"Release that girl," Keller says.

"She's already in a taxi on her way home," Ochoa says. "I'm a man of my word."

"What do you want?" Keller asks, steeling himself to be interrogated. The names of informants? The status of investigations? A way to get to Aguilar or Vera? He flashes back to Ernie Hidalgo's body, showing the marks of torture, his face frozen in a grimace of agony. How long can I hold out, he wonders, before I give it to them?

"We have something in common," Ochoa says.

"I doubt that."

"We both want to take down Adn Barrera," Ochoa says. "You know the old saying, 'The friend of my enemy is my friend.'"

"I'm not your friend."

"You could be."

"No."

"Barrera will kill you."

"Or I'll kill him."

"You're exactly who they said you are," Ochoa says. "That rarest of creatures-an honest cop."

"Well, you should know about cops," Keller says. "You own enough of them."

"I don't own the federales," Ochoa says. "Barrera does."

"If you have evidence of that, give it to me," Keller says. "I'll see that it gets into the right hands."

Ochoa laughs. "Those hands are too full grabbing Barrera's money."

So I guess we do have something in common, Keller thinks. We don't trust anyone.

"All we want is a level field," Ochoa says, "for the government to treat both sides the same. If we lose, we can respect that, but we can't tolerate the government applying the law only against us."

"Do you have incriminating evidence?"

Ochoa stands up. "You're the super-cop. Find it. If I were you I'd start with the Tapias. I'm sorry you rejected my friendship. It might have been mutually beneficial."

Back in the vehicle for the long drive back to the city. They stop a block from his apartment, remove the hood, and let him out. He goes up to his apartment, sits on the bed, and shakes. It lasts only for a few seconds, then he checks under the bed. The shotgun is there-they didn't take it. So is the knife.

Everything Ochoa said rang true.

The near misses on Barrera, the apparent fact that he's living in perfect safety in Sinaloa, Batman and Robin's war on Barrera's enemies in Tijuana, the arrest of Osiel Contreras, the AFI and SEIDO fighting against the CDG-owned cops in Tamaulipas...all those facts would support a theory that the administration is backing Barrera at the cost of the other cartels.

But which parts of the administration?

Aguilar?

Vera?

Neither? Both?

And how do you find out? And how do you prove it?

Start with the Tapias, Ochoa said.

Face it, Keller thinks, the hunt for Barrera is going nowhere and now Batman and Robin, disingenuously or not, are bogged down in the Gulf War and they've taken you with them.

Start with the Tapias.

Again, how?

Although the night isn't cold, Keller can't seem to get warm.

He gets into the shower and turns it up hot, to warm up but also to scour away the place where he met Ochoa. Some places hold horror in them, it seeps into the walls, it permeates the air, its smell stays with you after you leave, as if it wants to seep through your pores into your blood, into your heart.

Pure evil.

Evil beyond the possibility of redemption.

4.

Jesus the Kid

You got a one-way ticket to the Promised Land -Bruce Springsteen "The Ghost of Tom Joad"

Laredo, Texas 2006.

Jess "Chuy" Barajos didn't grow up in the nice part of Laredo.

He was raised in the projects, in a wooden shack set on cinder blocks, with nine brothers and sisters. His father did construction jobs to feed his family, his mother cut hair. Hardworking people, loving parents who knew they were too busy supporting their kids to spend enough time with them.

Chuy played ftbol in a park across the street and wanted to be a professional player or a Navy SEAL. He and his best friend Gabe would talk about that a lot, especially after 9/11. Chuy wanted to fight for his country, Gabe wanted to learn how to beat the hell out of his abusive alcoholic father.

Neither one ever joined the navy, never mind the SEALs.

Gabe started hanging out on Lincoln Street with the mota dealers. Chuy, he ran away from home, got picked up for marijuana possession, which was no big deal.

The gun was.

Chuy was kicking the ball around in a vacant lot when he saw the brown paper bag in a bush along the chain-link fence. He opened the bag and hefted the heavy pistol, silver and pretty, in his hand. If you find a pistol like that, what else are you going to do except shoot it?

You have to.

Chuy fired the gun into the air.

A neighbor lady called the cops.

In the "interview room" at the precinct house, Chuy admitted to what he'd done. When he repeated his admission in court, the judge put him in juvie for a year, eight months with good time.

The "Gladiator Academy" was a learning experience.

The older boys taught him things he never wanted to know. He was small and skinny and weak, and they took him in the showers, took him in the bathroom, took him in his cell at night. He tried to fight back, he begged, he pleaded...and learned that fighting back was futile and that begging and pleading just made you more of a punk, made you a bitch.

More a bitch.

What they did to him made him a bitch, and they never stopped telling him so, calling him a bitch, a girl, a joto.

Every time he sees his face in the mirror, that's what he sees. You don't forget what they did to you, what they made you do to them. That fire doesn't go out, it just smolders, and you remember every face.

When Chuy got released, he started slipping across the border to Nuevo Laredo-not much of a slip, right across the bridge. A lot of the pochos did it, Chuy and Gabe and a dozen others.

Mostly hung out in a disco called Eclipse.

Doing his best to dance to the reggaeton music, working up the nerve to talk to one of the girls in their tight, slinky dresses, looking in admiration at the narcos in their crema, with their chains and their watches and their money and their cars parked out front.

None of those narcos live in a wooden house on cinder blocks. None of them share a bathroom with eleven other people, with a toilet that doesn't flush half the time, a trickle of a cold shower, with a father who shows up late at night and leaves before the sun comes up, a mother who looks as tired as she is.

The narcos have houses, condos, apartments. They have new cars and hot girls and money.

A lot of money, which they throw around like it's nothing.

Like it's nothing.

Like it doesn't come from lugging concrete, digging ditches, laying pipe. Like it doesn't come from holding a scissors until your hands are bent and cramped like a Halloween witch, your shoulders stooped, your neck aching.

Chuy knows where this money comes from.

A simple trip back across the bridge.

He makes it all the time, and he knows that you can make it empty and that's what you get, or you can make it heavy, and that's another reason-along with the music and the lights and the girls-he hangs out at Eclipse, hoping to catch on.

Hoping one of the narcos will notice him and give him a chance.

That's what Gabe said.

"We hang out long enough," Gabe advised, "someone will take notice and give us a shot."

Finally, one of them does.

One of the older narcos, guy named Esteban, maybe in his twenties, gives them each a little packet of coke and tells them to carry it back across the bridge, go to this house, and give it to this guy.

Chuy does it.

Of course he does it.

It's easy.

Strolls right across the bridge, goes to the address he was given, and gives the packet of perico to the guy who comes to the door. Guy takes the packet and hands Chuy a hundred-dollar bill.

Tip money.

Chuy goes back to Eclipse and starts making more trips.

Him and Gabe both, heavier and heavier amounts, and they start walking around with money in their pockets.

It isn't enough.

"We're making chump change," Gabe complains. "We'll never break into the big time this way."

"So how?" Chuy asks.

The Zetas, Gabe tells him. "The Zetas are looking for people. We catch on with them, we're made."

"So how do we catch on with them?" Chuy asks.

Gabe says he'll put the word out.

He does but nothing happens.

For months, they keep going down to the 867, making dope runs back, collecting chump change.

"We're getting nowhere," Chuy says.

"We gotta be patient, 'mano," Gabe says. "They're watching us."

Finally, Chuy's hanging out at Eclipse when Esteban, the guy who gave him his first dope run, comes up and says, "You still looking to get hooked up with some people?"

Chuy feels his throat tighten. He can barely breathe.

He just nods.

"Come on then," Esteban says.

He takes Chuy out to a black Lincoln Navigator and blindfolds him. They drive maybe an hour before he takes Chuy out of the car and walks him into a house, then takes the blindfold off.