by Sean Black
Hernandez got up, blocking his passage. ‘I already said, there’s a lot more to this.’
‘But you won’t share?’ Ty asked.
‘It’s not a question of won’t. I can’t.’
Sixty-eight
HER SERVICE WEAPON raised, Rafaela nudged the apartment door open with her toe and stepped inside. She waited, listening for the sound of movement, but none came.
Across the border, she would have walked downstairs and called the cops. Here, she was the cops and, in all likelihood, so was the delivery man who had come to take her life. Alerted by the sound of the bell and of another neighbour shouting down to the street, she had watched him walk up the stairs and into her apartment. The only thing that surprised her was how quickly they had moved to kill her. Usually when something big was going down, the cartels waited in the long grass for a while. It was clear from the sicario’s arrival that they wanted her dead quickly for a reason.
She moved into the living room, anticipating the rush of a body only to be met by stillness. Gun arm out, she moved towards the tiny balcony, approaching it side on so that she never exposed her back to the interior. The balcony was empty. She moved back into the body of the apartment, finding nothing.
Then she noticed the closed bathroom door.
She lowered her weapon. She could shoot through the door and hope to get lucky but even if she caught him it would create one hell of a mess. And she didn’t want the man dead, not yet anyway.
She moved back, gathering her bag and car keys, making sure that it would be audible to the man waiting in her bathroom. She went to the door and slammed it shut then threw the locks but left the chains where they were. As quietly as she could, she took up a position facing the bathroom door and stood there.
Less than three minutes later, she heard a deep sigh followed by the splash of water. A minute after that the door opened. She already had the gun raised and level, the hammer thrown back, her finger on the trigger.
The man she knew as Hector, bodyguard to Charlie Mendez, and one of the most prolific sicarios operating in the borderlands, as well as a serving police officer, stepped out of the bathroom and looked at her. There was no wry smile on his face, no sign of irritation either, but neither was there any fear. If anything, she was looking at what she thought she would never see. Someone who was as world-weary and exhausted by life as she was.
He shrugged. ‘I’ll get rid of my weapon, okay?’
She nodded, watching him carefully as he removed it from the holster, ejected the clip, put both down separately and slid them with his foot across the floor towards her.
‘Raise your arms above your head and turn around,’ she said.
He did as she asked, although it was more of a shuffle than a turn. She knelt down and picked up the clip and the gun. She emptied the clip and made sure the chamber was clear. When she was finished she asked him to turn back to face her.
A silence settled between them.
‘You came to kill me?’ she asked him.
He gave a nod, staring at her with the same sad eyes. ‘Yes.’
At least he was honest, Rafaela thought. Stepping back, she motioned for Hector to move ahead of her. ‘You’re alone?’ she asked, careful not to turn her back to him.
‘That’s how I work. It’s better that way.’
She motioned for him to take a seat on the couch. She could hear it creak as he sank down into it, the cushions folding in under him. He looked up at her. ‘What now?’ The question drew a smile. ‘You found me in your apartment, you know why I’m here. You have a badge. And a gun. You kill me, it would be accepted.’
‘But you’re a fellow officer,’ she said.
‘You know what I am,’ he replied.
He tilted his head back and looked up at the ceiling. ‘It’s what I would do if I were you.’
‘Is it that or is it that you don’t want to live?’
His huge shoulders heaved. ‘I live. I don’t live. If I cared about my life how could I do these things? You’re no different either. If you were, you would have left the city by now because you know that when I’m gone they’ll send someone else and they’ll keep sending them until you’re gone, too.’
He didn’t say it as though he was making a threat. There was no menace, no macho bravado. He spoke softly, his voice barely reaching a whisper. He was simply stating facts. He had raised a good question too. Why hadn’t she left? With what she knew she could have made a deal with the Americans and been relocated in return for information. But then what? America wasn’t her home. This was her home and, contrary to what the Americans believed, not every Mexican dreamed of a life across the border. Rafaela didn’t want the American Dream, she simply wished to see an end to the Mexican nightmare. She wanted her country back, just like the majority of its people.
The problem wasn’t simply the violence. It was the creeping acceptance that came with it. At first, as the cartels had become more extreme, there had been protest marches, and reporters, like her husband, along with other people had spoken out. Then they had begun to kill those who dared to remonstrate.
She crossed to the kitchen counter and picked up the thick blue binder that held the pictures of the dead girls. Her girls. Still holding the gun, she walked back to the man and tossed it towards him. He looked at it, confused.
‘What’s this?’ he asked.
She dug a little handheld voice recorder from her bag and clicked on the record button, then placed it on the arm of the couch.
‘I want you to tell me which ones you know about. And I want you to tell me everything.’
He opened the binder and caught sight of the first girl in her confirmation dress. In his eyes, she saw recognition. He glanced up at her and said softly, ‘Do you believe in God?’
Rafaela nodded. ‘I believe in the devil so, yes, I believe in God.’
‘I’m lost, Detective,’ he said, tears welling in his eyes. ‘I am so lost.’
Sixty-nine
THE ROAD OUTSIDE the shack grew quiet, the kids’ soccer game finding its way gradually down the street. The last police patrol had passed more than an hour ago. Two cops had tried the door, which Lock had long since bolted from the inside, and a neighbour had come out to inform them that the lady who lived there was at work and the place was empty. They had moved on without making any further checks.
Mendez was sitting on the edge of the battered couch and rubbing his eyes, a man coming to terms with his new circumstances. Lock had dug some stale corn tortillas from a cupboard along with some overripe brown avocados. He split open the avocados with his Gerber knife, took out the stone in the centre, scooped out the browny-green flesh and mushed it over two tortillas, which he then rolled up into wraps. Beggars couldn’t be choosers. He took one and handed the other to Mendez.
Mendez took the food without a word and a long moment passed as both men ate in silence, chewing as little as possible and swallowing as fast as they could. Lock opened a soda bottle that was half full of water, took a slug and passed it to Mendez. He gulped and passed it back.
After a few more moments had passed, Mendez finally looked up at him. ‘You have a name, bounty hunter?’
‘Nope,’ said Lock.
‘No name?’
‘Okay.’ Lock sighed. ‘If it makes you feel any better, you can call me asshole.’
Mendez waved the stump of his rolled-up tortilla at him. ‘You know what happened to the other guys who tried to take me back across the border, right, bounty hunter?’
Lock nodded. ‘Sure do, but aren’t you forgetting something?’
‘What’s that, bounty hunter?’
‘Well, I’d say that, judging by the pot shots they were taking at you last night from that helicopter, you’ve just about worn out your welcome down here.’
Mendez’s gaze fell to the bare floorboards. He took a final bite, chewed briefly, then swallowed. Last night, Lock had seen the terror in his eyes but it hadn’t taken Charlie Mendez long t
o revert to the smug, self-satisfied moron that Lock had anticipated.
‘That’s true,’ said Mendez. ‘You’ve got me there.’
He was working his way up to something, Lock could feel it. His predatory little mind was turning over, the cogs clicking away.
‘So, how much do you pick up when you hand me over?’ Mendez asked him. ‘Guy like you gets – what? Ten per cent? That’s right, isn’t it?’
Lock shrugged. ‘Something like that.’ In truth, he had no real idea how it worked. He wasn’t even sure that someone in his position was able to collect part of the bond. And if he was entitled to the money, he had no interest in it. Money only interested him in as far as it allowed him to be his own man, not beholden to anyone. Other than that, he thought of it as merely a tool, a means to an end, and certainly not something that you accumulated as an end in itself. Having enough money could buy you freedom, but too much became its own prison. He had looked after enough wealthy people to know that.
Mendez, though, was warming to the topic. Unsurprisingly, for him money was clearly one way to manipulate people. ‘You know, a couple of hundred grand is chicken feed compared to what you could make,’ he said matter-of-factly.
Lock smiled. ‘You mean if I don’t hand you back to the authorities when we get you back home? If instead I smuggled you out of the country or let you go.’
Mendez returned a smile that showed he was used to having his way. ‘That’s right. So, what do you say, bounty hunter? You want to make some real money?’
‘I’d say there’s about as much chance of me helping you out as there is of the Iranian government legalizing gay marriage.’
‘Come on, bounty hunter. Everyone has a price. Half a million bucks. That’s got to be double what you’d get for handing me back.’
‘Forget it,’ said Lock. ‘This isn’t about money.’
Mendez’s grin grew broader, as if what Lock had just said was utterly alien, which it probably was to a man like him. Lock didn’t feel like explaining so he didn’t add anything.
‘This is personal to you?’
Lock stared.
Mendez leaned forward. ‘I’m right, aren’t I?’
Lock sensed where Mendez was about to take this and he didn’t like it. This wasn’t a conversation he wanted to have. It was all too raw. He could feel anger rising in him. If he allowed it to boil over, he would have no way of stopping it. He had promised Melissa to bring Mendez back alive. He wanted to keep his word and, by doing so, honour her death. Also, he wanted Julia to have the chance to face the man who had drugged and molested her.
‘I’ve had that look you’re giving me now plenty,’ Mendez went on. ‘First I thought it was disgust, or pity, or both. But you know what I think it really is? I think you’re all jealous because I go and do what most men would like to.’
‘Jealous of a scumbag rapist? I don’t think so,’ Lock said, reaching down and clamping a hand around Mendez’s throat tightly enough to stop him breathing. ‘There have been sick assholes like you before now, there’ll be sick assholes like you after, same as there’ll be men like me to make sure they exit the gene pool. That’s all there is to know about this little situation we find ourselves in.’
Mendez grasped at Lock’s arm with both hands but his captor was too strong. His eyes bulged, and his face flushed as Lock squeezed harder.
Seventy
EYES WET WITH tears, Hector’s finger traced the outline of the girl’s face. She had been seventeen when she had died. She had worked in a maquiladora owned by one of the businessmen Federico funded. She had been the prettiest girl in a place where there were many pretty girls. When Managua had made a campaign visit to the factory, she had caught his eye. A few days later, she had been held back after her shift ended, ostensibly to talk to the factory owner about a promotion. He had kept her so long that when she had left the bus that would have taken her home had gone. She had walked to catch a regular city bus, which had given Hector his opportunity. He had known she would miss her bus home.
He had done his job as best he could, reassuring her that everything would be okay. He had driven her to the ranch. There had been no American bounty hunters to stop him. After Managua and the others had finished, Hector had taken her to a plot of waste ground a half-mile from the factory and ended her life. Then he had driven home and got so drunk that he had severed a tendon in his left arm: a shard of glass from the tequila bottle he had thrown at the wall ricocheted back towards him. Her name had been Maria Sanchez, and sometimes she visited him in his sleep. She was girl number seven in Rafaela’s book of the dead, but girl number twelve of those he had either delivered, killed or disposed of. Rafaela’s book was an abridged version of the complete story. There were others, some who hadn’t had families to miss them, or whose families were in the south and didn’t have the money to travel to the border to find out what had happened when the letters and the money stopped.
He had almost been here once before. A year ago, in a drunken state, he had lurched into a cathedral in Mexico City and crawled into confession. But he hadn’t known where to start. He hadn’t been to church since he was a boy. And he had been scared, as he was scared now of what was facing him. As the tears of contrition poured out of him, and his body heaved, he didn’t know how to make them stop. It was as if his heart had merely been storing blood rather than circulating it through his body, so that when a valve was opened, it didn’t flow in a stream so much as exploded outwards all in one, flooding through him.
As the red light of the recorder glowed, and Rafaela sat across from him and listened, Hector poured out his stories. They were all endings. Bad endings. Tragedies. When he finished each one, Rafaela turned off the recorder and gave him the beginnings and, where the women were a little older, some of the middle. Hector listened, and sometimes he wept. Rafaela didn’t comfort him but neither did she tell him to stop crying. She didn’t seem to take any pleasure from his distress but she didn’t pity him either. It was what it was, a man recounting the terrible things he had done, and they both knew there was no way to excuse it.
The light outside began to change as the afternoon settled into evening, but Hector kept on talking until his throat was hoarse. Rafaela got him a glass of water. She took the gun with her, although they both knew they were past all that now. He wouldn’t wait until she dropped her guard and attack her. That part of him was gone for ever. He had seen what he had done for what it was. He was finished. A sicario had to be able to do one thing and it had nothing to do with killing. He had to be able to close his mind to the consequences of his actions. That part was over for him.
He sipped the water and went on. As darkness fell he reached the final photograph and then he was done. He snapped the blue folder closed and placed it next to him on the couch. He rested his hand on top of it, and felt the spirits of the girls as he closed his eyes.
Rafaela reached over and turned off the recorder. When Hector opened his eyes, she was staring at him, as if to say, ‘What now?’
Hector got up. She didn’t raise the gun, or say anything, or make any attempt to stop him as he walked to the door of the apartment. He turned the locks and stopped. He shifted around. She still hadn’t moved from her seat.
‘I’m sorry for what I’ve done,’ he said, and walked out, closing the door behind him.
He went slowly down the stairs, his legs so weak that he clung to the banister. Down he went, not stopping to look back. He was wrung out. Exhausted. Tired beyond any fatigue he had ever known.
On the ground floor, he pushed the door open and stepped out on to the street. There was a chill in the air. He had been inside for six or seven hours, long enough for them to realize that there had been a problem, that he had failed in his mission. Long enough to make other plans.
Rafaela’s car was parked down the street. His car was parked around the corner, but it was her car he walked towards. When he reached it, he looked up at her balcony to see if she was watching, but it was e
mpty and the doors leading out to it were closed, the curtains drawn. That was good.
He grasped the handle of the driver’s door as hard as he could. Hard enough that he could feel the car’s body move. It was enough. The blast lifted him off his feet and he was thrown high into the air, his eardrums bursting under the pressure as he left his body.
Looking down, he saw himself fall back to earth, his limbs interlaced with pieces of metal, his torso and head coming to rest at the far end of the empty street.
Curtains flapped through blast-shattered windows like black crows’ wings but no one else screamed. He was gone. Everyone was safe. Safe now that he was no more. That thought, which seemed to come with his last breath, brought him peace.
Seventy-one
HANDS TIED BEHIND his back and feet bound together, so that if he tried to get up he would fall flat on his face, Charlie Mendez glared at Lock as he jammed one of Mendez’s own socks into his mouth and gaffer-taped it in place.
‘Now, don’t you look purty,’ Lock told him, stepping back to admire his handiwork. ‘All nice and wrapped up for the boys at Pelican Bay. And let me tell you, Charlie, they love them some good-looking sex offenders up at the Bay. You’re really going to brighten up those long winter nights for some lucky guy.’
Lock walked to the rear of the shack where the back door led into a patch of badly fenced, overgrown, weedy lawn. Before he stepped outside, he looked around for signs of life in the neighbouring backyards, but everything was quiet. People were at work and they put in long hours. To be dirt-poor on this side of the border meant going to work. The alternative was stark: stay home and starve.
He closed the back door behind him, dug out his cell phone, powered it up and called Ty, who answered straight away, relief that Lock was alive evident in his voice.
After he had spent a few minutes bringing his partner up to speed, Ty said, ‘There’s a couple of things you need to know.’
