The Lord of Opium(8)

Cienfuegos wiped his forehead with a handkerchief. “¡Esa víbora! I don’t know where to begin with that snake.”

“Why don’t you take Matt for a ride?” suggested Celia. “Let him be seen as El Patrón’s heir. You can explain the situation to him on the way.”

* * *

“Can you ride a horse?” said Cienfuegos. They were at the stables, and the odor of fresh hay prickled Matt’s nose.

“Only Safe Horses,” he admitted. He could instantly tell the difference between the animals in the stalls. The Safe Horses stood quietly, tamed by the microchips in their brains. The Real Horses put their noses over the gates and begged for attention. They watched eagerly to see whether they would be taken for a run.

“Pity. You won’t make a good impression until you know how to ride. When he was young, El Patrón was a fantastic horseman. He could break a wild mustang without even using a saddle.”

“That must have been a long time ago,” said Matt. El Patrón had been 146 years old when he died.

“The memory is kept alive in narcocorridos,” said Cienfuegos.

“Narcocorridos?”

“It’s an old-fashioned word for personal ballads. Now they call them gritos.”

“Ah!” Matt understood. He had endured many hours of tuneless yowling from bands hired to celebrate drug deals or spectacular murders. These were politely listened to by El Patrón when drug lords came to visit. The old man had his own praise singers, but they were top-of-the-line guitarists from South America and Portugal.

“I use the old word because that was the term El Patrón preferred,” Cienfuegos explained. “He had a fine ear for music. He hired the best composers in the world, and his corridos will never die.”

“You sound like you admire him,” said Matt.

“I do. I know he was evil, but I’m no cherub myself,” said Cienfuegos. “Well, if you can’t ride, we’d better go by car. You can sit in the back and look menacing.”

Matt followed the jefe to the garage. Daft Donald was polishing El Patrón’s long, black touring car. It had once been owned by someone called Hitler and had a top that could be folded back. Matt had always admired it but until now had not been allowed inside.

Daft Donald nodded silently in greeting. Long ago he and Tam Lin had been Scottish terrorists together and had set a bomb to blow up the prime minister of England. Unfortunately, a school bus had pulled up at the last minute. The explosion killed twenty children and left Daft Donald with a wound that almost severed his throat and had destroyed his ability to speak.

What a fine collection of followers I’ve inherited, Matt thought. Citizens of Opium and not a cherub among them.

Daft Donald grinned and got into the driver’s seat. He looked as eager as the horses to be taken for a run. Matt reminded himself that the man, in spite of his evil past, had always been kind. And he was a friend of Tam Lin, which counted for a lot.

Cienfuegos and Matt sat in the back, with Matt on a pillow to make him look taller. “Remember, don’t smile,” the jefe warned him. “You’re here to rule, not make friends.”

Spring arrived early in Opium, and sand verbenas were already putting out lavender blooms. Desert lilies poked through the warming soil. In the vast gardens of the hacienda, a haze of bees moved over beds of sweet alyssum, and a white-winged dove called who-cooks-for-you? from a paloverde tree.

In spite of Cienfuegos’s warning, Matt couldn’t help smiling. This was his home and his country. It wasn’t full of clanking machines and noxious air like Aztlán—except for the eejit pens, he quickly reminded himself. They were kept out of sight at the bottom of shallow valleys, and it was all too easy to forget about them.

Water from the Colorado River was purified for drinking. The residue, a toxic mix that smelled like rotten fish, excrement, and vomit, was pumped into sludge ponds next to the eejit pens. On still nights the air from the ponds overflowed and poisoned whatever it came in contact with. Then the Farm Patrol ordered the eejits to sleep out in the fields.

The gardeners waved and shouted, “¡Viva el patroncito!” as Hitler’s old car went by. Matt raised his hand to wave back.

“Don’t encourage them,” hissed Cienfuegos. “If they start calling you ‘the little boss,’ they’ll never show respect.”

Matt put his hand down.

They left the green lawns of the estate and came to the first poppy field. Lines of eejits bent and slashed in a mindless rhythm, and a Farm Patrolman monitored them from the back of a horse.

“¡Hola! Angus!” shouted Cienfuegos. “Come and see the new patrón!”