Three weeks later, Ester went looking for Chido. She knew the restaurant where he'd be on Friday nights and she got high on viesca and wine and walked into the restaurant and saw him at a table with Gerardo and Silvia.

And some other woman.

Ester went up to the table and asked Chido, "Can I speak with you?"

Chido looked surprised, angry. "Get out of here. Now."

"I just want to speak with you." Then she broke down crying. "I'm sorry. I love you, I love you. I'm sorry."

"You're drunk," Chido said. "High."

Silvia got up, took her by the elbow, and tried to walk her away. "Don't embarrass yourself, sobrina."

But Ester got mad and jerked her arm away, looked at the pretty girl sitting next to Chido, and asked, "Who's this cunt?"

"Enough," Chido said.

"They kill people, you know," Ester said to the girl, who sat there with her red-lipsticked mouth in a shocked O. "I saw them-"

Then Chido and Gerardo had her by the arms and she couldn't shake away and they walked her out of the restaurant into the alley and she saw Chido's face and it was red and angry and she saw his eyes and knew he was high on coke and she was suddenly sober and very afraid as they pushed her against the wall.

"What did you see?" Gerardo asked.

"Nothing."

"What did you see?"

When Ester didn't answer, Gerardo said to Chido, "You know what we have to do."

Ester started to run, but Chido grabbed her and pushed her back against the wall. Then he saw the bottle at their feet. A green bottle that had once been full of cheap wine. He smashed it against the wall and held the jagged neck to her face.

"I told you," he said, "that you saw nothing."

"I didn't."

"Lying bitch," Chido said. "Now you won't see anything."

He dragged the glass across her dark eyes and held his other hand over her mouth as she screamed and screamed.

When he let her go she slid down the wall and collapsed, pressed her hands against her eyes and felt nothing but blood. Then she heard Chido say, "She can't identify what she can't see. It's cool."

She heard them walk away.

They must have called a squad car, because a few minutes later two cops arrived, picked her up, put her in the backseat, and drove her to the hospital. The doctors did the best they could, but she would never see again, and she became the blind whore of La Polvarilla. As her mother said, you don't need to see a man's hard dick to put it inside you, and men came for the cheap thrill of getting done by a girl who couldn't see them, and when she went to the trucks to get water, some people, boys mostly, were mean and tripped her so the water spilled, but most people were kind and helped her.

She never heard from Chido Palacios again.

But that, she tells Keller, was when she was young and not a whore.

- Javier "Chido" Palacios takes coffee at the same cafe just a few blocks away from AFI headquarters every day at four o'clock.

In nice weather, such as this May afternoon, he sits at a table outside, sips his espresso, and watches the world go by on the boulevard in front. His three bodyguards stand at various places by the iron fence or the door to the cafe.

Keller watches this for three days.

After a long debate with Aguilar, it was decided that it was Keller who would make the first approach.

"You can't," Keller told the prosecutor. "If he turns you down, he blows our cover. Besides, you don't have anything to offer him at this point. You can't protect him in Mexico."

Aguilar reluctantly agreed and Keller started his surveillance on Palacios, trying to find a time and place where he would be sufficiently alone. On this third afternoon, Keller walks in and takes a table next to Palacios. The bodyguards notice and watch, then apparently decide that he's not a threat.

If Palacios is nervous about his situation, he doesn't show it. His custom-made suit is pressed and clean, his black hair-with just flecks of silver at the temple-is carefully combed back. He looks cool, sophisticated, a man in charge of his world.

Keller sits and looks at him.

Palacios breaks first. "Do I know you?"

"You should, Chido."

Palacios flinches slightly at the old aporto. "Why is that?"

"Because I can save your life," Keller says. "May I join you?"

Palacios hesitates for a second, then nods. Keller gets up, the bodyguards start to close in, but Palacios waves them off.

"I'll bet you thought you left 'Chido' behind in La Polvorilla," Keller says when he sits down.

"I haven't heard it in years," Palacios says calmly. "Who are you?"

"I'm with DEA."

Palacios shakes his head. "I know all the DEA guys."

"Apparently not."

"You said something about saving my life?" Palacios says. "I wasn't aware it needed saving."

"Seriously?" Keller asks. "You just buried three of your buddies. The Tapias want to kill you. If they don't, Adn Barrera will. You have to know you're on the endangered species list."

"Your DEA colleagues would say that you're talking out of your ass," Palacios says.

I can't lose him now, Keller thinks. I can't make this cast and let him off the hook, because if I do he goes straight to Vera. So he says, "You were at a meeting last spring with Diego and Martn Tapia. During that meeting you agreed to provide protection to the Zetas and target La Familia instead. Also present at that meeting were Gerardo Vera, Roberto Bravo, and Jose Aristeo."

Palacios reverts a little to his La Polvorilla days. "You're full of shit."

"I have you on tape, motherfucker."

Palacios literally starts to sweat. Keller sees the beads of perspiration pop on his forehead, just below his carefully cut hair. He presses: "Think about it-you've got one foot on the Tapia dock and the other in the Barrera boat, and they're drifting apart. You're going to have to choose, and your guards can't protect you in Puente Grande, which is where you're going. The only question is, do they fuck you in the ass before they slit your throat?"

"I was at that meeting," Palacios says, "to gather evidence against-"

"Save it," Keller says. "You think Vera is going to protect you? I know you're boys and all that from the old barrio, but if you think Vera's going to put the life he has now on the line for old times' sake, you don't know your old friend."

"Maybe he's on that tape, too."

"Maybe he is," Keller says. "So that puts you in a little race with him, doesn't it, because the first one of you to cut a deal gets a snitch visa to the States and the other gets ass-raped. Which do you want to be?"

Palacios glares at him.

Keller gets up. "I came to you first because you can trade up, for Vera. I'm going to go to him in exactly twenty-four hours, unless I hear from you first."

He lays a slip of paper with a phone number on the table.

"Beautiful day for scoping the women, isn't it?" Keller asks. "By the way, Ester Almanza sends her regards, you piece of shit."

Keller holds his thumb and little finger to his face-Call me-smiles, and walks away.

- There's little to do now but wait.

And prepare for the worst-case scenario, that Palacios runs to Vera and they launch a counteroffensive that could take several forms, the most likely of which is a raid on SEIDO to acquire the incriminating tapes, Aguilar's firing by pressure from Los Pinos, and even criminal charges against him.

Keller doesn't discount another possibility-an outright assassination attempt on Aguilar.

"Don't be ridiculous," Aguilar says when Keller suggests it over a brandy in his study.

Lucinda had prepared her usual excellent dinner, a fiery shrimp dish over rice, and the children were their charming selves, conversing easily about their ballet and horseback lessons, and shyly about boys they had met at an interschool dance. Keller had forgotten how simply lovely family life could be.

Then Aguilar and Keller went into his study to discuss business, and now Keller sits there with the cell phone in his pocket, urging it to ring. He'd bought it only for Palacios's call, and now it sits in his pocket like a time bomb you want to go off. Every second it doesn't increases the possibility that Palacios has gone to Vera, or, maybe worse, to the Tapias. "It's not ridiculous, Luis. In fact, I think you should consider moving your family out for a little while."

"How would I explain that to them, Art?" Aguilar asks. "Without terrifying them?"

"A vacation," Keller said. "We set you up in the States, DEA provides security."

"I don't think Gerardo would go so far as to hurt families."

"But Barrera would," Keller says, "and has."

"They'd make a threat first, no? To intimidate me into cooperating?"

"Probably," Keller admits. "But it doesn't hurt to be safe. Look, wouldn't the girls love a couple of weeks at some dude ranch in Arizona? They could ride-"

"Western saddles? And ruin their seats-"

"Luis," Keller says. "Galven, Aristeo, and Bravo were killed outside their homes. Do you want to expose your family to that possibility?"

"Of course not."

"Well..."

"I'll think about it."

They go over other possibilities. If Aguilar's boss, the attorney general, calls him in and either fires him, shuts down the investigation, or both, it means he's in on it, in which case Keller gets out of the country as fast as possible with a copy of the tape.

The phone vibrates.

Aguilar watches as Keller digs it out of his pocket, listens for two seconds. "Parque Mexico," he says. "Foro Lindbergh. One hour." He clicks off.

- They meet under the pergola near the large columns in the Lindbergh Forum.

A smart choice, because it's out of sight. But dangerous, because the trees behind the columns offer ample cover for gunmen, especially at night.

Keller knows that he might be walking into a trap. But then again, he's pretty much in a trap already, so what's the difference? Nevertheless, he keeps his hand on the pistol under his jacket.

Palacios stands at the end of the pergola.

He appears to be alone.

"I want out tonight," he says.

"That's not going to happen." The moment Palacios crosses the border, he loses half his motivation to talk. Keller has seen it happen-the source sits on a chair in some office on the other side and spins useless bullshit stories until everyone gets tired of it and moves on. No, what they have to do is pick Palacios as clean as they can before they move him. Everything they get after that is gravy.

But they have to move fast.

"Here's how it's going to work," Keller says. "You're going to give us information. We check it out to see if you're telling the truth. When we have enough to nail Vera, you get your ticket."

Palacios stares at him. Then he says, "I want visas for myself, my wife, and my two adult children. And I get immunity, I get to keep my bank accounts."

The prick doesn't want to go into the program and become a greeter at a suburban Tucson Home Depot. He wants to come across and live the high life on the dirty millions he's taken from the Sinaloa cartel.

"That's up to your AG," Keller says.

It's a risk Keller has to take, and it might as well be sooner than later. Palacios might balk at the Mexican involvement, because he thinks he's been dealing exclusively with DEA.

Palacios says, "We're done here."

"You walk away now," Keller says, "you don't get far. You get busted before you leave the park. You think your old buddies are going to wait around to see if you flip?"

Keller knows his business, knows that there's a time to push and a time to pull, so now he softens his tone and says, "Look, you haven't committed a crime in the States. Neither has Vera. So the Justice Department can only offer you sanctuary as a courtesy to the Mexican AG's office. We do it through SEIDO, keep it under wraps."

"Luis Aguilar?" Palacios asks. "That sanctimonious prick?"

"He's your lifeline, Chido."

Palacios laughs. "Where is he?"

"In a car on Calle Chiapas."

"Let's go."