“Magda?”

She just smiles, knowing that she looks, well, fetching in her white sundress cut to maximum advantage and her white sunhat.

“I’m glad,” he stammers, “that you’re out.”

“From the prison you abandoned me to? Thank you so much.”

Magda enjoys his discomfiture. She likes that oh-so-cool Jorge looks afraid, almost as if he expects Adán Barrera and his gunmen to appear any second. He knows, of course; he has to have heard that she’s made a powerful connection. “It’s all right. I haven’t come to kill you.”

“You’d be within your rights.” He smiles.

Same old Jorge, still charming.

But now his charm eludes her.

Magda would still fuck him, if that’s what it takes, but it would just be part of the job. Hopefully mildly diverting, perhaps even providing some sexual release, but there was no longer any question of loving this man. She can’t imagine now that she ever found him anything but pathetic.

“Adán did send me to see you, though,” she says, watching him turn pale. “Are you going to offer me a drink?”

“Of course,” Jorge says. “What would you like?”

“You don’t remember?”

“Gin and tonic.”

“No lime.”

He orders two and his drink settles him down a little, at least enough to ask, “What can I do for Barrera?”

“It’s what he can do for you,” Magda says.

“What’s that?”

“He can make you wealthy, or he can make you dead.” She smiles at him and adds, “You choose, cariño.”

Jorge chooses the money.

“Of course,” he says, “as much product as Barrera wants. Depending on the quality, I can give it to him at around, say, $7,000 a kilo.”

Magda knows her math, knows that the same kilo can be turned around in Mexico for about $16,000, around $20,000–$24,000 in the northern towns along the border.

“You’re not ‘giving’ anything,” Magda says, “you’re selling. And you’re going to sell it to me at six.”

“And you’ll tell Barrera it was seven?” Jorge smirks.

“No, Adán will pay retail for whatever of your product he wants,” Magda says. “If I want to buy additional kilos on my own, the price will be discounted to six.”

Jorge smirks. She used to think of it as a charmingly sardonic smile, but now she sees it’s a smirk as he says, “And why should I do that?”

“Because you owe me,” Magda says.

“Would you like another drink?” Jorge asks. “I would. Listen, cariño, certainly I owe you something, for old time’s sake, but not that much. To be perfectly honest, at the risk of hurting your feelings, you weren’t that good in bed.”

“I’m not talking about the sex,” Magda says. “I’m talking about the months I spent in prison.”

“You knew you were taking a chance,” Jorge says. “All right, I’ll tell you what I’ll do because I’m still so fond of you—let’s say six-five to you for the first ten kilos, but after that, I’m afraid it has to be seven.”

“And I’ll tell you what I’ll do because I’m still so fond of you,” Magda says. “Six for the first ten kilos, but I’m afraid it has to be five-five after that.”

“Or your boy Barrera will send gunmen to kill me?” Jorge asks.

“No,” Magda says. “I will.”

She gets up from the table.

“I’ll be at the Carolina,” Magda says. “Send me your answer there. And send it, don’t come yourself, because that’s just not going to work anymore.”

“Prison changed you.”

“Oh, no kidding, Jorge,” Magda says. “And don’t look so forlorn, cariño, you’re going to make a lot of money with me.”

She walks away, knowing that he’s looking at her ass.

She thinks about going out that night to one of the clubs, to dance and maybe find someone to bring back, but decides to settle for a good room-service dinner, a bath, and an evening of solitude instead.

The message is in her mailbox in the morning.

Jorge is honored to accept her offer.

Magda’s pleased, because it will make her rich and she didn’t really want to have him killed. She would have done it, though, to teach the next prospective seller a lesson. She would have taken the bonus money Adán is paying her to set up the connection and used it to buy sicarios to come to Colombia and kill Jorge.

Either way, the story will get around and the men will respect her. She leaves the hotel humming—

Ladies, it ain’t easy being independent.

It may not be easy, Magda thinks.

But it’s good.

Mexico City

Even from the faint hallway light, Keller can see that his door has been jimmied.

The bedroom lamp is on in his apartment and the light shines under the door. He pulls his Sig Sauer and kicks the door open.

A man sits in his one chair and looks calmly at him. “Señor Keller?”

Keller trains the sight on his chest. “Who are you and what do you want?”

The man slowly holds up an eight-by-ten photograph of a young woman who looks into the camera, terrified. “Her name is María Moldano, she was kidnapped off the streets today, and she will be killed in a brutal way if you don’t come with me.”

“And if I do?”

“I give you my word that she will be released,” the man answers, and then adds, “Intact. We know who you are. “So we know you will make this trade.”

Keller lowers his gun.

They put him in the back of a Navigator, then pull a black hood over his head and make him lie down on the floor. Keller got a glimpse of the license plate and knows it will make no difference. Even if he does survive, the plates will turn out to have been stolen.

The men are well trained and don’t talk.

Keller tries to time the drive but he knows that fear and adrenaline will speed up his mental clock.

He doesn’t try to initiate conversation or ask questions. Who are you? Where are you taking me? What do you want? It would do no good and only show weakness. If they want two million dollars of Adán Barrera’s money they’re going to get it.

They drive for a long time—Keller estimates two hours—out of the city and into the country. Traffic noises gradually fade and then Keller can feel them leave tarmac and go onto a bumpy gravel road. He can hear goats and chickens. He feels the car go uphill, the driver shift into first, and then a sharp curve to the right.

The car stops.

Doors open, hands reach down and lift him out.

If they’re going to kill me, he thinks, they’re going to do it now. Shove me to my knees and put a bullet in the back of my head. It isn’t the worst result. The other possibility is torture, the kind that the Zetas described on Crazy Eddie’s video clip.

It’s hard to be brave in the face of that. Any man who says he’s not afraid of torture is lying, and Keller feels his legs quiver as they walk him away from the car and then into a building.

Hands push him down onto a stool.

Keller gets a faint whiff of something familiar.

Gasoline.

The place smells of gasoline and it smells of something else, too.

Death.

It’s palpable, and Keller feels it the way that perhaps cattle feel a slaughterhouse, a sympathetic sense that members of your species have suffered and died in this place.

He shivers.

Then he hears a man sit down across from him. His tone is strong, calm, authoritative. “Señor Keller, I’m Heriberto Ochoa. I’m sorry to have brought you here this way. But we have no one else to go to, and we didn’t know if you’d come otherwise.”

“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?