Murder City_ Ciudad Juarez and the Global Economy's New Killing Fields - Charles Bowden [67]
He mentions the case of Victor Manuel Oropeza, a doctor who wrote a column for the newspaper. He linked the police and the drug world. He was knifed to death in his office in 1991.
“The people who killed him, taught me. Sicarios are not born, they are made.”
He became a new man in a new world.
He mentions a cartel leader in Juárez, “a man full of hate, a man who even hates his own family. He would cut up a baby in front of the father in order to make the father talk.”
He says the man is a beast.
His eyes now are very dark, blank eyes, and behind them, I can sense he has returned to the murders, the tortures, all those things that seem so distant from this motel room where the exhaust fan roars and the colors are soft, sedating, and bland.
He is drifting now, going back in time to a place he has left, the killing ground when he would slaughter and then drop five grand on a single evening. He remembers when outsiders would try to move into Juárez and commandeer the plaza, the crossing. For a while, the organization killed them and hung them upside down. Then, for a spell, they offered Colombian neckties—throat cut, the tongue dangling through the slit. There was a spate of necklacing—the burned body found with a charred stub where the head had been, the metal cords of the tire simply blackened hoops embracing the corpse.
He has lived like a god and been the destroyer of worlds. I look down at the thick fingers on his large hands—“my arm grew”—and I can hear the last gasps of the people he has strangled. The room is still, so very still, the television a blank eye, the walls sedated with beige, the exhaust fan purring. His arms at rest on the wood table, everything solid and calm.
And fear. Not fear of me but of something neither of us can define, a death machine with no apparent driver. There is no headquarters for him to avoid, no boss to keep an eye peeled for. He has been green-lighted, and now anyone who knows of the contract can kill him on sight and collect the money. The name of his killer is legion.
He can hide, but that only buys a little time, and time just keeps rolling on and on. One serious mistake, and he is dead. His hunters can be patient. He is like a winning lottery ticket and one day they will collect. The death machine careens out on the streets, guns at ready, always rolling, no real route, randomly prowling and looking for fresh blood. The day comes and goes and ten die. Or more. No one can really keep count any longer, and besides, some of the bodies simply vanish and cannot be tallied.
He stares at me.
He says, “I want to talk about God.”
I say, “We’ll get to that.”
He is the killer, and he does not know who is in charge. Just as he sometimes did not know the reason for the murders he committed. He will die. Someone will kill him. No one will really notice.
No place is safe, he knows that fact. A family in the States owed some money on a deal, so a fourteen-year-old son and his friend were snatched and taken back over. The kidnapper killed them with a broken bottle, then drank a glass of their blood. The man talking to me knows things like this because of what he has done. He knows crossing the bridge is easy because he has crossed it so many times. He knows all the searches and all the security claims at the border are a joke, because he has moved with his weapons back and forth. He knows everything has been penetrated, that nothing can be trusted, not even the solid feel of the wooden table.
The rough edge of burning wood fires at those shacks of the poor, the acrid smell of burned powder flowing from a spent brass cartridge, an old copper kettle with oil boiling and fresh pork swirling into the crispness of carnitas, the caravan of cars passing in the night, windows tinted, then the entire procession turns and comes by again, and you look but still do not stare because if they pause, however briefly, they will take you with them to the death