The Dead Women of Juárez

by Sam Hawken

  “No,” Sevilla said. “No.”

  “Then fuck off back to your narcos,” Garcia replied. “They’re taking over the whole goddamned city.”

  The line went dead. Sevilla folded his phone and put it in his pocket. For a long time he sat still and silent.

  “¡Chingalo!” He pounded his fist on the steering wheel. “¡Chingalo! ¡Chingalo!”

  The moment passed. Sevilla lapsed back into silence. Without thinking he reached beneath the seat, his hand searching for a bottle wrapped in paper, but there was nothing there. He nearly cursed again and then he thought he might cry. Two men emerged from the entrance to the palenque, got into a rust-sided old Chevrolet and drove away. They were oblivious.

  Sevilla covered his face with his hands. “Estéban, you stupid bastard,” he breathed. In the same moment he knew he would have done the same thing if their places were reversed. The memory of the bat coming down on Estéban’s hand was fresh.

  He found his phone again and dialed another number. No one answered and the line switched to voice mail. Sevilla took a deep breath. “This is Sevilla. When you get a chance, call me. We should meet. I know about Estéban so there’s no need to tell me. There’s still a chance to make this right.”

  Afterward he held the phone in his hand, willing it to ring, but it was dead weight. He put it away. He started the car again and then turned the ignition off. The palenque squatted in the heat and dust, waiting for him. He thought of the shade and fans blowing cool air and a bar with iced beer and harder liquor. It wasn’t so late in the day that a drink would ruin it, nor so early that he would have to hide what he’d done.

  The phone didn’t ring. If it rang he would not go inside and he would not drink. If it didn’t ring, he would treat himself this once. He wouldn’t drink so much that he couldn’t drive safely. Maybe he would watch the fights. Maybe he would even bet on them and let the clock turn lazily toward evening. He could afford two or three drinks then.

  Sevilla was out of the car and across the lot before he decided to go. The phone did not ring and he put it away. The entrance to the palenque was shady and smelled of mixed alcohol, chicken blood and straw. When he entered no one looked his way and when he ordered a blended whisky no one spoke a word of blame.

  THIRTEEN

  SLEEPING IN THE BACK SEAT OF HIS car was not so bad when the sun lay low along the horizon and the windows were open to allow a little breeze. The phone buzzed in Sevilla’s pocket and then it rang. He stirred. His hand found the phone on its own.

  “Sevilla,” he said.

  “I called three times,” Enrique said.

  “I’ve been busy,” Sevilla replied.

  “You sound like you’ve been sleeping. Where are you?”

  “At a cockfighting arena. I won three wagers.”

  “What are you doing there?”

  Sevilla struggled to sit up. His foot caught on the armrest and for a moment he felt trapped. “What difference does it make to you? Where have you been?”

  “Estéban Salazar is back at El Cereso,” Enrique said. “I’ve been trying to meet with him.”

  “Why? He already confessed, the stupid bastard.”

  “Confessions can be recanted.”

  “Only if he wants La Bestia coming to visit him in his cell the way he did with Kelly. He’ll wish we had capital punishment again before it’s over.”

  “You’re drunk,” Enrique said. “Goddammit.”

  “I was just resting my eyes. I haven’t had anything to drink.”

  The parking lot was busier now at the end of the working day with more trucks and more cars nosing up to the palenque. Looking at the place made Sevilla’s temples throb. He left the back seat and did his best to smooth the wrinkles in his suit jacket.

  “Why do you want to meet with me if there’s no point? What have you been doing?”

  “I have a name,” Sevilla replied. “Carlos Ortíz. Do you know it?”

  “No. Should I?”

  “He’s a fight-fixer. Kelly knew him. They were together before Kelly took to the needle again. The old man who runs Kelly’s gimnasio del boxeo said some things that made me think. Find out more about him.”

  “Where will you be?”

  “Home.”

  FOURTEEN

  HE WAS ANGRY AT HIMSELF FOR drinking and angrier still for lying about it. At least before, when Enrique had been in his home, Sevilla was honest enough to admit that he had drunk too much. That it was happening at all was bad enough. That he was hiding it was unforgivable. He felt Liliana’s eyes on him.

  The edges of his attention were ragged as he drove and the headlights made his eyes water. He was glad to reach the safety of his street, and when he at last killed the engine he breathed a silent prayer of thanks.

  He wasn’t ready to go in and face the empty house so he sat and stared out over the dashboard at the still avenue. The shootings and the killings of the Sinaloa and Gulf cartels’ war hadn’t ever broken the bubble around these houses. Other, older things had come to bear upon them, but the dead women of Juárez were invisible. Mujeres Sin Voces tried to change that, but the women in black could not be everywhere, standing silent vigil, forcing the feminicidios to the surface again.

  Sevilla wasn’t aware of dozing; his eyes were still open. A sharp rapping on the glass of the driver’s side window made him twitch violently and a curse nearly escaped his lips. At first he didn’t recognize Adela de la Garza in the shadow on the sidewalk between telephone pole and car. She wore a hooded sweater that obsured her face.

  First he made to open the door, but the woman motioned for him to stop. Sevilla wound the window down. “Señora,” he said, “what are you doing here?”

  Adela looked both ways down the street. No one was there and still nothing moved. “I have a message from Ella. Ella Arellano. You wanted to talk to her, yes?”

  “Sí. Where is she? Her house—”

  The woman thrust a folded piece of paper into Sevilla’s hand through the window. “Go to this church on Sunday. The first service. Someone will know you. She will take you to Ella.”

  “Why has she gone into hiding? Was it Jiménez? Who is he working for?”

  “She will tell you everything,” Adela replied. “I must go.”

  “Wait,” Sevilla said. He clambered out of the car, but Adela was already out of earshot and moving quickly. She rounded the corner and by the time Sevilla reached it she was gone.

  Under the light of a lamppost Sevilla read the name of the church. He didn’t recognize it. Once more he looked the way Adela had gone, but the woman did not reappear. Reluctantly he left the corner and returned to his home. It felt good to turn on the lamps and bathe the unchanged front room with golden illumination. For the first time the street outside his door had an unwelcome cast.

  Again he read the name of the church, willing a picture of the place to rise in his mind’s eye. Nothing. He would have to ask someone, perhaps Enrique if he was not too busy with Ortíz. With nowhere else to put the paper, Sevilla tagged it to the front of his refrigerator with a magnet.

  He took a shower because the dust of the palenque’s lot was still on him. He tried to remember all he could about Adela de la Garza’s face, the reflected light in her eyes, the hooded sweater pulled tightly around her like a shield. Of course there was fear, but it was fear with a shape and a name, not some nameless terror.

  Señora Quintero never answered his phone message about Jiménez. Sevilla thought to call again, but it was too late in the evening. He passed on his nightly vigil on Ana’s bed, beside Ofelia’s crib, and went straight to his own room. Tomorrow he would visit Kelly at the hospital and then he would call Quintero again.

  Despite the long, drunken nap of the afternoon, Sevilla fell asleep easily. He dreamed of battles and men without faces who brought their cocks to fight. One wore a suit and Sevilla knew this was Ortíz. The other dressed in the manner of a policeman and this was Jiménez. Still another had the body of La Bestia
and stood guard over the others with his great fists. Though he had no eyes, he saw Sevilla watching, and though he had no mouth, he scowled.

  FIFTEEN

  IT TOOK THE BETTER PART OF THE morning before Enrique Palencia found Carlos Ortíz.

  He made some excuses to Garcia about an appointment with the dentist and went first to the nearest athletic club he knew of, a place where there was boxing two Friday nights a month. There he spoke to the manager.

  “Of course I know him,” the man said. “He has the best new talent. It’s his bankroll, you see. Sometimes it’s hard for a fighter to find time to train. Ortíz can arrange that.”

  “What does he get?”

  “Twenty percent of their earnings. From here that’s not so much, but once he takes his fights to the States he gets much more. In Juárez the top fights pay less than the midcard in California or Texas.”

  Enrique made a note of this. “He goes across the border often?”

  “All the time. I hear he has many apartments there. He likes to entertain. That’s how he made his mark, you know: arranging parties.”

  “I didn’t know,” Enrique said.

  The manager went on to tell Enrique more about Ortíz’s fighters, hungry young men from the rough spots in the city, and how they were intensely loyal to him. Better yet, Ortíz was loyal to them, something that wasn’t always the case among managers. Trainers were bound to fighters for the life of a fighter’s career and sometimes even longer, but managers came and went without so much as a farewell.

  “That’s Ortíz’s secret, you see,” the manager said. “He has friends.”

  From the athletic club Enrique went to a restaurant where Ortíz sometimes held court and from there to a boxing gym. Here he saw some of Ortíz’s fighters, lean and hard like street dogs. Some had jailhouse tattoos Enrique had seen on the arms and backs of convicts in the system, but these men worked as diligently at their training as all the others.

  Ortíz’s path led into the tourist districts and out again. The strip clubs and brothels were open in the day for those turistas enterprising enough to cross the bridge and secure a deal, but without the veneer of night to hide peeling paint and chipped wood the streets were sad, deflated somehow. Neon lights were on, hidden by the sun’s glare. Even a short overcast rain would be enough to restore some mystery, but it was not coming.

  Enrique didn’t know any businessman who had no office and went the places Ortíz did. Everyone knew him, but outside of the fight venues they were circumspect about how. When they saw Enrique’s badge their faces closed and the questions were harder to find answers for. They told him Ortíz didn’t deal drugs, and this Enrique believed. Drugs in Ciudad Juárez were the province of gangs in and out of prison and the frontline troops of the cartels moving north and east. Drug dealers of the city didn’t wear suits or dine at the Montana Restaurant on steak and baked potatoes. Perhaps elsewhere they did such things, but this was Mexico and the rules were different.

  The clock turned past eleven before he saw the truck. More than once he was told about Ortíz’s black pick-up truck, how clean and shiny it was, and the three bodyguards that came with him everywhere. The seats were leather and the fittings real, polished wood. See how he does business? they told Enrique. You can trust a man who hasn’t forgotten his roots. He doesn’t need a fancy car.

  The truck stood sentinel outside another boxing gym, the third on Enrique’s list. It was not like the others, but had the appointments of a fitness club across the border. Through broad windows on the second floor Enrique saw men jogging on treadmills and on the first floor the entrance was inviting metal and glass. Sunlight glared off white-painted walls that also read BOXEO — SALUD — CALISTENIA — NAUTILUS.

  Enrique saw the outline of two of Ortíz’s bodyguards through the heavily tinted windows of the pick-up’s king cab. Their engine idled and the tailpipe dripped condensation as the air conditioning ran. Enrique sweltered with his windows down. Heat rose in steady waves from the asphalt. He parked in a red zone and watched.

  A part of him felt silly. In his time with the police Enrique had never sat on a stakeout or prowled the streets looking for suspects. He went from the academy to administration, and though they issued him with identification and a pistol, there was a vast gulf between what he did and other cops did.

  Garcia always made sure to point this out. “Don’t get the idea that you’re a real cop,” he said. “Real cops sweat. Real cops have blood on their hands. When you have blisters on your blisters from walking all day and your voice is too tired for you to say goodnight to your wife, then you’ll know.”

  Enrique had no wife and no blisters. But still he sat and watched and for a long time nothing happened. His eyelids drooped.

  Ortíz emerged from the building. Enrique didn’t know the man by sight, but there was no mistaking him: a man in a blazer and slacks, dwarfed by a long-limbed bodyguard in a dark athletic shirt. They moved to the pick-up and the bodyguard held the door for Ortíz. The man sat in the passenger seat. The guard went into the back.

  They moved off and Enrique followed. His cell phone was on the seat beside him, and for a moment he considered calling Sevilla, but the truth was he had nothing to report. “I’m shadowing him,” he could say, but that was all. If he was pressed to arrest the man he couldn’t; sponsoring cocks was not illegal and nor was betting on them. Ask his fighters and Carlos Ortíz was a saint. Money to the managers of the athletic clubs where those fighters graced the ring bought still more praise.

  The truck went north into the tourist areas and passed the Hotel Villa Manport. Suddenly Enrique knew where they were going, and when the truck glided to a stop alongside the coral-tiled façade of El Herradero Soto he saw he was right.

  Everyone in Juárez knew the restaurant: the cheap, good food and the family atmosphere. The waiters brought pork skins and spicy red salsa to the table as an appetizer and their pico de gallo was renowned. At lunchtime a crowd formed under the sign. People talked to each other as if they were friends until a table came available. Out of the car, Ortíz smiled broadly and shook hands and then passed through the entrance without waiting.

  Parking closely was out of the question. Enrique circled the block and found a lot with room. He hurried though he had no need to hurry; lunch at El Herradero was nothing to be done away with quickly.

  The truck waited on the curb the way it waited at the boxing club. Enrique looked at the crowd of patrons, considering the wait and what he intended to do once he was inside. Did a real cop linger over a meal in the same dining room as his quarry? Should he just stand among the men waiting for food and look through the window? These things weren’t taught to him and he hadn’t learned them by experience. He knew where to file paperwork and the knowledge stung.

  He was at the tail of the line when he saw Captain Garcia. The man crossed the street in front of the black pick-up. He thumped his hand on the truck’s hood and made a shooting gesture at the driver. If the driver did it back, Enrique couldn’t see.

  There was nowhere to hide himself on the sidewalk except to hunker down below the line of heads. Enrique dropped his shoulders and slumped as if shot. He risked a look through the restaurant window and there was Ortíz in the back corner with his bodyguard at the same table. Garcia made his way across the dining room and joined them. Ortíz shook the cop’s hand and motioned for him to sit.

  Enrique didn’t stay to see what they ate.

  SIXTEEN

  “THEY DELIVER BABIES IN THIS hospital,” Sevilla told Kelly.

  If he heard, Kelly gave no sign. He was still and the only sounds that came from him were really from the machines that monitored him and fed him fluids and ensured he still took breaths when he should and his heart beat when it should.

  They were alone. Even the police guard had gone because Kelly showed no sign of waking. The nurses asked Sevilla to turn off his cell phone and to refrain from smoking. He asked them where he could find something to drink and they
brought him a tray with a carton of juice and a carton of milk. He hadn’t eaten breakfast or lunch and his stomach was empty.

  When Sevilla spoke to Kelly he did so in English. This was always the way between them: to speak in English. With Juárez so close to America, so close that one block blended into the next, Sevilla did not understand why people didn’t learn the language of the north. Speaking Spanish and only Spanish in Ciudad Juárez was stubborn and prideful and Sevilla was having none of that; he spoke English with Americans whenever he met them, even if that English wasn’t always so perfect.

  “My granddaughter wasn’t born here, of course,” Sevilla continued. “My wife and I, we talked about moving somewhere away from the city where we could keep a garden and maybe some goats. You can make good cheese from goat’s milk.”

  The most livid of Kelly’s bruises were fading. He was healing, but he would not wake.

  “Ofelia was my granddaughter’s name. Her father… we won’t talk about him. The last thing he gave us was little Ofelia and it was the best he could give. I don’t think he even came to visit her in the hospital. He never called Ana or wrote. For all I know he’s dead. I heard he moved to Monterey, but there’s no way to find out. I don’t care to.

  “They were alike, Kelly, my Ana and Ofelia. You could tell just from looking at Ofelia that she would grow up like her mother to be full of life and happiness. And that is saying a great deal in this city. I don’t have to tell you.”

  Sevilla worked the waxed cardboard of the drink cartons while he spoke, teasing the seams apart and slowly flattening them. His hands felt the need to do something while his body was still. The smell of disinfectant and the quiet scraped at his nerves; he could not stand to be here for very long.

  “When Ana and Ofelia disappeared, of course we were worried. A mother and daughter don’t vanish. Not our Ana, anyway. That rulacho of a husband, that was different, and it’s true I suspected he had a hand in it at first. But it wasn’t so easy as that.