Bones: A Story of Brothers, a Champion Horse and the Race to Stop America’s Most Brutal Cartel. Joe Tone
Forty-Two was in his mid-thirties, the third-youngest of the Treviño kids. He was five foot seven, shorter and thicker than Forty, and his black hair was streaked with gray. He liked to wear his shirt spread open to reveal a tan, smooth chest covered in tattoos, including a hulking bird of prey.
Like Forty, Forty-Two had never served in the military, making his place among the high-ranking Zetas a curiosity to the group’s ex-soldiers. But like Forty, he’d shown a willingness to protect the Gulf Cartel’s interests with unrepentant force, earning the trust of the Gulf bosses.
Forty-Two didn’t care much about horses, but he knew how much his brother did. And a few weeks before, Forty’s best horse, Tempting Dash, had qualified for the Dash for Cash Futurity in Dallas, a Grade 1 stakes race with a $445,000 purse. There was a lot to talk about. But given the news Ramiro had just received, it seemed like a strange time for Forty-Two to check in on Tempting Dash.
“Forty told me you just had a shoot-out,” Ramiro said, in Spanish.
“Yes, quite a while,” Forty-Two said. “Like an hour.”
“And Miguel was there?”
“Yeah, he was,” Forty-Two said. “He was there in the truck with me talking to a man, and I was on the passenger side, then I jumped to the seat, and it was off.”
“Man, take really good care of yourself,” Ramiro said. “Fuck.”
“Once again we took care of them,” Forty-Two said.
“But you are all right?” Ramiro asked.
“It’s bleeding,” Forty-Two said.
“It’s coming out?”
“It’s bleeding, it’s bleeding,” Forty-Two said, letting the drama build.
“Where’d you get hit?” Ramiro asked.
“On the tip of my dick!” Forty-Two told him.
Then he started laughing.
“No way, man, don’t scare me!” Ramiro said.
Ramiro laid down his own laughter over Forty-Two’s. In truth, he was out of his depth. Ramiro was no aspiring trafficker or Special-Forces wannabe. His dad was a bookkeeper; his mom was a teacher. He’d grown up in Monterrey, Nuevo León, a cosmopolitan city long known as a haven from the violence of Mexico’s drug war. There were American companies there, Pepsi and Caterpillar and others. When Ramiro was a child, it was one of the few places everyone seemed to agree should stay quiet.
Ramiro’s obsession with horse racing seemed born from native talent. As a teenager in Monterrey, he’d cobbled money from friends and relatives to buy cheap horses at auction and race them at the small tracks that dotted the Mexican countryside. His horses always outperformed their purchase price, which got the attention of other horse owners. Ramiro started making a living by picking and buying promising young quarter horses for ranchers and other wealthy businessmen.
Eventually Ramiro’s keen eye got the attention of the drug criminals, including the original Zeta they called “Mamito,” a play on Mamita, the common term of endearment for Latina women. Mamito’s plate was full. He paid bribes to state policemen and soldiers, and he collected pisos from traffickers who wanted to move drugs through the Gulf’s territory. If they didn’t pay those pisos, he was usually ordered to kidnap them, torture them, and, if the piso was offered too late or not at all, kill them.
Like many of the high-ranking Zetas, Mamito found time for racing horses. He’d become interested in 2004, and he’d noticed Ramiro’s talent for picking fast horses. He asked Ramiro to pick him some winners at the auctions in the United States and bring them back to Mexico to race.
Throughout his twenties, Ramiro had built a sustainable income as a broker, but Mamito’s business offered more revenue. The more expensive the horse, the higher Ramiro’s commission, and Mamito wanted some of the priciest horses. Ramiro started showing up at the big auctions in Oklahoma City, Dallas, and southern California, bidding on horses from Mamito’s favored bloodlines—First Down Dash, Corona Cartel, and others.
Usually Mamito found a legitimate Mexican businessman to pay off Ramiro’s debts at the auction houses, instructing them to send a check or a wire and promising to repay them from his stash of drug money. But in 2008, Ramiro smoothed out the process by enlisting a Monterrey currency-exchange house to launder the money.
Here’s how it worked: The Zetas took cash from one of their stash houses and delivered it to Ramiro. It always took too long for Ramiro to collect, because the drug lords moved around so much and dropped their phones so often. But he eventually got the money and brought it to the casa de cambio in Monterrey, anywhere from a few thousand to several hundred thousand. Sometimes he showed up himself, parking his silver BMW 750 in front and lugging the cash in an envelope. Sometimes he sent his secretary, a woman who organized his affairs. Sometimes he sent a courier he used to run errands like these, although that didn’t always work out. The courier had a gambling problem and once gambled away $600,000 of drug money. Somehow he and Ramiro survived.
The owner of the exchange house didn’t know where the money came from, and didn’t ask. He simply exchanged it for pesos, then back to dollars, in keeping with the normal course of his business. Then he fired wires all over the American Southwest in smaller amounts, to whichever American auction houses and breeding farms Ramiro currently owed money.
Once the horses were paid off, Ramiro could either keep them in his name or transfer them into the name of a friend or associate—someone who didn’t care or didn’t even know that he owned a narco’s racehorse. No matter whose name it was in, it was actually owned by Mamito or whichever gangster had instructed Ramiro to buy it. Ramiro collected a fee, anywhere from a thousand dollars to five thousand dollars, depending on the quality of the horse.
Ramiro operated like this throughout most of the 2000s, well into his thirties. Though he was buying for narcos, he had managed to remain independent, a safe distance from their business and their culture. But around the time he bought Tempting Dash in 2008, some guys approached and told him that a Zeta named Forty wanted to do business together.
Ramiro politely declined, saying he preferred to stick with his freelance horse brokerage. But the guys came back and said, This isn’t optional, Horseman.
Soon after, Ramiro showed up at a track in Monterrey. Two armed men found him and escorted him to a cluster of SUVs and pickups parked near the track. A man stepped forward and extended his hand.
So you’re the famous Horseman, Forty said.
How can I help you? Ramiro asked.
I want you to buy horses for me, Forty said.
I’m too busy.
Think about it, Forty said. He left Ramiro alone to watch the horses run. Later, he returned.
I really need you to buy horses for me, Forty said.
I’m sorry, Ramiro said. He insisted he didn’t have time.
Forty’s bodyguards stiffened. Their boss pulled back his shirt to reveal a pistol. Forty asked, Do you have time to save your family?
What do you mean? Ramiro asked.
If you don’t buy my fucking horses, Forty said, you won’t have a family.
So now, Ramiro bought for Forty.
The machismo of Mexico’s narco culture didn’t suit Ramiro, but he tried his best. He could talk like a narco at least, prattling on about associates who could “fuck off” and occasionally feigning a violent streak. He was prone to elaborate descriptions of his friends’ flatulence, and he talked constantly to friends about women. Sometimes he actually talked with women, sex past and future crackling through the phone calls.
Mostly he spoke with one woman, an apparent girlfriend in Mexico. They spoke several times some days, about the innocuous things that make up the closest relationships, including