“Menendez. Big, smart, tough, tricky. More sophisticated. Not just feeding men to vultures and cutting women’s heads off. Oh, they’ll do that if they feel it advances their interests, but it’s not SOP.”

“Who’s Menendez?”

“Raúl Menendez. About fifty. One of the few, maybe the only, cartel hotshot with American citizenship, joint with Mexican. He was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where his dad was getting his Ph.D. in economics. Dad went on to become the head of the Econ Department at the University of Mexico, until he died a few years ago, maybe out of grief over his son’s chosen path.”

“So Raúl has brains from his dad’s side.”

“His mom’s too. Well, maybe that’s where the refinement comes from. American citizen, grad student in art history, when she met and married Raúl’s dad. She’s dead too, maybe of the same grief.”

“They should be proud he chose such a growth career,” said Nick.

“Supersmart Raúl used tony family connections to apprentice under some of the bad dudes, then went independent ten years ago, having paid his dues, having learned the business from the ground up, having made peace with the older cartel generations so he himself didn’t end up staked out for the vultures. He seems to have been guided by a vision for what a cartel could be, not just a Nazi Murder Battalion that, incidentally, sold drugs to the bean people but an international entity, penetrating society at many different levels. They use money to buy allies in other realms of society.”

“Smooth?”

“Snoot Spanish and American all the way. No mestizo blood in him. That is why, alone among them, he’s also cultivated the outer world. He seems to be headquartered in L.A., where he owns some auto dealerships, shopping centers, fast-food joints, has been mentioned as a possible investor in various sporting franchises, dabbles in movies, sits on several charity boards, has a wife and three kids.”

“Meanwhile—”