The Border: The final gripping thriller in the bestselling Cartel trilogy. Don Winslow
Mexicans at their game, we have to start playing like the Mexicans.”
“I’m not following you.”
“What do the narcos have in Mexico they don’t have here?” Mullen asks.
Primo tequila, Cirello thinks, but he doesn’t say it. He doesn’t say anything—Bobby Cirello recognizes a rhetorical question when he hears one.
“Cops,” Mullen says. “Sure, we have some dirty cops. Guys who’ll look the other way for cash, a few who do rips, a rare few who sell dope themselves, even serve as bodyguards for the narcos, but they’re the exception. In Mexico, they’re the rule.”
“I don’t get where you’re going with this.”
“I want you to go back undercover,” Mullen says.
Cirello shakes his head. His UC days are over—even if he wants to go back under, he can’t. He’s too well known as a cop now. He’d get made in thirty seconds, it would be a fuckin’ joke.
He tells Mullen this. “They all know I’m a cop.”
“Right. I want you to go undercover as a cop,” Mullen says. “A dirty cop.”
Now Cirello doesn’t say anything because he doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t want this job. Assignments like this are career killers—you get the rep for being dirty, the stink stays on you. The suspicion lingers, and when the promotion lists are posted, your name isn’t on them.
“I want you to put it out there that you’re for sale,” Mullen says.
“I’m a thirty-year man,” Cirello says. “I want to pull the pin from this job. This is my life, Chief. What you’re asking will only jam me up.”
“I know what I’m asking.”
Cirello grabs at straws. “Besides, I’m a gold shield. That’s too high up the chain. The last gold chains who went dirty were all the way back in the eighties.”
“Also true.”
“And everyone knows I’m your guy.”
“That’s the point,” Mullen says. “When you get a high-enough buyer, you’re going to put it out that you represent me.”
Jesus Christ, Cirello thinks, Mullen wants me to put it out that the whole Narcotics Division is up for sale?
“That’s how it works in Mexico,” Mullen says. “They don’t buy cops, they buy departments. They want to deal with the top guys. It’s the only way we get in the same room with the Sinaloans.”
Cirello’s brain is spinning.
It’s so goddamn dangerous, what Mullen’s suggesting. There’s so much that can go wrong. Other cops get word he’s dirty and run an op against him. Or the feds do.
“How are you going to paper this?” he asks. Document the operation so that if it goes south, their asses are covered.
“I’m not,” Mullen says. “No one is going to know about this. Just you and me.”
“And that guy Keller?” Cirello asks.
“But you don’t know about that.”
“If we get popped, we can’t prove we’re clean.”
“That’s right.”
“We could end up in jail.”
“I’m relying on my reputation,” Mullen says. “And yours.”
Yeah, Cirello thinks, that’s going to do a lot of good if I run into other cops who are dirty, who are taking drug money, doing rips. What the hell do I do then? I’m not a goddamn rat.
Mullen reads his mind. “I only want the narcos. Anything else you might come across, you don’t see.”
“That’s in direct violation of every reg—”
“I know.” Mullen gets up from behind his desk and looks out the window. “What the hell do you want me to do? Keep playing it by the book while kids are dying like flies? You’re too young, you don’t really remember the AIDS epidemic, but I watched this city become a graveyard. I’m not watching it again.”
“I get it.”
“I don’t have anyone else to go to, Bobby,” Mullen says. “You have the brains and the experience to do this and I don’t know who else I could trust. You have my word, I’ll do everything I can to protect your career.”
“Okay.”
“Okay, you’ll do it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Thank you.”
Riding down in the elevator, Cirello wonders if he’s not completely, utterly and totally fucked.
Libby looks at him and says, “So you’re a nice Italian boy.”
“Actually, I’m a nice Greek boy,” Cirello says.
They’re sitting at a table at Joe Allen, near the theater where she’s working, bolting down cheeseburgers.
“‘Cirello’?” she asks.
“It doesn’t hurt to have an Italian-sounding name on the job,” Cirello says. “If you can’t be Irish, it’s the next best thing. But, yeah, I’m a Greek boy from Astoria.”
Almost a stereotype. His grandparents came over after World War II, worked their asses off and opened the restaurant on Twenty-Third Street that his father still runs. The neighborhood isn’t so Greek anymore, but a lot of them still live there and you can still hear “Ellenika” spoken on the streets.
Cirello didn’t want to go into the restaurant business, and it’s a good thing he has a younger brother who did so his parents weren’t heartbroken when Bobby went first to John Jay and then to the police academy. They came to his graduation and were proud of him, although they always worry, and never really understood when he was undercover and would show up with shaggy hair and a beard, looking thin and haggard.
His grandmother looked him straight in the eyes and asked, “Bobby, are you on drugs?”
“No, Ya-Ya.”
I just buy them, he thought. It was impossible to explain his life to them. Another reason undercover is such a tough gig—nobody understands what you really do except other undercovers, and you never see them anyway.
“And you’re a detective,” Libby says now.
“Let’s talk about you.”
Libby is freaking beautiful. Rich red hair Cirello thinks they usually describe as “lustrous.” A long nose, wide lips and a body that won’t quit. Legs longer than a country road, although Cirello wouldn’t know much about country roads. He saw her at a Starbucks in the Village, turned around and said, “I have you for a low-fat macchiato type.”
“How did you know?”
“I’m a detective.”
“Not a very good one,” Libby said. “I’m a low-fat latte.”
“But your phone number,” Cirello said, “is 212-555-6708. Am I right?”
“No, you’re wrong.”
“Prove it.”
“Let me see your badge,” Libby said.
“Oh, you’re not going to turn me in for sexual harassment, are you?” Cirello asked.
But he showed her his badge.
She gave him her phone number.
He had her down as a cop groupie, except it took him about eighteen