Pelon, a fat hairy man in his underwear, was sitting on the side of the bed, smoking a cigarette when Raylan entered, aiming his Glock. A young girl asleep next to him opened her eyes and sat up, pulling the sheet to her bare shoulders.
Nora said, “Honey, what’s your name?”
“Maria Elena.”
“How old are you?”
“Fifteen.”
She was a pretty girl with straight black hair to her shoulders and heavy blue eye shadow, trying to look older.
Nora stared at Pelon with rage in her eyes, and then softened her expression, talking to the girl. “What are you doing here? Where is your family?”
The girl didn’t answer, she was shy, embarrassed.
“Where are your clothes?”
The girl nodded at the floor.
Nora crouched and picked up a tiny blouse and a pair of shorts. “You don’t have to worry about him anymore.” Nora pulled the blanket off the bed, wrapped it around the girl, and escorted her out of the room.
“Man, you’re in a lot of trouble. Taking advantage of a minor, a fifteen-year-old kid,” Raylan said.
“That why you here?” Pelon shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
“Where’s your wife?”
Pelon stubbed the cigarette out in an ashtray on the bedside table, and lit another one. “In Mexicali visiting her mother.”
“What’s gonna happen she finds out you’ve been shaking up with this young girl?”
“I never touch her.”
“You know where my partner’s gonna take the girl when we leave here? The hospital. Why do you think we do that? You think it’s to see, has the girl been molested or raped? Think there’s a test they can do?”
Pelon made a face, took a heavy pull from the cigarette, blew out a stream of smoke. “You break in my house as the sun is coming up. What do you want?”
“We arrested your three friends at La Siesta. We’re waiting for them to detox and tell us about your meth operation in exchange for leniency.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“So far we’ve got you on sexual battery of a minor under sixteen, and trafficking a Schedule II drug. It’s not even seven o’clock and you’re looking at two life sentences. You miss prison, huh? Miss the CEN.”
Pelon narrowed his eyes at Raylan. “You think I don’t know what you doing? I ask again, what do you want? Break it down.”
“Where’s Jose Rindo?”
“Now we getting to it.” Pelon’s face lit up. “Rindo, sure. That’s what this is about.” Pelon finished the cigarette and stubbed it out in the ashtray. “The only problem, I don’t know where he is. I was you, I would go to Mexico.”
“Maybe Rindo’s with your wife and her mother.”
“You never know.” Pelon lit another cigarette.
“I thought you’d want to help yourself, make a deal. Give us Rindo, I’ll talk to the prosecutor on your behalf. You do a few years, or maybe with luck, you walk.”
“One minute ago I was looking at two life sentences. Now maybe I walk? What you say makes no sense.”
“We get the big fish, pull the hook out, let you go.”
“Is not that easy. I do all day, or it’s all over.”
“We move you somewhere safe, set you up.”
“Cross Rindo and there is nowhere safe.”
“Okay, it’s your choice. Get dressed, man.”
Pelon picked up his Levi’s and tank top off the floor, put them on, and stepped into a pair of sandals. “What you gonna do with Pepper, my pit?”
“Animal Services will take care of him till your wife comes home,” Raylan said. “This is your last chance. You want to help yourself?”
•••
Raylan drove to the El Centro Medical Center, Nora and Maria Elena riding in back. He dropped them off at Emergency and sat in the waiting room. Two Latinas, mid-forties, were watching Judge Judy on a flat-screen. Raylan thought Nora was a bitch till he watched a few minutes of the judge’s rant. When Judge Judy ended, Maury came on. Raylan had never seen either show and was amazed how many dumb people there were on daytime TV.
After an hour, Nora appeared shaken, upset, telling him she’d held Maria Elena’s hand while a doctor did a sexual assault medical exam, a rape kit. Took hair samples, fingernail scrapings, did serologic tests for hepatitis, syphilis, gonorrhea, chlamydial infection, HIV, and gave her a high dose of estrogen to prevent pregnancy.
“Pelon paid her father. Do you believe that?” Nora shook her head. “The poor kid’s a nervous wreck. After going through what Pelon did to her, she had a doctor invading her privacy. I asked Maria Elena if Pelon had hurt her. She wouldn’t tell me, wouldn’t look at me. In private the doctor said she had been sodomized, there was rectal bleeding, and she had lacerations on her vagina. Maria Elena feels embarrassed, ashamed, thinks it’s all her fault.”
Raylan was angry too but knew the charges against Pelon were so serious—drug trafficking and now rape—that no judge would grant him bail. Judge Judy would’ve hung him.
“The situation is complicated. Maria Elena told me her mother had died during the crossing from Mexico, and she lives with her father. Arrest dear old dad, prosecute or deport him, what happens to her?” Nora took a breath. “She’s close to her cousin, aunt, and uncle in Brawley, and might be able to stay there.”
“Where’s Brawley?”
“About fifteen miles north of here. If that doesn’t work maybe I’ll take Maria Elena myself, bring her back to Tucson.”
“You don’t know anything about her.”
“She needs help, isn’t that enough?”
This Mother Theresa side of Nora was something new and unexpected, not that Raylan really understood her.
•••
Raylan could feel the tension as soon as Javier Ybarra opened the front door and they entered the small sparsely furnished house on the outskirts of El Centro. He could hear the window air conditioner laboring to cool the hot room. Maria Elena stood next to Nora, staring at the floor. She started to cry and had smudges of blue eye shadow on her cheeks.
Nora introduced them to Javier and told Maria Elena to get her things and stay in her room, they had to talk to her father. The girl shrugged, not sure what was going on, but did as she was told.
Javier Ybarra said, “What is this about?” He had the stooped shoulders and the suntanned arms of a field worker.
Raylan said. “How much does Pelon pay to have sex with your daughter?”
Javier Ybarra gave a heavy sigh and shook his head.
“How could you do that?” Nora said, her voice hard and angry. “Mi dios. A fifteen-year-old girl, a child. What value do you put on your daughter’s virtue? What is it worth?”
“We need money to eat.” Javier Ybarra licked his dry cracked, lips and wiped sweat from his face with an open hand.
“I think you need money for your habit,” Nora said, not giving the man an inch. “And when you run out, you sell your daughter. What kind of a father does that?”
Javier was a mess, strung out and craving.
Nora said, “You’re going to feel the bicho in your arms soon trying to get out. You’re going to start scratching.”
He already had. There were long white fingernail marks on top of his brown arms. Javier hadn’t broken the skin yet but it was just a matter of time. Raylan said to the man, “You have a green card?”
Javier Ybarra stared at the floor.
Raylan said, “Where do you work?”
“La Brucherie, in the fields, picking peppers and potatoes, lettuce or whatever they got to pick.”
Nora said, “You’re making money, why do you sell your daughter?”
“Is not enough.”
Nora said, “How long you been buying from Pelon?”
>
No response.
Raylan unfolded the mug shot of Rindo, held the page up to Javier Ybarra’s face. “When was the last time you saw him?”
Javier studied the photograph and shook his head. “No lo se.”
“Says he doesn’t know,” Nora said.
“Sure he does. You see his eyes, the look on his face? He knows.” Raylan stepped toward Javier. “What do you say, partner? Tell us where we can find Jose Rindo. We’ll get you cleaned up, send you back to wherever you’re from.”
“Can I talk to you?” Nora had never looked more serious.
They went into the kitchen, Nora standing in the doorway, so she could keep an eye on Javier. “What’re you talking about, send him home? I want to send him to prison. Selling your daughter is about as bad as it gets.”
“You want Rindo? I’m trying to get some information. Telling him he’s going to prison isn’t going to get us anywhere. Maybe he has an idea where Rindo is and maybe not. Pelon isn’t going to talk, and so far Javier, if he knows anything, doesn’t have the motivation to help us. Let’s give him a day in county, see if his memory comes back.”
Twenty-Nine
Nora said, “I talked to your aunt. She’s excited to have you come live with them. She’s a nurse, I understand. What is your uncle’s occupation?”
“He is a manager at the Walmart store,” Maria Elena said, sitting in the front seat on the way to Brawley.
Nora, hands on the steering wheel, smiled at her. “How about your cousin, how old is she?”
“Same as me, fifteen.”
“Your aunt said she wasn’t going to say anything about you coming.” Nora, playing it up, smiled again. “It’s going to be a surprise. Are you okay with this?
The girl nodded and said, “Can I ask you something? How did you know I was at Pelon’s?”
“We didn’t. We weren’t looking for you. We were there to talk to him.”
From the rear seat, Raylan said, “We’re looking for a man named Jose Rindo. You know him?”
Maria Elena turned, looking over the seat at him, shook her head, and said, “No, I don’t think so.”
Raylan unfolded the wanted poster and handed it to her. She stared at the paper for several seconds, looked at Nora, and then over her shoulder. “I saw him one time.”
Nora sat up straighter, eyes wide now, giving the girl a quick glance.
“Pelon picked me up and stopped at a house. This man in the picture came out and talked to him.”
Nora said, “You’re sure it’s the same man?”
Maria Elena nodded. “I’m positive.”
“How far away from him were you?”
“About twenty feet. He kept checking me out. Later Pelon said the man wanted me to come back and be with him, and I said no.”
Nora said, “Is the house in El Centro, do you remember the street?”
“It’s on the corner, South Fifth and Smoketree Drive.”
Nora said, “You can show us?”
The girl said, “Yes, of course.” She took a pink cell phone out of a pink purse that had Disney characters on it, brought up a street map of El Centro, gave them the address, and showed them a street view of the house.
Raylan said, “Did Pelon say why he was going there?”
“No. He gave the man in the picture something in a paper bag.” She indicated the size of the package with her hands.
Nora said, “And after that you spent the night with Pelon?”
The girl nodded.
•••
The aunt and uncle in Brawley, in Raylan’s opinion, seemed like decent god-fearing people. As it turned out the girl’s uncle and her dad were brothers, even looked alike, but couldn’t’ve been more different.
On the way back to El Centro, Nora seemed relaxed and happy. “Finding Maria Elena was a blessing in disguise. Bringing her to her relatives was the best possible outcome. I think they’ve got their hearts and heads in the right place. They’ll get Maria Elena enrolled in high school, give her life some structure. Who knows what would have happened to her if we had not come along? Sooner or later smoking meth, and maybe turning to prostitution.”
“Were you serious about taking her with you to Tucson?”
“Why, you don’t believe it?”
“I’m just curious is all. That’s quite an offer.”
“Would I have done it? Yes. But I’m happy for her. I think she’s in the right place, where she belongs.”
Back in El Centro, Nora went with him to see Big Country.
“The girl from this morning, Maria Elena Ybarra, positively ID’d Jose Rindo at a house in El Centro day before yesterday,” Raylan said, sitting at a round table in the deputy marshal’s office. He handed Big Country the address he’d written on the back of Rindo’s wanted poster.
“It’s close, a few miles from here. How do you want to play it?”
“Get a couple of your men over there,” Raylan said, “keep an eye on the house.”
Big Country said, “You want to hit tonight?”
“I’d like to make sure he’s still there before we do anything.” Raylan turned to Nora who hadn’t said a word. “What do you think?”
“I agree. Let’s take our time, do it right. I want to get him this time.”
Big Country said, “What if they see him leave?”
“Follow him, but don’t try to take him down unless he’s heading for the border. You’ve seen his sheet, this guy is high risk.” Raylan paused. “Finding him was dumb luck. This is our chance to bring him in before he goes south and disappears.”
“If you ID him, let’s hit first thing in the morning,” Nora said. “Before he knows what’s happening.”
•••
It was a quarter to seven when he got back to the hotel. Raylan took a shower, walked down the street to a restaurant in the hundred-degree heat, sat at the cool dark bar, and ordered a beer. He took off the Stetson and placed it on the empty seat next to him. He’d invited Nora to come along. She was tired and wanted to take it easy but asked him to bring her a sandwich. He drank beer, reading the menu, decided on a cheeseburger, and a chicken quesadilla for Nora, both to go, and placed his order.
A good-looking Latina, mid-twenties, was sitting a couple seats away from him. The bartender brought over a small glass and a bottle and poured her a couple ounces of tequila. He saw her look at him a couple times before she said, “Are you waiting for someone?”
Raylan turned, eyes on her and said, “No.”
“I have been waiting for you to buy me a drink,” she said with a Spanish accent.
“You’ve got one in front of you.” She didn’t look like a hooker, so why was she wasting her time on an old guy like him? “It’s been a long day,” Raylan said.
“What does that have to do with buying me a drink?”
“Trust me, it does.” Any other time Raylan might’ve been interested but there was too much going on.
She stood, lifted his Stetson holding it by the brim with two fingers like a dirty diaper, and sat next to him.
“You don’t pick up a hat like that.”
“You do when it full of sweat.”
Raylan took the Stetson and rested it on the empty chair to his left. She signaled the bartender and held up her glass. And when the bartender poured her another measure of tequila, she said, “You a cowboy, here for the Cattle Call?”
“I don’t know what that is.”
“It’s the rodeo. You look like a bull rider.”
“I’d hate to find out how long I could stay on the back of a two-thousand-pound Brahman. Maybe a couple seconds, I was lucky.”
“You’re not here for the rodeo, what brings you to this thriving metropolis?”
Raylan wasn’t gonna go into it, tell a stranger, even a good-looking one, his
business in this inbred town. He sipped his beer.
“You don’t say much, do you?”
“Much as I have to.”
The bartender placed a white bag on the bar top along with a bill. “Here you go.” Raylan handed the man a twenty and picked up the bag.
“What is it? You playing hard to get, or you don’t like women?”
•••
He knocked on Nora’s door five minutes later. “It’s Raylan, I’ve got your food.” The door opened, Nora in a robe, hair messed up, said, “I’m starving.”
He could see her delicate neck and soft line of cleavage where the robe wasn’t closed all the way. Conscious of his stare, she pulled the lapels closer together and adjusted the sash. Raylan handed her the carryout bag. “Chicken quesadilla with guacamole and pico de gallo.”
“That’s my chicken sandwich?”
“Close as they had. I’ll see you in the morning.”
Back in his room, sitting on the couch, Raylan had taken two bites of his burger when he heard a knock on the door. Had to be Nora. He got up and opened it. Holding the neck of a tequila bottle, the Latina from the bar said, “You forgot something.”
“Yeah, what’s that?”
“Me.” She moved past him into the room. “You have some glasses?”
Raylan wondered how she knew where he was staying unless she followed him, which he doubted, and she didn’t know his name—or did she? Whatever was going on, it didn’t feel right. “Listen, I’m kind of busy at the moment.”
“What are you doing that’s so important?”
“Having my supper.”
The girl smiled. “Man, you need a drink, loosen up.” She put the bottle on the desk and her shoulder bag on the chair, walked into the bathroom, and came back with two glasses. She opened the bottle and poured a couple inches of tequila in each and handed one to Raylan.
Now she sat at the desk, fished a pack of smokes out of her purse, and lit one with a plastic lighter.
Raylan Goes to Detroit Page 18
