by David Cole
"A waitress," I said, not wanting to tell him about meeting Xochitl, or that I had another connection to LUNA13. "A server, I guess she's called. Some restaurant in Tucson, but I really don't remember where."
Dance appeared at the far end of the terrace, wearing a very pale blue tuxedo and a cranberry silk aviator's scarf around his neck. A woman bowed to him, whispered in his ear, and Dance began a soft-shoe routine. The crowd parted, and he swiveled to a moonwalk, headed toward the bar. The woman who had bowed turned. It was Pinau.
"Fuck," Nasso said.
"That's Pinau Medina."
"Pinau Beltrán de Medina. Courtesan to the Zedillo brothers, whore to Mexico City and the regions beyond."
"She told me that she's a judge."
"She is."
"Part of your task force, she told me."
"Let's go."
"Aren't we eating?"
"Why bother with dinner, when you've already had the appetizers."
In the parking lot, I saw Xochitl get into a taxi. We walked past Zamora's Mercedes, and Jake stroked the rooftop, drawing a finger down the heavily smoked glass of the driver's side window, which opened automatically.
"Yes?"
Zamora's driver had one hand resting on his throat, the fingertips moving just inside his suit jacket. Nasso rapped his knuckles on the rooftop, and the man's hand stopped moving.
"I know you," Nasso said. "Two years ago, I busted you over near Agua Prieta. You were a coyote then, and look at you now."
"America," the driver said, carefully placing his hands on the steering wheel. "A wonderful land of opportunity."
Nasso led me to his battered Honda Accord and drove out of the parking lot.
"Hungry?"
"Atlantic salmon sounded good."
"There's this place on Country Club. Ensenada. They make these gulf shrimp dishes smothered in onions and garlic. Nothing costs more than ten bucks."
"Are you buying?"
"America is buying. Tonight you get to wet your beak courtesy of my government expense account."
"I don't think so. Just take me home."
"Home? Sonoita? I don't think so. Back to Wheatley's and that pig. You saw the pig that lives next door? Imagine. What an incredible barbeque that pig would make."
"How was dinner?" Taá asked when I was inside her house.
"We barely ate. Listen. Why did he take me there?"
"He's got a thing for you."
"Oh, please."
"No. You're his ideal body type. Tall, thin, white teeth, great boobs, short hair."
"You're kidding me, right?"
"Nope."
"Taá. Tell him I'm not interested. And don't tell me that you're interested."
"You're not my type," she said with a smile. "I'll tell him."
"We met somebody there. A guy named Zamora. And Pinau Medina."
That got her attention immediately.
"They were there together?"
I couldn't remember if I'd actually seen them together or not.
"They hate each other," Meg said. "Hmmm. I'm going to have to find out why they were both there. Okay. I'm going to work, then to bed. Night."
"You expect me to sleep every night with these things on my legs?"
"I've got handcuffs. Take your choice."
Handcuffed to a bed while I slept. What a dreadful concept.
"I'm out of tampons," Taá said when I woke up. "I've got to go to Walgreen's."
"Okay."
Thinking I was too nonchalant, I started the tea kettle.
"You want anything?"
"Maybe some more Mountain Dew? A few Snickers?"
"Sure. What, uh, you're gonna be okay? I'll just be ten, fifteen minutes. Want to come with me?"
"No. I'll just be writing a program," I said. "Something to check chat room content. I was working it over last night, I've got too many lines of code in my head. If I leave, I'll forget what I was going to do."
"You're sure you'll be okay?"
She clearly didn't want to leave me alone, but clearly had to go out.
"Mountain Dew. And don't get the big bottles, it loses its fizz. A can or two. Half a dozen cans," I added quickly. Anything to make her think I needed caffeine.
"See you, then."
"See ya."
At my laptop keyboard, I began typing, running my left index finger over the screen to check the lines of programming code. She stood in the doorway for a moment, one hand resting on the frame, but I only saw her at the edge of my vision and kept focusing on the keyboard, frowning to make it look even more real. A few minutes later, I heard her car start up. I went to the front window, watched her unlock the gate, pull out onto the street, and get out to relock the gate. I stayed at the side of the window as she went down the street, stayed there for another five minutes, and coasted back, slowly, passing the front of the house. She tipped up her sunglasses and studied the house for at least a minute. Then she drove off again.
I hurried into the backyard.
The toolshed was locked with a padlock. Taá had created an obsessively neat border of stones around a bed of flowers. I took one of the stones and smashed at the padlock until it opened. Inside, I found the lopping shears I knew had to be there, since her hedges were as neatened as the row of stones.
It took fifteen minutes, but I finally cut through the tracker anklet. I carried it into the kitchen and laid it on the table on top of my file folder. But I had no luck with the stun anklet and didn't want to risk getting knocked out just a few feet away from freedom. I suddenly realized that there must be a signal activated by a transmitter, hidden somewhere in the house, and operated by electrical power.
Back outside again, I circled the house until I found the circuit breaker panel on the side of the house near the pig. Sophie snuffled at me through the fence, but the woman wasn't outside. Like the toolshed, the circuit breaker panel was secured by a padlock, which I also knocked open. I started turning off individual breakers and finally just threw the master power switch.
Hoping that the transmitter wasn't controlled by batteries, I walked slowly to the front gate, holding my breath for the last three feet. Nothing happened. I crossed over the dirt sidewalk area just as a FedEx truck pulled up.
"You Wheatley?" the driver said. I nodded. He gave me an envelope and had me sign his electronic tracker pad. While he drove off down the street, I headed the other way to collect my identity kits from Meg.
22
Walking to the first corner, as soon as I got onto the cross street, I began to run toward 6th Avenue, looking for a ride. Outside a bodega I saw a lowrider car, three vatos gathered around it as the driver worked his hydraulics to make the left side rock and roll. I had a twenty-dollar bill folded into my left palm. Without hesitating or talking to the vatos outside the car, I went straight to the driver's window and dropped the twenty on his lap.
"I need a ride," I said.
He stared at me through his sunglasses, not touching the bill.
"Just to a used car lot," I said. "Take me to one, I'll give you another twenty."
"What car lot?" he said, not sure how to read me. "Why should I do this?"
"I need to buy an older pickup truck."
"Ford? Chevy? What you talking, lady?"
"I don't care what kind. Just a truck. You find me the used car lot that's got one, let's say I give you another twenty. Sixty dollars, just to drive me mere. Now."
"Cool," he said. "Show me the extra forty. How I know you got it? How I know you're not going to carjack me?"
He smiled at his own joke, nodding at his friends who drifted around behind me.
"Uh uh. You get me there, I get you the money."
"Reason I'm asking, why go to a car lot? Fernando there, that dude with the bandanna, he's looking to get rid of his '85 Chevy shortbed. You got the cash, you can deal with him direct. He signs over the registration slip. You got it, no dealer fees, no law, you're on your way free and clear."
"Fernando? You really got a pickup to sell?"
Fernando wore paint-stained coveralls over bare arms and shoulders. He nodded, shyly motioned his head towards a battered brown and gray pickup parked at the end of the lot. I walked straight to it, ignoring the vatos as I raised the hood.
"Start it up for me," I said to Fernando, who reached through the closed door and twisted a key ring. The engine ran smoothly, with not the slightest burr of trouble.
"I take care of it myself," he said. "It's got almost two hundred thousand miles on it, but I put in new valves, new rings, change the oil every three thousand."
"It's really yours?"
He got behind the wheel and opened the glove box, taking out the Arizona registration slip. "I'm a senior at the university. Sociology major. Need to sell this for fall tuition. Twenty-four hundred I'm asking."
"That's an honest price," I said.
"What do you think I am?" he said cynically. "Some street thug, some no good Mexican vato halfass car thief? You got the cash, or are you just jerking me around?"
"No. The money is real. You just have to drive me to get it."
"Yeah, right. I give you a ride, drop you off, you get a free taxi service, I'm stuck with nothing but a busted promise. How do I know you're not fucking with me?"
"That's a very good point. Well, the promise is real. But a promise is as good as it gets unless you take me there. I guess you'll just have to trust me."
"Okay. But they ride along behind us."
"Not a problem. I just need to make a phone call."
I suddenly realized I had no money and no cell phone, but noticed a public phone inside the bodega.
"Give me some change."
"Lady, you're really something. You're gonna give me twenty-four hundred dollars, but you want to borrow some small change?"
"Just enough to make a phone call."
He shrugged, fumbled in his jeans pocket, and dumped a handful of coins into my outstretched hand. I called Meg's private line.
"Ready," I said when she answered.
"Give me fifteen minutes to set it up," she said, giving me an address.
Meg had left my package at a house in central Tucson, an expensive area just north of the Arizona Inn, with large single-story houses of four- to five-thousand square feet.
Fernando navigated the complicated neighborhood street plan, his friends tailing us in the muscle car, until we found the address. The house was no different than its neighbors, the landscaping no different, no bars on any windows and no visible security precautions. I didn't even bother going to the front door.
A row of large clay ollas lined the gentle curve of the driveway, each olla filled with three-foot-high stalks of Mexican honeysuckle, the dirt underneath carefully groomed. Several hummingbirds flitted among the flowers, one swooping down to rest in the stretch of zebra aloe snaked between the ollas. A gardener came around the corner of the house, a bamboo rake over his shoulder, headphones on and plugged into a Walkman at his waist. He stopped to look us over, then idly raked underneath the aloe.
"Ah, come on!" Fernando said. "That dude's gonna make us vamanos."
The gardener seemed to be singing a few lyrics of the song he was listening to, but I saw a microphone clipped onto his blue denim work shirt collar and knew he was connected by cell phone to Meg. He moved slowly between the ollas, stopping briefly at the third from the end to wipe his neck before walking out of sight. I hurried to the olla and gently parted the greenish honeysuckle stalks. Some of the inch-long orange flowers flecked off as I twisted them this way and that until I saw the bright metal cap from a Dos Equis beer bottle. Scooping out dirt with my hands, I found a large Ziploc baggie, and inside that, another baggie that contained four manila envelopes.
Opening one of the envelopes, I counted out five five-hundred-dollar bills and took them back to the pickup, laying them on the hood and placing a small pebble to hold the bills secure against the slight morning breeze.
"Lady. I don't have a hundred to give back to you."
"Just sign the slip over to me. What are you studying?"
"Excuse me?"
"Why do you want to be a sociologist?"
"I actually want to be a lawyer. Want to work in Legal Aid, help these illegals that La Migra hassles all the time.
"That's cool."
"Let me clean the junk out of the pickup bed."
He motioned his three friends to help remove several old plastic milk crates and a large burlap bag full of empty paint cans, but I stopped them.
"No," I said, realizing it added to the image of a working-class pickup. "Leave it all in there, I'll dump it when I've got time.
"What game you running, lady?"
The four of them edged around me, boxing me against the step side box near the driver's side door. One of them raised a hand, and the gardener came around the other side of the house with a garden hose, the water running in a long, lazy three-foot arc as he watered some plants. Incredibly, one of the hummingbirds flew to the bottom of the arc of water and seemed to walk up the stream, drinking until he reached the nozzle of the hose. The gardener stood like a statue, but his eyes were on us, not the hummer.
"Wow," one of the vatos said, and in that instant all four of them stood transfixed, like six-year-old boys. "Did you see that?"
"Are we cool, Fernando?" I said, and the hummer flew away.
"Yeah." He stuffed the bills into his jeans. "So, like, how come you want a beatup old pickup like this?"
"I'm going on a sociology field trip."
"Oh yeah? What kinda people are you studying?"
"Single women who can't live a quiet life."
The vato with the funny car drifted over.
"Where's my forty?"
"Ask Fernando," I said, cranking the shift into first gear. "He's got an extra hundred."
I didn't want to drive along 4th Avenue to see if Meg was still running the restaurant, thinking that by now Taá had alerted Dance and Nasso, and they'd have people all over Meg. Instead, I drove along Broadway to the El Con mall. Parking in the front strip, I checked the ID packets and picked one, sliding the rest of the envelopes underneath the bench seat. Making sure that the pickup door actually locked, I went inside the Radio Shack, took out my new credit card, and ordered a cell phone account.
"Mary Stanley," the clerk said. "I've got a niece, same name, but spells it with an ie at the end. She pronounces it Mary, everybody wants to call her Marie. I'll need to see your driver's license, or some kind of ED."
I handed him the Arizona State driver's license.
"Pick out what kind of phone you want, and what kind of service. We've got some Nokias, plus the new StarTac digital. You want digital? Sprint?"
"Sure. Give me that top-of-the-line Nokia. Just put it on the card."
"Gee, you know what? I just realized, my niece is named Cherie, not Marie." He spelled Marie to himself. "Whoa, I think I'd better spend a little more time with the family. This job is turning into a twenty-four seven since I agreed to be the manager."
"Do you sell Palm Pilots?"
"Got to survive, got to carry what people are buying. Which model?"
"Wireless."
"Palm V. Um, that's a different wireless service. You want a contract with them also? Email, instant messaging, web browsing."
"Yes."
"I see these kids in the malls, they've got a cell phone with an earpiece, they're talking on it while they've got their Palm out, they're fingering the keypad. I kept wondering what they had so much to talk about."
He punched in my credit card number and started the activation process for both wireless services.
"Went up behind two girls, each talking on a cell phone. You know what they were talking about?"
"No. How much longer?"
" 'I'm in front of The Gap. Where are you?' Meaningless. Guess you've got to be a teenager to understand them. You got any kids?"
When he finally realized I wasn't going to talk, he co
ncentrated on processing the wireless services. It took him fifteen minutes to activate the cell phone, then another five to activate the Palm.
I drove up to Speedway and headed east until I saw a taco truck on a side street. He apologized for how long it took to heat up a bean burrito and a chile relleno over his small sterno flame. I drove another two blocks, parked, left a message on Meg's voice mail, and ate while I opened the FedEx envelope.
A single sheet of paper with the address of an Internet website.
I drove back to the Radio Shack.
"Listen," I said to the clerk, "I just heard from my boss. The first call I got on my new cell phone, and it's my boss, chewing my ass because I haven't done something for him. Is there any chance you've got a computer in here I can use?"
"Not really. I can sell you a computer." "I just need to look up a website. That's all." He looked around the empty store and yawned. "Sure. Why not. Keep me awake. Long as you don't mind if I sit at the computer and type in the address. That way, it's kosher all around."
Leading me into the back office, he sat at a keyboard and dialed up an ISP, shielding the keyboard as he typed in a user ID and password. He opened the Microsoft browser, looked at the sheet of paper from the FedEx envelope, and typed the URL.
www.moneytochihuahua.com
The website had only one page and simply asked for a user ID and a password.
"Do you have any idea what this means?" he said.
"Money. Mexico. I don't have a clue. Do you?"
"A guess, that's about it. You want to look at this website any more?"
"No. What's your guess?"
"Well," he said as shut down the computer. "Lots of these illegals send money back home. Really pisses me off. They come up here, get paid in cash, pay zero tax dollars, and then send a lot of the money home to their families."
"Through the Internet?"
"Mostly by Western Union. They're getting smarter. Used to be, they didn't trust any gringo banks or companies like Western Union. They go to money merchants, they'd pay twenty, thirty percent of their money just to get it sent to Mexico. Now, they just pay the standard Western Union wire charges. This website, could be somebody's found a new way to send that money."
