Murder City_ Ciudad Juarez and the Global Economy's New Killing Fields - Charles Bowden [63]
For El Pastor it is simple: “The police, the gangs, the governor, the state, now they all want the money. If the cartels agree, all the killings will calm down. We Mexicans know what is going on, but we cannot say anything, because if you say something, they kill you.”
He pauses and then changes tone.
“You see birds walking on the pavement in Juárez,” he explains, “and their heads dart from side to side because they are waiting for someone to throw a rock and kill them. This is the way it is for narcos.”
That is the way explanations of the violence always go. There is the body, or the experience, the woman cop is terrified and so are her children, the narco-corridos boom through the police radio, and death is waiting, things are out of control. And then the retreat, the belief that it is a cartel war, or that the government is behind it, no matter, someone is in control and eventually order will be restored. This is the safe place amid the killing.
But El Pastor, the street preacher, has a nagging memory. A man who worked for a nightclub tycoon came to him and said, How much does your work with the crazy people cost? El Pastor said, ten thousand dollars a month. The man said, I can get you twenty thousand. El Pastor said, Is this money clean? The man said nothing.
No matter. A few days later, Willy Moya was shot in the head as he stood amid his herd of bodyguards.
El Pastor told the man he could pray for Willy Moya, but he did not want such money.
“Probably,” El Pastor says, “Willy Moya wanted to clean his mind. He probably could feel death tapping him on the shoulder.”
Murder Artist
I wait for the phone to ring. The first call came at 9:00 A.M. and said expect the next call at 10:05. So I drive fifty miles and wait. The call at 10:05 says wait until 11:30. The call at 11:30 does not come, and so I wait and wait. Next door is a game store frequented by men seeking power over a virtual world. Inside the coffee shop, it is calculated calm, and everything is clean.
I am in the safe country. I will not name the city, but it is far from Juárez and it is down by the river and it is electric with the life and quiet as an American dream. At noon, the next call comes.
We meet in a parking lot, our cars cooped like cops with driver next to driver. I hand over some photographs of Juárez murders. He quickly glances at them and then tells me to go to a pizza parlor. There, he says that we must find a quiet place because he talks very loudly. I rent a motel room with him. None of this can be arranged ahead of time because that would allow me to set him up.
This is the place he lives, a terrain where the simplest things can kill him. He always studies his rearview mirror. He never turns his back on anyone. Nor does he ever relax. Or trust.
He glances at the photographs, images never printed in newspapers. He stabs his finger at a guy standing over a half-exposed body in a grave and says, “This picture can get you killed.” And then he tells me the man in the photograph is Number Two, the strong right arm of the boss.
I show him the photograph of the woman. She is lovely in her white clothes and perfect makeup. Blood trickles from her mouth, and the early morning light caresses her face. The photograph has a history in my life. Once, I placed it in a magazine, and the editor there got a call from a terrified man, the woman’s brother, who asked, Are you trying to get me killed, to get my family killed? I remember the editor calling me up and asking me what I thought the guy meant. I answered, “Exactly what he said.”
The next time the photograph came into play was at a bar in San Antonio, where I was having a beer with a