by Sam Hawken
Inside there were normal sounds, the only real survivor of the drug wars. Telephones rang and there was talking and bursts of laughter. Enrique didn’t like being here anymore. A look out the windows in any direction revealed the city at siege, the city the turistas didn’t see and didn’t care to. When the Gulf Cartel and the gangs and the Sinaloa clashed it was Mexican blood that flowed. In the west, in Baja, tourists were sometimes shot, sometimes kidnapped, but here it was still a domestic war; el Paso del Norte was too valuable to jeopardize.
Enrique climbed the stairs to the second floor. Here was the open bullpen, desks crowded together in clutches of three or four under harsh fluorescent lighting. The air had the smell of men working and coffee and dust.
First he checked his desk. He kept his space neat. His desk calendar was carefully marked with appointments, times and people. The logo of the Policía Municipal bounced around the screen of his computer. A few messages on pink slips of paper were stuffed beneath his keyboard. He could wait to answer those.
Captain Garcia kept an office at the edge of the bullpen, away from Enrique. Normally an assistant would have an adjoining space and enjoy a small part of his master’s cachet, but Garcia kept Enrique among the rest to watch and listen and report. Enrique didn’t tell Garcia most of what he heard about the man they called La Bestia.
Thinking of Garcia made Enrique glance toward the man’s workspace. The blinds on the office windows were open, the desk was empty. Garcia had a computer he rarely used for anything except playing games and wandering the internet. His filing cabinets were empty. His messages were routed through Enrique and he hadn’t bothered setting up his own voice mail. There was no need for any of these things because La Bestia was not an investigator. La Bestia enforced.
He left the bullpen. A few men said hello, but most kept clear of him. This was the only benefit of being close to Garcia.
In the basement the ceilings were lower and the cool air drier. Exposed veins of wire and pipe snaked along the walls and overhead. Occasionally an air compressor roared and pumped cool to some section of the great structure. It was not like being in the heart of the building, but in its guts.
Evidence stood behind a barricade of mesh steel. No soldier stood guard here. Two women in uniform kept watch over ten interconnected rooms of metal shelving installed floor to ceiling in tight rows. Los Tigres del Norte played quietly on a radio, the accordion jumping through “La Puerta Negra.” The heavy-framed metal door was secured with two locks. An opening above the check-counter was no more than two feet wide.
“Buenas tardes,” Enrique told one of the women. One was young, the other old. It was always women down here, away from the sun and blood and gunshots of the street. In America women worked the streets alongside the men. Not so here.
“Buenas tardes,” the old woman replied. She came to the counter.
“I need something,” Enrique said. He filled out a slip and passed it through the barrier. “For Captain Garcia. I don’t know the item number, but this is the case. It’s a red notebook. It should be the only thing like it.”
The old woman examined the paper. Her face was expressionless. “All right,” she said at last, and passed it to the young woman. “It will be a few minutes.”
“I can wait,” Enrique said.
They had no words for each other. Enrique caught himself pacing in the open space beneath a hanging rack of exposed fluorescent bulbs and stopped. On the radio the Tigres gave way to Conjunto Primavera and the Chihuahuense band accompanying Tony Meléndez while he sang about his first time in love. Enrique did not care for norteño and never had.
When the young woman returned she had the red notebook in a marked plastic bag. Somewhere nearby a fan kicked into motion and clattered loudly enough to drown out the radio. Enrique signed Garcia’s name in the log. He had to speak up to be heard. “Gracias, señoras.”
He felt the women watching him as he went. He resisted clutching the bag to his chest and looking back. At the stairs he put the notebook inside his jacket. It was too large to fit into a pocket, but it lay against his body. His shirt was damp with perspiration.
At the lobby he peered out of the stairwell before emerging. The building was quietening. Men were out to lunch, gone home or to a local gathering place where policemen could take the comida corrida with other policemen and a soldier at the door for safety. The shuttle van back to the parking lot came every fifteen minutes. Enrique checked his watch.
He didn’t want to wait out in the sun, but huddling in the stairwell was no good, either. He crossed the lobby and went into the men’s room, found a stall and sat down on the toilet without pulling down his pants. It was shadowed in the stall. The notebook felt like a secret thing when he brought it out, stripped it free of the plastic bag and dipped inside.
The cuaderno was a cheap, spiral-bound thing with a battered cover. Shredded-edged worms of paper crowded the spiral binding from pages torn out and discarded. The first half was names and addresses and telephone numbers, none of which Enrique recognized. A thin divider of brown paper marked the section the American used for his appointments.
Kelly Courter had a child’s kind of writing with big loops and letters that were not always the same size or shape. He wrote in English, but Enrique knew the language well enough to interpret this word or that. In the final third of the notebook he found a letter to the victim, half written, and dated more than a month before the crime. He saw no hatred there or the kind of anger that would leave a violated corpse half burned in a fallow field.
Enrique checked his watch. He had five more minutes to wait.
He paged through the notebook again. Paper stuck to his fingers and he realized his hands sweated despite the air-conditioned cool. He imagined Captain Garcia bulling into the restroom, cracking the stall open with a single blow. Enrique would be trapped between flimsy metal walls and the beating would come. He had seen many of these.
Now his hands trembled and that was enough. Enrique stuffed the plastic bag in his pants pocket and secreted the notebook into his jacket again. He stood and flushed the toilet automatically. Doing so made him feel stupid. He unlocked the stall and peeked out, but no one had come into the restroom behind him.
The van pulled up at the same time Enrique left the building. He and a half-dozen other cops piled into three rows of bench seats. “Turn up the air,” said one. Another agreed. The driver complied, but the fresh cool escaped from the open passenger window around the barrel of their guardian’s rifle.
The man beside Enrique nudged him. “I know you: aren’t you Garcia’s boy?”
Enrique didn’t recognize the man. He was heavyset, older and maybe his face might be familiar, but not now. Enrique nodded. “I’m assigned to him, yes.”
“La Bestia,” said the first cop who spoke. “Fuck.”
“You don’t look stupid enough to be his apprentice,” said another.
“That’s true,” said the older cop. His eye appraised and Enrique turned away to look out the window. “You seem more like the kind to crack a book instead of a head.”
The other cops laughed. The van moved. Enrique watched the entrance as they turned around in the street and doubled back. Garcia did not emerge from the smoked-glass doors. The soldiers didn’t even watch them go; their attention was elsewhere.
The policemen kept talking heedless of Enrique’s silence. “You know,” said one, “La Bestia is so stupid, he tried to drown a fish.”
“Do they have you read his assignments to him?” the older cop asked Enrique. “Or do they give him reports with pictures on them?”
Enrique shook his head. The notebook clung to the material of his shirt. He was sweating again.
“At least he can break those narco bastards,” said the first cop. The laughter stilled and there was assent all around. “If stupid is what it takes, then so be it.”
The older cop grunted. He nudged Enrique. “Don’t take the joking too hard, amigo. Everyone is just jealo
us. They made the book for us, not for Garcia. We should all have such a free hand.”
“It’s all right,” Enrique managed. He saw the parking lot ahead, the high fences and the curling masses of barbed wire shining in the sun. A drop of perspiration dripped into his eye. It burned and he wiped at it with his cuff.
“I heard he made a woman-killer confess,” said the older cop.
“Yes,” Enrique lied. He wanted to get out of the van even though it was in motion. The roof seemed too low, the doors pushed inward too far. He wished he was closer to the soldier and the open window.
“Good, good. We can joke, but he’s done a good thing. Feminicidios.”
“You can tell him the jokes if you want,” said one of the policemen. “He won’t get them anyway.”
The men laughed, but the humor was faded. Enrique made a weak smile. He was glad when the van stopped and he could step out onto the hot asphalt and get away from them. The older cop said goodbye, but Enrique moved away without saying anything. He felt breathless, the notebook pressing until he couldn’t draw in enough air. Inside his car he ripped the notebook out of his jacket and cast it onto the passenger seat. He put his hands on the hot metal of the roof and ignored the pain. He sucked in great lungfuls of air and the edges of his vision glowed with heat and hyperventilation.
When the moment passed, he got into his car and turned over the engine. He fastened his seatbelt and cinched it tightly. He closed his eyes until the glowing faded. He opened them again. His hands were on the wheel, the air conditioner humming while the engine idled. When he looked left and when he looked right he expected to see Garcia there, but he was alone.
EIGHT
THEY MET AT THE BACK DOOR OF Sevilla’s home well after sundown. Sevilla knew he smelled of whisky, but there was nothing to be done about it. Enrique didn’t seem to notice, or at least he pretended he didn’t.
“Come in,” Sevilla said. “Did you close the gate?”
“Yes.”
“Good. If you don’t close the back gate, dogs get into the yard and shit all over.”
Sevilla offered Enrique something cool to drink and they went through the motions of a normal visit. Enrique’s jacket went on a hook by the door and he sat on the couch with his back resting on the quilt Liliana made the first year she and Sevilla were married. Sevilla took the chair. His notepad was on the endtable.
“May I?” Sevilla asked, and he took the cuaderno from Enrique.
“It’s yours,” Enrique said.
They sat in silence while Sevilla checked each page against his notepad. The process was long. Sevilla felt Enrique’s eyes flicking here and there around the room, sensed his anxiety from the way he crossed and uncrossed his legs.
When he was done, Sevilla closed the notebook. He put it on the couch beside Enrique. “How long is it until you go back to work?”
“Tomorrow,” Enrique said.
“You can get the notebook back then?”
“Of course.”
“And then there’s more,” Sevilla said. He saw darkness pass Enrique’s face. “I need you to check on Estéban. He’s in the system, moving around. Even Señora Quintero doesn’t know where he is, or she pretends not to. We need him in one place where he can be checked on.”
Enrique shook his head. “I don’t have that kind of authority. If I interfere with his transport, word will get back to Captain Garcia. He’ll ask questions I can’t answer.”
“Then at least find out where they put him,” Sevilla insisted. He lapsed back in the chair and pushed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. The whisky did not quiet his nerves like it was meant to. He felt tired, but not calm enough to sleep. He had a headache. “He’s the last one who can still talk.”
“Why don’t you do something?”
“I’m not involved anymore,” Sevilla replied. “La Bestia doesn’t need me anymore. It was Kelly who knew me, Kelly who might have listened.”
Silence fell over the living room. The ticking of a clock by the window was the only sound. Even the street outside the front window, past the bars and containing wall, was quiet.
“You have a nice home,” Enrique said after a long time. “Where is Señora Sevilla?”
Sevilla uncovered his eyes. His vision was blurred. He blinked once, twice and again until it passed. The room was clean and ordered just so. The neatness of it made his heart ache. Perhaps it didn’t show on his face. “My wife passed away,” he said simply. “It’s been two years now.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Thank you. This house was hers to keep, to decorate… everything here is hers. I was barely here enough to make it mine. That quilt, that clock… all hers.”
“You have children?”
The headache stabbed at Sevilla. Another drink would take the point off the dagger, but he would not drink in the house nor drink in front of Enrique. He got up instead and went to the window. Outside it was blackness. If he turned off the lights and sat in the dark, orange-white light would filter in from the street, his eyes would grow used to it and it would be like a new room revealed to him in shadows.
“My daughter is also passed away,” Sevilla replied.
“How did it happen?”
“Make a few calls,” Sevilla said too sharply. “Don’t ask after Estéban right away or you’ll make Garcia suspicious. He’s stupid, but he’s not that stupid.”
“If he does ask, I’ll say I’m making up a report for Señora Quintero,” Enrique said. “There’s one due. I don’t have to mention you at all, or anything else. He relies on me.”
Sevilla turned from the window. There was a time he would not have stood with his back to the night, but he didn’t consider such things much anymore. Talking put strength back into his voice and thinking pushed the headache back. “What do you get from him?”
“I’m sorry?”
“He relies on you. He’s stupid and he’s cruel. He needs someone like you. What do you need from him?”
Enrique looked away. Another silence descended. “They promised me a promotion,” he said finally. “Two years with him would be like five in the rotation. There’s extra pay.”
“The Devil always pays well,” Sevilla said.
He went to the kitchen and found orange juice in the refrigerator. He poured himself a tall glass. He let the drink sweat against his fingers before he drank. The juice was gone in three swallows. Cold spread through his sinuses and for a moment he felt no pain from the drink at all.
“If you had questions about me, the notebook should have answered them,” Enrique said. He stood in the doorway as if he might flee at a harsh word. Sevilla felt a sudden urge to hurl his glass at the young cop, but it was not Enrique he was angry with. “I told you about the American. I gave that to you.”
Sevilla rinsed his glass in the sink. He let hot water run over his hands and he wrung his fingers. “It’s hard to trust,” he said.
“What more can I do for you?” Enrique asked. “The American is guilty. Salazar is guilty. Anyone will tell you that. You and I are the only ones to say no. And what for? If it’s right then it’s right, but we won’t be rewarded.”
“Are you so sure about that?”
“Yes.”
Sevilla looked at Enrique again. He saw Garcia’s hardness hinted at there, the hardness of a stone worn by the wind. He didn’t expect it to show so early.
“I followed a lead today and found out someone has been looking for witnesses and telling lies at the same time. If they spread enough hearsay it will become the truth; people won’t remember if what they say is fact or fiction.”
“Then we’ll show them. Isn’t that what you intended?”
“Let’s sit down again.”
They returned to the living room. This time Enrique stood while Sevilla sat.
“There are names in Kelly’s notebook. I’ll go to them. I’ll ask the questions that need to be asked. When I need you, I’ll call on you, but go back to your life. These are… confusing
times. Maybe nothing we do will make a difference. The wheels are already turning.”
“That’s not what you said before. You said this mattered.”
“Of course it matters!” Sevilla shot back. “But there’s a difference between knowing it and doing something about it. My fire, it comes and goes. In the daylight it all seems so easy, but here in the night I’m not so certain of myself.”
“Who will you talk to?” Enrique asked.
“There’s a girl who spent much time with Paloma Salazar. They’re looking for her. Not La Bestia, but someone like him. She’s a woman and she’s poor. They’ll find some way to push her that doesn’t involve truncheons. Maybe I’ll be able to push back. Maybe it’s already too late.”
“I don’t understand you.”
“I’m drunk!” Sevilla exclaimed. “I’m old and drunk and this—” he took up the red notebook and shook it angrily “— this isn’t enough! I thought it would have some breakthrough in it that I could use against what I found today, but it’s bullshit! The same bullshit it always was. Goddammit, Kelly.”
“How much do you drink?” Enrique asked.
“Too much. Not enough.”
Enrique paced. “What the hell am I doing here? Give me the notebook.”
Sevilla surrendered it without protest. His face was burning.
“You lectured me about duty and responsibility and now you can’t even keep away from a drink? What if Garcia saw me with this notebook today? What kind of excuse could I give? Or should I have just sent him to you?”
When Sevilla put his hands to his eyes again, they were wet. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have—”
“No, you shouldn’t have,” Enrique agreed.
“I’m not so impressive here, I suppose.”
“No, you’re not.”
“I’m sorry.”
Enrique sat heavily on the couch and disturbed the quilt. Sevilla wanted to reach out and smooth the wrinkles, but he stayed where he was. “You should be sorry, but there’s no time for that now. We are in it. The decision is made.”
The clock ticked a hundred times before Sevilla spoke again. “We are in it,” he said. “And we’ll be in it until we have answers. That’s what we agreed to.”
