The fact that they hadn't bothered to disguise their faces or their names tells Eddie that they're going to kill him, too.

He only hopes it's quick.

Then he sees white T-shirts soaking in a dishpan full of gasoline, and Ochoa says, "You boys like carne asada, don't you? We had to sit out there for hours, smelling it. Made us hungry. So we're going to have carne asada of our own."

He nods to Forty, who takes one of the T-shirts from the pan, wrings it out, then walks behind Chacho and lays the T-shirt on his bare back. The legs of Chacho's chair rattle on the wooden floor, he's shaking so bad. He shakes worse when Forty takes a Bic lighter out of his pocket and waves it like he's at a concert.

Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Eddie thinks. He feels like he's going to piss, and his right leg starts to quiver and he can't stop it.

Forty steps behind Chacho and talks into his ear. "You killed Soto. Now you burn in hell."

He lights the T-shirt.

Flames shoot up like a flare.

Chacho screams.

His chair bounces.

Segura laughs. "He sounds like a girl."

The fire goes out, the shirt seared into Chacho's raw skin.

Burning flesh scorches Eddie's nose, then his lungs, his soul.

Ochoa walks over from where he was leaning and lifts Chacho's chin. "You think you hurt? You don't hurt yet."

Stepping behind Chacho, he takes remnants of the T-shirt between his thumbs and his forefingers.

"You don't hurt yet," he repeats.

Then he tears the fabric out of Chacho's burned skin.

Chacho bellows.

A rhythmic, animalistic huffing.

The veins in his neck look like they're going to burst, his eyes like they could pop out of his face.

"Now you hurt," Ochoa says.

Forty laughs. He seems to think this is hysterical. Segura fingers the grenade around his neck like it's a rosary. When Chacho finally stops howling, exhausted, Forty takes another shirt from the pan and lays it on his back.

"Please," Chacho murmurs.

"Please what?" Ochoa asks.

"Please don't...do it again."

They do it three more times, set him on fire, rip off the shirt, and with it his burned flesh. By the time they finish, Chacho is meat, Eddie thinks. Nothing more than burned meat.

Carne asada.

Steam comes off his back.

Then Eddie hears Ochoa say the worst thing he's ever heard in his life.

"You're next."

Forty walks behind Eddie and lays a gas-soaked shirt on his back. Eddie, he tries to control himself but he can't. He feels his urine run down his leg and then sees it pool on the floor.

"He pissed himself." Forty laughs.

Segura fingers his grenade. "Like another girl."

Eddie blubbers, "No, please."

Like he's talking from far away, like through an old cardboard tube or something you used to shout through when you were a kid.

Forty flicks the lighter.

"No!" Eddie screams.

Forty closes the lid.

"We're going to let you go," Ochoa says, holding Eddie by the chin. "You go and you tell people what happens when you disrespect the Zetas. Now stop crying, faggot, and get dressed."

They cut the tape off and Eddie scrambles into his clothes and runs down the stairs.

He hears them laughing behind him.

- "Segura," Eddie tells Diego, verbalizing what has become an internal chant, a prayer, a mantra, "Forty, Ochoa. They're mine. I'm going to kill each one of them personally."

Diego just smiles. He likes this young man, likes his spirit.

Eddie ran to Badiraguato after the Zetas finished with him. They dumped Chacho's body out in the street, clad only in Lupe's underthings, to embarrass him, shame his family, call him a joto who died like a girl.

A big joke.

Funny assholes.

So Eddie came to Badiraguato, to the heart of the Sinaloa cartel, to tell the Big Man that he was in, that he'd come in with the cartel, he was their guy for the war against the Zetas and Contrerases.

The big bearded man just looks at him and says, "No war."

Eddie can't believe what he's hearing. "I told you what they did. In Monterrey, which is supposed to be neutral ground."

"I said no war."

"I'll do it on my own, then," Eddie says, getting up. "Without you."

"You think you and a few Los Chachos can go up against the Zetas?" Diego asks. "This time they will kill you."

It was him who asked Ochoa not to kill this young pocho, to let him live to run the business.

"At least I can die like a man," Eddie says.

"Think like a man," Diego says. "A man has responsibilities. You have a wife, you have kids to take care of."

"I got no way of taking care of them anymore."

"You'll run Laredo for us, pay our piso to Ochoa," Diego says.

"You want me to suck his cock, too?"

"That's up to you, m'ijo," Diego says. "What I'm trying to tell you is, don't be stupid. Don't let your emotions get in the way of doing the smart thing. Sit down."

Eddie sits down. But he says, "They killed my friend. In front of me. Burned him to death."

Diego already knows what happened in that room. It was awful, disgusting, unnecessary. But done. Now he says, "You know how many friends I've lost? You grieve, you put food on their graves on the Day of the Dead, you move on. I'm offering you a plaza. You're a pocho and I'm offering you a plaza. In exchange, I'm asking you for one thing-"

"To eat shit."

"To bide your time," Diego says.

You eat shit, you smile. You deliver the piso to Ochoa and smile some more. You're happy and grateful to still be alive and still be in business.

In the meantime-quietly, smartly-you recruit men. Not in Laredo, not even in the Gulf, but in Sinaloa, Guerrero, Baja. And not coke-snorting malandros, either, but police, soldiers, serious people.

Slowly, quietly, you move them into Laredo.

You build up a force, an army.

"The CDG has the Zetas," Diego says. "We'll have-"

"Los Negros," Eddie says.

The Blacks.

Black.

The color of burned flesh.

It takes months.

Months of recruiting, secretly renting safe houses, moving men and weapons into Nuevo Laredo, months of kissing CDG ass, delivering payments to the men who had tortured his friend to death, grinning like a stray dog who's been tossed a scrap from the table.

But finally, it was ready.

Adn Barrera gives them the green light.

El Seor says the word, Diego gives it to Eddie like a gift, and Eddie gets on the phone to Ochoa. "You have one week to get your asses out of Nuevo Laredo and Reynosa. You can keep Matamoros so you can eat, but that's it."

Eddie relishes the long, stunned silence. Then Ochoa asks, "What if we don't?"

Eddie's answer is simple.

If you don't- -we'll burn you.

One week later Eddie stands on a Nuevo Laredo roof with five men dressed in police uniforms, lets off bursts of rifle fire into the air, and shouts, "We are Los Negros, Adn Barrera's people, and he is here...in Nuevo Laredo!"

- Keller reads the headlines and can't help smiling.

The devil was dead.

But he wasn't dead for long.

3.

Los Dos Laredos

The blues is my business And business is good.

Todd Cerney "The Blues Is My Business"

Nuevo Laredo 2006.

It's civil war in Nuevo Laredo.

Keller goes there because Adn Barrera has announced himself there, literally from the rooftops.

Everyone keeps waiting for Barrera to show up in Nuevo Laredo. A rumor, repeated to the point that it's become "fact," is that his men came into a Nuevo Laredo restaurant, confiscated all cell phones, locked the doors, and politely said that no one could leave. The story goes on that Barrera came in, had dinner in the back room, paid everyone's check, and then left. The cell phones were restored to their owners, who were then allowed to leave.

Keller knows it's bullshit, but finds it revealing that such a story could be considered true. He knows that Adn Barrera will come nowhere near the war zone until the shooting is all but over.

Surrogates fight his battles, surrogates like Los Negros and the Tapias, and they might, just might, be a route into the man himself.