But they knew he would come.

Miguel Coral had fought on the losing side of a gang war. A few days ago, the informant said, Coral deserted the defeated gang. With a hundred kilos of Mexican heroin, Coral intended to start a new dope gang in Los Angeles.

He could never return to Mexico. His desertion from the Ochoa gang meant his death if his former compatriots ever found him. And his murders of innumerable gunmen and captains of other gangs marked him as the target of a hundred vendettas.

The files of the Drug Enforcement Agency held hundreds of pages of information on the career of Miguel Coral Valencia. According to the DEA, Coral started as an independent operator smuggling marijuana and heroin from Hermosillo in the Mexican state of Sonora, north to Tucson, Arizona. After murdering two Mexican policemen, he sought the protection of the Ochoa gang.

Like the other gangs, the Ochoa organization operated in alliance with the politicians and police departments of the remote Mexican towns. The drug gangs supported the ambitions of the politicians, financing their campaigns for mayor or governor or senator.

The mayors of cities learned to take bids on the position of police chief. Then, like the regional director of a high-profit enterprise, the police chief managed the income and disbursed the profits, distributing wads of cash to each patrolman and suitcases of American dollars to the politicians in higher government posts.

Gang money maintained the life-styles of the police, augmenting their small monthly salaries with thousands of American dollars a week. Police chiefs drove Corvettes and Cadillacs. Policemen who received salaries of only a hundred dollars a month drove Mustangs. Families of police officers enjoyed backyard pools and spending sprees in San Diego, Tucson and El Paso.