City of the Sun fb-1

by David Levien

  “Something wrong ’ s going on down there.”

  “Yep,” Behr breathed. Cold descended on them and they stiffened on the hard, dusty ground, where they lay.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  Don Ramon Ponceterra lay next to his wife in the large hand-carved wooden bed that had been in his family for generations. Though the air was cool, the bed was soft, and he felt the comfort of all of his ancestors who had rested in it before him, sleep was far off. He thought of his father, the stern presence who had shaped his life, in large part in this very bed. There were nights when his mother had left the finca and gone into the city, and Seсor Ponceterra had called young Ramon into the darkened room. There are many things you must understand, mijo, in order to become a man, he would say, his rough hands grabbing at the boy ’ s nightshirt. But Ponceterra had become a man and built his world around him as all men must do.

  He had received a few more reports and checked with his sources in town earlier that evening. They had made inquiries at the various brothels and learned that, indeed, two gueros a bit unlike the rest had been seen. They had spent money and previewed but hadn ’ t partaken, not that he ’ d learned so far, anyway. This was not unheard-of, but it was not usual, and now it concerned him. He ’ d learned that they ’ d spread cash around, had also paid cash at the motel, and though they seemed to have left, he didn ’ t take for granted that they actually had. Other than that, there was no real information to be gained. Only that they had been seen in the company of a young local named Victor Colon. He ’ d asked Esteban to try to find Victor, to see if he had anything to volunteer on the subject. Esteban had not yet turned up this Victor. But he would. He always did. He had never let Ponceterra down. This thought eased his mind. He listened to his wife ’ s steady, ignorant breathing and finally the hold of the day relaxed, and he began his own drift toward the territory of sleep.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  The night was half spent when Behr spoke.

  “We have a couple of choices here, and I’ve got to set them out for you.”

  “Okay.”

  “We can drive back and notify the U.S. government, see what they say. Plain and simple, this is the high-percentage play and I ’ m honor-bound to advance it.”

  “Uh-huh,” Paul said, but he was concerned about the time it might take to involve U.S. authorities. He felt that leaving their spot, even breaking his gaze, would cause the compound to disappear like a mirage, and he was afraid to risk that.

  “We could go back to town and call the Mexican police,” Behr went on, “but we don ’ t know for sure what the fuck is going on down there. We ’ ve seen some remains in a different location. And we don ’ t even know whose. It ’ s clear people are paid off left, right, and center out here. If they get word about us, they ’ ll arrest us or kill us, or move or kill everybody in that place and burn it to the ground.” This hung in the dark air for a moment as the light around them turned from purple to gray with the morning ’ s approach. “It might be time to pull back and hire some help,” Behr finally continued.

  “Other detectives?”

  “PIs, private security. I’ve got contacts, but again it ’ d take time.”

  “And I ’ m out of money.”

  They kept looking.

  “Or?” Paul said.

  Behr couldn ’ t bring himself to answer for a long time. In his mind was the notion of the great mistake. One in a lifetime was enough to ruin a man and he seemed to be trading in them. His first had destroyed his son, the second his career. There had been others, and this last one upon which he was on the precipice would likely kill his client and himself. But as he looked down on the compound he realized that unspeakable things happened inside it, that he ’ d been living in an unspeakable world since he ’ d started on the case and he was unable to go one more day without changing that.

  “We can go in and try to find out for ourselves,” Behr said. “We ’ ve confirmed four guards. Dogs. The place can only be reached by crossing an open expanse. We ’ d have to drive straight in. I could try and do it alone, but it ’ d be senseless.”

  He fell silent.

  Paul was unable to answer. A wave of panic broke over him, causing him to sweat and chill at the same time. Fear of what might happen down there, that he wouldn ’ t make it back, and that Behr himself was afraid, hit hard against his lower abdomen. Paul flipped over onto his back looking for air, sucking in great gulps of the cold stuff, as if his goal were to swallow the night sky. He flashed on the last breakfast at home, and on his last night with Carol, and the hope it gave him for his return, whether with answers or without.

  Paul felt Behr looking at him, but the detective didn ’ t say anything and eventually turned his gaze back down to what was in front of them. Paul didn ’ t belong out here in the desert. Nothing in his life had prepared him for what he was contemplating. He had once thought of his existence as a neat package. Then he had watched that package explode. He knew now that life was never the tidy thing he had imagined it to be, that he had just seen it that way. He had come to learn that the horrible could happen, and when it did, there were things more horrible still that could occur. But when the power that ran the universe, whatever it was, had decided to lay him low, it had reached out and touched him, it had singled him out and had become intimate with him. He understood then that even if his existence had become warped and misshapen, it was life nonetheless, and it was worth everything. He knew now that anything was possible. Maybe he ’ d even survive.

  “We need to tell the FBI, you ’ re right about that,” Paul said, his words floating away into the darkness. “But after. If that was my son out there rotting in the desert, then I can ’ t leave this spot until I know. I ’ ve got to go in there, Frank. I ’ ve got to. But I won ’ t ask you to. I can ’ t do that.”

  “We ’ ll do it together,” Behr said without pause. “You stay here and watch. I ’ d better go work on that password.” He pulled himself to his feet.

  Sometime just after three the floodlights in the compound went out and the whole bowl below Paul was cast into darkness, thick and absolute. Moments later the generator cut off, and silence joined the dark in a chorus of isolation for Paul on top of the bleak hill. He had no concept of where he was. He would have no idea how to even locate himself on a map. His only tether to civilization, to his life, was Behr, and there was no guarantee of his return. He felt his heart beat into the hard ground beneath him, scarce evidence of his own existence. Fear, as he had once known it, no longer existed. He had passed beyond such an earthbound condition. He was eye-to-eye with his oblivion now. Only a sense of logic, feeble and habitual, suggested that the morning would even come.

  Behr looked out the windshield, thick with dirt, as girls in groups of two and three left the hybrid adobe-trailer building. Nearly a dozen in all, they made their way to a battered pickup that quickly drove off. Another few walked down the road into the night, perhaps to a bus stop, he considered. Lights went off from one end of the building to another, until only one remained on. Where the kitchen would be, Behr thought, based on most of the double-wides he ’ d been in. The screen door opened, and the woman, older than the others, small and slight, exited smoking a cigarette. That was when Behr got out of his car.

  The woman was the one he had heard Victor call Marta. The one he had heard mention the rancho de los caballitos. She was frightened as he stepped out of the darkness into the trailer ’ s weak ring of light, but she hid it quickly and well.

  “Buenas,” he said.

  “We are closed, eh. Cerrado. Girls gone home.” If she remembered him from his last visit, she was trying to keep it from him. But he knew she knew. There was a flinty intelligence in her black eyes. It had made an impression on him during his last visit, and it gave him hope for coming back now.

  “I ’ m not here for that, Marta.”

  “No hablo — ”

  “Yes, you do.”

  “It ’ s late. I go to bed.”

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p; “Wait. Finish your cigarette.” She stared up at him with malice. He supposed in that moment that he was every man that had made her a commodity in her day and currently did so to all the girls in her charge.

  “What you want?”

  “I need the password to enter the rancho, ” he said. Now she glared at him outright. He saw genuine fear behind the expression she was trying to mask with the anger.

  “They look for you,” she said. “They gon ’ kill you.”

  “Who?”

  She made a tsk sound with her teeth that told him she would probably die before telling him that.

  “Then give me the password.”

  “No.”

  A moment of quiet passed.

  “Come inside,” she offered.

  “No thanks,” Behr said. She was five feet tall, but Behr was reluctant to share a space with her where she undoubtedly had a weapon.

  “It won ’ t come back on you,” he went on. “Others must know it. Plenty of others.”

  “Go ask them,” she said.

  “I ’ m asking you.”

  “Nothing here is for free. You know?”

  “I know.” Behr dug the ground with the ball of his foot. “I have very little money to pay you, and I don ’ t guess you take credit cards.”

  She squared up with him for the negotiation. He looked at her. She flicked her cigarette away and crossed her arms. Her hard eyes shone back at him, black and cold as the night.

  THIRTY-NINE

  When the darkness goes away, along with the cold of the night, and all is thick with heat and quiet, like now, he dreams of touching his mother ’ s face. He isn ’ t sure how old he is anymore. A long time has passed. His birthday has as well. At least one, he is sure. But he remembers her face well. The soft, thin skin of her cheeks…the slight circles under her eyes…of pressing on her full lips with his fingertips…of knocking his forehead against hers as he did when he was a child, the code for their love when he felt he had grown too old to speak it. It is a dream of peace out of reach. The dream visits him almost every time he sleeps. It haunts him, and drives him to try to run. Even though he doesn ’ t know where he is — only that he thinks it may be called Cuando Tiempo, for those are the words he hears most often. And even though he doesn ’ t know how far, he knows it is a great distance from anyplace else. They have taken his shoes. It is their practice to do this. He has been left alone for a long time, but he feels that something is about to change. His visits from the guards are more frequent now, their checks on his condition more focused. They had given him more food for a time, the occasional Coca-Cola, but not so much recently. He looks out the window and sees the cactus just outside. Low, flat plants with clusters of spines that shine in the sun lay around the building in every direction as far as he can see. He has seen others from time to time. And then not for a while and he knows they are dead. Like the one who was inside the van ’ s well with him, cloth sacks over their heads. Chris Something. The other had said a last name, but he can no longer remember it. He only recalls the moment when he knew Chris Something had died, lying heavy on top of him, the smell building up in the small space as the van drove.

  FORTY

  Paul must have fallen asleep because when he lifted his head the pink of morning was in the sky and Behr ’ s boots filled his eyes. He glanced up to see Behr crouched below the ridgeline, peering down on the compound.

  “You get the password?” Paul asked.

  “I got it,” Behr answered.

  The brief fresh cool of morning burned off minute by minute, and by the time it was ten o ’ clock, the sun was high and striking down on them like molten lava.

  “We don ’ t know what to expect during daylight hours,” Behr had said. “The high-percentage play would be to do it late night, when we know the routine. But I sure don ’ t feel good about going in there when it ’ s dark. Do you? We ’ ll keep on with the recon, go around dusk.”

  Paul nodded.

  “We go in there, there ’ s no guarantee of our safety. If it comes to it, can you shoot?” Behr asked.

  “Yes,” Paul answered. They said no more.

  They retired back to the car in shifts for shade and water but didn ’ t want to risk the sound of running the engine for air-conditioning, so if anything the car was even hotter than the outside air. The water, too, was warm and oily and tasted of plastic, but they drank it because they knew they needed it. By noon they ’ d eaten the last of the beef jerky and the other snacks they ’ d bought at gas stations on their way. Sweat rolled down their faces and stung their eyes, and even though they covered their heads and arms with extra shirts, they felt their skin burning. Their eyeballs ached and their heads were splitting, and while several men had left early in the day, and for a time only the Bronco was parked below them, they had yet to see any further sign of what went on inside. Later on, well after noon, a pickup with a canvas over a payload entered, but it pulled in behind one of the buildings out of their sight.

  Don Ramon Ponceterra took great care in dressing, as he always did, although he was moving more quickly than usual. This day was unusual in the extreme, but he was loath to abandon his habits. He had gotten the phone call from Esteban that Victor Colon had been located and that surely there would be something learned within an hour or two. Don Ramon had said that he would meet them out at the rancho. Then he set about choosing a white linen shirt, cream-colored trousers, fine socks, and light tan suede shoes. Lastly, he tied a short silk scarf around his throat, for though he wore a sturdy twill shooting jacket, he always made allowances, regardless of his dress, for at least one piece of silk against his skin. As Plato taught, “all physical objects are mere shadows of their ideal forms.” Except for silk. Silk was the apotheosis of fabric, in Ponceterra ’ s considered opinion.

  A light coating of Bay Rum on his smooth cheeks, the citrus scent pleasantly piquant in his nostrils, and he was ready. He went outside to where his Cadillac Eldorado had been pulled around. He ’ d be driving himself today. It was not something he liked to do, but there was good reason for it, as Esteban was otherwise occupied. He got into the well-kept car, the interior cool enough from being parked inside the carriage house that he needed only to keep the fan turned low. He pulled out of his property and made his way to the ruta.

  There had been screams. They began after lunch and seem to go on and on. They belong to a grown man, not a boy, though at times they resemble those of an animal. Something is happening. Something different. There has been a sense of waiting. It has gone on for so long it has given way to deadness. He dreads the visits from the Fancy Man. Though the man never touches him beyond a pat on the leg, the back, a hand on the cheek, there is a feeling that something is coming, and not knowing what is the worst thing he ’ s ever tasted. The Fancy Man wears suits that smell like mothballs underneath the odor of flowery aftershave.

  There is a lull in the screaming and he hears the sound of a car arriving. This is strange, it being so early, and also because a small truck has arrived already and has pulled around the far side of the building, where he cannot see it. Now he goes and peers out from behind the vinyl shade that covers the small window, too small for him to slip through. He glances down and sees the cacti they had forced him to plant. “Since we can ’ t make you ‘ work, ’ ” they said, “you will work.” He had dug and planted for endless hot days, the spiny needles tearing at his flesh, as he secured his own prison. Now he sees the car enter the compound — it is the Fancy Man. He stands, looks a last time out the window at the arrival, and then crosses to the cinder block to finish his sharpening…

  Paul had been staring through the binoculars for much of the day, the rubber cups on the eyepieces cutting into his face, when he finally saw it. A car, an older Cadillac, was approaching, and he ’ d just looked away from it when he saw a figure flash by a window. The person ’ s coloring stood out from the dark-skinned, dark-haired background that Mexico had come to be in his mind ’ s eye. The familiar rose u
p through all improbability and grabbed him by the throat. He knew what he ’ d seen. Before he realized it, he had climbed to one knee and was in the process of starting to run straight down the hill. Behr ’ s hand shot out, gripped Paul ’ s calf, and yanked him back down on his belly in the dust.

  “You have heat stroke?” Behr asked.

  “Frank,” Paul gasped. He felt Behr looking at him, saw with his peripheral vision that Behr ’ s hand was extended for the field glasses.

  “What is it?”

  “He ’ s there — ”

  “What?”

  “He’s there. Jamie.”

  FORTY-ONE

  Ponceterra’s Eldorado moved through the gate in a dust cloud of its own making. Paco had swung the gate back into place behind him by the time he ’ d gotten out of his car. Ponceterra regarded the air of the compound. Is something different today? he wondered.

  “Buenas tardes, patrуn,” Paco said.

  Ponceterra ignored him and moved toward the main house, his mind occupied with two things: whether or not Esteban had been successful and the rubio. He had been limiting his visits, staying away so as not to push him too hard, but considered if he should look in on him today. Perhaps all the waiting and careful cajoling would finally cause the boy to yield. And then he thought of Esteban ’ s project: the gueros. Were they merely new customers or could they be trouble? His people were armed with meticulous instructions for avoiding the wrong kinds of clients. And they knew the punishment for failing to follow said instructions was utterly severe.