by Sam Hawken
“Who will you talk to? Who is this woman who knew Paloma Salazar?”
Sevilla sat back in the chair and gripped the armrests. The action steadied him. He did not have a headache anymore. “You know of Mujeres Sin Voces?”
“The women in black. I’ve seen them.”
“Paloma was one of them. This woman, Ella Arellano, she is also one of them. I knew them both. From before.”
“What? How?”
Sevilla took a deep breath. “Because my daughter is missing.”
NINE
THE HEADACHE OF THE NIGHT WAS gone, but the headache of the new day pounded against the back of Sevilla’s eyes and made him wish for a long sleep. He hid bloodshot whites behind sunglasses and drank water from a plastic bottle whenever his mouth suggested even a hint of going dry.
He parked a hundred yards from the colonia’s bus stop and watched the young women come and go in the unfettered sun. Some of the buses were from the city, but most came from the maquiladoras themselves. Once upon a time Ana Sevilla rode a bus like those, the lights doused before dawn or after sunset to save that little bit of power for the owners of the plants.
The regularity of them was hypnotizing, and Sevilla could have let the whole day pass with their comings and goings. Once he saw a black pick-up truck patrol along the unpaved road with two men in the king cab. They passed close to Sevilla’s car and were gone.
Sevilla watched for Ella Arellano among the women and the buses but she did not appear. He would have to go in.
In his time Sevilla had seen worse colonias, some so close to the maquilas that one could throw a stone from one to the other if there wasn’t a wall in the way. He had once been in a colonia in Baja built right along the tall hurricane fence that separated Mexico from the United States. The people there looked out their hand-cut windows at the land of opportunity.
Sevilla did not like the colonias: their closeness, their smells and the suspicious faces. As a uniformed policeman he knew officers who had been beaten or stabbed patrolling the colonias or collecting statements for some crime or the other. Not all were like those, but they were close enough and Sevilla stayed away.
His car was unmarked and he didn’t display his badge, but the people of the colonia knew Sevilla for a policeman. Word of him would spread from one side to the other within minutes. The close little half-streets cleared and children wouldn’t play where he stepped.
He knew without looking inside that Ella’s home was empty. The rough-hewn door stood open and the shadows within were still. A spider had already drawn a line of silk between the handle and the jamb.
Sevilla went inside anyway. Nothing was left but the swept dirt floor. A few stray nails carried wisps of paper from pictures torn down. The legs of a table left depressions in the ground that time would fill and fade until even these were gone.
“Mierda.”
Lingering did nothing. He found no hidden message or even a hint of where or when the exodus occurred. Sevilla licked his lips, found them dry and drank more water.
The girl waited outside, half shaded by the close roofs of the houses to either side. She was perhaps five years old and small for her age. The print dress she wore had the delicate look of much-used hand-me-downs. She had a smudge of dirt on one cheek and a beauty mark on the other. One day she would be lovely.
Sevilla looked at the girl without speaking. She didn’t flee on bare feet into the maze of the colonia. She had old eyes.
“Hola,” Sevilla said at last.
The girl raised her hand.
“Did you know the woman who lived here? Señorita Arellano?”
The girl moved one foot and Sevilla thought she might take to her heels, but she remained. She nodded.
“Do you know when she left?”
The girl shook her head. “Adiós, señor,” she said in a voice as high as Christmas bells. She turned and vanished without leaving a footprint to follow. Sevilla exhaled as though he had just watched a deer bolt into the trees.
TEN
THAT NIGHT HE DID NOT DRINK. He cooked pork for himself for dinner and sat alone at the kitchen table to take the meal. He had only water with lemon to wash down his food.
He was not in the mood for television or reading or music and so he sat alone in Ana’s room with the picture from Parque Central in his lap as silent tears coursed down his cheeks. The drink would make the long hours better, or at least shorter, and he would tranquilize himself to sleep knowing that he could do the same again tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow until there were no more tomorrows to avoid.
“Where are you?” he asked Ana and Ofelia. His wife once said that God would answer if only the question came enough times, but even she grew tired of asking. Only Ella and Paloma and the women of Mujeres Sin Voces never tired. Justicia para Ana. Justicia para Ofelia. Where are you? Where are you?
For the first time in a long while Sevilla lay down on his daughter’s bed. He cradled the photograph to him because he didn’t have to look at it to know every color, every shape. He heard his wife humming a lullabye and then recognized his own voice carrying the tune.
Mira la luna
Comiendo su tuna;
Echando las cáscaras
En la laguna.
And then he slept.
ELEVEN
SEVILLA CALLED THE HOSPITAL EACH morning and asked after Kelly. The nurses told him the same thing each time. Kelly slept and didn’t wake. His heart still beat. He was not ready to die.
He avoided going to the office for more than a few minutes at a time. The security around state institutions was more impenetrable than the city’s and the feeling of being trapped inside an armed camp was too much for him to bear. He did his work by telephone and promised written reports he would put in the mail when he had something new to say.
This latitude he was allowed because Sevilla came from a time before the black-clad army of federal police and the barbed wire and the ramparts of concrete and steel. His Juárez was a place of marijuana runners and petty theft and turistas coming south of the border to score a gram of something that would make the world go away for a little while. There was no place for Sevilla anymore, but still he remained. The young ones could chase the bad men with AK-47s and rocket launchers.
Enrique didn’t call on him and left no messages. This was the way it should be.
On that morning Sevilla found the boxing gym on the third try. He did not know this corner of the city, had never had business there, and the streets were unfamiliar. He parked too far away and didn’t know it so that he walked three blocks before he saw the place. The door was open against the gathering heat of the day, a fan on a stand turned outward to wick away the warmth inside.
Sevilla had never taken up gloves and boxed, though his brother had for a few years during his school days. Urvano’s gym had the look and smell Sevilla remembered, riding his bicycle to be sure his brother left in enough time to sit for dinner with the family, waiting ringside as pugnacious old men with permanently broken noses and deformed ears showed Humberto the finer points of an art already dying.
Urvano was old, but not as old as Sevilla. When Sevilla saw the man, he imagined Humberto perched on the long-legged chair surveying his own domain. The man looked at Sevilla and half-raised a hand in greeting. Sevilla knew then Urvano was an honest man, because only honest men greeted a policeman so free of worry.
He displayed his identification. “Sevilla,” he said.
“If you’re looking for drugs, you won’t find any here,” Urvano said by way of a reply. “I don’t allow that kind of thing here. Anyone with drugs has to leave and they can’t come back.”
“That’s good,” Sevilla said. Two men ghosted each other in the ring. Another practiced his body movements with the heavy bag. Punch, punch and weave. Punch, punch and weave. His head was always in motion. It was quieter here than Sevilla expected. “Drugs are no good for anyone.”
“You can search the lockers if you want,” Urvano sa
id.
“There’s no need. I wouldn’t find anything.”
“That’s right.”
“You can still help me,” Sevilla said. “There was a man who trained here, I found a record of his payments. He was an American. Kelly Courter. You remember him.”
The old man nodded. He smiled to himself a little, crookedly because the nerves on the left side of his face were damaged. His eye drooped as well. “Of course I remember him. He was my only white boy.”
“I can’t imagine too many would come here.”
“Why is that? You see something here that’s no good?” Urvano demanded.
“No, no, it’s not that. It’s just that gringos want rock music and air conditioning and running machines — you know, treadmills — to make them happy. This is too simple for them.”
Urvano shrugged, but he shifted in his chair so he could regard Sevilla more directly. He was not punch-drunk and his eye was sharp. Sevilla imagined that eye assessing Kelly. “That’s why there are no good white boy fighters,” Urvano said finally. “A fighter isn’t comfortable.”
“My brother was a fighter,” Sevilla said. “He fought three years. He had promise.”
“What happened?”
“Our father wanted him to go to university, learn to be a doctor or a lawyer. Anything where he didn’t have to work with his hands. You see, our father worked with his hands all his life. He was a carpenter. He didn’t want that for us.”
“What did he become?” Urvano asked.
“A pediatrician. And then he moved to Arizona in the United States.”
“And you became a cop.”
Sevilla shrugged. “I don’t work with my hands.”
Urvano smiled enough to show teeth and laughed drily. He offered his hand and Sevilla shook it. The old man pointed toward the ring. “Those two are the best ones I have, but don’t tell them or they will get big heads. Jorge has heavy hands, but he still needs to keep them up. Oscar is better still. Fast. They’ll both be champions just so long as they stay focused.”
“Was Kelly focused?” Sevilla asked.
“I thought so. He was a little older, but not so old. He said he couldn’t fight under his own name. I asked some people if that would be a problem. It could have been overcome.”
“Did he say why he couldn’t fight under his own name?”
“Some trouble in the States. Probably drugs.”
“What makes you say that?” Sevilla asked.
Urvano’s mouth twisted. “I can tell when one of my boys is into drugs. I’m better than those drug-sniffing dogs the police use.”
“I thought you said no drugs were allowed.”
“I can also tell when that’s behind them. Or I thought I did.”
They stood and watched the two young fighters in the ring. Sevilla saw in Jorge the problem Urvano mentioned. He liked to punch and he held his hands too low. Oscar’s jabs came high and fast, and the defense wasn’t there to repel them, but Sevilla saw the wheels turning and Jorge’s stance changed and the sparring match evened. At some silent bell they separated and went to their corners.
“Do you see?” Urvano asked Sevilla and Sevilla nodded. “Kelly was like that: he could think.”
“Did you know him well?” Sevilla inquired.
“No. What I know of him I saw in his workouts. On the bag. In the ring.”
“I heard he had promise in the States. Before,” Sevilla said.
“I believe it. It must have been the drugs that hurt him. Is he using them again?”
Sevilla considered what to say, how to share it. He frowned. “He was. He got free of them again. But these things… it’s hard to fight them.”
“I have his things if you want to see them,” Urvano said. “His locker.”
“Yes.”
Urvano lowered himself from his chair. He walked with a pronounced limp, but his body was lean like a fighter’s and otherwise graceful like a fighter’s. Seeing Urvano made Sevilla embarrassed for the fat on his belly and around his waist. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d run a mile, or even run at all. Perversely, he wanted a cigarette.
The few things Kelly left behind were no help. A towel and a bar of soap and a comb carried no hidden message or profound clue. Sevilla cursed under his breath.
“It isn’t what you hoped to find,” Urvano said simply.
“No, it’s not. This is all there is?”
“Yes. I kept it longer than I normally would. He wasn’t paid, but no one wanted the locker yet. I’m sorry.”
Sevilla put his hand on Urvano’s shoulder and shook his head. “There’s nothing to apologize for. I saw from Kelly’s books that he was paying you. It was the last thing he did before he… well, before his relapse.”
“I blame that on Ortíz,” Urvano said. He spat the name.
“Who?”
“Ortíz. If you were a fighter, you would know him. He’s always sniffing around, making offers real managers can’t match. He came for Jorge and Oscar but they were smart and told him to go to hell.”
The old man headed back to his perch near the door and Sevilla followed. His notepad was already in his hand. “Ortíz,” he said. “He comes from around here?”
“No,” Urvano said. “I don’t know where he comes from. Under a rock, maybe. He wears a suit, but the way he wears it he’s just an animal in a man’s clothing. A snake. If Kelly took drugs again, it was Ortíz that gave them to him, I’m sure.”
Sevilla leafed through the notepad quickly. He found it — Ortíz — and a date. Kelly fought then. Sevilla remembered it. “This Ortíz is a boxing manager?”
“He books, he manages,” Urvano drawled. He looked pained and the lines on his face deepened. “And sometimes he takes fighters to the States for bigger money. The last time I saw Kelly, I saw him with Ortíz. The son of a bitch came in here like he was welcome. He had some of his pinche cabrones with him in that fancy black truck they drive. Taking his cocks to the palenque.”
At that moment eight young fighters spilled through the open front door of the gym. They were slick with sweat from running, their shorts and shirts plastered to spare bodies conditioned for the ring. Some of them called to Jorge and Oscar in the ring and all practice stopped as conversation rang from the walls.
Eyes were on Sevilla, the stranger in the gym. He ignored them. “You said he took fighting cocks to the palenque?”
“Sí. He has a hard-on for anything that fights, man or beast. I heard he used to book fights between men and dogs. What kind of trash is that? Kelly was better than him.”
His pencil was missing. Sevilla searched his pockets until he found it. He scribbled on the back of a used page. “Do you know the name of the palenque where Ortíz’s cocks fight? It would help me.”
Urvano thought a while until a name came to him. Sevilla wrote it down. His fingers trembled and he nearly dropped the pencil. He felt as though there was a question he needed to ask, something he’d overlooked, but it didn’t come to him. “If that Ortíz is to blame for Kelly’s problem, then someone ought to cut his balls off,” Urvano said.
“This is good information to have,” Sevilla said. He moved toward the door. “Thank you for this. I need to go.”
“You cut his balls off,” Urvano insisted.
“Someone will,” Sevilla replied, and he went outside.
TWELVE
IT WASN’T UNTIL HE’D MADE THE long drive to the palenque that Sevilla called Enrique. The parking lot was a broad, dusty expanse of unpaved and tire-rutted dirt. A mural of two fighting cocks on the side of the building was once bright, but now sun-faded. A handful of trucks and cars were scattered around. The phone rang twice. A man that was not Enrique answered. “¿Bueno?”
“Sí, I’m trying to reach Enrique Palencia. Do I have the right number, please?”
“This is his desk. Who the fuck is this?”
Sevilla paused. He heard the man breathing on the other end of the line. “Garcia?”
�
��Is this Sevilla?”
His first instinct was to hang up, but he didn’t. “This is Sevilla,” he said instead. “I tried to call your desk first, Ramón. You weren’t there.”
Garcia made a sound like a cough. “That’s because I’m here, you idiot,” he said. “Why are you calling my boy? It’s bad enough you have him looking after that rulacho, Estéban Salazar.”
Sevilla’s fingers were cold on his phone. “What do you mean?”
“I mean he’s been calling all around about him. Trying to get him settled. He’s turned into a regular guardian angel.”
“He’s part of your case. Maybe Palencia just wants to make sure you have all your witnesses.”
“We don’t need any witnesses. Someone ought to put a bullet in Salazar’s head and call it a day.”
“He confessed?”
“What do you think, Sevilla?”
Sevilla looked into his lap. His notepad was there, open to the address of the palenque. Before he had been excited, energized by the name of Ortíz and Urvano’s words. Now he felt suddenly enervated, as if he’d been too long in the sun and the juice was sapped from him. “When did he confess?”
“Yesterday. I spoke to Señora Quintero about it this morning. She’s a piece of ass.”
Fucking naco, Sevilla thought, but he said, “That’s good news.”
“He said it was the American who started it. Came up with the plan and when to do it. Salazar just helped him. Can you believe someone who would do that to his own sister? He’s like those sick bastards in the Sinaloa.”
“He confessed to all of it?”
“Sí. No thanks to you or Enrique. The two of you would rather cuddle and kiss these sons of bitches than give them what they deserve.”
A retort came to mind, but Sevilla sighed instead. “Congratulations,” he said.
“Thank you. Now, you want me to have Enrique call you? You can go cry into your drinks about a few broken bones.”
