Jay's KISS THE DETECTIVE Post -- More Elmer Mendoza, the Godfather of Narco-Lit

I’m a big fan of Mexican crime writer Elmer Mendoza. Each time I read him, I read him TWICE:  ONCE in English; and ONCE in Spanish.   I have now read like five of his Narco-Lit novels; this counts for TEN on my shelf.  Most of the Mendoza books I have read follow Detective Edgar “Lefty” Mendieta through the violence and trauma we call Culiacan, Sinaloa, where llfe is so savage,  it’s surreal.   At first Mendoza’s writing  style may be a little difficult to follow.  He may begin a paragraph from one point of view and finish with another – with little punctuation or distinction between.  It doesn’t matter language I’m reading, I often don’t know WHO is WHO, or WHAT is WHAT.  Maybe that is the point.  His string of consciousness writing style brings together the cops,  hoods, politicians, and victims together into one place.  In Lefty’s Mexico, he  believes they are all the same:  “Nothing is true, nothing is false.”

Here is a scene where Lefty’s trusted friend and informer, the Flea is murdered only a few feet away from him by the people who are supposed to be protecting them:  “Lefty emerged into the sunlight.  Susana, her eyes wide had one hand over her mouth.  Hyena Wong and his men stood around the body on the ground.  The Flea.  What Happened? His eyes went  to young Long and spotted him next to his boss, gun in hand, wearing a satisfied look.”  As a novice Spanish reader, I often have to read a paragraph like this one over and over.  There’s too many people.  Too much going on.  The narrative forces to me to scrutinize every detail of a scene.  But, that’s good for me.  I mean that’s what Lefty has to do through the entire novel.  As I journey through each page, I now feel like a Narco-Lit detective myself.  It gets better.  Like, I’m learning how to track the dialogue. I appreciate the ART and the CHALLENGE of it all.   I feel like I’m submerged in the SWAMP, they call Culiacan.

Edgar 'Lefty' Mendieta is a Mexican police detective who is not always holding up the law, but interpretting it. Much of the crime he sees on a daily business occurrs in his own building.  Corruption is everywhere.  Incompetence.  Disinformation.  Lefty is smart, not in the way of the politicians, doctors or lawyers he encounters, but in the way he can make it to the end of each novel,  ALIVE.  That's not an easy task in Sinaloa.   Like many of the hard-boiled detectives I read, Lefty is a drinker.  A pill-popper.  He's in his forties, his life is full of CONFLICT.  In his profession, he doesn't know what to believe or who to trust. 

This means, when he sees his childhood friend, the Flea, bleeding out in the dirt, he knows things like this can happen sooner or later, and he has to measure his reaction. The men who have just shot his friend dead are holding semi-automatic rifles.   Lefty knows his own life is on the line.   His trust in Flea no longer matters. He has to get over it, and I mean, QUICK.   Besar al Detective begins with the appearnce of Samantha Valdés, head of the Pacific Cartel.   I know her from other Lefty novels in the series.  After Samantha’s  father dies,  she becomes the Queen of Drug Lords.  She is La Reina del Sur.  Up until this point, Lefty doesn’t know her.  He doesn’t want to know her.  He hates the cartel.  But, the harder he tries to stay out of the swamp, the more he feels pulled into the middle of it. This is what I mean:  Samantha proves to be a ruthless gangstah, and she shows herself to be a dedicated lover.  In the novel I refer to , Nombre del Perro, her lover, is a much younger woman she keeps by her side for her own protection.  In Mexico, the Machista side of most crime bosses leave them with little trust or respect for a woman to give them orders.   Samantha’s rivals band together to send a message where it will hurt her the most.  They hire a military assassin to shoot her lover. This is where Lefty meets Samantha.  She uses all her power and contacts to seek Lefty’s help in finding her lover’s killer.  I mean, he’s Culiacan’s top homocide detective.  Everyone tells her that Lefty is on the Up and Up – he won’t do anything to help the Cartel.  But, like they say in the movies, she gives him an offer he can’t refuse.

I guess you can say Besar al Detective starts out with a BANG.   A rival cartel attempts to take Samantha out with a precision military attack of her caravan on a highway just outside the city limits of Culiacan.  It’s an ambush.  There is gunfire from all sides. Bazooka shells penetrate bullet proof doors.  Cars in front and back burst into flames. Somehow, Samantha’s bodyguards are able to move her to another car and escape, and they are able to transport her to a nearby hospital.  Lefty  happens to be working on a completely different case.  Of course, another murder.  This case is a tough one to crack. And Lefty knows that Samantha is not going anywhere soon.  The hospital is soon to be  surrounded by Mexican army, waiting for her to regain consciousness to transport her to Mexico City.  Although Lefty does not have much of a personal relationship with Samantha, he knows a few of her underlings.  They are former cops.  This is how they roll in Sinaloa.   Lefty feels they will have information he needs to solve his case. In the same way, Lefty helps Samantha avenge her lover’s death, he finds himself helping her escape the hospitatl under the watchful eye of the Mexican Army.  In each case he felt he didn’t have a choice. This is his Sinaloa.

I’m not writing a book report here, but through this series I enjoy exploring the complexities of Lefty’s drive to balance his professional  and personal life. In both cases, he seems to be hanging on a thread. Thrust into the middle of his violent and chaotic world, his ex-lover shows up out of nowhere.  Susana is a beautiful woman he first fell in love with in high-school, la prepatoria.  They share a life time of mutual respect and understanding.  They also share a son who is now eighteen years old, a son Lefty had never previously heard about.  The son's name is Jason.  He has a gringo name, and here is the difficult part for Lefty.  Jason wants to be a cop, just like his dad. When Lefty looks into the eyes of his son, he feels a surge of pride from the way he turned out.  He has his mother's looks at his father's determination.  But, Lefty doesn't know what to say about becoming a policeman in today's age of Narco-Traficantes.  I mean, half the time Lefty is high on whiskey and pain medication just to make it through the day.

Susana appearance drives up the intensity of the novel.   She shares the awful news that their son has been kidnapped and held for ransom. The father in Lefty freaks out., but the detective in Lefty suspects criminals out of his past  he has locked up.  Now more than ever, Lefty needs to keep his Cool and stay focused.  They kidnappers used a beautiful redhood to lower Jason’s defenses and lure him into a trap.  Lefty suspects it's some real Sinaloa shit.  He’s receiving threatening voicemails that end with the sound of a wet kiss. Susana has received his son’s cut-off trigger finger in a blood-stained envelope.  Lefty knows that the L.A. police or  FBI are going to be of little help to a Mexican national, even though he is a cop.  Once again, he feel alone at the bottom of the abyss.

But that’s when he remembers Samantha. Earlier in the novel, he was able to speak with her in her hospital room.  La Reina was severly injured from the bazooka blasts to her bullet-proof SUV: she was limp, lighter than he could ever imagine.  This was in the emergency room.  She was hooked up to tubes and machines.   At the sight of her, Lefty may have said ot himself, “I don’t give a fuck.” There was no money in the world that was going to tempt him to help a cartel leader escape from this hospital. That changed when his son was taken away from him.  He knew Samantha had not part in the kidnapping.  How could she?  She was surrounded by the Mexican army.  It was something Samantha told him then and there at her beside that sounded more true than anything else he knew: "Neither your life or mine travels in a straight line: we move to the beat of whatever come at us.  A poco no.. "Tell me that isn’t so."

Lefty once loved Susana with his entire soul.  He just may have hated Samantha on an equal level. For me, this is the cool part of the novel. No matter what,  Lefty will always feel torn apart in whatever he encounters. There is the hint of happiness at the end of the novel.  He just might reunite with Susana.  Lefty is forty-something.  Susanna may be what is missing in his life.  But in Sinaloa, he realizes the truth to what Samantha has told him. Lefty and Samantha maybe two parts of the same orange.  She seems to know him better than he knows himself.  They will never be a couple,  but Samantha may be what makes him whole.