The Best American Crime Reporting 2010 (35 page)

So his friend gives him up. He is taken at 10:00
P.M.
, and this time he is held until 3:00
A.M
.

But something has changed within him. And some things have not changed. Four men take him to a safe house. They remove all of his clothing but his shorts. They take pool balls in their hands and beat him.

But he can tell they are amateurs. They do not even handcuff him, and this is disturbing to him. He is the captive of third-raters. As they beat him, he prays and prays and prays. He also laughs because he is appalled by their incompetence. They have not bound him and their blows do not disable him. He sizes them up and in his mind plans how he will kill them, one, two, three, four, just like that.

And at the same moment, he is praying to God to help him so that he will not kill them, so that he can stop his life of murder. As he sits in the room, sipping coffee and recalling this moment, his face comes alive. He is passionate now. He is approaching the very moment of his salvation. Some people pretend to accept Christ, he says, but at that moment he could feel total acceptance fill his body. He could feel peace.

They point rifles at him. He cannot stop laughing.

“I was afraid,” he explains. “I realized I would have to kill them all.”

Two of the armed men left. One other guy went to the bathroom. He looks at the remaining captor.

“The guy says, ‘I don’t have a problem with you. Once, you told me to be careful or they would kill me. You did me a favor.’

“So, I am praying to God, help me! I don’t want to kill these people. And I know I can do it rapidly.

“The guy turns his back on me and says, ‘Get out, go.’”

He opens the door and runs without his shoes or clothes.

H
IS FACE IS STERN NOW.
He has come to the place, the very moment that has permitted him to recount the kidnappings, the tortures, the killings. He is selling and what he is selling is God. He is believing, and what he believes based on his own life is that anyone can be redeemed. And that it is possible to leave the organization and survive.

His thoughts are a jumble as he speaks. He is telling of his salvation, and yet he feels the tug of his killings. He feels the pride in being feared. Back at the beginning, when he first started with the state police, that was when Oropeza, the doctor and newspaper columnist, was killed. And Oropeza’s killers, he now recalls, were his mentors, his teachers. He remembers that after the murder, the state government announced a big investigation to get the killers. And one of them, a fellow cop, stayed at his own police station until the noise quieted and the charade ended.

He is excited now; he is living in his past.

“The only reason I am here is God saved me. I repented. After all these years I am talking to you. I am having to relive things that are dead to me. I don’t want to be part of this life. I don’t want to know the news. You must write this so that other
sicarios
know it is possible to leave. They must know God can help them. They are not monsters. They have been trained like special forces in the Army. But they never realize they have been trained to serve the devil.

“Imagine being nineteen and being able to call up a plane. I liked the power. I never realized until God talked to me that I could get out. Still, when God frees me, I remain a wolf. I can’t become a lamb. I remain a terrible person, but now I have God on my side.”

He stares at me as I write in a black notebook.

His body seems to loom over the table.

This is the point in all stories where everyone discovers who they really are.

He says, “I have now relived something I should never have opened up. Are you the medium to reach others? I prayed to God asking what I should do. And you are the answer. You are going to write this story because God has a purpose in you writing this story.

“God has given you this mission.

“No one will understand this story except those who have been in the life. And God will tell you how to write this story.”

Then we embrace and pray. I can feel his hand on my shoulder probing, seeking the power of the Lord in me.

I have my work to do now.

And so we go our separate ways.

In the parking lot he moves with ease, in a state of grace. The sun blazes, the sky aches blue. Life feels good. His eyes relax and he laughs. And then I see him memorize my license plate in a quick and practiced glance. He has told me he is bathed in the blood of the lamb, but his eyes remain those of the wolf.

C
HARLES
B
OWDEN
is the author of twenty-three books, including
A Shadow in the City: Confessions of an Undercover Drug Warrior; Down by the River: Drugs, Money, Murder, and Family; Juarez: The Laboratory of Our Future; Blood Orchid: An Unnatural History of America;
and
Exodus,
with photographer Julian Cardona.
Inferno,
with photographer Michael Berman, was a finalist for the Orion Book of the Year for 2007. His most recent book is
Murder City: Ciudad Juárez and the Global Economy’s New Killing Fields.

Bowden is a correspondent for GQ magazine, and his work has appeared in
Harper’s, Mother Jones, National Geographic,
and
Esquire.
He is a Pulitzer Prize nominee and winner of the Lannan Literary Award for Nonfiction and the Sidney Hillman Foundation Award.

Cover design by Allison Saltzman

Cover photograph © Ocean Photography/Veer