The Breakout

by Ryan David Jahn

  “You still have a chance to talk.”

  James continued to stare into Detective Huerta’s eyes in the rearview mirror. His lips remained sealed. He blinked.

  “Okay,” Detective Huerta said.

  He pulled his foot off the brake and moved it to the gas. The car eased forward. He drove them south along Tortuga until they hit Calle El Tule, where he made a right. They headed west through the desert toward a crescent of large brown hills and continued on for another ten miles before driving into the desert valley at the base of those hills.

  The jail came into view in the distance, wavering unsteadily behind heat vapors. Several low cinder block buildings surrounded by guard towers. Three rows of chain-link fence topped with razor wire. If you made it over the first fence you’d still have two more to get past, a gap between each of them. No chance of doing that before one of the towered guards saw you and put a .308 Winchester into your back.

  James felt his stomach go sour.

  * * *

  Detective Huerta pulled the car up to a cinder block building with TRATAMIENTO hand-stenciled above the rusting metal door. He stepped outside, walked to the car’s back door, swung it open. Pulled James out, took him into the building, and handed him over to two guards.

  “You’ll regret not talking,” Detective Huerta said. Then he was gone and the rusting metal door latched behind him, the light from outside cut off.

  The two guards took his personal property, including his watch, his wallet, his cell phone, and his clothes (except his Puma sneakers). They took him to a shower and handed him a hotel-sized bar of soap. He stood under the cold spray and washed for five minutes before one of the guards shut off the water, soap still in his hair and under his arms. One of them tossed a scoop of delousing powder onto his head and another onto his groin. It stung his eyes. He wiped the powder away with a threadbare towel. The second guard yanked the towel away and handed him a gray jumpsuit. He put on the jumpsuit and his shoes. They walked him out of processing and handed him over to another guard and, in Spanish, told the guard to take him to Block A, cell 16. The guard shoved him forward and marched him down various corridors. A few inmates shouted at him:

  “¡Yo cago en la leche de tu puta madre!”

  “¡Cagaste y saltaste en la caca!”

  “¡La concha de tu madre!”

  But mostly they just looked out through their bars in silence.

  Finally they reached his cell. The guard shoved James inside and swung shut the barred door. It hit with a loud but hollow clank and latched.

  In English the guard said, “You should be careful in here, bolillo. People die.”

  He pivoted and walked away. The echoes of his footfalls, loud at first, faded to nothing.

  James turned in a slow circle, looking at his cell, taking in his new surroundings. The cell was about eight feet deep and six feet wide. He could stretch out his arms and touch each wall with his fingertips. The walls were cinder block. Several of the previous inmates had carved their names or initials into them. Others had carved or written crude phrases: ME CAGO EN LA LECHE, TENGO GANAS, and VETE A LA VERGA CULERO. Against the back wall was a steel toilet and a basin. A barred window above the toilet looked out on a lamp-lit yard. A cot against the left wall held a folded white sheet, a thin blanket, and an uncased pillow. The pillow was ringed with yellow sweat stains. A metal desk sat against the right wall, bolted to the floor, a chair pushed up to it. He walked to the desk, shoved the chair aside, and pulled open the single drawer. Inside he found a pad of paper, a rubber band, and a metal pen casing from which someone had removed the ink tube, and a small spring.

  He pushed the drawer shut and walked to the cot. He unfolded the sheet, threw it over the cot’s thin mattress, and tucked it in. Draped the blanket over the sheet and put the pillow at the head of the bed. Lay down and looked up at the concrete ceiling. Thought of his time in boot camp, sleeping on the cots in the barracks there. This was very similar—and totally different.

  People die. That was what the guard had said, and he knew it was true. Everyone born would one day die. Like his sister had died.

  He thought about his history with her.

  He was four years old on the day she screamed into the world. He remembered being in the delivery room—his parents had wanted him to understand what was happening—and believed now her birth was his earliest memory. It wasn’t clear in his mind. Rather than being a mental movie, the memory was a series of out-of-focus still photographs. Yet he remembered.

  There he was, four years old, standing at the foot of his mother’s birthing bed. There was his mother with her legs spread, knees bent. A thatch of wet blond hair sticking out between his mother’s legs: just that disembodied blond hair tinted pink with amniotic fluids. Layla’s purple face pushed out from between their mother’s legs, eyes and lips shut tight, face like a prune. A doctor holding her, so tiny. His father with a large pair of scissors cutting the umbilical cord, a shocked expression on his face, as if he’d just witnessed something he was not prepared for.

  James loved her from the beginning. He gave her bottles, played with her on the carpeted floor, napped with her in the crib even though he was a big boy and slept in a bed.

  He was also protective of her. He was going into fourth grade as she was entering kindergarten, and on the first day he insisted on walking her to class, and she hugged him tight and cried, and he told her it would be fun. At the end of the day she said he was right. The first day of school had been fun. They’d sung the alphabet song and played kazoos and she’d made new friends, Brynlee and Caydence, and they’d get to see each other tomorrow. He walked her home, holding her hand the whole time. He was only nine, but her hand felt small in his.

  They talked about everything. Siblings who were close could discuss matters with one another they’d never bring up to their parents or their friends from school. He had a bond with his baby sister that combined familial love with absolute trust, and because he was four years older, she often talked to him about her troubles and asked him for advice.

  He did the best he could for her. He helped her with schoolwork he’d already had to do. He took her to the park and pushed her on swings. Later, when she had boyfriends who treated her poorly, he bloodied their noses and bruised their ribs.

  Yes, he’d been protective, but he hadn’t saved her.

  If he hadn’t been in Afghanistan, she might have come to him for help, and he might have been able to protect her from the people who’d dragged her to her death. But he’d been gone when she needed him most.

  So he knew full well the guard’s words were true. People die.

  But he knew something else as well, something the guard hadn’t said, which was that sometimes those deaths must be paid for. Everybody died but not every death was equal. Some lives were stolen, as his sister’s life had been stolen, and even though a stolen life couldn’t be recovered, you could make someone pay for it.

  He had every intention of making the man who took his sister’s life pay in full.

  It didn’t matter that he was in jail. He would find a way.

  He had to.

  * * *

  James woke up to the sound of his cell door swinging open. Two man-shaped shadows entered the room. Dark silhouettes, bulky. They grabbed him and pulled him from his cot. They threw him down. He whacked the side of his head against concrete, then looked up at the silhouettes. His left arm was asleep. His fingers tingled and ached as blood returned to them. He asked what the hell was going on.

  “You have a visitor,” one of the men said in Spanish.

  Footsteps echoed in the corridor outside his cell. A man appeared in the unbarred doorway. He was backlit by dim yellow bulbs in the hall. He said in Spanish that he wanted the light on in this cell. One of the guards told him all the lights were connected to the same circuit, that the only way to turn on this light was to turn them all on.

  “Then turn them all on.”

  “Yes, sir.”
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  One of the guards left, his footsteps, loud at first, fading as he walked to the end of the corridor. The naked yellow bulb in the ceiling flashed to life, as did the bulbs in every other cell in this block, humming with electricity. Other inmates cursed and shouted. The guard standing over James yelled for them to shut their bocas malditos.

  James looked from the guard to the man standing in the doorway. He recognized him immediately. He’d seen his picture illustrating dozens of news articles. Alejandro Rocha. He was handsome, about forty years old, and stood five ten. He had prominent cheekbones and a widow’s peak. His brown eyes were almond shaped. He wore a tailored seersucker suit, white, a white cotton shirt, a baby blue tie, baby blue pocket square, and baby blue socks. His hands were clasped behind his back. A smirk touched his lips.

  “Mr. James Murphy,” Rocha said in unaccented English. “I have a few things I’d like to discuss with you. May I enter?”

  James sat up, nodded.

  Rocha entered the cell, glanced at the guard, told him in Spanish to get out and shut the door. The guard did as he was told. Alejandro Rocha’s organization wasn’t as large as the Juarez cartel, but it brought in millions of dollars a year, and a percentage of his income could easily buy a town the size of La Paz—law enforcement officials, politicians, and anybody else who might need to hear a monetary argument to see things his way—and he’d used his money to do just that. It was the only way for an illegal operation of that size to function.

  James knew this, but watching a prison guard take orders from a man who deserved to be behind bars put a coil of rage in his belly, and as he watched Rocha sit casually on the edge of the cot and cross his legs, that coil tightened, the pressure increasing.

  “I understand you’ve done some research on me, Mr. Murphy, but did you know that I’m an educated man?” He looked at James, waited for a response.

  Through clenched teeth: “No.”

  “Business degree from Harvard. I’ve done so well in business, in fact, that I finished paying off my student loans years ago.” He smiled. “My education paid for itself. The American dream realized in Mexico.”

  It was the smile that did it. How smug it looked plastered on the tan face.

  The coiled pressure couldn’t be contained.

  James dove for him, shoulder slamming into Alejandro Rocha’s stomach. The air escaped Rocha’s lungs and he doubled over while the momentum of the blow slammed him back against the wall. He whacked his head on a cinder block. James got to his feet and swung, punching the son of a bitch in the nose. Blood poured from his nostrils, ran over his mouth, dripped onto the white shirt. James swung again.

  The cell door opened. Both guards rushed in. They grabbed James by the arms and flung him away. He whacked his head on the steel toilet and dropped to the floor. The guards moved in on him, drawing their saps.

  “Stop,” Rocha said in Spanish. “We’re fine. Leave us to our conversation.”

  He pulled the blue pocket square from his coat, snapped it open, and wiped at his bloodied face.

  The guards left the cell again, shut the door.

  James pushed off the floor and sat down on the edge of the toilet. He looked across the small cell to Alejandro Rocha. The man blew his bleeding nose into the pocket square, folded it, and slipped it away.

  “I admire a man who’s in touch with his emotions. So many men are closed off, but I’m going to have to ask you to refrain from violence for the time being. What’s your interest in me, Mr. Murphy?”

  “There’s nothing interesting about you.”

  “You did a lot of reading up for a man with no interest in who or what I am.”

  “I’ll read a bottle of toilet cleaner if I’m taking a shit and there’s nothing else handy.”

  “You may choose to deflect, Mr. Murphy, but eventually I’ll get to the bottom of this matter.”

  James thought: You’ll get to the bottom of a hole in the ground, and I’ll cover you in dirt, you motherfucker.

  He said: “Why did you have me locked up?”

  “I like to know where a man is when I have questions for him. Did you intend to use the weapon the police found in your hotel room on me?”

  “It was for protection.”

  “A sniper rifle for protection?”

  “I like to keep danger at a distance.”

  “Who are you working for?”

  “Amway. I was hoping you’d want to host a party. I think your estate would really impress people. I’m not saying we should lie, but maybe imply that Amway got you the place.”

  Rocha smiled without humor. “I see. So this conversation is going nowhere.”

  “You’ll get where you’re going faster by running on a treadmill.”

  Rocha got to his feet. “Very well. But you need to understand something. I can make the charges against you disappear. It’s nothing to me. I mutter a few sentences and you’re free. I’m also more than willing to buy my way out of trouble. I assume you have access to the people who hired you. I believe turnabout is fair play. But so long as I have questions about your intentions, so long as I don’t feel safe with you walking the streets, you’ll remain behind bars.”

  “Or you’ll have me killed.”

  “Don’t be foolish. I know better than to burn a book before I’ve read it. Of course, if a book is very tightly bound, sometimes you do need to break the spine to get at the information you want. I suspect we’ll be talking again soon.”

  Alejandro walked to the cell door and told the guards to let him out, which they did. The door swung shut again with a metal clack. Rocha looked at him through the bars. “Try to stay safe, Mr. Murphy. Many terrible things can happen in jail.”

  He turned and walked away, his footsteps echoing loud in the otherwise quiet corridor. The guards followed behind him. James stood at the cell door and listened until he heard only silence. He walked back to his cot, lay down, stared at the ceiling.

  He wondered how long it would be before Rocha grew impatient and decided to kill him. He wondered what he’d do about it, what he’d be able to do about it.

  3

  Alejandro Rocha pulled a fold of cash from his pocket and slipped it from its platinum money clip. He peeled five hundred dollars off the outside of the fold and handed the cash to the guard on the left, whom he trusted more than the other, before sliding the clip over what cash remained, somewhere in the neighborhood of three thousand dollars, and putting it back into his inside coat pocket.

  “That man needs to be hurt,” he said in Spanish. “He shouldn’t be killed. Not yet. He has information I intend to obtain. I merely want him to understand that killing him would be a trivial matter—and that he will be killed if he continues to refuse to talk.”

  The guard slid the cash into his pocket and nodded. “It will be taken care of.”

  “What did I say?”

  “You said he’s to be hurt.”

  “But.”

  A pause as the guard thought about what was expected of him. “But not killed.”

  “That last part is important. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Make sure the man you hire understands as well.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Have it done tomorrow. On the yard.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Okay.” Alejandro stepped outside. He pulled out the pocket square and wiped at his seeping nose. He snorted and spat a wad of blood into the dirt. It formed a bead as the dry sand absorbed the moisture. He squinted at the eastern horizon and saw the sun’s nimbus arcing over the edge of the world, though the sun itself was still hidden. The low sky was heather gray, but higher up the air turned dark purple. Stars were visible in what remained of the plum night, dotting it like backlit pinpricks in a dark sheet.

  He folded the pocket square, shoved it away, and walked toward his car, an ibis-white Audi A7 Prestige with twenty-inch wheels. He unlocked it as he approached, pulled open the door, and slid onto the soft beige l
eather driving seat. He started the car. The engine purred. He had a Los Dynamite CD in the stereo system, and as soon the car was started, “No Me Sueltes” began blasting through the speakers. He turned up the volume, slid the car into gear, and rolled toward the gates.

  The guard who controlled them, recognizing the car, had all three rolling open before Alejandro was anywhere near. He drove through, dust drifting into the air behind him, and moved along an unpaved road that was little more than tire grooves in the sand. He made his way around the east side of the jail to the unnamed street that would become Calle El Tule when he reached La Paz. He cracked the window as he drove—he disliked still air—and watched the sunrise in the distance.

  He entered the city about fifteen minutes after sliding in behind the wheel of his car. Rolled through the slums, small houses and dilapidated apartment buildings packed together tightly. Leaking roofs with tarps thrown over them; laundry drying on lines in grassless yards; cars and pickup trucks sitting on blocks; dogs chained to trees barking furiously at his car as he rolled by.

  As he crossed Avenida la Cruz, the city turned middle class. He drove past Parque de los Niños, both the primary and secondary schools, the Slim Office Building, and La Valentina, the best restaurant in town, which he happened to own.

  He thought about James Murphy. The man had something against him. His violence had been angry and that meant it was personal. Alejandro intended to find out who, if anyone, was behind him. Men of importance knew how to exploit lesser men for their own ends—he did this himself—and he suspected someone had seen the violence in James Murphy and pointed the man in his direction, as one might aim a gun. He wanted to know who.

  When he reached his estate he turned right into the cobblestone driveway. He slid his window down and punched in the key code. The gate opened and he drove through. He glanced at his rearview mirror as the gate swung shut behind him, and then rolled past the fountain that split his driveway, a small quail bathing in it, and parked in a four-car garage to the right of the house, sliding in between a BMW 650i Gran Coupe and a Jaguar F-Type. He stepped out into the quickly brightening morning, walked to the front of the house, past two armed guards in black suits—they stared straight ahead, unmoving—and up a short flight of concrete steps. Pushed open the thick door and stepped into the air-conditioned house.