“I once watched him remove a living man’s face. He took one tiny patch of flesh at a time until the faceless, blubbering man was staring through lidless eyes at a bloody mosaic of his own skin pasted on a mirror that had been set so he could watch every cut of the operation.”

“Floor-to-ceiling picture windows were filled with the nighttime vista of the gleaming cities of El Paso and Juarez, obscured by large patches of human skin pasted to the glass like self-clinging decals. The odd angles and random placement looked like a macabre Picasso mosaic.”

“Tuco Medrano, wearing a black ski mask, walked quickly across the busy Bulevar Ignacio Bernardo Norzagaray and put two rounds through the driver side window of the lead truck. The bullets struck Officer Ignacio Reyes in the head, killing him instantly, and sprayed bloody bits of brain matter and bone all over his wide-eyed female partner.”

“If it’s coin operated in El Paso, you can bet the Cartel owns it.”

“What kind of trouble was he in now? If he thought I was about to bail him out of something, he was as wrong as a football bat.”

“She lay on her back with arms extended over her head and legs slightly spread. Cuchillo zip-tied her slender wrists and ankles to each corner of the long metal exam table and stuffed a washrag in her mouth to prevent her from crying out… Only her rapidly-moving eyes betrayed her distress, they darted from her captors to the wiry man tied to the wall…The interrogator stood close to the table, carelessly wielding a lovingly sharpened straight razor and licking his lips, while he ogled the helpless girl. Tuco felt his stomach turn when Cuchillo ran his dirty hand up the inside of her smooth leg and under the hem of her short dress.”

“If it hadn’t been for the tequila shots at the taco stand, I’d like to think I would have turned and walked away in a state of moral indignation. But the reality was that a platoon of Marines couldn’t have kept me out of that hot tub. It was an auspicious start to an otherwise doomed relationship. I should have just enjoyed the first night of debauchery and walked away, but never one to let good sense in the way of good sex, I stuck around for the ride.”