The Border: The final gripping thriller in the bestselling Cartel trilogy. Don Winslow
time my cops or first responders get there, it’s often too late.”
It makes sense, Keller thinks. It’s also political suicide—if he came out for open Narcan distribution, Fox and Friends would chop him to pieces. “Okay, triage—keep going.”
“Cutting down on overdose deaths is the first step,” Mullen says, “but when the addict comes to, he’s still an addict, right? You’re just saving him so you can save him again, until one day you can’t. What you have to do is get him into rehab.”
“So rehab’s the answer?”
“I know jail isn’t the answer, prison isn’t the answer,” Mullen says. “They’re getting high in there, only it costs more. Drug courts, maybe—bust them, have a judge force them into rehab? I don’t know that there’s an answer. But we have to do something different. We have to change the way we think.”
“Is this you?” Keller asks. “I mean, are you expressing a shift in the department’s thinking or are you an outlier?”
“A little bit of both,” Mullen says. “Look, you go to the chief, some of the older guys with this stuff, they look at you like you’re some bleeding-heart mugger hugger, but even some of the guys at One Police are starting to look for different answers, they see what’s going on now. Hell, we had a detective overdose two years ago, did you know that? Guy got hurt on the job, started taking pain pills. Then smack. Then he ODed. An NYPD gold shield, for Chrissakes. It makes people think. Look for new solutions. You heard of SIFs?”
Supervised injection facilities, Keller thinks. Places addicts can go and shoot up. Medical personnel supervise the content and the dose. “De facto legalization of heroin?”
“Call it what you want,” Mullen says. “It’s saving lives. The revolving door of bust-and-convict doesn’t. I arrest addicts, they shoot up in jail. I take dealers out, new ones take their place. I seize heroin, more comes in. Bobby, let’s head up to Inwood, show this man what he needs to see.”
“Jersey or Brooklyn?” Cirello asks.
“Take the Verrazano,” Mullen says. He looks at Keller. “I don’t like going out of my jurisdiction.”
They take Route 278 into the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn, then Sunset Park and Carroll Gardens. Mullen says, “This used to be called Red Hook, but Carroll Gardens sounds better for real estate. You’re not a New York guy, are you?”
“San Diego.”
“Beautiful there,” Mullen says. “Great weather, right?”
“I haven’t been there much the past few years,” Keller says. “Mostly El Paso and Mexico. Now DC.”
They cross the Brooklyn Bridge into lower Manhattan, over to the West Side Highway almost all the way up the island until they turn off at Dyckman Street, then take a left and go up Broadway.
“Where are we?” Keller asks.
“Fort Tryon Park, Inwood area,” Mullen says. “The northernmost tip of Manhattan, and heroin central.”
Keller looks around at the well-tended redbrick apartment complexes. Parks, ballfields, nannies pushing babies in strollers. “Doesn’t look like it.”
“Exactly,” Mullen says. “There aren’t a lot of users up here, but what you have here in Inwood and Washington Heights, just downtown from here, are heroin mills. This is where your Mexicans bring the shit in, sell it to wholesalers who cut it up, put it into dime bags and ship it out. Sort of an Amazon fulfillment center.”
“Why here?”
Location, location, location, Mullen explains. Easy access to Route 9, right up to the little towns on the Hudson that are getting hammered with the shit. A short hop to 95 and the Bronx, or out to Long Island or up to New England. Harlem is just down Broadway, and you’re close to the West Side Highway and the FDR to go to the boroughs.
“If you were UPS or FedEx,” Mullen says, “and wanted to serve the Northeast Corridor, this is where you’d be. You can get in your car, be on the Jersey Turnpike or the Garden State in minutes and you’re on your way to Newark, Camden, Wilmington, Philly, Baltimore, Washington. If you’re moving less weight, you put it in a backpack, you take the One or the Two train to Penn Station and get on the Acela. Go south to the towns I just mentioned or north to Providence or Boston. No one is going to stop you, no one’s going to search your bag, and they have Wi-Fi on the train, you can catch up on Narcos.
“Your people are onto this, too. We’ve busted mills here … fifteen pounds, twenty, thirty-five, millions in cash … but the narcos write it off as the cost of doing business, and the shit keeps coming.”
“You feel like you’re trying to sweep back the ocean,” Keller says.
“Something like that.”
“Are you getting what you need from my agency?” Keller asks.
“In the short term?” Mullen says. “Pretty much. Look, there’s always the tension between feds and local police, let’s not kid ourselves. Some of your people are afraid to share information with us, either because they want the busts for themselves or they think all local cops are dirty. My people will play hide-the-ball with your guys because they want the busts and they don’t want the feds tromping over their turf and jacking it up.”
Coordination is tricky, Keller knows, even when there’s the best of intent, which isn’t always the case. It’s too easy for different agencies to run across each other’s informants or protected witnesses, jam up or cut short a promising investigation, even get informants killed. And he knows DEA can be high-handed with local police forces, telling them to stay away from investigations, just as he knows the local guys are too often more than willing to freeze his people out of valuable intelligence.
Professional jealousy is a real problem. Everyone wants to make busts themselves because busts are the route to promotions. And good publicity—everyone wants to stand in front of that table loaded with drugs, guns, and money and get their picture taken. It’s become a cliché but not a harmless one, Keller thinks, because it gives the impression that we’re winning a war we’re not winning.
The drugs on the table are like photos of dead Vietcong.
“But for the most part,” Mullen is saying, “I think we’re working pretty well together. It could always be better, of course.”
Which is Mullen opening the door, Keller thinks. Asking the question—what are you really doing here?
“Why don’t you and I talk away from the kids,” Keller says.
“You ever been to the Cloisters?”
Keller and Mullen walk along the pillared arches of the Cuxa Cloisters in the park not far from Inwood. The structure was once part of the Benedictine Abbey of St. Michel in the French Pyrenees, was moved to New York in 1907 and now surrounds a central garden.
Keller knows that Mullen is making a statement by coming here. And, sure enough, Mullen says, “I heard you liked monasteries.”
“I lived in one for a while.”
“Yeah, that’s what I heard,” Mullen says. “In New Mexico, right? What was that like?”
“Quiet.”
“They said you were in charge of, what, the beehives or something?” Mullen asks.
“The monastery sold honey,” Keller says. “What else do you want to know, Brian?”
Because if Mullen has doubts about him, it’s better to know now.
“Why did you leave it?” Mullen asks.
“Because they let Adán Barrera out of prison.”
“And