by Mark Dawson
Gomez came in and immediately banged a wooden spoon against the pass. “Pay attention, you sons of bitches. We got a busy night coming up. No-one gets paid unless I think they’re pulling their weight and if anyone faints that’s an immediate twenty percent deduction for every ten minutes they’re not on their feet. And on top of all that we got ourselves a newbie to play with. Hand up, English.”
Milton did as he was told. The others looked at him with a mixture of ennui and hostility. A new cook, someone none of them had never seen working before, no-one to vouch for him. What would happen if he wasn’t cut out for it, if he passed out in the heat? He would leave them a man down, the rest hopelessly trying to keep pace as the orders piled up on the rail. Milton had already assessed them: a big Mexican, heavily muscled and covered in prison tattoos; a sous chef with an obvious drinking problem who lived in his car; a cook with needle scars on his arm and a t-shirt that read BORN FREE – TAXED TO DEATH; an American ex-soldier with a blond Vanilla Ice flattop.
“Our man English says he’s been working up and down the coast, says he knows what he’s doing. That right, English?”
“That’s right.”
“We’ll see about that,” Gomez said with a self-satisfied smirk, his crossed arms resting on the wide shelf of his belly.
Milton went back and forth between the storeroom, the cold cupboard and his station, hauling in the ingredients that he knew he would need for the night: three hundred pounds of French fries in waxy brown ten-pound bags; fish tubs full of breaded fillets (the cod dusted with cornmeal already going gooey in the humid air); three-gallon buckets of floury batter; boxes of clam strips; cases of calamari; rock shrimp and chicken cutlets. He looked around at the others, methodically going through the same routine that they would have repeated night after night in a hundred different restaurants: getting their towels ready, stacking their pans right up close so that they could get to them in a hurry, sharpening their knives and slotting them into blocks, drinking as much water as they could manage.
The front of house girl who Milton had met earlier put her head through the kitchen’s swing-door. “Hey Gomez,” Milton heard her call out. “Coach of gringo tourists outside. Driver says can we fit them in? I said we’re pretty full but I’d ask anyway––what you wanna do?”
“Find the space.”
The machine began rattling out orders. Milton gritted his teeth, ready to dive into the middle of it all. The first time he had felt the anticipation was in a tiny, understaffed restaurant in Campo Bravo, Brazil. He needed a way to forget himself, that had been the thing that he had returned to over and over as he worked the boat coming over, the desire to erase his memories, even if it was only temporary. After five minutes in that first restaurant he had known that it was as good a way as any. A busy kitchen was the best distraction he had ever found. Somewhere so busy, so hectic, so chaotic, somewhere where there was no time to think about anything other than the job at hand.
The first orders had barely been cleared before the next round had arrived, and they hadn’t even started to prepare those before another set spewed out of the ticket machine, and then another, and another. The machine didn’t stop. The paper strip grew long, drooping like a tongue, spooling out and down onto the floor. They could easily look out into the restaurant from the kitchen and they could see that the big room was packed out. It got worse and worse and worse. Milton worked hard, concentrating on the tasks in front of him, trying to adapt to the unpleasant sensation that there suddenly wasn’t enough air on the line for all of them to breathe. Within minutes he felt like he was baking, sweat pouring out into his whites, slicking the spaces beneath his arms, the small of his back, his crotch. His boots felt like they were filling with sweat. It ran into his eyes and he cranked the ventilation hood all the way to its maximum but, with it pumping out the air at full blast, the pilots on his unused burners were quickly blown out. He had to keep relighting them, the gas taps left open as he smacked a pan down on the grate at an angle, hard enough to draw a spark.
He sliced bags of fries open with the silver butterfly knife that he always carried in his pocket and emptied them straight into the smoking fryers. The floor was quickly ankle-deep in mess: scraps of food that they swept off the counters, torn packaging, dropped utensils, filthy towels; it was all beneath the sill of the window and invisible from the restaurant so Gomez didn’t care. Still the heat rose higher and higher. Milton stripped out of his chef coat and T-shirt because the water in them had started to boil.
It was hard work, unbelievably hard, but Milton had been doing it for months now and he quickly fell into the routine. The craziness of it, the random orders that spilled from the machine, the unexpected disasters that had to be negotiated, the blistering heat and the mind-bending adrenaline highs, the tunnel vision, the relentless focus, the crashing din, the smell of calluses burning, the screams and curses as cooks forgot saucepan handles were red-hot, the crushing pressure and the pure, raw joy of it all as the rest of his world fell away and everything that he was running away from became insignificant and, for that small parcel of a few hours at the end of a long day, for those few hours, at least, it was all out of mind and almost forgotten.
* * *
11.
CATERINA SAT on the bus and stared through the cracked window as they moved slowly through the city. It was getting late, seven in the evening, and yet the sun still baked at ninety, and Juárez quivered under the withering blows of summer, a storm threatening to blow in from the north, tempers running high. A steady hum of traffic rose from the nearby interstate and the hot air, blowing in through the open windows, tasted of chemicals, car exhaust, refinery fumes, the gasses from the smelter on the other side of the border, the raw sewage seeping into the what was left of the river. The bus was full as people made their way out for the evening.
Caterina had made an effort as she left the flat, showering and washing her hair and picking out a laundered shirt to go with the jeans and sneakers she always wore.
She was thinking about all the girls that she had been writing about. Delores was different. She had dodged the fate that had befallen the others. She had managed to escape, and she was willing to talk.
And she said she could identify one of them men who had taken her.
The brakes wheezed as the bus pulled over to the kerb and slowed to a halt. Caterina pulled herself upright and, with her laptop and her notes in the rucksack that she carried over her shoulder, she made her way down the gangway, stepping over the outstretched legs of the other passengers, and climbed down to the pavement. The heat washed over her like water, torpid and sluggish, heavy like Jell-O, and it took a moment to adjust. The restaurant was a hundred yards away, an island in the middle of a large parking lot, beneath the twenty foot pole suspending the neon sign that announced it.
Leon was waiting for her. She stepped around a vendor with a stack of papers on his head and went across to him.
“This better be good,” he said, a smile ameliorating the faux sternness of his greeting. “I had tickets for the Indios tonight.”
“I would never let you pick football over this.”
“It’s good?”
“This is it. The story I want us to tell.”
She was excited, garbling a little and giddy with enthusiasm. Leon was good for her when it came to that. She needed to be calm, and he was steady and reliable. Sensible. It seemed to come off him in gentle waves. Smiling with a warm hearted indulgence she had seen many times before, he put out his hands and rested them on her shoulders. “Take a deep breath, mi cielo, okay? You don’t want to frighten the poor girl away.”
She allowed herself to relax and smiled into Leon’s face. It was a kind face, his dark eyes full of humanity, and there was a wisdom there that made him older than his years. He was the only man she had ever met who could do that to her; he was able to cut through the noise and static of Juárez, her single-minded dedication to the blog and the need to tell the story of the ci
ty and its bloodied streets, and remind her that other things were important. They had dated for six months until they had both realised that their relationship would never be the most important thing in her life. They had cooled it before it could develop further, the emotional damage far less than it would have been if it had been allowed to follow its course. There were still nights when, after they had written stories into the small hours, he would stay with her rather than risk the dangerous journey home across the city, and, on those nights, they would make love with an appetite that had not been allowed to be blunted by familiarity. Being with Leon was the best way to forget about all the dead bodies in the ground, the dozens of missing women, the forest of shrines that sprouted across the wastelands and parks, the culverts and trash heaps.
“Are you ready?” he asked her.
“Let’s go.”
DELORES KEPT them waiting for fifteen minutes and, when she eventually made her way across the busy restaurant to them, she did so with a crippling insecurity and a look of the sheerest fright on her face. She was a small, slight girl, surely much younger than the twenty years she had claimed when they were chatting earlier. Caterina would have guessed at fourteen or fifteen; a waif. She was slender and flat chested, florid acne marked her face and she walked with a slight, but discernible, limp. She was dressed in a maquiladora uniform: cheap, faded jeans that had been patched several times, a plain shirt, a crucifix around her neck. Caterina smiled broadly as she neared but the girl’s face did not break free of its grim cast.
“I’m Caterina,” she said, getting up and holding out her hand.
“Delores,” she said, quietly. Her grip was limp and damp.
“This is my colleague, Leon.”
Leon shook her hand, too, then pulled a chair out and pushed it gently back as Delores rather reluctantly sat.
“Can I order you a drink? A glass of water?”
“No, thank you.” She looked around the room, nervous, like a rabbit after it has sensed the approach of a hawk. “You weren’t followed?”
“No,” Caterina said, smiling broadly, trying to reassure the girl. “And we’ll be fine here. It’s busy. Three friends having a meal and a talk. Alright?”
“I’m sorry, but if you think a busy restaurant would stop them if they had a mind to kill you, then you are more naïve than you think.”
“I’m sorry,” Caterina said. “I didn’t mean to be dismissive. You’re right.”
“Caterina and I have been working to publicise the cartels for two years,” Leon said. “We know what they are capable of but you are safe with us tonight. They do not know our faces.”
Delores flinched as the waiter came to take their orders. Caterina asked for two beers, a glass of orange juice and a selection of appetisers––tostadas, cheese-stuffed jalapenos, enchilada meatballs and nachos––and sent him away. She took out her notebook and scrabbled around in her handbag for a Biro. She found one and then her Dictaphone. She took it out and laid it on the table between them.
“Do you mind?” she asked. “It’s good to have a record.”
Delores shook her head. “But no photographs.”
“Of course not. Let’s get started.”
* * *
12.
LIEUTENANT JESUS PLATO decided that the two gringo college boys needed to cool their heels for the night. They were becoming boisterous and disruptive when he brought them back to the station to book them, and so, to make a point, he decided to delay the fine he had decided to give them until tomorrow. They could spend the night in the drunk tank with the junkies, the tweakers and the boozers; he was confident that they would be suitably apologetic when he returned in the morning. And, besides, he did not particularly want to go to the effort of writing them up tonight. He was tired and he had promised Alameda and Sanchez that he would go out with them for something to eat. The meal was a self-justifying camouflage, of course; the real purpose was to go out and get drunk, and he had no doubt that they would end up on the banks of the Rio Bravo, drinking tins of Tecate and throwing the empties into what passed for the river around here. Plato had been on the dusty street all day, more or less; he certainly had a thirst.
His shift had been straightforward after booking the two boys. He had pulled over a rental car driven by a fat American, sweating profusely through layers of fat and the synthetic fibres of his Spurs basketball shirt, a pimpled teen beauty in the seat next to him with her slender hand on his flabby knee. A warning from Plato was all it took for him to reach over and open the door, banishing the girl as he cursed the end of the evening that he had planned. The girl swore at Plato, her promised twenty bucks going up in smoke, but she had relented by the time he bought her a Happy Meal at the drive-thru on the way home. He had finished up by writing tickets for the youngsters racing their souped-up Toyota Camrys and VW Golfs, tricked-out with bulbous hubcaps and tweaked engines, low-slung so that the chassis drew sparks from the asphalt. They, too, had cursed him, an obligatory response that he had ignored. They had spun their wheels as he drove off, melting the rubber into the road, and he had ignored that, too.
Captain Alameda waved him across to his office.
“Your last week, compadre,” he said.
“Tell me about it.”
“How was today?”
“Quiet, for a change. Couple of drunk gringo kids. Thought a couple of hundred bucks would persuade me to let them off.”
“They picked the wrong man, then. Where are they?”
“In the cells. I’ll see if they’ve found some manners tomorrow.”
“You heard about what happened at Samalayuca?”
“Just over the radio. What was it?”
“Six men. They didn’t even bother to bury them. Shot them and left them out in the desert for the vultures.”
“Six? Mierda. We know who they are?”
“American passports. The Federales will look into it.”
Plato slumped into the seat opposite the desk.
“Jesus?”
“I’m fine,” he sighed. “Just tired is all. How is it here?”
“Twenty-eight no-shows today. Worst so far.”
Plato knew the reason; everyone did. Three weeks ago, a wreath had been left on the memorial outside police headquarters on Valle Del Cedro avenue. A flap of cardboard, torn from a box, had been fastened around the memorial with chicken wire. It was a notice, and, written on it, were two lists. The first, headed by FOR THOSE WHO DID NOT BELIEVE, contained the names of the fifteen police officers who had been slain by the cartels since the turn of the year. The second, FOR THOSE WHO CONTINUE WITHOUT BELIEVING, listed another twenty men. That section ended with another message: THANK YOU FOR WAITING. The wreath and the notice had been removed as quickly as they had been found but not before someone had snapped them with their smartphone and posted it on Facebook.
The press got hold of it and then everyone knew.
It had terrified the men.
“Twenty on long-term sick now. Stress. Another fifteen won’t go out on patrol. It’s not safe, apparently.”
“Ten men for the whole district, then?”
“Nine.”
“Hijo de puta.”
“Halfway to last year’s murders and it’s only just turned Easter. You’re getting out at the right time, compadre.”
“Feels like I’m abandoning you.”
Alameda chuckled. “You’ve done your time, Jesus. If I see you here next week I’ll arrest you myself.”
“What about you?”
“If a transfer came up? I’d probably take it.”
“If not?”
“What else can I do? Just keep my head down and hope for the best.”
Plato nodded. It was depressing. There was a lot of guilt. He couldn’t deny that. But, and not for the first time, he was grateful his time was up.
“You ready for that beer?” Alameda asked.
“Let me get changed. Ten minutes?”
“I’ll get Sanchez and s
ee you outside.”
Plato went into the locker room and took off his uniform, tracing his finger across the stencilled POLICIA MUNICIPAL that denoted him as a member of the municipio, the local police force that was––laughably, he thought––charged with preventing crime. There was no time to be doing any of that, not when there was always another murder to attend to, another abduction, and then the flotsam and jetsam like the two drunken college boys from this afternoon. Prevention. That was a fine word, but not one that he recognised any more. He had once, perhaps, but not for many years.
The cartels had seen to that.
He clocked out, collected his leather jacket from the locker room and followed Alameda and Sanchez to the restaurant.
* * *
13.
THE GIRL talked in a quiet voice, her hands fluttering in her lap, her eyes staring down at the table unless they had nervously flicked up to the entrance. Caterina took notes. Leon sat and listened.
“I moved to Juárez from Guadalajara for a job,” she said. “It was in one of the maquiladoras, on the banks of the river. Making electrical components for an American corporation. Fans for computers. Heat sinks and capacitors. I started work there when I was fourteen years old. A year ago. They paid me fifty-five dollars a week, and I sent all of it back to my mother and father. Occasionally, I would keep a dollar or two so that I could go out with my friends––soda, something to eat. It was hard work. Very hard. Long hours, no air conditioning and so it got hot even by nine or ten in the morning, complicated pieces to put together, sometimes the parts would be sharp and when you got tired––and you always got tired––then they would cut your fingers. I worked from seven in the morning until eight at night. Everything was monitored: how fast you were working, the time you spent on your lunch, the time you spent in the bathroom. They would dock your pay if they thought you were taking too long. None of us liked the job but it was money, better money than I could get anywhere else, and so I knew I had to work hard to make sure they didn’t replace me.
