Fisk said, “Care to draw us a map?”

CHAPTER 56

Through an open glass door in the back, they stepped down onto a brick patio arranged in a wide circle with inlaid tiles set to resemble a glowing sun. Beyond the patio, trees rose before the wall that circled the property. Above the patio was strung a thin netting that did little to block out the sun.

From one of three deck chairs set before a table containing the remains of a fine breakfast, Andrés León set down his iPad and stood. He was an older man, his hair long, held back in a gray-black braid that came halfway down his back. He wore loafers with no socks, linen pants, a loose, long-sleeved shirt, and a wide straw hat. He smiled in a grandfatherly way, greeting them.

“Welcome!” he said. He took Cecilia Garza’s hand politely, almost as though he were about to kiss it, then shook Fisk’s hand.

“Mexico City and New York, working jointly,” he said, having been appraised of their identities in advance of their appearance. “It is rarely a pleasure when police appear, but to what do I owe it?”

He offered them the other two chairs, but neither Fisk nor Garza sat.

Garza said, “We are preparing security for a special dinner tonight between two heads of state—”

León said, “Of course, of course. At my restaurant. But I believed all security matters were being seen to already.”

Fisk said, “We were curious. We hadn’t met you personally and wanted to come by ourselves.”

“Curious, I see. You won’t sit?”

They did, reluctantly.

“Anything? Orange juice? So fresh?”

“No, nothing,” said Fisk.

“I might have some,” said Garza.

“Wonderful.” He waved to a servant standing off to the side, and she departed.

“As you can see,” he said, “I live in a beautiful prison here.”

Fisk nodded. “We were going to ask you about that.”

“That was my assumption. Inspector Fisk, I followed your exploits in the news last year.”

“It’s Detective,” said Fisk.

“And you, too, Comandante Garza. I follow Mexican news most closely. You have made quite a name for yourself. I am not surprised you would seek me out here, due to my involvement in the dinner tonight. I am happy to answer all questions.”

Garza said, “Who are you?”

“Who I am now is a protected individual living under the careful watch of the United States government. A retired Mexican financier. An expatriate. A man in self-exile.”

Garza’s orange juice arrived in a crystal glass, sunlight glinting off the facets and sparkling. As the servant leaned forward to hand Garza the juice, Fisk saw the strap of a shoulder holster beneath his white jacket.

When the servant retreated, León said, “Who I was was a money manager for certain interests in Mexico, many years ago. I was heavily involved—you might say, desperately involved—in many illegal enterprises, as an accountant and a banker, laundering many millions for fifteen cents on the dollar.”

Garza said, “for the cartels.”

León tucked his chin and set his lips, looking resigned. “Corruption always begins with small things, Comandante. It comes at you sideways. I was a legitimate banker once. A long, long time ago. The movies make what I did look daring and exotic. It was hell. Daily hell. Ulcers. Paranoia. No sleep.”

“Not everyone is corrupted,” said Garza.

León opened his hands as though to concede the point. “The age I am now, I think more and more of mi papi, my poor father. I can never forget the expression on his face when he got himself out of bed every day. His back had been broken in an industrial accident. He was a wreck of a man physically. He was never treated properly and spent his life in physical agony. Still, every day he dragged himself out of bed and worked twelve hours a day selling newspapers in a little stand near the Palacio Legislativo. Every day, politicians came by his newspaper stand. They called him by name. I would see this, I would help him, hawking. This was back in the day when the PRI monopolized Mexican politics, of course. They all wore sparkling rings and fine suits. And they would flip me a ten-centavo piece because I was the broken newspaper vendor’s son. You know, ten centavos . . . it was worth less than nothing. They knew it and I knew it. And my father would always say to me, ‘That was Deputy So-and-So. He made sixty-three million pesos in bribes for putting a road across Oaxaca.’ Papi never said it, perhaps never even thought it, but to me the lesson was that, in a just world, those sixty-three million pesos would have gone to fixing the broken backs of the unfortunate men who hurt themselves in an industrial accident, and not to lining the pockets of politicians.”

His face looked almost clownishly sad, but that was his manner. León was a man of broad expression.

“But I never hated Mexico. My father made sure I would never follow his fate, and I did not. I built myself. But I was too ambitious at times. Too eager to meet with the wrong people. I had a bit of self-destruction about me. It seemed so remote, the violent source of the funds I was entrusted with moving and investing. I was willfully ignorant, I fully admit that.” He patted his knees, wanting to be done with his own story. “And so now I am trying to repay a debt.”

“You do not seem to be suffering,” said Garza.

“Not in the least. That offends you.”

“Yes,” she said.

León nodded.

“Which cartel?” she asked.

“The unofficial name was the Sonora Cartel, but these things change. People make pronouncements, naming this and that, but it is so fluid. I started low on the pole, I had my fingers in many pies. It was a different business thirty years ago, and yet very much the same. What knowledge I learned—I was always a good student—I have tried to put to good use here from the other side of the border.”

Fisk said, “You are an informant?”

“Bigger than that. I know informants. I still have several well-placed contacts in Mexico. I am an aggregator of information, Detective. I have assisted the Mexican government in curtailing the cartels’ activities, inasmuch as anyone can. The United States offered me this sanctuary in exchange for my offer of help in keeping such outrageous drug violence from drifting north, over its borders. And so I defected, though that is not the word that is used between friendly countries. To this end, I have been most helpful, I think. Until these past few days, that is.”

Garza nodded. She seemed to be hanging on the man’s every word.

“That is the language of Mexican crime now, is it not, Comandante? Atrocities. Meant to shock. It is terror.”

“Chuparosa,” said Garza.

Fisk felt she was uttering his name in order to watch León’s reaction. Fisk saw nothing in the man’s face to indicate anything out of the ordinary.

“I have heard the name,” said León. “Whispered, most often. Friends speak of him as though he is not real.”

“He is real,” said Garza.

“And he is here? He brings you to New York?”

Garza gave him a very brief summation of what she knew: nothing privileged, nothing revelatory. Fisk noticed a softening in her manner here, which confused him at first. Then he began to think it was a cultural thing, brought on by a conversation with this older, grandfatherly man.

Fisk admitted that there was something impishly likable about León, his blarney and bluster. But he needed to know more.

“He sounds like quite a gentleman,” said León. “Do you have a photograph, by any chance?”

“No,” said Garza.

“One wants to see the face of a man who could do such things, no?” León swiped at his mouth with his linen napkin, tossing it back upon the table. “Do you have any insight as to why he wants to bring down President Vargas? And perhaps die in the process? It seems so . . . extreme, no?”