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The bodies are all over the city this spring. People executed who are of the lowest social order, people killed who have never owned an automobile or had a room all to themselves, people slaughtered who stand on street corners peddling this and that, and yet educated people over fine meals tell me the killing is a cartel battle even though not a single fact sustains this argument or satisfies a rational mind. The body is on the sidewalk, the crowd gathers, the police bumble about, then the corpse is put in a van and vanishes, the people disperse, and soon all is normal and there is no taint, not even that drying puddle where blood spurted out of the dead man’s head, no, there is not a trace of anything that suggests the world briefly went awry in this place. Just as the crack of the pistol shot vanished into the thin air, so did another life.

I am sitting on the curb outside another death house. Soldiers wear masks to protect themselves from their fellow citizens. The media mill about, chatting, working cell phones, swapping lies and rumors. No one questions that the soldiers must wear masks, that the bodies will come out of the death house and go somewhere that is never revealed, and that the identities of the dead will either never be determined or made public. A woman drives down the lonely street in a fine, large pickup with tinted windows. Her hair is dyed blonde, her face a sea of cosmetics, her lips ruby red. She is stopped by a soldier, says something, and is allowed to continue on to her home, a place now sequestered behind the military barricades that shut off the street. She never even glances over at the death house where the digging goes on day after day. Her face reveals a slight irritation at the hubbub in her neighborhood but not a flicker of curiosity about the television trucks, the cameramen, the talent doing stand-ups as they file breathless reports about another house of death.

Three times I have been blessed to witness the killing moment. I am always standing with a cup of coffee, and suddenly death falls out of the sky in the guise of a falcon. Twice, the killers were peregrines. Once, the blow came as a prairie falcon. Each time, I notice a sequence. The air is fresh, the birds singing, the leaves so very green on the trees, and then suddenly this freeze frame looms before me, a falcon, at the bottom of a dive that can reach speeds up to two hundred miles per hour, stops before me in the air, a dove clutched in its talons, death seeping into the eyes of the prey, and then suddenly both the slayer and slain vanish into the sky. Each time, I notice that a silence descends and continues for about twenty minutes. And then the birds reappear and life goes on as if nothing happened.

The present is acceptable. Period.

Suddenly, the army wishes to explain how things work. It reveals that it has discovered an account book in the possession of a cartel member and this ledger contains the payouts in Juárez for a ten-day period in March 2006. The tab for those days ran $336,000 and broke down into rivulets of cash. Twelve grand went for “comp. prensa,” apparently payoffs to the local press. Then came $135,000 for what is termed local troops, and another $80,000 to someone called Juan. Medical expenses ate up $12,000, and another $25,000 vanished in radios for communication. Someone referred to as “R3” is down for $5,473 and also for $320.

“R4” gets $811, then $6,640, and finally, $4,760. The municipal police, according to the army, got $2,000 a week. A person going by the name Markesa got $1,160 and then, a bit later, another $955. Whoever “45” might be got $14,425. “Comp. Piolo” required $5,000, “Human 25” needed $10,000, and “Desp. Ofic. Parve” $200. Tete got a grand, but it is listed as a loan. On the plus side, “Cholo abono cab. Pollo” paid $159,000, and $39,820 flowed in from “R7 abono.” There is also mention of “Talon 452.”

The accounting has the careful ring of Benjamin Franklin’s early efforts at frugality—a centavo