San Jose, California

One month later

Why do people get greedy and steal what don’t belong to them, Shark wondered. Then you gotta kill them to set a fucking example.

Plata o plomo. Money or lead. Work for us and we pay you, but you cross us, you eat a lead bullet.

Shark expelled a breath, then groused aloud to his San Jose-based gang, 

“Cabrona! The bitch!” Shark, or El Tiburon, continued in a more controlled voice, “She should know better. Right, bros?” For emphasis, he pounded the table with his fist.

A chorus of agreement followed.

He’d called his board of twelve associates, or his “Tequileros”—all narcotraficantes—to a special meeting. He’d just been told by Gordo that the bitch at one of the casinos who worked for them was slipping plata—the cartel’s dirty cash—under her clothes every week. What, like they didn’t count the shit before and after it was cleaned? 

His twelve loyal soldados stared at him, waiting for him to continue. Tiburon sat back, took his time to gaze around their vast basement. The basement was their stash house, or headquarters, off Trimble Road, where all the Baja Cartel’s drug money flowed into NorCal from all their retailers--the street crews, the illegal cannabis stores, the bribed pharmacists and doctors. All that was funneled through this headquarters.

Their business—Shark’s and his board’s—was to count, store, launder, count again, package and send it all back into the Cartel’s coffers across the U.S.’s Swiss cheese southern border. Back into Baja.

The street crews—the couriers, street slingers, and lookouts—worked mostly in pairs under the supervision of Shark’s associates. The wholesalers who bought from the labs and growers were another arm of the industry. Not Shark’s concern. This compartmentalization of the huge operation limited the exposure of Shark and his men--who were mostly bilingual, American-born chicanos--to the street peddlers and falcones, or spies. A very wise strategy. The less the street slobs knew of the local cleaning operation, the better.

As a whole, Shark and the Tequileros functioned as the fifth tier in the drug industry hierarchy. What a ladder it was. The growers who raised the poppies sold the opiates to the wholesalers, who turned them into brown heroin. Then other middlemen bought the bricks from the mills and sold them to other mills that turned them into powdered pills, usually mixed with extremely potent, powdered fentanyl from China. Then these were sold to the distributors, who ran the street network of suppliers, peddlers, and spies. 

The final tier, which El Tiburon’s network operated, was vital. Cleaning the dirty money or laundering it was the final step, which involved millions in cash per month. An important one, too, for clean cash could be invested in real estate and businesses in Mexico and the States, moved to other countries in bank wires to shell companies, invested abroad,  or used to bribe government officials in Mexico and the States.

A vast efficient network, Tiburon thought proudly. With this network of Cartel business came a chain of command in the enormously powerful Sinaloa drug industry, the Baja Cartel being one of its plazas or marketplaces. Everyone in their criminal enterprise, from the lowliest grunt on the street to El Patron himself in his Sinaloa fortress, would be compensated according to their rank in the cartel’s hierarchy. If a narco worker got too greedy, or was disloyal in any way, they were always dealt with harshly.

One had to make examples of those bastards.

Or bitch, in this case.

After Shark/Tiburon snarled, “We gotta make another fucking example,” the Tequileros nodded and yelled again in agreement. 

One shouted, “Pinche puta!” A second dude, “Kill the puta!” Another, “Damn right, screw the bitch!”

Shark looked at the second man, momentarily blanking on his name. The American—young, clean-shaven, and muscular. A familiar face over the last six months or so, he liked to wear his trademark black cowboy hat and black vest. A new recruit from Arizona, he thought—a guy who’d risen fast. His apodo, or nickname, escaped him for the moment. A wannabe enforcer. Sicario. Everyone had a code name.

Above their heads, in the offices and factory rooms of their four-story stucco building where the legitimate businesses were conducted, was a very different story. Everything upstairs was legit. And a good cover business, Shark knew. Imported tequila, brand-named Primero Agave from the Sinaloa-controlled fincas, and colorful ceramics from Oaxaca were unboxed, catalogued, re-boxed and labeled, then distributed to the Northern California and Northwest retail markets, all over the Western states. From grocery stores to pottery barns.

Shark, so named because his canines had been filed down to sharp spikes, sat at the head of a table on which cut glass tumblers of Primero Agave were strewn, waiting to be drunk at the appropriate moment. In his forties, Shark had survived a lifetime of conflicts and tests through sheer intelligence and guts. As a smart sicario, he was a cartel legend and, as his due, he’d been assigned this strategic post by the Sinaloa cartel jefe, El Patron, himself. A source of mucho orgullo—much pride.

Tonight’s meeting followed a simple procedure. A problem was first discussed, the solution ultimately ordered by El Tiburon, the enforcer chosen or volunteered. 

A hand raised.

Tiburon’s first lieutenant and second-in-command was his rotund cousin, Gordo. The dude fingered his neatly trimmed beard and mustache. He liked to wear collared shirts, sports jackets, and pocket squares. No one outside the board would ever guess that Gordo had a bachelor’s degree in economics. He liked to talk narco smack, but he was the brains behind the casino laundering scheme.

“Yeah, the bitch wanted more plata, so she takes it. Says she’s risking her job, why not. So, Tiburon, what do you wanta do?”