The place had swinging doors. No joke. I guess nobody told them to stop making bars this way in Chihuahua. Didn’t bother paving the street either, just dust and gravel. Prices were above the bar, hand-written in chalk. The cost for a shot of tequila, like everything else in the bar, probably hadn’t changed much in a hundred years. I got a Tecate and tried to disappear at a table in a back corner.
+++++The jukebox, loaded with old-school rancheras, was at full volume, Vicente Fernández belting out Volver, Volver. I had no problem with the music, and if the beer were any colder, it’d be ice. It all would’ve been fine except I was terrified.
+++++The place was called the Star of Chihuahua, which made me chuckle. As a kid, I’d draw a star with lines intersecting at a center point, which also looked like an asshole, so I guess the name fit. When you get a summons from the cartel, your options are limited; they choose the location. I chose to follow orders, often the best way to stay alive, except when it isn’t. Dealing arms to narcos was a high-risk enterprise, even when they were happy. They weren’t.
+++++Touchy bastards even when things were going well. Customs seized a shipment of M4 carbines which set off fireworks in the cartel. To me, this was nothing more than a slight hiccup, the price of doing business. I told them I could get another shipment together in a week; promised to escort this one through personally. They were losing their minds even though they already had enough firepower to take on the Texas National Guard.
+++++They assumed I’d sold the guns to the Juárez people, that I was arming their enemies, playing both sides. I admired that they came right out with the accusation, then threatened to kill me—I hate passive-aggressive types. Lately, cartel killings were more than double automobile fatalities in Mexico. I took their threat seriously.
+++++Your first instinct is to run, but that didn’t always go well for the runners. Sometimes they’d forget about you, other times they’d keep looking until someone walks up to you in the line at a busy supermarket in Seattle two years later and shoots you dead. They were all about making a statement, like when the Soviets killed Trotsky—wasn’t just about killing him. I knew these people. I’d seen their “messages” hanging upside down from overpasses. Murder was a tool they used as casually as a carpenter his hammer. I was the nail in this scenario, but thought I could talk my way out.
+++++I was hoping that the six AK47s I’d crossed the border with this morning would smooth things over, a goodwill gesture, if you can say that about assault rifles. I took a huge risk driving the guns across myself, but an even bigger gamble showing up in this dump to meet with Xavier, my only contact with the cartel. We got along, had even hung out a few times, but I knew what he’d do if push came to “put one in the gringo’s dome.” You didn’t have friends in this business, not if you were smart and liked having birthdays.
+++++Two hours, twenty-two classic ranchera ballads, and four beers later, Xavier was a no-show, weird because the guy usually texted me constantly before a meet up, like a giddy teen before a first date. I didn’t know if I’d dodged a bullet or would step into an ambush on the way back to the van.
+++++I went to the bar to settle up. On the TV, a news bulletin of a horrific shootout near Juárez. Dozens killed, drug related—of course—Sinaloa and Juárez gangs going at it. Happened hours earlier, police still sifting through the rubble.
+++++Please include Xavier in that body count, I prayed. This could be one of those “when God closes a door, he opens a window” moments.
+++++I swore earlier today that if I walked away, I’d give this up, but now I had six cuernos to sell. No shortage of buyers in Mexico, three right here in Chihuahua. The window should still be open after that. Right?

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John Scheck

John Scheck has lived in four countries on three continents and currently calls the Ruzafa neighborhood in sunny Valencia, Spain, his home. His new novel, La Frontera Saga, is about a drug cartel going legitimate. Available now on Amazon. Visit his author page for details: www.john-scheck.com.

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