made its living off of things that the rest of the city had thrown away. Tepitenos married Tepitenos and had done so for centuries. They were as clannish as Gypsies, and to them, all the rest of the world was made up of outsiders.
During the day, the stalls of illegal street vendors practically blocked access to legitimate stores here. The places on the sidewalk for these squatter stalls were “bought” from Korean thugs who, despite the neighborhood’s closed culture, had viciously usurped much of the control of Tepito’s institutionalized banditry. Mexico was now third, behind only Russia and China, in the commerce of pirated goods, selling fake labels on everything from condoms to caviar, and anything plastic. Tepito was the beating heart of this illicit trade.
He had taken a taxi, but at a certain point the driver had refused to go any farther into Tepito. The Texan had climbed out of the car and started walking deeper into the labyrinth.
Every once in a while, he stepped into the recess of a doorway that smelled of urine and ancient stone. He listened. He was sweating, despite the fact that Mexico City sat in a valley at an altitude of 7,340 feet and was surrounded by mountains nearly twice that high. The nights were always cool. He stepped out of the doorway and continued walking.
Samarra was a street of silences. Off the beaten track, even during the day, it was alleylike and foul-smelling, the wafts of sewage mixing with the odor of frying onions and dust. The flat faces of the buildings were stark and unadorned. Occasionally as he moved through the ocher-tinged shadows, the fluorescent glint of a television seeped through the crack of a shutter or flickered off the ceiling of a second-floor room with an open window. Now and then, he caught snatches of voices dripping with pathos-a telenovella-or the surging canned laughter of a sitcom. But mostly, he heard only his own footsteps, muted as they crunched on the grit of the old stones. His shoe fell on something soft, followed a moment later by the pungent odor of animal feces.
It wouldn’t be long now.
Suddenly, a few yards in front of him, a door opened and a figure stepped out on a spill of dull light. He raised an arm horizontally, directing the Texan inside. Though he had never before met them in Tepito, he knew the routine. He turned and went in.
The empty room was shrouded in a hazy, feeble light from the bare bulb hanging from the ceiling. He raised his arms while the Korean patted him down. The guard wore a misshapen suit and street shoes, a cutoff M16 slung over his shoulder.
He followed the man through a darkened room and then out into a courtyard bathed in the same jaundiced light as the street outside. The limp silhouettes of banana trees were scattered about the compound, and other rooms, some dark, others with dull lights, surrounded them. A second Korean guard fell in behind him, and a shorthaired dog appeared from the smudgy corners of the enclosure and snuffled at his legs and nudged his hand with its damp nose, the only compassionate creature that the Texan was likely to encounter during the entire long night. They crossed to an outside stairwell and started up.
On the second floor, they doubled back and approached another lighted doorway, where yet another guard waited outside. They went in, interrupting three men huddled in deep conversation around a small wooden table. None of them was Korean or American-or Mexican.
“Judas,” said the man who had been sitting with his back to the door and was now turning to look at the Texan. His name was Ahmad, and when he stood to shake hands, there was no characteristic smile, and his eyes regarded the Texan with a pained solemnity. Something was up.
“Khalil,” the Texan said, nodding at a man his own age who was sitting directly across the table from Ahmad. Khalil hadn’t shaved in several days and looked as if he had missed a lot of sleep. He was surly and didn’t offer his hand.
The third man at the table was a stranger to the Texan and sat opposite an empty fourth chair. The Texan stared at him cockily, suggesting by his pointed gaze that a name was expected. It was all a game, and it mattered very much how you played it.
But the man didn’t look at him, and apparently he was not going to be introduced. He was hollow-cheeked, with an olive complexion gone pasty, bald, and had thin shoulders, which made his head look too big for his body. In the deep crease at the upper right of his mouth was a dark mole the size of a raisin. Without making eye contact, he leaned forward and sipped from a teacup in front of him, holding the cup by its rim, not its handle.
“Please,” Ahmad said, “join us.” He offered the fourth chair at the table.
The Texan sat down and was aware of the two Koreans remaining in the room, although they stood out of sight behind him. The three men at the table were drinking the familiar strong, sweet tea, but none was offered to the Texan. A significant sign, one that caused another wave of perspiration to rush to the surface of his skin.
Silence followed. Now Khalil averted his eyes, too, but Ahmad continued looking at him, his expression grave.
“Bad news, Judas,” Ahmad said, and it was painful to hear the genuine note of sadness in his voice. The two of them had learned to like each other, and actually had grown close in a perverse way. Friendship as rape-it was another talent the Texan had perfected, another admirable human trait that he had corrupted in the service of a questionably higher calling.
Khalil looked up now, too, and he and Ahmad stared at him in silence. The third man continued to look down.
“It’s over, my friend,” Ahmad said. “We know.”
He hadn’t seen it coming. Something else, maybe. There were always fears. But this… he hadn’t seen this coming.
From somewhere, he summoned the strength not to panic and bolt for the door. He frowned, gave them a dumb, puzzled look. But before he could stop himself, he swallowed. Goddamn. It was as good as a confession. He felt something against his leg and glanced down. The dog had followed them up the stairs and was standing there looking at him. Waiting, it seemed, just like the rest of them.
The unidentified man, his eyes still averted, coughed a little and cleared his throat, pulling up a wad of phlegm, which he worked with his tongue.
Oh shit. The Texan’s heart stopped. It didn’t beat at all. It just hovered in his chest, not even touching the surrounding tissue. The light in the room dimmed… No, no, not this. He did not want to faint.
“What is this?” he managed to say, but the intended tone of bravado was not convincing.
The stranger’s head shot up, and he sprang to his feet and spat with a force that shook his body. The crap from his throat flew across the table and slapped against the corner of the Texan’s mouth.
Before he could react, someone grabbed his arms from behind and wrenched them backward, snapping one of his elbows. He screamed out, hardly aware that someone was taping his wrists together as someone else taped his ankles to each of the chair’s front legs. His head was clamped between two hands sheathed in rubber gloves.
The bald man slammed his hands down on the table, exploding the cups of tea. Lurching forward over the broken cups, his face rigid with violence, his hands planted in the syrupy mess that was running off the edges of the table, he shrieked, “ Jasus! Jasus! ”
The Texan heard a door behind him open and close and then footsteps approached. Somebody set down something with a thud. A man stepped around in front of him, holding two insulated electrical cables with bare ends. He wore a mismatched jogging suit, which was unzipped to his hairy stomach.
When the wires touched either side of the Texan’s neck, it was as if a bomb had gone off in his throat. He thought his head had been blown off his body. But that was only an illusion. The sensation that he was involuntarily pissing his pants was not.
The stranger who had spat on him yawed back his head, mouth wide open, wide as a baboon’s maw, his eyes glittering, the veins in his neck engorged, standing out like great plum-colored worms.
They were all standing. Suddenly, Ahmad’s arms flew out wide, as if he were conducting an orchestra with brio, and the spray of his brains fled the blast from Khalil’s outstretched arm. No more Ahmad.
The wires again, rammed precisely into his ears.
Silence.
The stranger was straddling him, his face contorted like a Francis Bacon portrait, his mouth twisted grotesquely up the right side of his head, one eye pig-size and wandering, the other protuberant and goggling.
The Texan felt the man inside his mouth, and for a split second he thought the whole man was in there, because he couldn’t see him, but he could feel him walking around.
