The corner suite featured views of the southeast corner of Central Park through floor-to-ceiling bay windows. A balcony offered further views of the city, but the door was locked and the president was expressly forbidden to step outside. Seven plasma HD televisions, three marble bathrooms, handcrafted sycamore furnishings and leather surfaces. In a word: luxury.
“What would the people say?” asked Cecilia Garza, seated on a plush chair near the corner window, holding a glass of water.
“They would be outraged,” said the president, nodding to one of his EMP guards to step away, dismissing his valet and his personal secretary and his chief of staff, then sitting on the sofa before a set of briefing papers. “Everyone from the farmer to the banker. If they saw this.” He smiled his campaign smile as he slackened the knot of his necktie. “But, if I were to move to a chain hotel without any amenities, they would say, ‘Why does our president sleep in a flophouse while the Japanese prime minister stays in luxury?’ And in this case, national pride trumps the fear of a trumped-up scandal.”
Garza nodded. It was so strange sometimes, remembering her old UDLA law school professor and reconciling that man with the president of her country. He still had his idealism, only now it was tempered by the reality of everyday concessions. It had not hurt his campaign that he had aged so well. Tall, broad shouldered, his thick, dark hair graying at the temples. His expression was intelligent without being judgmental, commanding without being imperious. Looking the part is so important in politics, as in all walks of life, where meeting preconceived expectations gets you halfway to your goal. Garza, herself, had no such advantage as Policía Federal, a woman leading men.
President Vargas waved at the cityscape. “Life. So strange the paths we take. I think that to meet anyone on a crowded city street, even for an appointment, is a small miracle. But for us, for our lives, to intersect again like this, twenty years after leaving the incubator of the university . . . it is not mere fate, it is something richer. Not necessarily fraught with meaning . . . but profound nonetheless. Agree?”
She smiled as he lapsed back into his professorial way of speaking—something the campaign trail had required him to abandon early on, after reports that audiences felt he was bloviating and talking down to them. “I agree it is remarkable, Señor Presidente.”
He was in an expansive mood, but could tell that she was not. “Comandante Garza, your eyes are sadder than I remember. The weight of responsibility?”
And fatigue, she might have added. And squinting into the sun whenever she lost her sunglasses, which was frequently. “Perhaps,” she answered. “I am quite concerned about the incident.”
President Vargas’s lip curled a bit at the thought of it. “It is how they see us, no? And how they want to see us. Their inferior neighbor to the south. Violent and unruly. It is all they want to know. What was it Díaz said? ‘Poor Mexico . . .’ ” Garza finished the words of Porfirio Díaz, a former Mexican president, “. . . so far from God and so close to the United States.”
“They, who are the cause of all this drug violence, look down upon us for it. That is one of the many things I hope to achieve with this landmark treaty, Comandante. For it is not only to cut down on trafficking and the attendant violence, but to force the United States of America to take responsibility for its role in it.”
The so-called drug war in Mexico had claimed well over fifty thousand lives since 2006. Three times the number of murders in the United States, in a country one-third its size. And while that statistic seemed to speak to chaos, in fact the drug trade had become a complex global operation . . . as well as an immensely financially successful one. “A treaty is a great first step, Señor Presidente, but it is just a piece of paper to those who matter.”
“And you have faced those corrupt and violent souls, I know. After this trip is concluded and once the treaty is ratified, I would like to have you back in Mexico City. I have not figured out the exact role just yet, but we may need some equivalent of the American drug czar—only, one who can be effective. Someone to oversee the decline—and I say this confidently—the decline of the Mexican drug cartels.”
Garza smiled, both at his optimism and at the misnomer cartel. Cartels collude to fix prices and/or supply. As the saying goes in Mexico, one wishes the narcotics gangs were cartels. Then they would not constantly be killing each other and driving up the violence.
Garza did not deny the flame of ambition that burned inside her, driving her each day. But she felt instantly that taking such a stance would be exactly the wrong move. She needed to remain in a position to be active and do good, even if on a smaller scale than Señor Presidente foresaw for her.
“I think police work agrees with me,” she told him. “I cannot see myself spending the entire day making phone calls and flattering men in neat suits.”
“Is that what I am now? A flattering man in a neat suit?”
“You are that when you need to be, I think.”
“Don’t say yes or no just yet. Think about it. Nothing is set, and as I said, the role itself has yet to be fully determined. It might be something that interests you. And, as I say, it would be nice to have you back in Mexico City, the two of us, working for the national good.”
Garza nodded, but inside her head she was spinning. He was coming on to her. She remembered Herrera teasing her, “You would make a fine first lady.”
She could admit to a certain crush on him back in her school days—and she was not alone. An idealistic law professor holding forth before a room full of naive young students. And now that attractive man wore an air of authority about him, her magnetic president.
“My focus right now is Chuparosa.”
Vargas threw his head back at the mention of the assassin’s name. “The damned Hummingbird. Isn’t your focus supposed to be on me?”
“It is, Señor. And the office of the president.”
Vargas nodded, looking at her with the faintest trace of a smile. “I see. Well, I must say, I have every confidence in you here. We knew we would ruffle a few feathers signing this treaty—to say the least. But you do your job and I will do mine. It helps to have someone close at hand who I can trust.”
He smiled again. No malice, no disappointment. If anything, his manner appeared to be saying, Until tomorrow.
Garza took that as her cue, swallowing the rest of her now-warm water. “I will leave you to prepare.”
The president liked to write his own major speeches. He sat back, pulling his papers into his lap, sliding on a pair of reading glasses. “Perhaps tomorrow night, we can have a late dinner, as our schedules allow?”
She wasn’t sure. “Your schedule is my schedule,” she said. “Let’s see what the day brings.”
“Excellent.”
CHAPTER 25
Cecilia Garza was also staying at the Four Seasons, albeit in a single room on a lower floor. In-room dining was a tempting option, but she was waiting for a report from Virgilio, who, according to his texts, was on his way back to the hotel. So her work was not quite done for the evening.
She went downstairs into the lobby in search of food. The Garden, just off the main lobby on the Fifty-seventh Street side, was a twenty-minute wait for a table between towering indoor acacia trees. The host suggested that, as a single diner, she try the bar, which Garza was reluctant to do. She went as far as the revolving doors, but she was tired, and the thought of wandering up and down the block looking for something moderately healthy offered no appeal. She turned back, looking into the bar. Lots of beefy American males meeting after work, many in casual clusters at the long bar. A few females in pairs, alternately accepting or fending off attention from the opposite sex. A knot of robed Africans stood around two tables. Garza went a little farther inside, spotted an open chair, second to last along the bar, and made her way to it.