The Queen of the South Read Online Free PDF Page B

pockets and was slowly walking toward Teresa, who was sitting motionless at the head of the bed. When he reached her he stopped and looked down at her.
    "Well, you see, mamacita" he said at last, "your man thought he was smart."
    Teresa felt the fear writhing in her intestines, like a ratdesnake. The Situation. A fear as white and cold as the surface of a gravestone. "Where is he?" she repeated.
    It wasn't her talking, it was some stranger whose unexpected, unforeseeable words startled her—a reckless stranger who didn't recognize the urgent need for silence. Gato Fierros must have sensed that, because he looked at her strangely, surprised that she could ask questions instead of sitting there paralyzed, or screaming in terror.
    "He's nowhere. He died."
    The stranger continued to act on her own, and Teresa was once again startled to hear her curse them: Hijos de la chingada. That was what she said, or what Teresa heard her say— Hijos de la chingada —regretting it before the last syllable had left her lips. Gato Fierros was studying her with a great deal of curiosity and a great deal of attention.
    "Not nice," he said, still thoughtful. "Talking about us that way . . . That mouth on you," he added. And then he hit her in the face, knocking her full length across the bed, backward. He stood looking down at her for another while, as though taking in the view. With the blood pounding in her temples and her cheek throbbing, her head dulled by the blow, Teresa saw his eyes go to the packet of powder on the night table. He picked up a pinch and raised it to his nose.
    "Hm, good stuff," the hit man said. "Been cut, but it's still good stuff." He rubbed his nose with his thumb and index finger, then offered some to his companion, but Pote shook his head and looked at his watch again.
    "No hurry, carnal? said Gato Fierros. "None at all." He turned once more to Teresa,
    "Nice piece, Güero's girlfriend .. . and now she's a widow, poor thing."
    From the door, Pote Galvez spoke his companion's name. "Gato," he said, very seriously. "Let's get this over with."
    Gato raised a hand, asking for quiet, and sat down on the edge of the bed.
    "Don't fuck around," Pote insisted. "The orders were to off her, not boff her. So get on with it— no seas cabron!'
    But Gato Fierros shook his head like a man listening to the rain. "My, my," he said. "I always wanted a piece of this."
    Teresa had been raped other times: at fifteen, by several of the boys in Las Siete Gotas, and then by the man who'd put her to work on Calle Juarez. So she knew what to expect when the killer's knifelike smile grew wetter and he unbuttoned her jeans. And suddenly, she wasn't afraid. It isn't happening, she thought. I'm asleep and this is just a nightmare like all the others, the ones I lived through before, something that happens to the other woman I dream about, the one who looks like me but isn't. I can wake up whenever I want to, listen to my man's breathing on the pillow, hold him to me, sink my face in his chest, and discover that none of this has ever happened. I can also die in my sleep, of a heart attack, a cerebral hemorrhage, whatever. I can die all of a sudden, and neither the dream nor life itself will have any importance anymore. Sleep, without images of anything at all, without nightmares. Rest forever from what has never happened.
    "Gato," the other man repeated. He had moved at last, taking a couple of steps into the room. "Quihubo," he said. "What's up? Güero was one of ours, man. A good guy. Remember—the sierra, El Paso, Rio Bravo. And this was his woman." And as he was saying this, he was pulling a Python out of his waistband and pointing it at Teresa's forehead. "Get up so you don't get splattered, man, and let me put her lights out."
    But Gato Fierros had other plans. "She's going to die anyway," he said, "and it'd be a waste."
    He knocked the Python away, and Pote Galvez stood looking at them, first at Teresa and then at Gato—undecided, fat,