The Dead Women of Juárez

by Sam Hawken

  With Enrique gone he shuffled around the house in his slippers and housecoat, took naps on the couch and flipped idly through channels on the television. He lacked the energy or the focus to read, though there were many books on the stand beside his bed. He avoided going into his daughter’s room though eventually he knew he must; the photograph needed to be back where it belonged.

  It was evening and after a quiet meal that he finally entered. He knocked lightly on the door as if to announce his presence and slipped inside. The spot where he sat on the edge of the bed was dented, he saw.

  He put the photo on the nightstand and sat. In the angled light of the lamp he saw that it was wrinkled and this made his heart ache. He wanted to press the picture, smooth it out like a piece of cloth, but the damage was done. As on his face, the lines could not be made to go away.

  All day he had felt a weight on him that he thought was sadness. Alone in his daughter’s room with his granddaughter’s crib at hand, he understood it was anger. He felt far gone from himself, so much so that even the Madrigals did not recognize him for a cop, but as a crook, a con man. They did not see any iron in him. He was ashamed.

  “I’m sorry I could never bring you home,” he said to the empty room. “Maybe I didn’t try hard enough. But it wasn’t because I didn’t care. You know I would give my life to have you home again.”

  Sevilla wrung his hands. The knuckles of one hand were bruised and scabbed.

  “I want you to know that what I do now isn’t because I’ve given up. Whatever anyone thinks, whatever they say, that’s not the reason. It’s only I don’t know what to do. I’m not as smart as I believed I was.”

  Once there was a time he could have asked for help. He was surrounded by men like himself, men who had become authority because it was, like themselves, immortal and unchanging. Over the years they had fallen away. Some died. Some quit. The ones who remained were worn on the inside and out. They didn’t speak to one another anymore and the new young men… they were not interested.

  “There is nothing so worthless as an old man,” Sevilla said.

  He took from his pocket his pistol and put it on the bed beside him. It was the first automatic he had ever owned, a .45 given to him by an American policeman from a joint task force south of the border. He still remembered the man’s name: Joe Hopkins. He was young like Enrique Palencia was young and full of the energy long missing from Sevilla’s life.

  “A .45 will put a man down and keep him there,” Hopkins told Sevilla. “That .38 you’re carrying is never going to get it done. They’re carrying big guns. We have to do the same thing.”

  “I don’t have anything to give you in return,” Sevilla said to the American.

  “You don’t have to. Do somebody else a favor someday.”

  Sevilla held the pistol in both hands, feeling its weight. The metal was worn from a long time in his holster. He kept it clean and the parts maintained. The weapon held only eight rounds, but they were enough. For the thing Sevilla sometimes had in mind there was need for only one.

  Tonight he wasn’t thinking of ending himself, and no matter what he would not do it here in this room that waited and would forever wait for Ana and Ofelia to come home. This room was untouched, sacrosanct. Sevilla thought instead about his old .38 revolver, the one he kept in a locked box in his bedroom closet. This was the weapon Liliana brought out one night when Sevilla was away. Why she chose to kill herself in the kitchen he didn’t know. A perverse thought once occurred to Sevilla that she wanted it to be easy to clean up.

  Ana and Ofelia had Sevilla and Liliana to remember them. Liliana had her husband. Sevilla had no one. Perhaps Enrique would regret Sevilla’s passing, but they did not know each other so well. The people in Sevilla’s department knew him not at all; he was a ghost passing through their halls from investigation to investigation, the man all wished would retire but did not even though it was well past time. They sensed the mantle of death around him that didn’t come just from age.

  If Kelly ever woke, he might be sad to learn Sevilla was gone, but he had too many other lives to remember. Their closeness was one only Sevilla felt. He followed Kelly and learned of Kelly and eventually there was a sensation of kinship that could only come from long association, but this was something Kelly could not feel because he didn’t know Sevilla was there. Maybe the nurses would tell Kelly how Sevilla called every day to check on him, or how he came to visit when no one else did. Maybe this would make a difference. Most likely it wouldn’t.

  The gun whispered ideas to Sevilla, but he didn’t listen. He turned his mind to other things. If he had whisky he would drink it now, right here on the edge of Ana’s bed, beneath the roof of Liliana’s house, and would go on drinking until he could see just straight enough to put the barrel of the gun to the underside of his chin and pull the trigger.

  “No,” Sevilla said aloud. “I said no.”

  He hoped for a telephone call from Enrique to break the silence, but there was no call. Sevilla didn’t know how long he stayed in Ana and Ofelia’s room. Abruptly he stood and left, taking the gun with him.

  Sevilla went to his bedroom and opened the closet. His old suits, his real suits, awaited him. He stripped naked and took a shower and scrubbed himself hard enough to make his skin tingle. He shaved his neck and cheeks until mustache and beard were only a rough square around his mouth and on his chin. He put a touch of Dr Bell’s Pomada de La Campana in his hair and slicked it back. It did not make him look younger, but he felt something he could not quite identify.

  His holster went into its place at his side, easily hidden by his jacket but where he could reach it quickly. He checked the magazine and the bullet in the chamber.

  In his sock drawer he found a matte-black cylinder of rubberized metal. It wasn’t heavy and it fit in a pocket. A flick of the wrist revealed ten inches of blackened steel.

  After he settled the knot in his tie, Sevilla looked at himself in the mirror behind the bedroom door. The gun was invisible, the bulge of the impact baton something that could be keys or an oddly shaped wallet.

  “I will be back late,” he told the air. “Don’t wait up for me.”

  THIRTEEN

  ENRIQUE CROSSED THE BORDER early in the morning to avoid the worst of the bridge traffic. On the average day the lanes out of Mexico could be stacked a hundred deep and the Americans were slow to process the cars. There were drug-sniffing dogs and mirrors to look beneath frames and endless questions about where you were coming from and where you intended to go. It was worst for Mexicans, though it was not easy for returning natives.

  Even at the hour he chose there was still a wait. When he got to the front of the line he showed his credentials to the uniformed man in the booth. This time there were no dogs, but the American broke out a long metal rod with a mirror on the end and walked around the whole perimeter of the car before asking that the trunk be opened.

  Enrique answered the man’s questions. It was just a ritual. Both of them knew he would go through.

  Once he was free Enrique passed into El Paso. The city was still half asleep. He drove down streets of still cars and dark windows, following directions he’d printed out from the internet.

  Most of the border towns in Mexico served as shadows of their American counterparts. The relationship between El Paso and Juárez was different: Juárez was bigger than El Paso. Enrique almost felt as though he was driving through a small town compared to the complex, interlocking grid of Juárez.

  Eventually he found the exit for US-180 and accelerated out of the city. The highway would take him across the narrowest spoke of westernmost Texas and then up into New Mexico. The terrain was rough and flat the way it was for miles around Ciudad Juárez. There was no color except what the rising sun offered in red and orange. Once Enrique saw a jackrabbit break from the cover of a sun-blasted yucca plant. Its fur flashed white in his headlights.

  It was not a long drive from Juárez to Hiatt. He could be there in a matter of si
x hours. To slow his progress he stopped in Las Cruces for an American breakfast of waffles, bacon, eggs and coffee. Enrique took his time over the food, but even with the delay he knew he’d be early to the prison.

  Obtaining access to Marco Rojas was easier than Enrique had expected. When he called he introduced himself as a Mexican police officer and had thought he would have to go into great detail about his reasons for wanting to see the prisoner. That hadn’t been the case; in five minutes he was off the telephone with a date and a time to visit. The prison promised to extend Enrique every courtesy.

  He reached the town of Hiatt with ninety minutes left before his time with Rojas. There was little to the town: it sat in the middle of a broad desert, a dozen buildings or so and roads leading off to ranches hidden by distance. Everything was closed. Enrique stopped by a large rectangle of fenced-in grass that he supposed was meant to be a park and closed his eyes for a little while, trusting in the alarm on his cell phone to wake him in time.

  When he had thirty minutes left he followed signs out of Hiatt proper and to the prison. He reached the first fence before he could see the buildings at all. A guard was stationed in a dusty-colored box with dirty windows, operating an electric gate. Enrique showed his identification again and explained why he was there. He was allowed through.

  After a mile Enrique encountered a cluster of houses with trees planted around them and neat but dry yards. A child’s swing set was stationed behind one of them, sentry in the early morning.

  Finally he saw the prison itself. It was not very imposing, consisting of long, boxy structures made out of concrete and cinder block, surrounded by triple rows of fencing and barbed wire. The yard and basketball courts were devoid of life.

  He found himself a spot in a parking lot with twenty or so other cars and walked the rest of the way to the entrance. This time he showed his ID and was not waved through right away. Using a computer and an old printer, a law-enforcement visitor’s pass was made for him and laminated on the spot. “You can keep it as a souvenir,” the uniformed corrections officer joked. Enrique smiled.

  Another corrections officer came to escort Enrique into the main building. They passed through a narrow corridor of hurricane fencing topped with barbed wire and locked securely at both ends. Enrique’s pass was checked before the officer at the far side would even unlock the gate.

  “It’ll be a few minutes until they’re ready for you,” said the officer leading him. “Just wait here.”

  Enrique was in an area scattered with chairs and couches upholstered in deep red vinyl. There was a coffee table peppered with magazines. Enrique didn’t sit down or read; he paced off the minutes while his officer went away to make some preparation.

  After a quarter of an hour the officer returned. “Come on,” he said.

  They had to go through two electric lockdown doors before reaching a gray room with a few plastic chairs dotted around. The windows were covered with tight metal grating that cut the morning sun into little pieces.

  “He’ll be right in,” the officer said.

  Another ten minutes passed until finally a prisoner in a white jumpsuit was escorted into the room.

  Enrique wasn’t sure what to expect of Marco Rojas. The man was an American and so the Mexican police had no photographs or any real records concerning him. There was no family resemblance between Rojas and Rafa Madrigal, but then there wouldn’t be; he was from Madrigal’s wife’s side of the family. He was short and blocky and full of muscles. He had a crosshatch scar on his temple, as if he’d been ground into something until the flesh peeled away.

  Rojas had a waist chain and his feet were shackled. He shuffled ahead to one of the plastic chairs, led by the elbow and then urged to sit. Enrique watched Rojas watching him.

  “If you need anything, just knock on the door,” said the corrections officer, and then he went out of the room. A bolt was shot. They were locked in.

  “You are the Marco Rojas who’s cousin to Gabriel Madrigal?”

  “I am.”

  Rojas was still looking at Enrique. When he spoke again, he spoke in Spanish: “Did they send you to bring me back to Mexico?”

  “I don’t have that kind of authority,” Enrique said.

  “Good. You’re a Mexican cop, though.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “They told me before I came in. Don’t worry, I’m not a mind-reader,” Rojas said, and he gave a little smile.

  Enrique was still standing. He dragged one of the plastic chairs around and sat with the back facing forward so he could fold his arms in front of himself. It also made him feel a little safer, though there was no way Rojas could rush him with all the chains he wore.

  “If you’re not here to bring me back to Mexico, then what do you want?”

  “I want to talk to you about the Madrigals,” Enrique said plainly.

  “What about them?”

  It occurred to Enrique that he didn’t know where to start. When he rehearsed his meeting with Rojas he had never gotten past the first few moments. The questions were all a jumble, each one as important as the next and finding no natural order.

  Rojas made a face, as if he was impatient to be somewhere else.

  “Let’s start with Gabriel Madrigal.”

  “Okay, let’s start with him.”

  “You were arrested for drugs and rape, is that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell me about that.”

  Rojas shrugged his shoulders in a slow, rolling way. “Gabriel liked to party. It runs in his family. Cocaine, heroin… girls. He liked all of that.”

  “There has to be more.”

  “Maybe. Why should I tell you?”

  “Because you have to tell someone.”

  “Do I? I haven’t told anyone anything for years. Why should I start now?”

  Enrique took a slow breath, let it out. “Because I’m asking.”

  They were quiet a while. Enrique got the sense that Rojas was taking his measure the way convicts did in prison. Some things were the same in America as they were in Mexico.

  “Gabriel liked to party,” Rojas said again, and then he was silent, thinking. “It started when I came down to Juárez to visit him. He would set things up.”

  “Drugs?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who supplied you?”

  “Different people at first. Then Gabriel got a steady source.”

  “What was his name? Do you know?”

  “Estéban.”

  “Estéban Salazar?” Enrique asked, and his heart sped.

  “I don’t know his last name. He was the one who started to bring in the heroína. Before that it was just cocaine, marijuana, that kind of stuff.”

  “He got you hooked.”

  “Not me. Gabriel. We used to get drunk and stoned and so did the girls.”

  “Prostitutes?”

  “Not always.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean they were whores, but sometimes they had to be convinced of it.”

  Enrique tried to keep an expression from his face even though he felt himself twisting. There was a suggestion of something in Rojas’ eyes that he didn’t like, a black glittering as he remembered.

  “We used to get help from a friend of Gabriel’s father. His name was Ortíz, I think. Sometimes he would party with us.”

  “And at these parties you raped women?”

  “Yes.”

  “How long did this go on?”

  “A few months.”

  “How much did Estéban Salazar know about this?”

  “I don’t know. Enough. He stayed once or twice, but he didn’t like it when things got rough. I told him not worry about it. Poor girls, who are they going to tell?”

  Enrique swallowed.

  “Eventually he stopped coming and he stopped selling chinaloa to Gabriel. That made him mad.”

  “What did he do?”

  “He complained to Ortíz. Ortíz had the muscle to s
olve problems.”

  “But he didn’t kill Estéban.”

  “No. Gabriel said Estéban had a sister. Even narcos have soft spots, you know?”

  “She would be harassed?”

  “Sure.”

  “Killed?”

  “I couldn’t say.”

  Enrique continued: “Then you went to the United States?”

  “I had to get back to my business in Santa Fe. Gabriel, he had money to burn, but I had to earn a living, you know? I couldn’t just party all the time.”

  “Gabriel came with you?”

  “Not right away. Eventually.”

  “Did you have… parties again?”

  “Why the fuck do you think I’m in here now?” Rojas said loudly.

  “You were found out.”

  “Because Gabriel was an idiot. He was strung out half the time and didn’t know left from right. He didn’t have his daddy’s friends no more. And things are different here. The poor girls, they go to the police. You can’t get them to shut up unless you kill them… and I wouldn’t do that.”

  “Gabriel would?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  Enrique pressed, “You know Gabriel killed women?”

  “That never happened at our parties.”

  “When did it happen? Did he tell you he’d killed someone?”

  “I said I don’t want to talk about it!”

  Rojas looked down at his cuffed hands, secured to the belly chain. He would not raise his eyes. Something heavy lay mantled across his shoulders. For a burly man, he suddenly seemed weak.

  Enrique’s mind raced. The connection between Estéban Salazar and the Madrigals was established, but Gabriel Madrigal was long dead before the murder of Paloma Salazar. The hot link was Ortíz, and Rojas had confessed that Ortíz partied with Gabriel and him more than once.