When Carlos Don Vacas, the formidable leader of the Reynosa drug cartel, perished, peacefully and in his sleep (the assassin was extremely efficient, slitting his fat, snoring throat) the other drug lords, bound by unwritten codes of honor, traveled great distances to pay their respects. And so did my friend Doug, who’d bonded with Don Vacas during a recent golf tournament at the country club.
“You won’t believe where I am right now,” Doug beamed over FaceTime. He had turned around his camera to show me the view from his balcony: an empty plaza at sunset with lush, green mountains in the background. “Colombia!”
I basically coughed on my coffee: What was Doug doing in Colombia, and why didn’t he tell me he was leaving? “Doug,” I said. “What in the hell are you doing in Colombia?”
“Oh just here for Carlos’ memorial,” he fluted back casually. “You know, the drug lord I won the tournament with. The family and I are utterly devastated.”
I quickly turned my phone’s volume down. I was a police detective at the time and taking my lunch with a couple of officers in the breakroom. I still felt guilty about being mutuals with a cartel leader—even if he was now deceased—but Doug was my best friend, and I’d keep any secret for him. “One sec,” I said, “Let me put my AirPods in.”
I stepped into my office, and for the next several minutes Doug, lying in a luxurious four-poster, told me about how he had received a mysterious letter inviting him to “celebrate the life and works of Don Vacas at his family’s estate in Medellín.” He’d arrived four days ago and had enjoyed much wine and cigars. Not to mention the opportunity to socialize with some of the most dangerous men on the planet. “They’re pretty torn up about it, these drug lords. They hated Vacas, but then again Vacas was one of them, and if he can get his throat cut, who’s to say they’re not next?”
“Gee, I didn’t know you and Vacas were close like that,” was all I could say.
Doug then propped up the phone on the dresser, revealing more of the room’s elegant features, a fine Turkish rug and what looked like a Picasso on the wall. “Well, it wasn’t that I was close with him, per se,” Doug admitted, buttoning an expensive-looking guayabera and slicking his hair back, “It’s more that I was close with his wife, whom I’m currently seeing sexually.” Doug continued combing his hair in the mirror.
“I’m sorry—what?”
“I’m having a torrid love affair with Don Vacas’ wife, Beatrice. How does my hair look?”
“Now, wait a minute, Doug,” I said, “how long has this been going on?”
“Oh, just since July. Very fine woman, Beatrice. Elegant, Spanish chic, pronounces the word ‘zapato’ beautifully.”
I paused for a minute, just absorbing that statement, and then I was like: “Doug, did you ever consider the very serious consequences of, oh I don’t know, sleeping with a drug lord’s wife?”
“Only from the start, amigo,” he said, chuckling and sprucing up with some after shave. “I told her, ‘Look honey, I don’t want to be a homewrecker so either get rid of your husband, who frightens me deeply, or I return my cock to the stable. A few days go by, Vacas ups and gets assassinated, and just like that,” he clapped his hands hard for emphasis, “problem solved!”
At this point in the conversation, my bad cop side was starting to simmer, by which I generally mean I was experiencing a growing desire to interrogate Doug in a locked room with no supervision. If I was Doug’s best friend, keeping secrets for him, why was I just hearing about his big secret now? Did my friend feel that I, a lonely, sex-deprived cop who recently had his gun privileges revoked on account of a completely unrelated, complex story that I can’t get into at the moment, would be overcome by jealousy at the thought of him with a gorgeous Spanish woman? Hmmm. Yeah, that made no sense. And what of Vacas’s untimely death? Sounded pretty timely if you asked me…
Just then a door in Doug’s room opened to admit, in a golden cloud of steam, the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen in my life. (And here I was thinking the girl in Queen’s Gambit was attractive!) Wearing nothing but a towel, the woman, whom I took to be Beatrice, was tall, slim, and freshly showered. Little wisps of steam danced across her olive shoulders and mischief played in her dark eyes. She smiled a devilish smile, letting her towel drop from her lithe figure, and then, in a wickedly sexy hush, she uttered the phrase, “¿Has visto mis zapatos?” a query which clearly escalated things in the passion department because no sooner had Beatrice said it than Doug was caressing her and oh god! kissing her lips. Yuck! Were these two perverts really going to get it on right in front of me? I was willing to watch quietly to find out.
A few minutes later, Doug and Beatrice were still kissing, and I started to feel quite creeped out by the situation. So, fueled by jealousy and anger at my duplicitous friend, I started clapping my hands in a slow, deliberate fashion.“Congratulations,” I whooped sarcastically into the phone, “Welcome to sex city, you sluts.”
“Everything O.K in here?” I glanced up to find the police chief poking his head into my office. I removed my AirPods.
“Uh-huh, yep, all good, Sir,” I shot back.
“There’s been another nightmarish drive-by in the meat-packing district. 3 injured, 56 dead.”
“Wow,” I said, “Gosh.” I said. “That’s a bad ratio.”
“When can you get over there?”
“In thirty-ish minutes?” I offered. “I’m kind of busy at the moment.”
The chief then gave me a disapproving look that essentially said, “You can say goodbye to your gun for another three months,” turned on his heels, and left.
In an instant, my AirPods were back in, and I prepared to unleash another barrage of bitterness at Doug and his whore mistress Beatrice, whom I was now totally convinced had killed her husband.
When I glanced at my phone, however, the scene I saw was anything but expected. Speaking rapid Spanish, five men in black suits were now moving around the room with the efficiency of a NASCAR pit crew. Three of the men were occupied with rolling Doug and Beatrice up in the fine Turkish rug—both had been killed by what looked like machine gun fire. Another man was carefully ragging a blood splatter off the Picasso, and the fifth man, with a handsome black mustache, was the one who saw me, looking on from the dresser where Doug had left me.
“Amigo,” the man said, picking up the phone, “is this your friend, amigo?” He pointed the camera at Doug, dead as a dog. I wanted to vomit.
“You’re going to pay for this,” I said. “I’m a police detective.”
The man laughed in my face. “You come for Vacas, amigo, we come for you.”
Thinking quickly, I concealed my identity using FaceTime’s dog filter. Then I got real serious: “No,” I said, “I’m coming for you.”
“Ohhh el perro dice ‘I’m coming for you’” the man announced to his henchmen, and everybody started laughing. “Adios, perro.”
And just like that, the call was over.
That man was of course the great El Chapo. And the long journey to his arrest began that very day, when the FBI tracked the location of Doug’s phone. It wasn’t the last time I’d see El Chapo either. We’d meet again in a jungle compound on the outskirts of Monterrey, where I would disobey orders and prematurely fire my revolver, yelling, “This is for Doug!” After that, my gun privileges were revoked, permanently.
However, that was all a long way away. Doug was dead, and I had a crime scene to get to. I stood up from my desk and put on my black shades. I flicked off my desk lamp and walked to the door, but not before pausing a second at my cork board. There was a photo of me with Doug on his 40th birthday. He was wearing his “Club Champion” hat, and in the background—I could just make her out—it was Beatrice, smiling that devilish smile. I put my AirPods in. And this song was playing.
by William Herff
This piece was originally posted on William’s Substack, “Fox Pas.” You can subscribe here. All proceeds go toward urban restoration projects in the meat-packing district.
