doing business with a Mexican drug lord was something akin to a rattlesnake massage. Not true. If you kept your word, paid your bills, and refrained from cheating, the Mexicans would not only be loyal and generous, but totally invested in keeping you alive. On the other hand, if you didn’t deal with them squarely, they would not hesitate to punch your ticket. It was a simple code.
Just as Mike and Jack had been feeling their way along, learning on the job, so had their supplier on the Mexican side, Hector Ruiz-Gonzales. The bloodshed that would mark the ascension of the brutal cartels was still a few years away. Actual violence was surprisingly rare. Hector, in fact, ran his empire without much in the way of competition. He owned the biggest fields and was untouchable—the grandson of la Nacha and heir to the first family of Sinaloa. It’s good to be the King.
Mike Halliday spent most of his time in Juarez with Hector. El Paso in the 1970s was not what you’d call cosmopolitan. But the difference made by crossing a river was like riding a time machine twenty years into the past. On the streets of Juarez, law was a rumor, order was an accident, and violence a way of life. On the U.S. side of the border, Mike was just another dealer, living in a modest rental home and blending in with the crowd. But on the wide-open streets of Juarez in the company of the King, he was Don Miguel, the powerful jefe who resided beyond the reach of law and walked with the swagger of a pistolero.
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