Bulletproof Vest

by Maria Venegas

  “She’s a niece,” he says.

  “She’s not your daughter?”

  “No, she’s a niece.” They fly past the slaughterhouse where two other SUVs are sitting in the shade under the mesquite.

  “A niece?” She narrows her eyes on him. She’s not a bad-looking woman. Early forties, most likely, though a scar across her cheekbone, dark circles under her eyes, and her rotting teeth seem to age her beyond her years. “What’s the name of your daughter, the one who owns a gas station in Jalisco?”

  “I don’t have any daughters in Jalisco.”

  She rams the butt of the rifle into his kneecap with so much force that it sends a shock through his injured hipbone.

  “Don’t play smart with me, viejo.” She tells him they are well aware he has five daughters, and word around town is that one of them lives in Jalisco and owns a gas station, so what is her number?

  “I don’t know where you’re getting your information from,” he says, though perhaps they’ve gotten it from him, because even though businesses have started closing early and everyone goes home before dark, locks their doors, and stays put until morning, the taverns are still open. And though they have lost a few regulars, he has carried on as he always has. He’s not one to hide from the SUVs or anyone for that matter, especially not in his own town. He has continued frequenting the taverns, and after having a few drinks, it’s inevitable—he will start boasting about his five girls and how successful they are, how each one has made a small fortune, and with no help from a man at that. “I don’t have any daughters in Jalisco,” he says.

  “What about your daughter who lives in Nueva York, what is her number?” Again she’s scrolling through his phone.

  “I don’t have any daughters living in Nueva York.”

  “Who’s the girl who was just down here visiting you?”

  “She’s just a niece,” he says, bracing himself to keep the weight of his body from barreling into the woman as they fly around the only curve on that road between town and his home.

  “Another niece?” The woman smirks at him before ramming the butt of the rifle into his other kneecap. “What is her name?”

  “Maria de Jesus,” he says, and again she’s scrolling through his phone, though he knows she will never find that name, or any of their names for that matter. He has all five numbers saved under their nicknames: Chuyita, La Flaca, Chela, La Vickie, Sonita.

  Up ahead his truck slows and turns left onto the dirt road that leads up to La Peña. He watches the woman go through his wallet as the SUV he’s riding in also turns left, and then they’re bouncing along the dirt road, over the river, up the incline, and through the entrance where the dilapidated limestone pillars still stand. She pulls out a piece of paper and a few loose bills. There’s a name and a phone number scribbled on the paper.

  “Sonia salon,” she reads out loud, as she places the bills in her breast pocket. “Who’s Sonia?”

  “That’s my daughter,” he says.

  “Your daughter?” she says, grinning so big that he catches a glimpse of the gold caps on her upper molars. “And what does she do?”

  “She works in a beauty salon in Chicago.”

  “Isn’t she the owner?”

  “No, she just works there,” he says, though he can tell that she’s not buying it.

  Even before they pull up in front of his house, he notices that the minivan he picked up two weeks before is gone, and that his house has been broken into. His bedroom door is scraped, bent, and slightly ajar. Two men help Rosario out of the truck and into her wheelchair. The woman gets out of the SUV, lights a cigarette, and walks a full circle around Rosario before stopping in front of her and asking what is the name of the viejo’s daughter, the one who owns a gas station in Jalisco?

  “I don’t really know anything about his daughters,” Rosario says.

  The woman takes a long drag, narrowing her gaze on Rosario before slapping her clear across the face.

  “Call his daughters,” she says, throwing his phone onto Rosario’s lap. “Tell them we have their father and if they ever want to see him again, they can reach us at this number.” She scribbles the digits down on a scrap of paper and hands it to Rosario.

  The convoy starts moving and once again the SUV he’s riding in is following his truck. The woman reaches into the seat pocket in front of her and pulls out a roll of toilet paper and duct tape. She takes two wads of toilet paper, presses them to his eyes, and while she holds them there, one of the men wraps the duct tape tightly around his head. Inside that new darkness a different light snaps on. The lay of that land is practically a part of his genetic makeup, etched in his bones. He doesn’t need to see when they are rolling over the river because he can hear the rushing water below, and when they turn onto the main road, the whir of the tires takes on a different sound. Again, he has to steady himself as they clear the curve to keep the weight of his body from pressing, not into the woman this time, but the man. He also knows exactly when they are passing in front of the bus depot. He can hear the engines of the buses idling, smell the diesel, and then comes the da-thump, da-thump, da-thump as they clear the three speed bumps on the north end of town before breaking out onto the open road and into the desert.

  * * *

  It’s Monday night, and I’m out having dinner with a friend in my neighborhood.

  “I’m running to the bathroom,” my friend says, pushing her chair away from the table. The waiter comes by and drops off our check. I reach for my bag and notice my cell is vibrating. I have two missed calls from Sonia and a text from her: Call me 911. This can’t be good, I think as I stare at the flame in the votive, watch how it sways each time someone opens the door. What happened now? What if he’s dead? What if he killed someone? What if he shot Rosario? It had been only two days since I told him where his gun was hidden. The reflection of the flame makes the smooth grooves in the wooden table look dark and warm, and there’s a part of me that wants to crawl into one of those small nooks and stay there for a very long time.

  “What’s the damage?” my friend asks when she returns. There’s a bounce in her platinum blonde hair, and she’s wearing a fresh coat of pink lipstick.

  “I just got a text from my sister,” I say, clearing my throat. “And she wants me to call her 911.”

  “That can’t be good,” she says.

  “I know.” I tap my phone twice on the table. The bartender pours wine for a couple sitting at the bar. All the polished glass bottles are gleaming on the wall behind him.

  “Well, you should probably call her back,” my friend says.

  “Right.” I reach for my glass of red wine and down what’s left before calling Sonia. When she picks up, she informs me that she just got off the phone with Mary, who received a call from Rosario, saying that my father has been kidnapped.

  “Kidnapped?” I say. “How? By who?”

  She doesn’t know all the details, but according to Rosario, they had ransacked the whole house. The wardrobes and storage trunks had all been rifled, and they had left shattered dishes, pillows, and clothing strewn in their wake. They had given Rosario a number where they could be reached.

  “And?” I say. “Did Mary call them?”

  “She thinks we should stay out of it,” Sonia says. When Rosario had called Mary and told her what happened, Mary had taken a few moments to let the news sink in before responding with a single knee-jerk reaction. “You know what, Rosario? For all I know, he did something to provoke this, and I’m not getting involved,” she said. “You can call them and tell them that they’re not going to get a penny out of me, or any of his kids, because he abandoned us when we were young.” Mary had refused to even take down the number. “Did you notice anything suspicious while you were down there?” Sonia asks.

  I tell her how stories of people being kidnapped were surfacing all over town and about the SUV I had seen while jogging, but other than that, I hadn’t noticed anything out of the ordinary.

  �
��How much money are they asking for?” I ask, aware of how my friend is staring at me from across the table. She’s British, a fashion designer, and probably can’t comprehend the words coming out of my mouth.

  “They want like five hundred thousand pesos, or dollars, or something like that.” She’s not really certain of the amount, as Mary wouldn’t even hear of it.

  “Did he have his gun on him?” I ask, already feeling guilty for hiding it.

  Sonia doesn’t know whether or not he had his gun. We decide that until we figure out what we’re going to do, it’s best not to answer any calls from Rosario or any unknown numbers. She says that a woman keeps calling one of her salons and asking for her, but she’s already told her employees to say she no longer works there.

  My friend and I settle the tab and I go home, spend the next hour pacing around my apartment and feeling utterly useless. The first thing we do is erase our voices. We all change our greeting so that if anyone calls, they hear the automated response repeating the number they just dialed back to them. If the kidnappers call, they can’t be certain of who they’ve reached, and if they can’t get hold of us, they can’t threaten us.

  Rosario calls that evening and leaves several messages pleading with me to call her back, and though she sounds genuinely upset, I don’t return her call. There are too many unknowns: What if we send the money and they ask for more money? What if we send the money and then they go after our mother? She had been back in Valparaíso for a week already. What if we send the money and they kill him anyway? What if Rosario is in cahoots with the kidnappers? Why had they left her as the middleman? Or worse, what if he had something to do with it? What if he somehow provoked this—messed with the wrong herd or owed someone money? Why had he practically insisted on knowing when Mary would be returning to Mexico?

  Later that night I lie in bed, tossing and turning and wondering where he may be at that very moment. Imagining they probably have him blindfolded and tied to a wooden chair somewhere in an abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of town, and that they must be taunting him. Walking circles around the chair and asking, where are your daughters now? ¿Pues, no que te procuraban tanto? By then, the only message Mary had sent the kidnappers must have already reached them: They’re not going to get a penny out of me, or any of his kids, because he abandoned us when we were young.

  If he was within earshot of that conversation, it must have been then that he realized his past might be catching up to him—even though we had all gone back and reestablished a relationship with him, our past was still a dark line drawn between us. I assume that wherever he may be, he must already be calculating, plotting—coming up with a plan to save his hide—because by the time the sun went down that day and none of us had called the kidnappers back, the one thing that must have crystallized for him was that he may have to fend for himself.

  Kidnapped. That word tumbles endlessly in my thoughts as the fan whirs in the window, providing little relief from the oppressive August humidity. What a strange word. What a vast gray space—what a relief. Dead is an infinite black hole from which nothing is retrievable. Kidnapped is good. There is hope.

  First thing Tuesday morning, I e-mail my friend in Mexico City, the journalist. He puts me in contact with a friend of his, another journalist who has a direct connection to the head of the kidnapping division in the Mexican federal government.

  “So your friend tells me your father isn’t exactly an upstanding citizen,” the fed says when I call him.

  “That’s true,” I say, “but he’s still my father.”

  The fed tells me that the thing with kidnappers is that they are usually after a monetary reward, and as long as we cooperate, they probably won’t hurt my father.

  “Have you talked to the kidnappers yet?”

  “No.”

  “Have you talked to your father?”

  “No.”

  “How do you know if he’s still alive?” he asks. This is something that had already occurred to me, but I tried not to dwell on it. He explains that the first thing I need to do is call the kidnappers, tell them we will cooperate, but can I please speak with my father first and make sure he’s okay. Once we know he’s alive and well, we can begin negotiating. “I’ll walk you through all the steps,” he says. “And if at any point the situation escalates or the kidnappers become threatening, say, then you need to let me know and we’ll proceed accordingly.”

  “Can’t you send in the federal troops to rescue him?” I ask, imagining that the feds could somehow locate him and the soldiers would descend upon the warehouse in the middle of the night. The place would be surrounded with armored vehicles and helicopters in no time, and the kidnappers wouldn’t even know what hit them.

  “One step at a time,” he says. “You need to call them first, talk to your father, then call me back and we’ll go from there.”

  After getting off the phone, I call Mary. Since she lives in Mexico, I think she should be our point person, be the one to speak with the kidnappers.

  “You should have never called the feds,” she says, and asks if I had given them my name.

  “Of course I gave them my name,” I say, explaining that I trust my friend, that he would have never put me in contact with a crooked fed.

  “You can’t trust anyone down here, especially not the feds,” she says, expressing a sentiment shared by most people in Valparaíso, and probably all of Mexico. By then, it seemed pretty obvious that the feds had been behind the jailbreak—had known about it and allowed it to happen. How else was it possible that fifty-three inmates had escaped within five minutes, and there had been no resistance? Not a single bullet had been fired.

  “Maybe you should pack up the kids and get out of there,” I say. “Go stay in Chicago until this whole thing blows over.”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” she says, and tells me to stop calling her because the kidnappers are probably listening in on our conversations. She’s not being paranoid—everyone knew the cartels had set up surveillance towers and had been tapping into cell phone calls.

  On Wednesday morning, we hear about the latest threat. Either we send the money by the end of the day or they are going to toss his head over the courtyard wall. News of this threat sparks a frenzy of phone calls, crisscrossing over the border. Roselia calls several contacts she has in Mexico to see if anyone can help. Not only can they not help, they’re hesitant to discuss anything over the phone. She calls a few private-detective agencies in Chicago, all to no avail. She contacts the FBI, but since my father is not a U.S. citizen, there is nothing they can do. Sonia tells me to call the fed and have him send in the troops.

  “Mary doesn’t want the feds to get involved,” I say, and though I think about calling the fed back, I know he’s just going to ask why I haven’t called the kidnappers yet.

  When I talk to Yesenia, who’s in Oakland, she says not to have the fed send in the troops because every time the soldiers get involved in these situations, it ends in a massive shoot-out, and what if he gets caught in the cross fire?

  “For all we know, Dad is already on the other side,” I say, and the minute I say it, I wish I hadn’t.

  We both fall silent for a long time.

  “You really think they may have already killed him?” Her voice is barely audible.

  “Think about it,” I say. “With the reputation Dad has, there’s no way they’re going to let him walk—even if we send the money. You don’t mess with someone like him and then let him go free as if nothing ever happened. I think Mary is right. We need to stay out of it. With the type of life he has lived, he’s got to be okay with this. If anyone can negotiate his way out of something like this, it would be him.”

  Later, as I lie in bed, staring at the ceiling and listening to my neighbors carrying on in their backyard, I wish there were a way to send him a message—smoke signals, Morse code—or find him in a dream and tell him that even though we are not calling the kidnappers, it doesn’t mean we aren’t trying.
Because what if they do kill him? What if he leaves this world thinking we had all turned our backs on him—that we don’t love him? The air hangs hot and dense in my bedroom and when I finally doze off, sunlight floods my window. My father steps out of the light and stands before me. He’s about the same age he was when he left Chicago—forty-five. He looks tall and strong and is wearing a black cowboy hat, jeans, and a black leather vest over a plaid cowboy shirt. He smiles at me, gives me a nod, and then turns and vanishes into the white light. I wake with an immense pressure on my chest, gasping and thinking that they must have killed him. That he had come to say goodbye.

  In the morning, I check in with my sisters: Nothing has come flying over the wall—yet. By noon, still nothing—not his head nor his hand, not even a finger—nothing. The only message that reaches us later that day is that his bond has been lowered to $50,000. Cartels are not ones to negotiate—either you send the amount they ask for or you never see your relative again—it’s that simple. Not only has his head not come flying over the courtyard wall, his ransom has been lowered by $450,000, and I can’t help but wonder what had been that $450,000 moment. What charm had he mustered? What landscape had he painted for them—what type of deal had he struck—in order to keep his head attached?

  That night, Mary wakes to loud banging, to what sounds like someone trying to break through her front gate. She makes her two teenage daughters climb the spiral staircase to the roof, telling them to go hide at the neighbor’s. The noise grows louder and when it stops, there’s nothing but the sounds of sirens approaching and a woman shrieking. She’s yelling to someone to please look after her children. A car door slams shut, swallowing the woman’s voice, then car tires are screeching past Mary’s front door practically as machine-gun fire rings out. Mary is certain that at any moment they’re going to come barreling into her house. But instead the blasts and the sirens pass and soon they’re diminishing in the distance.