“By the time I came up,” he said, “we fought over geographic territory. It wasn’t no picnic, you know? The blacks had the Bloods and Crips. We did what we had to do.” His voice whooped, “Wedgewood Chicanos, forever!” Then his face turned wistful. “But there was a code, you know? A brotherhood. We were there to protect our own. Now, man, everybody’s fighting over everyplace. It’s all about drugs. The cartels are in it and it’s all fucked up. Glad I got out of the life. Glad the big man here got me out.”
Antonio looked bored.
Peralta sensed it. “The question is what we’re dealing with here? El Verdugo in little Phoenix, Arizona. Don’t like the look of that. This is not small-time.”
“He wasn’t El Verdugo!” Robin said, frustration wrinkling her brow.
“Tell me again how you knew this Jax?” Antonio asked. Robin went through it once more, how they had met at a gallery on Roosevelt Street. Antonio wanted to know which gallery. I could sense tension entering her voice and she started nervously playing with her hair, but she gave the same details I had now heard a dozen times. Was Antonio a cop, FBI, or a P.I. like Peralta? Maybe he was ATF, working for Amy Preston.
“What makes the most sense is that he was killed by the Gulf cartel or by Los Zetas,” Antonio said. “Maybe he was on a job here and they found him. Maybe he was trying to leave the life. Either way. Wouldn’t surprise me if they contracted it out to La Familia in the U.S. La Familia’s gone out on their own since 2006, but they used to have ties to the Gulf organization.”
“What about the gun shop?” Peralta asked.
“Zetas were a private army for the Gulf Cartel,” Antonio said. “Now the old alliance between the two is falling apart. They’re becoming rivals.” It was hard to keep things straight. My brain wandered off into analogies with the contending parties of Renaissance Florence, the Guelfi and the Ghibellini, or of the petty German states before the Napoleonic wars. Nothing really changes, except this was all about bloody crime and America’s insatiable hunger for drugs and cheap labor.
Antonio’s rich voice continued. “Los Zetas recruited from some of the best of the Mexican army. Airborne soldiers. Special forces. The pay is more than those soldiers can make in a lifetime with the government. Now they need weapons, lots of weapons.”
“This is the place to get ’em,” Bill said.
“It’s not enough,” Antonio said. “The existing supply is dominated by the Sinaloa cartel.”
