by Hester Young
I understand, even before I grip the cheap handle and slide it open, what’s waiting for me. A room I know too well.
Walls of concrete block, painted white and peeling. A metal rod from which a white cloth curtain hangs. Exposed piping, a showerhead. Blue and yellow tile. I’ve died in this room so many times.
I stand in the doorway, spine still crackling, pulsing with an almost electric current, and yet the rest of me remains curiously numb. No surprises here. Everything is as I’ve dreamed it, strangely mundane now that I’m really seeing it before me.
But for one thing. One wrong detail.
My eyes fall again on the shower curtain. It’s not just conceptually white, that mold-tinged gray that quickly triumphs in damp environments. No, this is a gleaming white, the white of toothpaste-commercial smiles and beachy linens in a summer catalog. Too new. No traces of wear. Someone must’ve replaced this curtain not so long ago.
I push aside the folds of fabric and study the tiled floor. The grout is gray with age but clean. No unexplained stains. No one could fault Marilena’s housekeeping. And still.
I ease toward the doorway, suddenly ready to take my chances downstairs with Quico.
The moment I turn my back, I hear a noise. The shuddering of old pipes. A rattling, as the water pressure builds and spray bursts forth. A few tiny droplets graze my neck, warm and wet, setting all my hairs on end.
I don’t want to look, don’t want to see what’s waiting there behind me in that shower, but I force myself.
Nothing but water pooling in the drain. You know what happened here, Lety seems to say. Do I really have to show you?
I reach out and grip the faucet, jerking the handle. The showerhead sputters twice and shuts abruptly off. I need to leave room 2. Now.
I’m just inches from the door when I hear a scraping at the lock, someone standing in the hallway outside, about to come in. My fingers tighten reflexively around the room key. Its jagged edge still points outward, ready for trouble.
Lety may have died here, naked and vulnerable, too surprised by her assailant to put up a fight. That doesn’t mean I will.
Twenty-Three
Marilena’s one good eye is black and unreadable as she peers at me from the crack of the door, like a lizard or a bird scanning its environment for prey. For an instant, I feel relief—she’s not Quico—but something in her iron stare strikes me as off. The warmth she displayed with Albert has evaporated; now her lips form a tense line, a rather frozen approximation of a smile.
“Señora? You are okay?”
“Fine, thanks.” I should leave the room, of course. It makes no sense to stand here in this unbearable heat, sweat gathering in my armpits and between my breasts, and yet I can’t bring myself to approach her. “I was just—looking around. You have a nice little place.”
“Thank you,” she says. “I am a lucky woman.” She stands in the doorway, left hand behind her back, not budging. Waiting to see what I’ll do next.
“Is Albert ready to go?” I ask.
“He went to do a small job for me.” She doesn’t tell me when he’ll be back, doesn’t move from the doorway. She has me cornered here, in this little room.
“And your friend Quico?” I ask brightly. “Is he still here?”
“Señor Ortega went with Albert.” She doesn’t say, It’s just you and me now. She doesn’t have to.
I file away the name Quico Ortega, wondering what he told her. That I’ve been asking around about Lety, I suppose. Or maybe Albert mentioned it. I haven’t been terribly discreet in my inquiries.
“I look forward to meeting Señor Ortega.” I lean casually against the wall, trying to appear unsuspicious and at ease, as if her presence isn’t scaring the crap out of me. “You said he works with Sonora Hope?”
“He works for the government of Sonora,” Marilena says. “But he admires our work.”
A government job might explain Quico’s ability to cross the border easily. “Sounds like a good person to have in your corner,” I say.
“Oh, yes. I value his friendship.” Marilena cocks her head to the side and observes me with her single intelligent eye. “You are tired?” she asks.
I hope that my fear is manifesting as exhaustion. “Yeah, I haven’t been sleeping well.”
“Your baby is coming soon, yes? It is hard to sleep when the body grows so big.” She doesn’t mention her three stillbirths, but I can feel them hanging in the air, unspoken. Did losing three pregnancies drive her to the brink? Are they part of her grudge against Lety? My racing thoughts no longer make sense. I just wish that I could see her left hand, see what she’s holding.
“Maybe you want una siesta?” Marilena suggests. “I can turn on the cool air. This bed is very comfortable.”
“No, no. No need to run up your electric bill.” I produce a rather constipated smile. “We should . . . go downstairs. I’m so sweaty and gross, I’d just ruin the sheets anyway.”
“A shower, then? To feel fresh?” Her voice is mild, but it slides across my neck and shoulders like ice water. Perhaps this room is not an accident. Perhaps she wanted me here.
Is she the one who did it? Is she the one who pulled the trigger?
“You’re so kind,” I say faintly. “But I think I’ll just wait with Carlos in the van. He’s probably getting lonely.”
This is it. Either she lets me pass or she kills me. One thing I know, and I hope she does, too: the concrete floor of this guest room is a lot harder to clean than that shower.
Marilena doesn’t speak for a moment, and I imagine that she’s assessing the threat that I might pose living versus dead. She doesn’t know how much I know (not much, if we’re being honest) and how much of a potential irritant I might be in the future (very irritating indeed). On the other hand, disposing of a Charlie is not the same as disposing of a Lety. I’m not an orphaned prostitute. I’m a pregnant American journalist. People would come asking.
Marilena pushes the door open a few inches wider. “All right, then.” Her lips press thin again. “You tell Carlos hello from me. Albert will be with you soon.”
• • •
I DON’T WAIT AROUND FOR ALBERT. I’m no longer sure I can trust him. I don’t know if I can trust Carlos, either, but he seems like my best bet. With a look of terror not at all difficult to manufacture, I bang on the passenger side of the waiting van, clutching my lower abdomen as if in pain.
“I’m having contractions,” I tell him. “You need to get me back into the States right now.”
It’s an Oscar-worthy performance, and Carlos swears as he tears down the busy streets, trying not to take out any pedestrians. The line for vehicle entry back to the States isn’t too terrible, but Carlos wants to jump the queue.
“We’ll tell them you’re in labor,” he says. “They’ll let us through. They’ll have to.”
Given how things turned out for Noah, I’m not looking for any drama with Customs and Border Protection. “I can make it. We’ll get through.” I give Carlos a weak smile, the picture of valiant maternal determination, and then, for good measure, try to look like my insides are seizing up.
As the line of cars crawls forward, Carlos glances periodically over at me to make sure I haven’t yet delivered a child in his van. Once across the border, he deposits me in front of a Nogales hospital that looks more like a strip mall or collection of office suites. To his credit, he offers to escort me inside, but I tell him no, he’d better go retrieve poor stranded Albert. Carlos is only too happy to take off. Laboring women are somehow vastly more alarming to him than impoverished families living amongst garbage.
The return to American soil fills me with intense relief. From here on out, I promise myself, you’re staying the hell out of Mexico. But I’m not about to roll over and play dead. I will dig up whatever dirt I can on this Quico Ortega.
Since I’m alr
eady at the hospital—having made a big show for Carlos of hustling inside—I plant myself in the air-conditioned waiting area and sort through my messages. Work e-mail, a couple missed calls, and a text from Carmen updating me on her progress with Noah.
Still being an idiot, she reports. TELL HIM TO ACCEPT A DEAL.
Whatever fight I had left gushes out at her words. I try to picture Noah in jail and discover I don’t want to. He could be locked up with international smugglers, addicts, rapists. We’ve had far too many close calls lately. Carmen is right. If accepting probation as part of a plea deal is the only way out, then so be it. Maybe we weren’t meant to adopt Micky. Maybe my vision of Micky in the house on Mawith Drive was wrong.
I scroll through my missed calls and determine that Carmen isn’t the only one who has been trying to get in touch with me. Pam has called twice this morning, a fact that brings me a modicum of comfort. Like it or not, she’s the best friend I have in Arizona, and I need her connections like I never have before.
Pam doesn’t waste any time with pleasantries when she answers her phone. “Are you still in Nogales?” she asks.
“Yeah.” I have a feeling she already knows this, that she’s just testing my answers against her existing knowledge to see if I’m trustworthy. “How’d you know Sanchez was following me?”
“Oh, I know a few things,” she says. “Not enough, not yet. But a few things.”
“Care to share?”
She lays her first card on the table. “Pretty sure I got an ID on the girl in those naked pictures Jasmine had.”
This isn’t the kind of information I was looking for, but I run with it. “Who is she?”
“Serena Alexander. An old friend of Jasmine’s.”
“Serena,” I echo, the name familiar. “I know her. She was at the funeral. I talked to her a bit.”
“Yeah? What’d you think of her?” Pam has already made up her mind about Serena, I can tell, just wants confirmation of her own bad opinion.
“Total narcissist,” I say. “Serena was pissed she wasn’t asked to deliver Jasmine’s eulogy. And she had a chip on her shoulder about McCullough.”
“She say why?”
I try to remember the girl’s words. “She said Jazz used to be fun until he came along. And then they stopped hanging out.”
Pam sniggers. “Those pics give me a pretty good idea what kind of ‘fun’ those girls were having together. You think Serena is the jealous type?”
“She did seem a little . . . imbalanced,” I concede. “But wasn’t there a guy in some of those photos?”
“Yeah, I’ve got my suspicions about that. Gotta see how it all plays out, though.” She makes a low hissing sound with her breath. “Crazy, isn’t it? All those years I tried to keep Donna from getting sucked into Jasmine’s drama, and now here I am. Guess I always knew where that girl was headed.”
Now I understand why cops aren’t supposed to work cases they have personal ties to. Pam is so determined to make these murders Jasmine’s fault that she’s failed to explore Donna’s life in any depth. If I’m going to secure her help, I’ll need to tread carefully here.
“So.” She emerges from her Jasmine-hating bubble and finally gives a thought to someone else. “What are you guys doing in Nogales, anyway?” She says the word like it’s a food she has a bad reaction to.
“You remember that girl Lety that Donna worked with?” I keep my voice down and one eye on the hospital patrons.
“The girl who killed herself, sure.”
“I think she was murdered, Pam. Somebody killed her and then covered it up.”
Pam reacts without interest. “It’s possible. The kid came from a rough background.”
“I think her murder could be linked to Donna’s.”
That gets her attention. “How?”
I gnaw on a fingernail. Of course Pam wants facts, solid proof. What did I expect? “I don’t know yet,” I admit. “I’m thinking Lety knew something that got her killed. Whatever it was, she could’ve told Donna.”
“You’re saying Donna knew something so explosive that someone from Nogales tracked her down to Jasmine’s house and killed them both?”
When stated this way, my theory sounds inane. “Maybe.”
Pam keeps her opinions to herself, though I can hear the skepticism in her questions. “What exactly do you think Donna knew?”
“Some of the women she worked with have been suffering from stillbirths and cancer.” I peer around the hospital, suddenly wishing I hadn’t chosen such a public venue to discuss this. “There could be an environmental cause. American factories dumping toxic waste. That kind of thing.”
“I’m sure there’s plenty of American factories dumping toxic waste in Nogales,” Pam says. “But you’re wrong if you think anyone cares. The Mexican government likes American dollars, the people of Nogales need jobs, and nobody on this side of the border gives a crap about how their stuff gets made as long as it’s cheap. The whole idea of some international cover-up . . . why bother?”
She has a point, a cynical yet valid point. “Maybe it’s drugs, then. A smuggling ring. That would explain the Rohypnol in Jasmine’s place.”
“You’re reaching,” Pam tells me.
“Come on. You don’t think it’s weird that both Lety and Donna got shot within a month of each other?”
“If Donna knew about some big illegal operation going on, she would’ve told me,” Pam states.
Not if she was somehow involved, I think. Maybe you didn’t know my mother as well as you think you did. Insulting Donna’s memory won’t get me anywhere, though, so I try another approach.
“I guess it doesn’t matter, anyway.” I sigh. “Your old police connections—it’s not like they extend to Mexico. If someone from Nogales did kill Donna, we couldn’t touch them, right? They’d just get away with it.”
I can hear Pam bristling, rising to the challenge. “I don’t care if the person who hurt Donna is from friggin’ Jupiter,” she growls. “One way or another, I’ll find the bastard. They’re going down, I will make sure of that.”
I feign doubt. “I don’t know, Pam. It’s a whole different country. You said yourself the police are totally corrupt. We should probably stay out of it.”
Pam doesn’t speak for a moment. She knows what I’m doing, can see my not-so-subtle efforts to manipulate her. “What is it you want me to do?” she asks at last.
“Not much. I give you a couple names, you do some digging. That’s it. Can you do that? Even if they’re Mexican citizens?”
“Probably,” she says cautiously. “But I think we’re dealing with something a lot closer to home. You said yourself this Serena girl’s a loose cannon. If she and Jasmine had a thing going—”
“See what you can find, and then I’ll let it go. First, I need to know about a woman named Marilena. Donna met her a few years ago at Tirabichi.”
“Marilena Gallardo,” Pam supplies. “I know who you mean. Messed-up eye, husband used to beat her up. You think she’s mixed up in something?”
“Pretty damn sure.” I shiver at the memory of that old shower. “I’m also looking at a guy named Quico Ortega. Supposedly he works for the Sonoran government. Sound familiar?”
“Never heard about him,” Pam replies. “But Quico’s a nickname. You’re probably looking for an Enrique or Francisco. If he’s got a government job, he shouldn’t be too hard to find.”
“Thanks, Pam.”
She knows that I haven’t told her the whole story. “Hey,” she says, her instincts reflecting her years as a cop, “you and Noah doing all right? Did you run into some kind of trouble with these guys?”
“Well . . .” I laugh darkly. “Since I’m already calling in favors . . . I don’t suppose you have any pull with federal judges?”
• • •
I HAVE DINNER WITH
CARMEN that night at a local steakhouse. It’s a faded restaurant with a stale odor and worn leather furniture from the fifties. In Brooklyn, this place would be a fun, retro hangout for hipsters to ironically enjoy a bygone era; in Nogales, this seems to pass for present-day glamour. Under different circumstances, I would’ve delighted in watching the clichéd dating rituals unfold around me, men playing fast and loose with their cash, women fiddling with their hair and giggling at unfunny jokes. Tonight I’m in no mood to be amused. Noah’s spending his night in the county jail; tomorrow he’ll be transported north to a federal facility.
“I don’t understand,” Carmen mutters, already on her second glass of pinot noir. “He’s being so pigheaded. And for what? One little kid you hardly know—that’s not worth jail time.”
She’s right, of course, but I’m not about to take her side.
“Did you get a record of pedestrians who crossed the border yesterday?” I ask.
“I requested the video footage,” she says. “But it’s a weekend. Maybe Monday they’ll cough it up.”
“We’re looking for a man named Enrique or Francisco Ortega,” I tell her. “Big man, thinning hair, goes by the nickname Quico. I think he works for the Sonoran government.”
Carmen frowns. She wants to dismiss me as a crackpot, I know, but my specificity has her reevaluating. “Who is he?” she asks. “What would he have against you and Noah?”
I don’t bother trying to explain the intricacies of Lety’s death, of Donna’s and Jasmine’s murders. “I’m a journalist,” I say. “And the pot was in my bag. Maybe he didn’t like the story I was working on.”
She raises her eyebrows. “You were doing some kind of investigative piece?”
“Yeah,” I say. “On Tirabichi. Trying to figure out why the women there keep suffering stillbirths. One of my sources alleges that companies may have been illegally dumping hazardous waste. I’m still trying to substantiate that.” It’s hot air, mostly, but it sounds better than the investigating-a-dead-prostitute-I-dreamed-about truth.
“Why didn’t you say something before?” Carmen breathes. “I can work with this.” She puts down her wineglass a little too firmly, and some sloshes over the side. “People won’t care about the environmental stuff, but corrupt Mexican government officials trying to silence a member of the press—that could fly. That’s something I can spin.”
