Narco Polo

Must be the money.

-Nelly "Ride wit Me"

Mexico City 2006.

Keller sips his white wine and looks over the glass at the exquisite woman smiling at him across the lobby of the movie theater.

Yvette Tapia is stunning in a short silver dress, her black hair cut in a severe pageboy, her lipstick a dark, daring red. If she meant to invoke the age of the flapper, a Zelda Fitzgerald combination of sophistication and sexiness in a Mexican milieu, she's succeeded. As one of the film's financial backers, she moves fluidly through the crowd, smiling and chatting and charming.

Desperate men, Keller reflects, make desperate moves.

And he's desperate.

His hunt for Adn Barrera is at a standstill, frozen on an investigational tundra of no leads, mired in bureaucratic entropy. His colleagues on the Barrera Coordinating Committee are bogged down elsewhere, simply too busy trying to cope with simultaneous wars in Baja, Tamaulipas, and now Michoacn.

Keller has to admit that the violence is unprecedented. Even at the height (the depth?) of Barrera's war against Gero Mendez, back in the '90s, the fighting was sporadic-brief sudden peaks of violence-not a daily event. And not spread across three broad areas of the country, with multiple and interconnected antagonists.

The Alliance fighting Teo Solorzano in Baja.

The Alliance fighting the CDG/Zetas in Tamaulipas.

La Familia (with, apparently, Alliance help) fighting the Zetas in Michoacn.

The war back in the '90s encompassed a few dozen fighters at a time. Now the cartels are mustering literally hundreds of men, maybe thousands-most of them military veterans, former or current police officers, in any case, trained fighters.

AFI and SEIDO are trying to take them all on.

Unless you believe Ochoa, Keller thinks, in which case the lineup looks a little different: The Alliance and the federal government fighting Teo Solorzano in Baja.

The Alliance and the federal government fighting the Zetas in Tamaulipas.

La Familia (with, apparently, Alliance help) and the federal government fighting the Zetas in Michoacn.

Keller doesn't want to believe it. Was there official collusion in Barrera's escape from Puente Grande? Doubtless. Complicity in his close escapes? Likely. Entrenched corruption that keeps him protected wherever the hell it is he's "hiding"? Inarguable.

But a coordinated federal effort to assist Barrera in taking over the entire Mexican drug trade? That's a grassy knoll that Keller can't climb.

He and Ochoa do agree on one thing.

Start with the Tapias.

I have nowhere else to start, Keller thinks as he watches Yvette come toward him in the lobby.

It's in direct violation of his working agreement with both DEA and the Mexicans. You are not here to cultivate your own sources, take independent action, or do surveillance or any other intelligence gathering.

Yeah, well, Keller thinks, I'm not here to sit on my ass and do nothing while you guys work on everything but Barrera, either. Nothing changes if nothing changes, so it's time to start a little change.

He'd used an embassy connection to get into the film, and it came with an invitation to the post-premiere reception where everyone stands around thinking of nice things to say. Keller sought Yvette out, complimented her on the movie, and they got to talking.

"Yvette Tapia," she said. "My husband, Martn, and I helped to finance the film."

"Art Keller."

If she recognized the name, she didn't show it. "And what do you do in Mexico City, Art?"

"I'm with the DEA."

Give her credit, she didn't flinch. Her in-laws are some of the biggest drug traffickers in the world and she didn't as much as blink. Instead, she smiled charmingly and said, "Well, that must keep you very busy."

They made small talk for a little bit, and then she moved on to work the crowd. Now she makes her way back to him and says, "Art, we're having a post-party party at the house. Very casual. Won't you come?"

"I'm by myself," Keller answers. "I don't want to be a fifth wheel."

"You'd be a twenty-fifth wheel," she says. Her husband comes up and stands at her shoulder, and she turns to him and says, "Martn, we have a poor lonely diplomat here who's resisting my invitation. Make him come."

Martn Tapia looks like anything but a narco. He wears a carefully tailored dark blue suit with a white shirt and tie, and the word that comes to Keller's mind is "polished."

Martn extends his hand. "My wife has invited all the usual suspects, so a little fresh blood would be very welcome."

"Always happy to be a transfusion," Keller says. "Where..."

"Cuernavaca," Martn says.

Hello, "Cuernavaca," Keller thinks, remembering the series of phone calls that led to the ambush at Atizapn. "I don't have my car with me."

"I'm sure we can arrange a ride with someone," Martn says.

So Keller hops in a car with a film agent, and rides out to the modern house in a gated community in the hills of Cuernavaca.

The small crowd can only be described as "glittering." Literally, in the case of the actresses in sequined dresses-one of whom he thinks he recognizes from American films-metaphorically in the case of the writers, producers, and financiers. He's been standing around for about ten minutes when Yvette comes over to him.

"Let me see," she says, scanning the room. "Who here is right for you? Not Sofa, she's a wonderful actress but quite insane..."

"Maybe not an actress."

"A writer, then," Yvette says. "There's Victoria-stunning, isn't she? She's some sort of financial journalist, but I think she's married, and, anyway, she lives in Jurez..."

"You really don't have to play matchmaker for me."

"But I enjoy it so much," Yvette says, "and you wouldn't deprive a staid married lady of her small pleasures, would you?"

"Of course not."

"Come on, then," she says, taking him by the arm, "let me introduce you to Frieda. She writes film criticism and we're all terrified of her, but..."

Yvette skillfully dumps him off on Frieda, and Keller chats with the film critic as he watches Yvette move from guest to guest, charming everyone.

But she's here to do just that, Keller thinks.

So is her husband.

Martn Tapia is a successful young entrepreneur on the rise, and making high-level connections is his business. Or his brother's, Keller thinks. The Tapias could be Diego's link to Mexico's upper crust. And if they're Diego's, they could very well be Adn's.

It's not much, but it's the only thread Keller has. It's pretty ballsy, though, he has to admit, injecting himself into the Tapia household. I wonder what Adn would think, if he knew I was here.

Maybe he already does.

Keller makes polite conversation with the film critic for a moment and then wanders off and grabs another glass of wine.

"You look as lost as I feel."

The woman beside him is stunning-a heart-shaped face, high cheekbones, dazzling brown eyes, auburn hair that falls to her shoulders, and a figure that Keller can't help but notice under her classic little black dress.

"I don't know how you feel, but, yes, I do feel lost," Keller says. He offers his hand. "I'm Art Keller."

"Marisol Cisneros," she says, shaking his hand. "North American?"

"With the embassy."

"Their Spanish instruction is better than it used to be," Marisol says. "Rosetta Stone-Latin American version?"

"My mother was Mexican," Keller says. "I spoke Spanish before I spoke English."

"Are you a friend of the Tapias?"

"I just met them at the film opening," Keller says.

"I don't know them at all. I came with a friend."

Keller's surprised that he feels a slight pang of disappointment until he hears her say, "I think you met her. Frieda?"

"The terrifying film critic."

"All critics are terrifying," Marisol says. "That's why I became a mortician."

"You don't look like-"

"I'm a doctor," she says. "One step removed from a mortician."

Keller sees her blush.

"I'm sorry," she says, laughing at herself. "That was a stupid joke. I think I'm nervous. This is sort of my coming-out party."

"Coming out from..."

"My divorce," Marisol says. "It's been six months and I've done that bury-yourself-in-your-work thing. Frieda dragged me to this. I'm not very comfortable with the beautiful people."

But you're beautiful, Keller thinks. "Me neither."

"I can tell." She blushes. "There I go again, being socially awkward. What I meant was...I don't know...you don't seem..."

"The beautiful people type?"

"I meant it as a compliment, believe it or not."

"I'll take it as one." They stand there-awkwardly-and then Keller thinks of, "Do you live in Cuernavaca?"

"No, the city. Condesa. You know it?"

"I live there."

"I moved from Polanco after the divorce," she says. "I like it there. Bookstores. Cafes. You don't feel so...pathetic...going into those places by yourself."

Keller can't imagine that she's by herself that much. If she is, it's by choice. He says, "I was reading a book the other night while eating-alone-in a Chinese restaurant, and the book talked about a man so lonely that he eats alone in Chinese restaurants."

"So sad!"

"But you're laughing."

"Well, it's funny, too."

"I got up and left," Keller says. "Totally demoralized."

"This past Valentine's Day?" Marisol says. "I sent out for a pizza. Sat in my condo and watched Sabrina and cried."

"That's pretty bad."

"Not as bad as your Chinese restaurant."

They look at each other for a second and then Keller says, "I think this is where I ask you for your phone number. So I can...call..."

"Right." Marisol reaches into her purse.

"I'll remember it," Keller says.

"You will?"

"Yes."

Marisol tells him her number and he repeats it back. Then she says that she'd better collect Frieda and head back to the city-she has clinic hours in the morning. "It was nice to meet you."

"You, too."