by Sam Hawken
Dreier’s partner made a signal with his hand and caught Jack’s eye. Dreier signed back. ‘Mr Searle,’ he said, ‘I’m going to have to ask you to follow us back to the local police station. Your employee will have to ride with us.’
‘I don’t even know where the police station is.’
‘We’ll show you the way.’
SIX
THEY MADE HIM SIT IN ONE OF A LONG LINE of plastic chairs all bolted together. Jack’s Coke went flat, but he nursed it because that was the only thing he could think of to do. Cops came and went without looking his way and Jack didn’t see Dreier or his partner for well over an hour. Jack wondered whether the Leeks’ housekeeper was waiting on him, whether he should call.
Of Eugenio he saw nothing at all. They handcuffed him before they put him in their truck and Eugenio would not look at Jack when they unloaded him. Jack could think of nothing comforting to say, so he kept quiet and let them take Eugenio away.
He spotted Dreier a few minutes before the man came out to get him. Two uniformed cops and Dreier’s partner clustered together, talking, on the far side of a glass wall. Once Dreier’s partner looked directly at Jack and Jack dipped his eyes reflexively. They had not cuffed him, but he felt as though they had.
Finally an electric lock buzzed and Dreier emerged with a few pages of printout in his hand. ‘You want to come with me, Mr Searle?’
At the end of a seemingly endless hallway they made a left and passed along a row of identical closed doors marked with numbers. Dreier used a key to open one and held it for Jack. Inside was a small table and three chairs in a space barely big enough for them. A camera with a red light on it perched high in one corner, staring down at the room.
‘Have a seat.’
Jack sat.
‘Before you ask,’ Dreier said, ‘you’re not under arrest. You’re not being charged with anything. In fact, you can go any time you want. You don’t even have to talk to me.’
‘That’s fine,’ Jack said.
‘Okay.’ Dreier sat down. He put the papers face down on the table. ‘Just so long as you know where we stand.’
‘What can I do for you?’ Jack asked.
‘By what name do you know the man you hired?’
‘Eugenio.’
‘No last name?’
‘No, I never asked.’
‘And he said he was from Anáhuac in Mexico.’
‘That’s right.’
‘You hire men out of that Home Depot parking lot often?’
‘From time to time. I take all kinds of jobs and I can’t afford to keep people on the payroll when I can’t use them. It’s easier to pick them up.’
‘How much do you pay?’
‘Eight dollars an hour, plus lunch.’
Dreier raised his eyebrows. ‘Not a whole lot of contractors paying minimum wage for day labor out there these days.’
‘I pay what I think is fair.’
‘Sure, I understand. And you don’t worry about things like taxes or anything.’
‘Look, I don’t—’
Dreier held up a hand. ‘I’m just saying, Mr Searle. No need to get defensive. You’re not the first guy to cut corners on paperwork and you’re not going to be the last. We’re just talking here.’
‘All I ask for is an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay,’ Jack said.
‘I get you. How many men do you think you’ve hired out of that lot over the last, say, year?’
‘Five or six.’
‘Can you remember any names?’
‘Not really.’
‘Could you pick out faces from a photograph?’
‘Maybe. Is that what you want me to do?’
‘Not right now,’ Dreier said. He steepled his fingers. ‘You know, we figure nine out of ten men in that parking lot are here illegally. We could sweep it every day. That’s what we did this morning. And you know what? That lot will be filled tomorrow morning with all new faces.’
‘If you want me to stop hiring day labor, I will,’ Jack said.
‘I’m not saying that. It’s just that you have to know what you’re doing is against the law. There are plenty of legal workers you could hire. Plenty of guys from Mexico if that’s what you prefer.’
‘Look, he said he had a green card.’
‘He did have a green card. It’s fake.’
‘I wouldn’t know,’ Jack said.
‘To be honest, if I didn’t know what to look for I wouldn’t have been able to tell either,’ Dreier said. ‘But it was a fake and “Eugenio” is here illegally. You were lucky: some of these guys have criminal records and they’ll rob their employers of cash, tools, whatever. Your boy was clean. Hell, he might really be named Eugenio.’
Jack took a deep breath. ‘So what happens to him?’
‘In a day or two he’ll be deported.’
‘What happens to me?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Nothing?’
‘That’s right. I’m going to be straight with you: I don’t really have time to bust every contractor who’s looking for some cheap hires. And in this case you were employing someone who claimed to have a green card and even had the document on him. It’s not worth the effort.’
‘So what’s that?’ Jack asked. He pointed at the papers.
‘Oh, these? It’s your driving record. No tickets.’
Jack’s shoulders fell. He hadn’t noticed the tension until it was gone. He sat up straighter in his chair. ‘I guess this is where you tell me to watch myself.’
‘I don’t think I have to. You get it.’
‘Can I go, then?’
‘You can go.’
Jack rose from the table and so did Dreier. The man offered Jack his hand. They shook. ‘I can find my own way out,’ Jack said.
‘You mind if I walk you anyway?’
‘Could I stop you?’
They retraced their steps down the long hallway and out into the station’s lobby. People bustled back and forth, hurried by the business of policing. Cops and criminals. Victims. Light cast in brilliant squares across the tile and Jack was caught in the center of one.
‘Take care, Mr Searle,’ Dreier said. ‘Hopefully we won’t cross paths again.’
‘I hope so, too.’
Jack left the station and went back to his truck. It was nearly three.
SEVEN
THE STATION IN DOWNTOWN NUEVO Laredo was not large, just one of a few scattered across the city. Once there might have been some reason for putting the buildings where they were, but now they seemed almost randomly set out, their spheres of influence roughly overlapping and the Army and Federal Police filling in the rest. The entrance to the building was reinforced with barriers made of concrete and spirals of barbed wire. Some of the windows had sandbags stacked on their sills.
Gonzalo Soler was not the first person to notice the thin man in work clothes when he entered the police station. A spill of reports arranged themselves in rows on Gonzalo’s desk, each one crying out for his immediate attention, and it was his job to determine which would be pushed back and which brought to the fore. A policeman was like a doctor judging the severity of wounds among a crowd of the injured. He could not give everything his full scrutiny, though he would do his best to see to it all.
It was Pepito Barriga who saw him first. ‘Oh, shit,’ he said at his desk.
Gonzalo glanced up. ‘What’s the problem?’ he asked.
‘It’s that guy again,’ Pepito said. ‘He was in here yesterday and the day before that. I told him to go home and stay home, but he doesn’t know how to take a hint.’
Gonzalo looked and it was then that he saw the man. He was thin to the point of starving and he wore battered tan work clothes that blended into his sun-darkened skin and gave the impression of some weathered, dirty scarecrow in a dying field. He stood in the open space beyond the duty officer’s desk, wringing a baseball cap in his hands, looking with pleading eyes toward busy cops who paid him no mind at all
.
‘What does he want?’ Gonzalo asked.
‘It’s his kid. Believe me, it’s nothing to bother with.’
From here it looked as though the man might cry on the spot. The desperation was etched into his face, palpable even at a distance. Gonzalo closed the folder in front of him and got up. He put on his jacket.
Pepito saw him rise. ‘I’m telling you, don’t waste your time.’
‘I’ll only talk to the man.’
‘Whatever. Just don’t ask me to help out.’
‘I won’t.’
Gonzalo passed among the desks, some empty and some occupied, until he reached the reception area. He put out his hand when he came near. ‘Hello,’ he said, ‘I’m Inspector Gonzalo Soler. My colleague tells me that you have a problem.’
‘Yes,’ the man said. ‘Him, over there. I’ve talked to him before.’
‘If you don’t mind, I’d like to hear your story. What’s your name?’
‘Tomás Contreras.’
‘You live in the city?’
‘No, sir. I work on a farm near Sabinas Hidalgo.’
‘That’s an hour or so, isn’t it? Not far.’
‘No, sir, not far.’
‘Why don’t you come back to my desk and tell me your problem?’
Gonzalo led Tomás to his desk and found a chair for the man. He ignored the looks of Pepito. From a drawer he brought out a notepad and pen and he turned to a fresh page before writing Tomás’s name at the top.
‘It is my daughter,’ Tomás said when Gonzalo was ready. ‘Her name is Iris.’
‘How old is she?’
‘Twenty.’
‘Do you have other children?’
‘Yes,’ Tomás said. ‘Two others. A boy and another girl. They are younger.’
It occurred to Gonzalo that it was difficult to tell Tomás’s age from the look of the man. Long days and weeks and months in the sun had weathered his face; it seemed dust had settled in every line. Gonzalo’s own father had looked much that way before he died. ‘Where is your daughter now?’ Gonzalo asked.
‘Here. In Nuevo Laredo.’
‘She lives here?’
‘Yes. For three months.’
‘What does she do?’
It was then that a look of such reflexive, intense pain passed over Tomás’s expression that Gonzalo thought the man was injured somehow. The man clearly struggled with the sensation and his face twisted before his eyes began to shine deeply with tears. ‘Forgive me, sir,’ Tomás said.
‘It’s all right. Take your time and tell me when you’re ready.’
Tomás nodded and breathed deeply and put knuckles to his eyes to crush away the wetness. His chest hitched. ‘I’ve told all of this to the other policeman,’ he said finally.
‘I understand, but I’m hearing this for the first time now.’
The man looked at Gonzalo and every crevice in his face was drawn. ‘My daughter… Iris… she works in Boy’s Town, sir. In Boy’s Town.’
EIGHT
HE WAS EARLY GETTING HOME AND neither of the girls had come back from their day trips to friends or to the mall or wherever they kept busy on lazy late-summer afternoons. Jack put on the radio in his bedroom and turned the volume up so he could hear it in the shower with the bathroom door open. With no one around to hear him, he sang along under the spray. He discovered a cut on his hand that he hadn’t noticed before and washed it clean. A contractor’s hands were always getting filthy and he didn’t need an infection.
When he was washed and dressed again he went out in the back yard and plucked weeds for half an hour. He cast the plants into an old, rusty wheelbarrow that had once been bright orange. After that he brought the wheelbarrow out front and did the same all over again. It would do until the weekend when he would drag out the lawn mower and do the grass up properly.
The wheelbarrow seemed heavier somehow when he ran it back to the side of the house, but it was just his sudden mood and not the dying weeds. He emptied the wheelbarrow by the handful into a garbage can, and then put it in the garage.
The house was very quiet again. Jack tried to imagine it this way all the time, Marina and Lidia both gone, but that sent a dark cloud skittering across his thoughts.
When the day came for Marina to go to school, she’d take classes at the community college or somewhere else local. She would live in this house and sleep in her bed and Jack would take care of her as he always had. The same went for Lidia. He had never told them, but they had to know that as long as he was alive they had a place under his roof. That was the promise he gave to Vilma, the one he would not break.
‘Beer,’ Jack said aloud. He found a bottle and let it start to sweat before he twisted off the top. In the family room he took a spot on the old La-Z-Boy and stared at the blank screen of the television. He could smell the traces of the perfume Lidia had taken to wearing all the time. The couch was like her command post, feet always up and cell phone always working.
He heard Marina’s car in the driveway and waited. There was the jingle of keys but the front door was unlocked. Jack didn’t call out when she entered. She saw him right away.
‘Drinking alone?’ she asked.
‘Just one,’ Jack said.
‘I counted all the bottles in the fridge, so I’ll know if you’re lying,’ Marina said. She hung her purse from a hook by the door.
‘You did not,’ he said.
‘Maybe I did and maybe I didn’t. You won’t know.’
‘This is the only one I had,’ Jack reiterated.
‘I believe you.’
Marina came into the family room and sat on the couch. Jack saw that she was in a new blouse and good jeans. She wore pumps instead of sneakers. ‘You look nice,’ Jack said.
‘Oh, this? I went by the earring place like I told you. Talked to the manager. I wanted to look professional, you know?’
‘Sure, I know.’
‘Anyway, the manager said I could come by next Tuesday for an interview. She said it was just a formality. Got to follow the rules.’
Jack nodded. There was only a little beer left and he tilted it into his mouth.
‘It’s not a lot of hours. Maybe ten a week? But that’s good to start, right?’
‘Right.’
‘Ginny says they have a girl there who might quit and then I could get her hours, too. That’ll add up.’
‘Mm-hmm,’ Jack agreed. ‘You know where your sister is?’
‘With Saundra, I think. They were going to go to the movies.’
‘So long as she’s back for dinner.’
‘Nobody misses dinner, Jack,’ Marina said. She got up. ‘You want me to bring you another beer?’
‘If you trust me with it.’
‘I told you: I counted them all.’
‘Okay, I’ll have another beer.’
‘Coming up.’
NINE
SOME PEOPLE CALLED IT ‘BOY’S TOWN,’ but in the city it was known simply as La Zona. It was three blocks sealed off by a wall, the interior built up like a small city. The place even had a little police station staffed by pairs of officers in shifts, though it was primarily just a place for drunks to be held until a wagon could be sent to ferry them to larger accommodations downtown.
The police station was just inside the entrance, a metal sign advertising its presence, but the officers assigned there did not patrol. La Zona was a place of tolerance where prostitution and sex shows abounded, but it was also a community, with rooms to rent and small stores for tourists and locals alike. There were many bars and restaurants on its streets, interspersed with brothels and strip clubs and even a place where one could see the notorious donkey show. A policeman’s first instinct was to dismiss La Zona as a nest of criminals and those who trucked with them, but couples came here for dancing and workingmen stopped for cheap beer. But in the daytime it was a place for hangovers and ghosts.
Gonzalo parked outside the gates and walked the rest of the way. He thought brief
ly of checking with the police on duty, but there was nothing they could do to help him with his task today and he would only waste their time. He had his badge and his gun, for what good they would do him, and that would have to be enough. Even those would probably be no use for what he would have to do.
He followed the Circunvalación Casanova, which formed a sort of loop around the whole of La Zona’s interior. From what Tomás Contreras had told him, Gonzalo knew he could find the way. La Zona was like a warren, but like all warrens it was not infinite and there were only so many places to hide. Fewer still if being visible was important for business.
A long stretch of street was lined on one side by shabby whitewashed buildings. The apartments opened directly onto the unpaved street and there were other, narrow doors squeezed between the tiny units that led to upper floors. No building was more than two stories. Only some of the apartments were numbered. The one he wanted was marked with a few splashes of paint that marked out the numeral nine.
Iris Contreras’s crib was on the second floor. The walls of the stairwell closed in so snugly on either side that Gonzalo’s shoulders rubbed them. At the very top was a single door with no landing. He stood awkwardly on the steps and knocked twice.
When there was no answer, he knocked again and waited. It was possible that she was gone, or perhaps too exhausted from the night to even hear his rapping. Gonzalo waited longer.
After a while he heard a thump of feet on floor and the pacing of steps. He sensed the presence of another human being on the far side of the door and then her voice came through the wood. ‘Who is it?’
‘Iris Contreras?’
‘Who wants to know?’
‘My name is Gonzalo Soler. I am a policeman.’
‘What do the police want with me?’
‘Open the door, please.’
There was a long pause as Iris Contreras considered, but then a chain rattled and the door came open. It was dark inside. The girl appeared.
She was not a beautiful young woman, though darkness and makeup would make all the difference. She was slender like her father and did not have large breasts or rolling hips. Instead of a pretty dress, she wore a simple white shift for sleeping. She was barefoot. ‘What do you want?’ she asked.
