by Brenda Novak
Sophia didn’t recognize the location. Despite growing up so close to the border, she’d spent very little time in Mexico and hadn’t studied it except as it related to basic American history. “That’s a city?”
“A state.”
“Where? Is it far?”
“Sí,” Enrique answered soberly. “It is south, near the ocean.”
The two men at the front table leaned toward each other, talking. They paused every now and then, their eyes shooting imaginary daggers at Sophia. They weren’t happy that she’d found the help she needed. But she ignored them. She’d decide what to do about them later. “How did they get here from so far away?”
“Probably by bus.” He checked with Juan, who agreed. Bus was easy to understand in either language.
Juan’s brother spoke up, and Enrique listened to what he had to say before passing it on. “Miguel, he go to meet them when they arrive.”
“When was that? How long ago?”
There was more conversation between them, and Sophia heard the word cuatro, which made sense when Enrique answered, “Four days. They rest at hotel on Thursday. Friday, they wait for night. And then—”
“Which hotel?” she broke in.
“Hotel California. That way.” He motioned to indicate south.
“And then what?” she asked.
“And then Juan and Miguel, they pick them up at—” there was a rapid burst of Spanish before he finished “—seven-thirty.”
“Just them? Or were there others?”
This question was passed on before it was answered. “Many others. A…” He rubbed his hands together as he again struggled to find the right English word. “A…group. About thirty.”
“That many?” she asked in surprise.
“Sí. Mucho. Is better.”
Sophia could see that there might be some safety in numbers. She also knew that coyotes often sent out smaller groups as decoys to confuse the patrol officers. But if the CBP couldn’t keep groups of thirty from crossing the border, America didn’t have much hope of stopping illegal immigration. “Who else was in this group? Can he give me a list of names?”
The men discussed this but Enrique ultimately shook his head. “No, señorita. Some names, maybe. He take groups two, three times a week, you understand? He no remember every one.”
“He remembered Benita and José.”
“Because she was muy bonita—pretty, eh? And scared. He tried to talk to her, to calm her. And her esposo, her husband, he no like it.”
Okay, so the Sanchezes’ youth, looks and relationship had set them apart, made them memorable. That was encouraging. What else could she get from these men while she had the chance? Because of the language barrier, it wasn’t as if they’d volunteer information. She had to ask for it. “Where did Juan and Miguel take this group? Where did they cross?”
“There is an abandoned cattle rancho. About cinco kilometers from here. They go there to cross, after the fence turns to barbwire.” He walked two fingers across the table to make sure she understood that they went on foot.
Sophia tried to imagine what that day must’ve been like for José and his wife. Leaving their families, their home. Arriving in this dirty town from somewhere deep in Mexico, a place that was bound to be cleaner if not more affluent. Being met by Miguel and shown to a hotel to wait for night. Being taken to a ranch and herded across the border like cattle. Being chased by the CBP.
“If José and Benita left with thirty people, how’d they end up alone?” she asked. “How is it that Juan and Miguel are sitting here alive and well, and this couple is dead?”
“La Migra,” he said simply.
“You’re saying the CBP killed them.”
“No, the…the sensors give them away.”
He was talking about the Virtual Presence and Extended Defense System, technology that could detect pedestrians and vehicles, even differentiate between them.
“Sensors go off, but no one knows, eh? Only agents at the command. They call other agents.” He pretended to be driving, closing in on a target. “Mexicans run.” Making an explosion with his hands, he tried to clarify, and Sophia knew exactly what he meant. She’d heard border patrol agents use the term going quail. The CBP had shown up and everyone had scattered.
But the illegals didn’t always run. Sometimes they were too exhausted. Apparently, this group had been found early enough that they still had the energy to make a break for it.
“And this couple?” she asked. “Did they return to Mexico?”
“No.”
“Did Juan or Miguel see them leave with anyone else?”
He shook his head but checked with his companions to be sure. “He was running himself.”
“What about everyone else? What happened to them?”
Enrique told her that some of the same people who’d been “VPed,” or caught by the new security system and repatriated to Mexico, had crossed the border the very next night without a problem. But he had no idea what’d happened to the others.
“Is there any talk of this on the street? About a particular border patrol agent, for example?”
“Not a particular agent. They’d all like to shoot us.”
“That’s not true.”
“You don’t know what goes on out there,” he said grimly.
She was beginning to learn. And she didn’t like what she heard. Becoming familiar with the unvarnished truth made her uncomfortable because there didn’t seem to be any way to solve the problem and still be sensitive to the needs of Americans and Mexicans alike. “So no one has any idea who’s doing this.”
“None. But it sounds as if you do. It sounds as if you think it’s the CBP.”
“That’s not what I think. I’m just being cautious enough to look at every possibility. If it is a Federal agent, it’s one random officer gone bad, which you can find in any organization.” She certainly didn’t mean to villainize the whole force. She knew too many of the officers, saw how hard they worked to maintain their humanity while fulfilling the requirements of the job.
“You ask me? They’re all bad,” he said. “At least half are the children of Mexicans who snuck across the border a generation ago. How does that make them any better than us?”
“You consider them disloyal.”
“Sí.”
“What about your part in all this?” she asked.
Confusion lined his forehead. “Señorita?”
“You don’t feel guilty—bad—about the people who get hurt because of what you do?”
“I no shoot them,” he said, pressing a hand to his chest.
“You’re encouraging others to break the law. You’re helping them do it, which is putting them in a very dangerous situation. If it wasn’t for Juan and Miguel, José and Benita might not have been killed.”
“Maybe. Or someone else might have taken them across,” he said indifferently. “Maybe me. Es sólo un trabajo.”
If she understood him right, he’d said it was just a job. “Maybe that’s how the Mexican-American border agents feel, too.”
Unconvinced, he smacked the table. “They cannot blame us for helping people do what their parents did twenty, thirty years ago.”
Except that twelve people had been murdered in the past six weeks and these men were still encouraging illegal immigration. But there was no point in arguing. She wasn’t going to change his mind, so she withdrew the money from her pocket and handed it over. “I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree.”
“Gracias.” Enrique eagerly accepted the worn bills and the three of them hurried outside.
Sophia was putting away her pad and pen and digging out the key to her Harley when she realized the cantina owner was waving to get her attention. Speaking in Spanish, he made shooing motions toward the saloon-style door. He was trying to close.
Her eyes gravitated to the front table. It was empty. The man who’d called her a puta and his friend had already been asked to leave.
But they we
ren’t gone. She could see them standing outside, waiting for her.
6
Sophia considered asking the cantina owner to walk her to her bike, but she doubted she could string together enough Spanish to make herself understood. Not only that, she couldn’t think of any reason he might be willing to put his life on the line for some gringo he’d never met before. Maybe she was being ungenerous and her nationality wouldn’t enter into his decision, but she knew it could. Racism cut both ways.
She thought about heading down the dimly lit hallway where a sign promised Los Baños. But even if the restrooms had a window through which she could crawl into a back alley, what good would it do? As soon as the man who’d called her a whore figured out that she’d given him the slip, he’d simply cross over to her bike. He’d seen her drive up, knew where she’d parked. It was only a stone’s throw from where he and his friend were standing.
She couldn’t use her cell phone to call for help. And she didn’t know a soul here in Mexico that she could depend on. She’d already let Enrique and his friends leave without asking them to escort her safely to her Harley. But that wasn’t necessarily a bad decision. As far as she could tell, they were friends with the loser who seemed so bent on harassing her and could just as easily come to his aid if forced to choose sides. No, she preferred to keep the numbers small and manageable. There’d be fewer variables.
Taking her gun from under her pant leg, she held it against and slightly behind her body as she strolled out of the bar. She had no idea whether these guys were armed, but she had to assume the worst. It was too dangerous to do otherwise. Their behavior was aggressive enough to suggest it.
The breath she held burned in her chest as she reached the man who’d been doing his best to make her uncomfortable. He’d stationed himself so that she couldn’t avoid walking past him.
She was prepared when his hand whipped out to grab her left arm. Letting him jerk her around to face him, she brought up her gun, using the momentum of his own action to shove the barrel between his ribs. “Let go or I’ll kill you,” she ground out, teeth clenched.
Fear replaced the menace in his eyes. She’d gotten the drop on him. He hadn’t expected her to be armed.
But, wary as he’d become, he didn’t release her.
Adrenaline poured through her body, which made her feel a little shaky, but she had to sell her “hard chick” performance. His life, and possibly her own, depended on whether or not he bought it. “You have three seconds. I’ll even count en español, comprendes?”
At first, he couldn’t seem to decide how to react. But his friend scrambled away so fast he fell in his hurry to put some distance between them.
“Uno…dos…” She knew she couldn’t pull the trigger, not at this range. Although she’d had to use her firearm twice in the line of duty, she’d never actually killed a man. Unless he did something more than grab her arm, something to prove his intentions were what she feared, her threat was only a bluff. But she had the image she’d created with her bike, her tattoos and the swagger she’d learned from the Hells Angels working to convince him otherwise.
She prayed it would be enough.
Before she could get to three, he muttered what sounded like “fucking loca” and stepped away with his hands up. By this time, his friend had darted around the corner and was no longer in sight.
“That’s it,” she murmured. “Nice and easy. No need to make me nervous.”
“Puta!”
“You used that one already.”
Hatred glittered in his eyes. “You better not ever come back here.”
She smiled. “But this is such a nice place to visit.”
Keeping the gun trained on him, she backed across the street. Then she shoved her Glock into her waistband, where she could grab it again, if necessary, got on her bike and rode away.
Only when she was in line to get out of the country did she pull her shirt down to cover her weapon. And it wasn’t until after she’d crossed the border and was nearly home that she put it back in its holster. Maybe she was safe from the man who’d scared her in Naco, but the area wasn’t as empty as the dark streets implied. Even as she flew down the road, there were coyotes smuggling bands of illegal immigrants into the country—and there was a killer lurking somewhere, waiting to shoot the unsuspecting in cold blood.
Roderick felt like roadkill. Unable to get a flight to Tucson, he’d gone to Phoenix, but it’d been after eleven-thirty when he got in. Then he’d had to wait for his luggage and go through the tedious paperwork involved in renting a car before driving four hours southeast to Bordertown. Other than a fifteen-minute nap on the plane, he’d been up for nearly twenty-four hours.
But, tired though he was, he couldn’t bring himself to pull into the Mother Lode Motel and get a room. The sun wasn’t up yet. Arriving so early gave him a short window of time during which he could drive around unnoticed, familiarize himself with what had changed and reacquaint himself with what hadn’t—all before having to face his father or anyone else he might know from those early days. For an hour or so, he wouldn’t need to don the mask of indifference he’d soon wear, wouldn’t need to pretend that what’d happened here didn’t bother him anymore.
“Welcome home,” he muttered as he passed the drugstore, the family-owned grocery, Serrano’s Western Wear and the Catholic church his mother used to drag him to each Sunday. She’d insisted her younger brother go to church with them, but religion hadn’t been enough to keep Arturo on the right track. Was he even alive?
Roderick stretched the tight muscles in his neck. Maybe, when he was finished in Bordertown, he’d head down to Mexico and look for Arturo.
Then again, it’d been so long, maybe he wouldn’t. Some things were better left alone. He had no idea if the man he’d find would even want to be found.
When he reached the high school, he slowed to a crawl. The buildings had recently been painted; a new addition stuck out from the main hall like an extra appendage. Elmer’s Burrito Stand, the same awful blue color it’d always been, huddled on the corner across the street. Roderick had to marvel at that. For twenty years Elmer had made his living selling burritos out of that little stand. Not many places lasted so long. But not many places served food as good as Elmer’s, either.
In the very center of town, the buildings had the wood-plank sidewalks and overhangs reminiscent of the Old West. In an effort to save itself after the mine closed nearly a century ago, Bordertown had followed Tombstone’s lead in vying for the tourist dollar. But Bordertown didn’t have the O.K. Corral or any other real claim to fame. It had to rely on tours of the old mine, a string of souvenir shops and a few ranches in the surrounding desert that boarded tourists and offered an “authentic Western experience.” Rod was pretty sure the town would’ve died a slow death if not for the artisans who’d moved into one section and made a name for themselves selling turquoise jewelry and western art.
A few of the dumpier buildings downtown had been cleaned up. A chiropractor’s office and a veterinary office had received a face-lift and sported new signs. But a strip mall that’d been new the year he’d left was now weathered and worn-looking, home to a Laundromat, an electronics discounter and a liquor store. What Roderick remembered as an old thrift shop had been taken over by a salon boasting a full set of acrylic nails for forty-five dollars. At the Circle K, where half the high school had loitered late into a Friday or Saturday night, there was litter in the bushes and graffiti on the tan bricks facing the alley. And most of the houses on Center Street, those that hadn’t been turned into businesses, had bars covering the windows and doors.
On the whole, Bordertown wasn’t particularly attractive. It never had been. But there was a nostalgic quality that, for Roderick, coalesced into a combination of homesickness and regret. As he drove through the quiet streets, gazing at the buildings, many of which featured the typical desert landscaping, it felt almost as if his mother was sitting in the car beside him.
He consid
ered going out to the cemetery to visit her grave. Now would be the time, when he could pay his respects in private. But the thought of standing there, looking down at that small mound as he had when he was only sixteen, brought back too much pain. He wouldn’t go. Not yet. Maybe if he avoided the cemetery, he wouldn’t miss her quite so poignantly.
Once he drove to the edge of town, he turned right and continued several miles before making a left and then another right. He was going to the ranch. He wasn’t sure why. He didn’t care what it looked like, didn’t want anything to do with his father or his half brothers, but he was curious.
The arched Dunlap ranch sign came up more quickly than he’d expected. It’d seemed much farther from town when he was young, probably because he had to walk if he wanted to go anywhere.
Paloverde trees lined the drive to the mansion where his half brothers had lived with Edna, Bruce’s wife, who’d prided herself on her taste and cleanliness. His mother could’ve experienced a better life if she’d been allowed to become one of the maids. Edna had several in those days. His father had once promised Carolina the chance to work inside, get out of the terrible heat. But Edna had refused. She couldn’t stand to have Carolina in such close proximity to the Family. Knowing that she’d also had a son by Bruce, Edna had lobbied to have Carolina kicked off the ranch completely.
Fortunately, his father had never gone quite that far. He’d tried to buy her off once, but she’d refused to leave Jorge. So Bruce had let her stay. She’d continued to work in the fields, as long and as hard as any man, and continued to live in one of the little shacks along the periphery of the South Forty. Roderick had worked beside her, trying to do more than his share in order to give her a break. Until that last beating from his half brothers. Then his father had insisted he find work elsewhere to resolve the constant conflict.
That was why he felt so compelled to come here, he realized. As much as he hated his father, this was home, the only home he’d known until his mother had died and some other farm laborer had moved into her shack.
