by Sarah Lovett
He checked his wristwatch again: sixty-two minutes. The flight from Albuquerque to El Paso had taken less than fifty minutes. All around him, the streets were thick with people—shoppers, vendors, hustlers, and those with nothing better to do than hang out.
A cabdriver trolled past on Riberena. "Hola, señor. Youwannarideconmigo?"
Matt waved him off just like he'd waved away the last five taxis.
"Muy barato." The taxi driver winked. "Very cheap for my taxi."
"No, gracias." Matt glanced at the driver, started to walk away, then stopped. Slowly, he stepped over to the battered red-and-white Taxi Heroe—noticed a string of bullet holes along the door—and leaned in the window.
The taxi driver was smiling, but his eyes were sharp as glass. He mumbled, "I give you the Pitkin tour, señor."
Matt adjusted his sunglasses against the mean Mexican sun, tasted baked smog, and slid into the backseat. Dale Pitkin had finally managed to contact Vargas through the Mexican's street network. Vargas had agreed to meet with Matt—as long as it was done his way.
Matt noted that the bullet holes were not visible from the vehicle's interior. He knew the Mexican police had access to bulletproof delivery trucks, vans, buses; why not taxis? He leaned forward, said, "Nice wheels."
Victor Vargas was somewhere past thirty-five but shy of forty. He had a head of thick, dark hair and a trim mustache and a stubble of beard that went nicely with his bronze skin. He sat erect, dressed in a white polyester shirt and dark slacks, and he had a presence that belied his relatively slight physical stature. At the moment, he looked like a cabdriver who had already worked the graveyard shift, not a cop.
Vargas glanced in the rearview mirror, and a wide smile broke open his face, revealing white teeth. "I have a little something for you."
"I hope it's a Cuban cigar."
"Take a look." Vargas pulled the taxi into a heavy stream of traffic. Two traffic officers—Laurel and Hardy in uniform—directed him past a construction detour.
Matt saw a manila file on the floor of the car by his feet; he lifted it onto his lap and opened the cover. The contents included a half dozen photographs and a stack of typewritten reports in Spanish. He focused on the photographs; there was one man in the first picture.
Without looking back, Victor said, "The first photograph is Amado Fortuna—one of the few on file because the Big Tuna is allergic to cameras. The other five photos are of his primo Paco."
Matt studied the drug kingpin. The surveillance photo was grainy, its subject disappointingly mundane. The slight, middle-aged figure did not look like a man who had ordered a hundred-plus executions, a man who doled out death with his bare hands. No fangs, no horns. Only in kinetic energy had the photographer caught a hint of the international criminal's cocky machismo, his natural brutality.
Matt moved on to the photographs of Paco Fortuna. He appeared to be a soft man with nondescript fleshy features. On the street or in a crowd he would disappear behind a cloak of ordinariness. A witness would describe him as average, normal. Matt studied each photograph, taking in the narrow mouth, the deep-set eyes behind thick glasses, the unremarkable nose. Was there intelligence etched in the mocking curve of the lips? Did a hint of deftness escape through dark pupils? Matt was careful not to project keenness or cogency upon that two-dimensional image.
The photographs slid across Matt's lap when Victor was forced to jam on the taxi's brakes. They were inching through a jammed intersection. All around them, vehicles with Texan and Chihuahuan license plates played stop-and-go while car horns created a disharmonious symphony.
Victor gave a noncommittal snort as he glided the car to a stop.
Matt tried to roll down his window—it lowered most of four inches and stuck. Enough to register the smell of oil refineries, hot asphalt, anxiety, fast food, car exhaust—plain old urban burn-off at somewhere near ninety degrees. On the first day of November.
A hawker waved to Matt from between the rows of idling cars. A barefoot boy with mestizo features, no older than seven or eight but already hard at work, covered with plastic skeletons, skull maracas, paper coffins, and toy spiders with gleaming red eyes.
"El Día de los Muertos," Victor murmured.
Day of the Dead. A major Mexican holiday and one that Matt had always been partial to. He motioned the kid over to the car. The child's dark skin was covered with a film of dust and grease. When Matt pressed his nose over the window, he could hardly breathe through the thick exhaust fumes; but this polluted strip of the world was the child's office. The boy wiped grimy fingers across his face and kept up a running pitch in mongrel Spanish.
Matt asked the kid how he split his take—the policía had been rumored to rent space to beggars and vendors. The boy shook his head, his broad smile revealing missing front teeth. His fingers clutched the door as the car inched forward in line.
He said, "No problema, Señor Norteamericano." But his accent was bad, and Victor explained that the boy was probably Indian, a traveler from somewhere deep in Mexico's interior, or farther south, Guatemala or Ecuador. He was a young member of the migrating masses—rivers of people who flowed across natural and man-made borders.
Matt bought two of the plastic skeletons—they turned out to be puppets—and gave the boy two dollars.
He dropped the skeletons into the front seat. "Happy birthday, Vargas." Then he stacked the photos together and asked, "What the hell was Amado Fortuna's cousin doing in New Mexico with a ten-year-old kid?"
"Moving fast? No sé." Victor shook his head. "So Paco Fortuna is your guy?"
Matt thought about the dead man whose body was now tagged and stored at the O.M.I. in Albuquerque. The face and hands of the corpse had been badly decomposed. Positive identification could take weeks—and that was assuming Mexican authorities cooperated. "Maybe."
"A lot of people will be interested in your maybe. He was a . . . how do you say, a right-hand man?"
"To Amado?"
"Sí." Victor pursed his lips. "Your questions will make people nervous—What was he doing in Los Estados Unidos; What was he doing in Nuevo Mexico?—they make me nervous." His eyes narrowed to slits. "You ever heard of Snow White?"
"Yeah. She ate the poisoned apple."
Victor shrugged. "Is it true the child may be the daughter of a condemned murderer?"
"It's true. What's the deal with the taxi?"
"Amado Fortuna wants to kill me." Victor noticed Matt's expression and flashed a macabre smile. "No problema, Señor Norteamericano."
SEEN THROUGH A hard plastic security barrier in the Penitentiary of New Mexico's Maximum Facility, Cash Wheeler's face appeared oddly out of focus. The drab prison-issue clothes hung off his body and made his white skin look even paler. His hair and eyes were washed to a dull gray by fluorescent lights and malnutrition. His shoulders were pressed open, and he sat stiffly upright at the table in the visitors' booth. He didn't move his head, but his eyes searched out detail. When he made no move to communicate, Sylvia picked up the telephone on her side of the barrier and waited. Almost a minute elapsed before the death row inmate responded by lifting the receiver on his phone.
Sylvia spoke first; to her own ear, her voice sounded pinched and tinny. "Thanks for the drawing," she said. She held up the piece of white paper the C.O. had given her when she arrived. By phone, she had requested a pencil drawing from Cash Wheeler. "Just sketch a man—a self-portrait if you want. Nothing fancy, a stick figure or whatever. Don't sign your name; just print your initials."
He'd agreed, asking only: "Is it some kind of psychologist thing?"
"Yeah. That's what it is."
On the other side of the barrier, Wheeler blinked. A fly landed on the reddish bristles that covered his chin. He ignored the pest and it flew off again.
Although Sylvia was used to dealing with prisoners, it had been weeks since her last contact with a penitentiary inmate—even longer since she'd been in a visitors' booth in P.N.M.'s max unit.
Sylvia
almost jumped when Wheeler finally spoke. He said, "I'm here because Noelle says you're all right." His voice was soft, close to gentle.
"Yeah, I'm all right." Sylvia tried a small smile. Cash Wheeler's gaze brushed past her face—settling into that thousand-yard stare so many inmates wear like a uniform. She asked, "Did your sister tell you why I wanted to see you?"
"About the kid." His eyes settled on her mouth.
"She may be your daughter."
Wheeler turned away, blocking her out, perhaps to artificially re-create the solitude he had grown used to. He said, "The jury thought my daughter died in the Pecos River."
"Did you put her there?"
"No."
"Her name is Serena." "Who says?"
"She wrote it down. Did Noelle tell you Serena doesn't speak?"
Wheeler grunted. "Is she retarded or something?"
Sylvia sighed, only partially warding off an instant dislike for this man. "No," she said. "She's not retarded. She's extremely bright. I'd like to tell you about her."
She thought she heard Wheeler release a sudden breath into the phone. She felt the icy grip of his attention—he was watching her again. She didn't let herself look at him but pressed on quietly. "The first time I saw her, Serena had bruises from the accident; they've pretty much healed now. She's leggy for a ten-year-old. She weighs eighty-eight pounds. Her hair is long and dark, and she likes it in a ponytail."
Sylvia gave a quick laugh, adding, "There's a little gap between her front teeth." She looked directly at the inmate. She wanted to personalize Serena—in name, physically, emotionally—to make the child real for Cash.
She pressed her fingers together and leaned forward toward the barrier. "Her eyes are huge. They're so dark they're almost black."
Wheeler dropped his gaze, but still he held the phone to his ear.
Afraid she was losing him, Sylvia said, "She's an artist. Her drawings are amazing—"
"Why tell me?" He shrugged, apparently uninterested.
"Do you understand your daughter might be alive?"
The inmate leaned forward until his forehead touched the security barrier—the gesture was subtle, oblique, and threatening—and the psychologist knew she was back in the con game: a world of antisocial, predatory personalities.
Wheeler said, "Here's what you should understand: I want out of here. If the kid can get me out, great."
Sylvia pushed a loose strand of hair from her face. For a moment, Wheeler's expression had revealed something unintended—the hollow bravado of a teenager. She was reminded of the blind psych screens done in prisons where inmates consistently scored below average for their age group. Almost to a man, you could take the chronological age and subtract the number of years spent behind bars. Incarceration stunted most inmates—emotionally, intellectually. In many ways, Wheeler was still a brash, angry, and pathetic nineteen-year-old.
She knew he would hate her if she allowed pity to show in her face. Speaking in a hard voice, she said, "You're not making this easy."
"Nobody made it easy for me." His tone was harsh, but he had relaxed just slightly. Resentment was a comfortable and familiar refuge.
"How can I make it easier for you now, Cash?" She didn't try to keep the edge of sarcasm from her voice.
Cash looked away, tapping his fingers on the plastic table.
Sylvia spoke softly. "I know this must open up feelings from all those years ago—"
"No." Wheeler swallowed and his Adam's apple bobbed. He spoke in a flat voice. "It doesn't open anything."
Sylvia bit her lip, then frowned. "What if Serena is your daughter, Cash? What do you want her life to be like? What would you dream for her?"
No response.
Suddenly, the inmate's sharp eyes caught and held Sylvia in their gaze. There was nothing hidden, nothing masked or challenging in his stare. His face looked naked, his innermost feelings painfully exposed. Sylvia swallowed, almost flinching at the hopelessness played out on his features. The man sitting five feet away had spent the last decade locked in a prison cell for the murder of the woman he loved. If he was guilty, remorse had eaten away at his soul. If he was innocent . . . Sylvia could only imagine what his pain must be.
But there was a faint flame in his eye, a candle flickering at the end of a long, dark tunnel—his humanity had not withered completely.
Sylvia leaned forward in her chair, the plastic digging uncomfortably into her butt. Her muscles were suddenly trembling. She clenched the phone. "If you are Serena's father, she's waited ten years and traveled five hundred miles to find you. Don't turn her away without giving her a chance."
Then it struck her like a bolt of electricity—she felt incredibly dense that she hadn't figured it out sooner. Noelle Harding's words about Serena replayed in her mind: "She is Elena."
"You don't believe you were the father of Elena's baby—is that it?"
She caught her lip between her teeth and shook her head slowly. She tried to remember every word the inmate had spoken in the last five minutes. He was staring at her, his eyes boring oppressively into her face. But Sylvia saw the warring emotions beneath the mask—anger, frustration, and shame.
"Cash, if you weren't the baby's father, then who?" He didn't answer. She pushed: "Did Elena tell you she'd slept with someone else? Or did you guess? Did Elena love another boy?"
In Sylvia's mind, a name swam to consciousness; early this morning, bleary-eyed, she'd watched Matt leave for the airport and Mexico. Then she'd returned to her kitchen, and over strong, black coffee she'd read more of Jim Teague's case files. All the time her curiosity had grown—who was the boy who had disappeared? Who was Jesús?
She slapped her palm gently on the table. "Cash, was Jesús the father? Was that why you never helped Elena name the baby?"
Wheeler stood, dropping the phone to the tabletop. He swayed, then recovered. For an instant, his face revealed nothing but pain and fear—but just as quickly his expression softened. He clasped the phone one last time, held it to his mouth, and whispered, "Tell Serena the drawing's from me."
Then he turned his back on Sylvia. Within seconds he was gone. Alone, she pressed the inmate's drawing against the hard tabletop.
. . . sketch a man—a self-portrait if you want.
He'd sketched a forlorn little man—almost a stick figure—trapped inside a rectangle. Arms and legs were extended, and they pressed against each of the four corners. The face had only two features—wide black eyes. There was no mouth at all. He'd initialed it as requested: C.W.
INFRASTRUCTURE IN JUÁREZ was crumbling in comparison with its sister city, El Paso. Streets were scarred with potholes, reconstruction projects slow or nonexistent, traffic patterns chaotic. The primary colors of Mexico—red, yellow, magenta, cyan—were splashed across buildings, clothing, and billboards like an endless rainbow. The sounds this side of the border were cacophonous—horns, engines without mufflers, bells and whistles, music and voices. The smells were a rich brew of pollution, raw sewage, grease and food, and whatever else the heat cooked out.
Matt winced when Victor swerved sharply to avoid a bus pulling into traffic from a frontage lane. Victor didn't seem to notice his passenger's distress; he waved a cautionary hand at the bus driver and then sped ahead. At the intersection, he turned onto another boulevard—Avenida Abraham Lincoln—passing a massive ten-story skeleton of steel beams that rose into the skyline like the hulk of a neoteric dinosaur watching over the city.
"Monument to the drug lords," Victor said. As Matt studied the naked structure from his window, Victor explained: "Construction started in the mideighties. It was a project to launder drug money. That particular patrón got busted, died, or just disappeared."
"No more dinero?"
"A waste of perfectly good steel. There are others like it in this city." Victor braked for a red light. "If your dead man is Paco Fortuna, then Amado ordered the hit on his own cousin."
Matt massaged the base of his neck with one hand. "I can think
of plenty of reasons to shut up a runaway bookkeeper."
The light changed, but Victor was caught up in his thoughts. Behind the taxi, horns blared. Victor shifted into gear, and the car crept slowly forward. He asked, "So what did Paco have on Amado? Political payoffs? New distributors in the U.S.? A second set of books? They all keep them because the chingados can't trust each other as far as they can spit."
"A money trail?" Matt leaned forward in the seat as if his body would propel the vehicle through the intersection. He realized that Victor Vargas was testing him.
Victor raised his eyebrows. "A money trail would be helpful," he said mildly. "We've never been able to follow his cash." The speedometer hovered at fifteen kilometers per mile. A massive truck careened past, and the trucker mouthed something unpleasant.
Matt spoke casually. "Paco Fortuna's carotid artery was sliced, and he was left to drain out."
"¿Sí?" Victor nodded.
"Does that sound like one of Amado's hits?" Matt watched the other man; from the corner of his eyes he saw the outside world moving by. They were on a wide boulevard lined with modest shops and apartments. The city was a socioeconomic jigsaw puzzle with barrios, middle-class neighborhoods, and mansions side by side.
Vargas's eyes were suspended in the rearview mirror. "What does E.P.I.C. say?"
Matt took a guess. "The killer is a cop."
"Why do you say that?" Vargas's voice was icy.
"That's not what I say; it's what you say. You don't trust me as far as you can throw me." Matt laughed uneasily. "Come on, Victor, you're not dead yet."
"I'm not worried about dying by your hand, but I am concerned about stories getting into the wrong ears." Victor's frown was cryptic. He turned the taxi down a series of winding streets, passing cul-de-sacs, parks, and houses that gained square footage with each block.
Matt turned, gazing out the passenger window. Here the houses were massive and set close together, most with adjoining walls, all with metal grillwork or thick security walls. Huge satellite dishes glared over walls. Driveways and garages were stocked with Mercedes, Porsches, and fun buggies. Four prime British roadsters were parked behind iron gates at the end of one cobblestone drive. As Victor slowed to navigate a sharp corner, the screech of mynah birds and parrots echoed from within a glass atrium. Security increased with each block: six-foot-high walls embedded with broken glass gave way to twelve-foot-high walls topped with deadly razor ribbon. Armed guards leaned languorously against grilled gates. They watched the taxi through half-shut eyelids.
