The man’s head bobbed around as though his neck muscles were no longer working. A thick silver chain with a silver etched coin hung about his neck. It looked like a silver dollar someone had machined and they re-tooled with a new design, two small exes in its center. She had a suspicion what that meant.
“Look at me,” said Matt, who seemed a little too at ease for Catherine’s liking. This is why I called him, she reminded herself, to do what I can’t. “Start answering truthfully.” The man stared at Matt with venom in his eyes, hate pouring out like his bloodied hand.
“Tell us who put the hit on the boy, then,” Catherine said. “Tell us something before we have to start cutting things off!” Her voice rising in frustration.
The man had drool coming from his mouth from crying out in pain and now spit upon the floor, still eyeing Matt. “I don’t know who.”
“You’re still lying,” said Matt, pulling some more until the finger was now a quarter smaller in diameter from the skin that’d been pulled away while the man screamed and cursed some more. “You keep lying like this and there won’t be anything left.”
“Who?” asked Catherine again.
When Matt let go this time, the man was crying. “I don’t know, I don’t know,” he whined. Matt put the circle of wire around his middle finger and began to tighten it. “Wait!” he said. “Mira! No se nada! No se nada!”
“Who!?” Catherine demanded. She grabbed him by the back of his head, a large clump of hair between her white knuckles, “No more of this shit! Tell us now or I’m going to have him cut your fingers off one by one. Tell us, godammit, or you’ll wish you were dead long before you are.”
He shook his head in tears and Matt tightened the wire. Again, he screamed.
Catherine was now truly wondering if the man was a dead end. Surely he would have said something by now. Matt let go of the wire but rubbed his finger hard over the man’s newly revealed layer of bloody underskin, causing ripples of fiery pain to pulsate through the man’s body. “Hurts, doesn’t it?” Matt asked. “Wait until the rest of your hand is skinned away. It’ll make this feel like a massage.” Catherine had had enough. She was going to stop Matt, but then . . .
“Ortiz!” Yelled the man. “Fernando Ortiz!”
Finally. “Who is Fernando Ortiz?” asked Catherine. “And where do we find him?”
The man sat quietly crying, his breaths labored.
Matt went back to the wire, pulling it just a hair more, cutting more of the top layer of skin away, “Where!?”
He winced in pain, “Mexico City! Fuck! Mexico City, okay?”
“Where in Mexico City?” asked Catherine.
“I don’t know. Come on,” he moaned. “I told you what you wanted to know, already. I don’t know any more.”
“Not yet you haven’t,” Matt said.
“Tell us how to find him,” Catherine said.
The man’s head began to bob around again. “I bet you’d really like this to end, wouldn’t you?” asked Matt. “You’re almost there. Just tell us what we need to know and we’ll leave you alone.” The man said nothing, only moaned. “Or,” said Matt, pulling the wire down and stripping the rest of the skin from the man’s finger, “You still have eight fingers left and I’ve got all night.”
The man’s entire body clenched in pain. He looked down at his right hand and saw that now two of his fingers had been filleted almost down to the bone. The bloody stumps that were his index and middle finger looked like bits of bloody salmon after a bear had had its fill. He screamed at the sight of them. “Oh, fuck, man. Stop! Please stop!”They killed Kelly, Juan, and tried to kill us, Catherine reminded herself. Let Matt handle this. Matt began to wrap wire around the next finger. “No,” said the man. “Please stop, man. I’m fucking begging you, please. I can’t. They’ll kill me.”
“What do you think I’m going to do if you don’t tell us?” asked Matt. “And I’ve got all day to kill you. You really want to see just how painful I can make it?”
“They’ll kill my brother and mother,” he said. “Please. I can’t tell you anything more. You don’t understand what these people are like. My whole family, man, they’ll kill my whole family.”
“Oh, we’re getting a good idea about who we’re dealing with,” said Catherine.
“Just kill me,” said the man quietly. “Just get it over with.”
Catherine hated the fact this man was able to elicit empathy from her, but she couldn’t help it. “You’re one of ‘these people’ just in case you forgot. How many brothers and mothers have you killed?”
“They won’t kill anyone if they’re dead,” said Matt. “Now either you talk, or I keep pulling layers away until your right arm is nothing but bones. Do you want to see? I’m a bit curious how long your fingers will stay attached at this rate. Maybe we’ll try some of your toes afterward, see which ones last longer. I think the toes will stay on longer. What do you think?”
Catherine walked over and leaned down in front of the man much the same way she had with Jim in his study, “Do something right while you still have the chance,” she told him. “If you want to save your family, tell us where we can find Ortiz so we can stop him once and for all.” The man said nothing, but his eyes met hers.
As Matt began to pull the wire again the man gave in. “Okay! Enough! I don’t know how to find Ortiz, okay, but Miguel does.”
“Who’s Miguel?” asked Catherine.
“Miguel Valencia. He runs the gang, right. He’s Ortiz’s guy, you know? He’ll know where to find him. Everything goes through Miguel.”
Another name to find, thought Catherine. She was having trouble believing all these people were involved in Kelly’s murder. Why?
“And where do we find Miguel?” asked Matt, skeptical the man may throwing false names out there in order to end his ordeal.
“Luna Azul,” said the man.
“Blue moon?” asked Catherine. “What’s that, a restaurant?”
“It’s a strip club,” said the man. “Miguel owns it. He’s always there.”
“Where?”
“Mexico City, man. He’s in Mexico City.”
“He lives there?” He nodded. “Where?”
“I don’t know where he lives, but he’s always at the club. You’ll find him there.”
“Does he have a car?” she asked.
“Mercedes. Black. You’ll see it. He parks it behind the club when he’s there.”
“You wouldn’t still be lying to us, would you?” asked Matt, pressing again on the tender areas of stripped skin.
“No, man!” he cried. “I’m telling you! It’s all I know, man. Come on, please, let me go. That’s all I got.”
Matt looked at Catherine and they seemed to reach agreement in their eyes. They’d gotten what they needed from the man. Matt unwrapped the slim wire from the man’s finger and they walked together towards the back.
When they were out of earshot, Catherine asked Matt, “What do you think?”
“He might be full of shit, but I don’t think we’re going to get much more out of him.”
“I agree,” said Catherine. “And it sounds like a good lead, at least.”
Matt looked back towards the man sitting in the chair. He was moaning, “Let me go, man. I want to go home.”
Catherine looked back at him, too. “We can’t let him go,” said Matt. “He knows Julio’s in Playa. He may have even heard us talking to Pat.” He looked into her eyes. She was already shaking her head. “Catherine,” he whispered. “This is the cartel we’re dealing with. The first thing he’ll do is tell them everything he knows about us, the boy, what he just told us, everything. “
“I didn’t come here for this,” she told him. “I don’t know if this is right. Who are we to decide this man has to die?” Back home, this guy would have been sent to prison for the next twenty years, but Catherine knew if they handed him over to the police in Mexico, he’d probably never even see the inside of the police station. He�
��d be back with his buddies before breakfast.
“No,” he told her. “This is war. I don’t know how Kelly ended up a victim of it, but make no mistake, Catherine. This is war. And these guys,” he said, pointing back at the gang member, “are the enemy. I know how you feel about these things, but sympathy will get you killed. I’m not saying we do this because the guy deserves it or because it’s justice. We simply don’t have a choice. If he goes free and tells the rest of his gang what’s happened, it’ll get Julio killed, pat killed, his family . . .”
“Enough,” she told him, shrugging his arms off her. “I get it.” She looked back at the man, still moaning in pain. Who’s to say if it was justice or revenge? The thought of the implications of their actions, and then she knew he wasn’t going home. As much as she hated to admit it, Matt was right. The man was a cartel henchman. There was nothing they could do to stop him from warning Miguel or coming back to Playa with a dozen armed thugs to find Patrick’s house if they cut him loose. Even if they locked him up somewhere, the risk of his escape meant too much. And no matter what he promised, as soon as the risk of losing his life was gone, he’d be right back to the Barrio Boys. Take a life to save lives, she told herself, hoping she wasn’t deluding herself into becoming a cold-blooded killer.
“Go on,” said Matt. “I’ll be right behind you.”
“Wait,” she said. If they were going to do it she wanted to know one more thing, first.
She walked back to the man. “Just let me go,” he pleaded with her. “You’ll never see me again, I swear. I just want to go home.”
She knelt down in front of the man again and lifted his medallion up to better see the little exes engraved. “Two?” she asked him. “Who were they?”
The man looked down at his medallion disheartened. “Nobody. Just a rival gang, you know.”
“Yeah,” said Catherine, now having her suspicions verified. “I’m sure that’s who they were,” she told him, rubbing her fingers along the etchings. Then she turned and walked away, ignoring the man as he begged after her.
As Catherine walked out towards the car, a single gunshot reverberated against the thin metal walls. The moment had reaffirmed a few things for Catherine. She had called Matt because he possessed the things she couldn’t accept about him years ago. She needed him now for all the reason she’d left him. And in some ways, being involved and up close to the fray, she understood him better now. Maybe he wasn’t a bloodthirsty killer. He’d just been around them so long he’d learned that to survive them sometimes meant playing by their rules. How far can you go before you’re no better than them, she wondered. It was a slippery slope and she felt herself losing her footing.
Jose sat in the suburban and lit another Marlboro as he kept watch over the parking lot of Richland Community College. He turned his tejano music up and leaned back. He’d been at this for days. There were no less than nine Dallas Community College locations, but Mama had told him to stick with the three on her list. “It’s one of these,” she’d told him. “If he goes to classes, it’ll be on the North side.” He’d been starting to think Mama was wrong on this one lately, and had settled for spending his recent hours dozing off. But right when he was about to assume his relaxing position, he spotted what he’d been waiting for. Armando’s pickup truck came pulling into the parking lot. There you are, Jose thought. Leave it to Mama. He got out his notepad and wrote down Armando’s license plate as Mama had told him. Then he lit another cigarette and waited.
A few hours later Armando pulled out of the parking lot and the tan suburban shadowed it from several car lengths back. Armando stopped off at a gas station and after pumping the gas went inside to pay. Jose kept his distance and followed Armando back to the little house. He wrote down the address, 3022 Jane Long Dr, and then pulled away. He didn’t want to stay on the street long enough to be conspicuous. He drove to another nearby gas station and pulled in. Then he picked up his cell phone to call his mother.
“Did you find him?” she asked.
“Yes, Mama. It was just like you said. I found him at one of the schools. I followed him to his house and wrote down the address like you told me to.”
“Is she there with him?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t see her, but she might be in the house.”
“Where are you right now?”
“I’m parked at a Shell station down the road from where he lives.”
“Good,” she told him. “I want you to go back and park down the street, close enough you can see if he leaves, but not so close that he’ll see you. And go to the opposite end of which way he most likely go to leave so he doesn’t pass by you. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Mama.”
“If you don’t see anything by the time it gets dark, then park a little closer and try to look in the window. But don’t get caught!”
“Okay, Ma-ma.”
He hung up the phone and returned to the subdivision where he sat and waited. He smoked his cigarettes and ate a meal of chicken and rice Miss Lydia had given him, but for the next two hours nothing happened. Then, someone emerged from the front door of the house. It was Armando and some other young man, but directly behind them came Yesenia.
Jose dropped his Tupperware container in the passenger seat and picked up the cell phone again. When his mother answered he told her what he was seeing. “She’s with him. They’re getting into his truck.”
“I knew it,” said Miss Lydia, immensely pleased with herself. “I knew the little bitch had help from someone. Tell me where they go, but don’t be seen.”
Yesenia sat next to Armando fiddling with his radio. “There’s so many stations,” she said. “Oh, I like this song.” Kelly Clarkson belted out a tune and Yesenia sang along.
Armando looked at her funny. “What?” she asked. “Do I sing bad?”
“No, but you’re singing in English,” he reminded her.
“I guess, but I don’t know what the words mean.” Catalina had a Kelly Clarkson CD one of her customers had given her and it was one of the only English songs Yesenia knew.
As they drove along Armando would point things out and tell her the English word for it. When they pulled into a parking lot she asked, “How do you say ‘restaurante’?”
“Restaurant,” he told her.
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
They ate dinner at the El Patio Restaurant laughing until late. Armando felt swept away by Yesenia. He hadn’t yet told his brother exactly where he’d met her, despite many questions, but he couldn’t help himself. He was falling in love with her, if he wasn’t in love already. “Hey,” he whispered to his brother. “Why don’t you stay over at Mom’s tonight?”
“What for?” Ricky asked.
“I want to have a night with her, you know. Just the two of us. I’ll give you twenty bucks, bro. ”
Ricky smiled, “Man, you got it bad for her, huh? Okay, fine.” They both visited their mother about once a week but rarely spent the night anymore. Ricky didn’t mind, though. It might be good to check on his mom, see if she was on a binge or not.
Border Crossings Page 24
