Godoy is part of a small army of witnesses who are kept isolated from one another and who usually have no idea that others are stashed in the U.S. and have also become informants. They will be fresh, they will not have a chance to compare stories. They know little of the investigation because it asks questions that hardly matter to them. Enrique Camarena was a foreign agent in their country poking into their business. His torture is not significant. In Mexico, it is well known by everyone that if you are picked up by the police, you will be tortured. If you are picked up by the drug traffickers, you will be tortured. And often the same person works for the police and for the traffickers. Godoy is a perfect example: He is a policeman for the state of Jalisco who is assigned by his comandante to be Ernesto Fonseca’s personal bodyguard. He is on official assignment, on a good career track with bonuses, because Fonseca is a caring boss. And this DEA agent Enrique Camarena fell into his life like a live grenade and blew it up.

Berrellez understood that there is only one way to get to the actual killers — the powerful men who live in safety and who order their murders done for them — and that is through people like Jorge Godoy.

Years later, Godoy leans forward, his breath on my face, his eyes bulging.

“Look at me, look at my eyes” — he points two fingers at his eyes — “do they look like the eyes of a man who shoots someone in the back of the head? No, no, I only shoot in the front, not in the back.”

He is standing, leaning forward. This matters, whether it is true or not. Only in the front, not the back. Such assertions allow these men to hang on to shreds of conscience.

The informants, over 200 of them, the witnesses produced by recruiters Berrellez paid in Mexico, they are unsavory to most people because they have made careers out of crime. And some of the key witnesses had killed U.S. citizens without regrets. Prosecutors hesitate to put a man on the stand who had been part of a team that tortured and murdered two American couples, raping the wives in front of their husbands first. None of this is unusual in a criminal justice system that makes deals with the devil every day.

Berrellez finally decides out of all the informants maybe 10 could be used as witnesses. The others are simply too compromised to withstand cross-examination. But when the Camarena case began to rupture, it was not because of the crimes of the witnesses. The case ran into trouble because of what the witnesses said and the people they talked about.

They take the investigation into that room where Enrique Camarena is screaming. Because they were in the room.

Chapter Four

KIKI