They're drinking at Oxido that night, one of the clubs still open in the PRONAF Zone, and she has a couple more than she usually does.

"I might as well have taken the money," she says.

"What do you mean?" Pablo asks.

"When the narcos offered me a bribe," Ana says, "I should have taken it. They're our bosses now, right? So they should pay us."

Pablo drains his beer.

"I'm not letting it go," Ana says. "They killed our friend and our colleague and I'm not letting it go."

"Ana, you heard scar. What are you going to do?"

"Push," Ana said. "Push the authorities until they do something about it."

"Like they did something about Jimena's murder?" Pablo asks. "Like they did something about the attack on you and Marisol? How about those two women up in the valley? Or the dozens of murders we see every week? Are those the authorities you're going to?"

"I'll shame them," Ana says.

"Ana, they're shameless."

He's scared. If she pushes on this, she could be next.

"Well, I'm not," Ana mutters. "I'm not shameless."

"scar won't print what you write."

"I know," Ana says.

A little while later Pablo pours Ana into a taxi and takes her home. Puts her to bed and then he goes out again.

Pablo is not by nature heroic.

He knows this about himself and he's okay with it. But tonight he goes back out because he has to do something to prevent Ana from running headlong off the edge of the cliff. If I can get an answer, he thinks, about who killed Giorgio and why, maybe I can get the story published in a North American paper under a phony byline. Maybe that would satisfy Ana, or even pressure the police to do something about it.

Nor does Pablo look particularly heroic, and he knows that, too. He wears a black, somewhat soiled T-shirt under a black, somewhat soiled untucked shirt with a light windbreaker and a red Los Indios ball cap, and he's aware that his stomach hangs over his belt.

Now he rings Ramn's doorbell. It takes a few minutes, then some lights come on and the door cracks open behind the security chain.

"Ramn, it's me."

The door opens and Ramn has a pistol pointed at Pablo's face. "Mierdito, 'mano, what the fuck?"

"I have to talk to you."

Ramn lets him in. "Don't wake up the kids, okay?"

They walk into the kitchen. The house is a mini McMansion out in the new suburbs and looks like the generic home of any midlevel manager.

"I haven't seen our fucking story, Pablo," Ramn says.

Pablo tells him about scar's decision.

"I guess you're off the hook, then," Ramn says. "That's good-spares us both a lot of pain."

"Why was Giorgio Valencia killed?"

"Fuck, you just got out of the hot water-"

"Why?"

"He took the wrong pictures."

"Which wrong pictures?"

"That Cisneros chocha," Ramn says. "You tapping that, Pablo? You know her, right? Jesus shit, I would like to bang that, I mean before she got, you know, fucked up. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth, Pablo, it could have been you."

"Why wasn't it?" Pablo asks.

"You weren't on the Zs' payroll."

Pablo feels his head spinning. "What are you saying?"

"Your boy Giorgio was sucio," Ramn says. "Dirty. Like you. Only he was taking the Zs' money and then he fucked them by doing those pictures of the broad showing off her scars. You want to see my scars, 'Blo? I have some beauties."

"You have names? Who did it?"

"Fuck, you want to get me killed with you?" Ramn asks. Then he shuts up because he hears Karla coming down the stairs. His wife comes into the kitchen and looks blearily at Pablo.

"Hi, Pablo."

"Hello, Karla. Nice to see you."

"Nice to see you." She looks curiously at Ramn.

"Go back to bed, baby," Ramn says. "I'll be back up in a few minutes."

"Come by sometime for dinner," Karla says to Pablo.

"I will."

She walks back upstairs.

"Names?" Ramn asks. "Names? Grow up. What the fuck difference does it make? They're all the same cat. I'm telling you, Pablo, leave this the fuck alone. Leave it all the fuck alone. Me, I've decided to get out of here. Karla's pregnant again, I got some money set aside on el otro lado. A few little things to take care of and then I'm out of here. You should do the same."

"I'm a Juarense."

"Yeah, that's great," Ramn says. "Except there ain't no more Jurez. The Jurez we knew is gone."

- When Pablo gets back to Ana's she's still up. "Where did you go?"

"We're not married, Ana."

"I just asked."

"Ana, leave this thing with Giorgio alone, okay?"

"What do you know about it?"

"Just leave it be." It will only break your heart, if it doesn't get you killed first.

"Pablo, what do you know?"

"I know that Sinatra's not coming back."

"What does that mean?"

He doesn't answer.

There are no answers.

Victoria, Tamaulipas October 2010 Don Pedro Alejo de Castillo hears a commotion outside his hacienda and goes to see what is happening.

His cook, Lupe, looks terrified, and Don Pedro doesn't like people upsetting Lupe. She's been with him for over thirty years, the only woman in his household since his wife, Dorotea, passed away six years ago.

Don Pedro is seventy-seven, still tall and straight-spined. He goes to the door to see men driving around the front of the house in trucks and SUVs, firing AK-47s and AR-15s into the air, honking their horns and shouting obscenities.

Don Pedro doesn't like that either.

Only a malandro uses obscenity in front of a woman.

Three of the men get out of an SUV and walk up to his front porch. They're dressed like vaqueros, but he sees right away that they've never worked a day in their lives on a ranch.

His has five hundred acres, not large by local standards, but perfectly suited to him. And it sits on the edge of a beautiful lake with ducks and geese and good fishing. He goes out there just before dawn most mornings.

"Are you Alejo de Castillo?" one of the men demands.

Rudely.

"I am Don Pedro Alejo de Castillo, yes."

"This is your ranch?"

"Yes."

"We are the Zetas," the man says, as if it's supposed to frighten him.

It doesn't.

Don Pedro has a vague notion that the Zetas are some sort of drug gang that has been causing trouble in the cities, but he is not frightened. He has little to do with the cities, and less to do with drugs.

"What do you want?" he asks.

"We are confiscating this property," the man says.

"I don't think so, no."

"Old man, we're not asking you. We're telling you. You have until tonight to leave, or we'll kill you."

"Get off my land."

"We'll be back."

"I'll be waiting."

Don Pedro has an aristocratic manner and bearing, but he is not an aristocrat. His father ran a sawmill, and Pedro grew up working very hard. He turned the one sawmill into two, then five, then twelve, and eventually became a rich man. Don Pedro didn't inherit this ranch, he earned it the same way he earned the "Don," from his own hard work.

And he is not going to give it to anyone.

He built the two-story hacienda himself, with the help of local men, and lovingly supervised each detail. The walls are of thick, mud-colored adobe, with deep-set windows. The front door, of heavy wood, is shaded by a deep portal supported by hand-carved zapatas from his own sawmills.

Inside, large log roof beams, called vigas, stretch across the large, whitewashed living room, jointed to the walls with hand-carved corbel brackets. Thin latillas are laid crosshatched across the ceiling. The floors are polished terra-cotta tiles, with Indian carpets laid out. A clay fireplace sits in one corner.

The house is beautiful, understated, and dignified.

Don Pedro is impeccably dressed, as always. Dorotea always dressed well, like a lady, and he would never let her down by dressing as anything other than a gentleman. When he goes to put flowers on her grave, on consecrated ground on the little knoll overlooking her beloved lake, he wears a suit and a tie.

Today he wears a tweed shooting jacket, knit tie, khaki trousers, and hunting boots. Don Pedro is a founding member of the Manuel Silva Hunting and Fishing Club and the ranch will go to the club when he dies, on the stipulation that Lupe and Toms, who has worked for him for thirty-eight years, can live their lives out here.

He has no children to leave his land to. When Dorotea tried to apologize to him once for not being able to give him children, he put his finger to her lips and said, "You are the sunrise of my life."

Now Lupe is crying.

She must have heard everything, and Don Pedro doesn't like this, because he does not like to see a woman cry, and it makes him have even less respect for these "Zetas," because gentlemen do not conduct business in front of women.

"I think," Don Pedro says, "that you should go into town so you can spend the weekend with your grandchildren."

"Don Pedro-"

"Don't cry. Everything will be all right."

"But-"

"I have that beautiful duck that you made me last night," Don Pedro says. "I can warm that up for dinner. Go pack a few things, now."

He finds Toms in the barn, cleaning the heads on the new John Deere tractor that they are both so proud of.

"Who were those men?" Toms asks.