The Border: The final gripping thriller in the bestselling Cartel trilogy. Don Winslow

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      “So now we have a heroin epidemic,” Mullen says. “You know how I know? The New York Times, the Post, the Daily News, the Voice, CNN, Fox, NBC, CBS, ABC, and, let us not forget, Entertainment Tonight. That’s right, people, we’re getting ass-fucked by ET.

      “All that aside, people are dying out there. Black people, white people, young people, poor people, rich people—this shit is an equal opportunity killer. Last year we had 335 homicides and 420 heroin overdoses. I don’t care about the media, I can deal with the media. What I do care about is these people dying.”

      Cirello doesn’t speak the obvious. ET wasn’t there when it was blacks dying out in Brooklyn. He keeps his mouth shut, though. He has too much respect for Mullen and, anyway, the man is right.

      There are too many people dying.

      And we’re a few brooms trying to sweep back an ocean of H.

      “The paradigm has shifted,” Mullen says, “and we have to shift with it. ‘Buy and bust’ works up to a point, but that point is far short of what we need. We’ve had some success busting the heroin mills—we’ve seized a lot of horse and a lot of cash—but the Mexicans can always make more heroin and therefore more cash. They figure these losses into their business plans. We’re in a numbers game we can never win.”

      Cirello’s done some of the mill busts.

      The Mexicans bring the heroin up through Texas to New York and store it in apartments and houses, mostly in Upper Manhattan and the Bronx. At these “mills” they cut the H up into dime bags and sell it to the retailers, mostly gangbangers, who put it out in the boroughs or take it to smaller towns upstate and in New England.

      NYPD has made some big hits on the mills—twenty-million-, fifty-million-dollar pops—but it’s a revolving door. Mullen’s right, the Mexican cartels can replace any dope and any money they lose.

      They can also replace the people, because most of the personnel at the mills are local women who cut the heroin and low-level managers who work for cash. The cartel wholesalers themselves are rarely, if ever, present at the mills except for the few minutes it takes to bring the drugs in.

      And the drugs are coming in.

      Mullen is in daily touch with DEA liaisons who tell him the same thing is happening all over the country—the new Mexican heroin is coming up through San Diego, El Paso and Laredo into Los Angeles, Chicago, Seattle, Washington, DC, and New York—all the major markets.

      And the minor ones.

      Street gangs are migrating from the cities into small towns, setting up and doing business from motels. It’s not just urban dwellers hooked on opiates now—it’s suburban housewives and rural farmers.

      They aren’t Mullen’s responsibility, though.

      New York City is.

      Mullen cuts right to it. “If we’re going to beat the Mexicans at their game, we have to start playing like the Mexicans.”

      “I’m not following you.”

      “What do the narcos have in Mexico they don’t have here?” Mullen asks.

      Primo tequila, Cirello thinks, but he doesn’t say it. He doesn’t say anything—Bobby Cirello recognizes a rhetorical question when he hears one.

      “Cops,” Mullen says. “Sure, we have some dirty cops. Guys who’ll look the other way for cash, a few who do rips, a rare few who sell dope themselves, even serve as bodyguards for the narcos, but they’re the exception. In Mexico, they’re the rule.”

      “I don’t get where you’re going with this.”

      “I want you to go back undercover,” Mullen says.

      Cirello shakes his head. His UC days are over—even if he wants to go back under, he can’t. He’s too well known as a cop now. He’d get made in thirty seconds, it would be a fuckin’ joke.

      He tells Mullen this. “They all know I’m a cop.”

      “Right. I want you to go undercover as a cop,” Mullen says. “A dirty cop.”

      Now Cirello doesn’t say anything because he doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t want this job. Assignments like this are career killers—you get the rep for being dirty, the stink stays on you. The suspicion lingers, and when the promotion lists are posted, your name isn’t on them.

      “I want you to put it out there that you’re for sale,” Mullen says.

      “I’m a thirty-year man,” Cirello says. “I want to pull the pin from this job. This is my life, Chief. What you’re asking will only jam me up.”

      “I know what I’m asking.”

      Cirello grabs at straws. “Besides, I’m a gold shield. That’s too high up the chain. The last gold chains who went dirty were all the way back in the eighties.”

      “Also true.”

      “And everyone knows I’m your guy.”

      “That’s the point,” Mullen says. “When you get a high-enough buyer, you’re going to put it out that you represent me.”

      Jesus Christ, Cirello thinks, Mullen wants me to put it out that the whole Narcotics Division is up for sale?

      “That’s how it works in Mexico,” Mullen says. “They don’t buy cops, they buy departments. They want to deal with the top guys. It’s the only way we get in the same room with the Sinaloans.”

      Cirello’s brain is spinning.

      It’s so goddamn dangerous, what Mullen’s suggesting. There’s so much that can go wrong. Other cops get word he’s dirty and run an op against him. Or the feds do.

      “How are you going to paper this?” he asks. Document the operation so that if it goes south, their asses are covered.

      “I’m not,” Mullen says. “No one is going to know about this. Just you and me.”

      “And that guy Keller?” Cirello asks.

      “But you don’t know about that.”

      “If we get popped, we can’t prove we’re clean.”

      “That’s right.”

      “We could end up in jail.”

      “I’m relying on my reputation,” Mullen says. “And yours.”

      Yeah, Cirello thinks, that’s going to do a lot of good if I run into other cops who are dirty, who are taking drug money, doing rips. What the hell do I do then? I’m not a goddamn rat.

      Mullen reads his mind. “I only want the narcos. Anything else you might come across, you don’t see.”

      “That’s СКАЧАТЬ