by Mark Dawson
Milton led Caterina out of the hospital. The midday heat was like a furnace. It was so fierce that it had just about cleared the streets, forcing everyone inside. A siesta sounded pretty good right around now, he thought. Those people who were out looked punch drunk and listless. He led the way down to the cabstand, opened the door of the cab parked there and ushered her inside.
The car was air-conditioned.
“You know the La Playa Consulado?” he said.
The driver looked at him in the mirror. “Near the US Consulate?”
“That’s the one.”
“Si––I know it.”
They drove out, Milton checking that they were not being followed. If the narcos were good there would be no way of knowing, but they would have to be very good, and Milton didn’t see anything suspicious.
“What about you?” Caterina asked him suddenly.
“What about me?”
“I told you about me. What about you? You married?”
“I was, once. She left me.”
“Oh––I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.”
“Family?”
“My parents died when I was little. No brothers or sisters.”
“Girlfriend?”
“I’m never in the same place long enough to get attached.”
“You must have someone?”
“Not really,” he said with a wry smile. “This is it.”
“I’m sorry about that,” she said.
“For what?”
“That you’re alone.”
“Don’t be. I choose to be that way.”
“You’re not lonely?”
“No. It’s the way I like it. To be honest, I’m not the best company. I doubt anyone would put up with me for all that long, not unless they had to.”
“And you move around a lot?”
“All the time.”
“Why Mexico?”
“Why not? I’ve been heading north the best part of six months. Mexico was just the next place on the way.”
“And Juárez? How long have you been here?”
“I got in on Monday.”
She stared out of the window. “Good timing.”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I’m glad I was there. It could’ve been a lot worse.”
“But why here? Most people would go a hundred miles in either direction.”
“Then I suppose I’m not most people.”
“Why do you move around so much? Are you running from something?”
My history, he thought, but rather than that he said, “Not really. I just needed some time alone. To clear my head.”
“From what?”
“That doesn’t really matter, Caterina.”
She thought about his answer. He saw her tension coming back and she was quiet again.
La Playa Consulado was on Paseo De La Victoria. A two storey motor court set around a large parking lot, an ugly sign outside advertising Restaurant Cebollero and its flautas, tacos and hamburguesas. Milton got out first, his hand resting on the burning roof of the cab as he checked again that they had not been followed. Satisfied, he stepped aside so that Caterina could get out, paid the driver and went into the reception. Net curtains, wood panels, décor from deep into the eighties. A woman was sitting watching a chat show on TV. She got up and went around behind the desk.
“We need two rooms, one next to the other.”
“I can do that. How many nights?”
“I don’t know. Let’s say a week.”
“Weekly rate’s forty-five dollars per night plus two dollars seventy-five tax. Cash or card?”
“Discount for cash?”
She took out a calculator and tapped it out. “No discount, sir. Forty-seven dollars, seventy-five cents per night, times two, times seven. That’s six hundred and sixty-eight dollars and fifty cents.”
Milton took out a roll of notes from his pocket and peeled off seven hundred dollar bills. He gave them to the woman. “If anyone asks, we’re not here. No visitors. No messages, at any time. No-one cleans the rooms.” He peeled off another note and laid it on the desk. “Is that going to be alright?”
“Absolutely fine, sir.”
Milton took the two keys and led the way outside again, following a scrappy path around the parking lot to the row of rooms. He opened the door to the first room, number eleven, and went inside. He waited until Caterina had followed, shut the door again and closed the curtains. He checked the room: a queen-sized bed with a heavy wooden headboard and a garish quilt cover; purple carpets, stained in places; an artexed asbestos ceiling; a print of a vase of flowers on the wall; a bathroom with shower. Light from outside came in through the net curtains. Milton switched on the overhead light.
Caterina sat down heavily on the bed.
Milton stood at the window, parted the curtains a little and looked out through them at the courtyard outside. A few cars, lots of empty spaces, plastic rubbish and newspaper snagged in the branches of sickly creosote bushes. He ran things over in his mind. He got two glasses of water from the bathroom and came back and went to the window again. He took a sip and set the water on the cheap bedside table. Halfway there, he thought.
Caterina slumped back on the bed. “This is crazy. I can’t hide here forever.”
“Just for a few days.”
“So you can do what?”
“I know someone who’ll be able to help you get across the border.”
“In exchange for what? I told you I don’t have any money.”
“He has a problem I can help him with. And there’s no harm in you staying here until I can do that, is there?”
She shook her head and stared straight up at the stippled ceiling. “I don’t suppose so. I know I can’t go home.”
“Is there anything you need?”
“Nothing we can’t get in New Mexico.”
“Sure?”
“There is something––we’ve got another couple of writers. I have to get word to them.”
“Call them?”
“Their details are on my laptop. I need that, then I can mail them.”
“Where is it?”
“In my apartment.”
“Alright––I’ll get it. Write down your address.”
She did, writing it on a page that she tore from the Gideon’s bible in the drawer. Milton closed the curtains.
“You’re not just a cook, are you?”
“No.”
“You were a soldier.”
“Yes.”
“What kind of soldier?”
He thought about what to say. He had a sudden urge to be completely truthful but he knew that might not be the best policy with her: good for him, bad for her, so he evaded the question a little. “I was in the special forces for a while. And then I was transferred to work for a special detail. I can’t really tell you very much about that.”
“You were good at it?”
“Very good,” he said.
“Have you’ve killed people before?”
“I have.”
She fell silent.
He found the TV remote and tossed it across to the bed. “Try and get some sleep,” he said. “And I know you’re not stupid, but lock and chain the door and don’t open it to anybody but me. Alright?”
“You’re going now?”
“There are some things I need to get, too. I might be back late. Maybe this evening. Alright?”
She said that she was.
“Don’t open the door.”
* * *
27.
MILTON TOOK a taxi to the border and then got out and walked. The Paso del Norte bridge spanned the Rio Bravo, and he took his place in the queue of people waiting to cross. He paid three pesos at the kiosk and pushed through the turnstile. A couple of hundred strides to reach the middle, where Mexico ended and the United States began. He paused there and looked down. The floodplain stretched beneath him, the Rio Bravo a pathetic trickle, slithering between stands of Car
rizo cane. A chain link fence on either side, tall guard-posts with guards toting rifles, spotlights and CCTV.
The American gatepost was worse, bristling with security. He walked towards it and joined the queue. Well-to-do housewives chatted about the shopping they were going to do. Bored children bounced. Kids slung book bags over their shoulders, waiting to pass through to their Methodist schools. Vendors hawked hamburgers, cones of fried nuts and bottles of water. A woman in a white dress with a guitar sang folk songs, a handful of change scattered in the torn-off cardboard box at her feet.
It took an hour for Milton to get to the front.
“Hello, sir,” the wary border guard said. “Your passport, please.”
Milton took out the fake American passport that he had been using since he arrived in South America. He handed it to her.
“Mr. Smith,” she said, comparing him with the photograph. “You’ve been away for a while, sir.”
“Travelling.”
She stamped the passport. “Welcome home, sir.”
He walked through into America. There was a McDonalds near the border, a hub of customs agents, girls laden with huge packets of diapers, Mexican businessmen and Mexican ladies on their way to clean American toilets. The mumbling homeless gathered outside, pushing their belongings in supermarket carts.
Milton had a fifteen minute cab ride to get to where he was going. He fished out his phone from his pocket and took the scrap of paper that the man in the hospital had given to him from out of his wallet. He dialled the number and put the phone to his ear.
“Baxter?”
“Who’s this.”
“John Smith.”
“Mr. Smith. How are you, sir?”
“Our friend––how much is he worth to you?”
“He’s worth plenty––why? You ready to help?”
“If you help me––then perhaps.”
“How much do you want?”
“Nothing. No money. I need you to do me a favour.”
“I’m listening.”
“Those Italians you work for––I’m guessing it’s a reasonably simple thing for them to bring someone across the border?”
“Sure. I’ve got to get our mutual friend across, and I’m damn sure I ain’t taking him over the bridge. I don’t reckon it’d be any great shakes to add another to the trip. Who do you got in mind?”
“The girl.”
“Makes sense. Yeah––I reckon I could do that. Anything else?”
“A new life for her on the other side. Legitimate papers in a different name. Away from El Paso. Somewhere where they’ll never find her.”
“That’s a bit more demanding. But maybe.”
“What would you have to do?”
“Make a couple of calls. You on this number all day?”
Milton said that he was.
“I’ll call you later.”
The taxi had arrived. Milton put the telephone away, paid the driver, and got out.
The El Paso gun show was held every Saturday at the El Maida Shrine Centre at 6331 Alabama Street. A sign outside the venue advertised roller derbies, pet adoption fairs and home and garden shows, but it was obvious that guns were the big draw. He paid sixteen bucks at the entrance and went inside, passing a row of ATMs, an NRA information booth where two bored teenagers were smoking and lazily handing out leaflets, ice cream and Mexican food stands and two emphatic sandwich boards requiring visitors to unload their weapons. A banner above the entrance to the hall said that YOUR SECOND AMENDMENT RIGHTS GUARANTEE ALL THE OTHERS.
Milton passed beneath it and went inside.
He had seen the show advertised in El Diario, a whole page advert that promised that every gun that he could imagine would be available to buy. Milton could imagine a lot of guns but, after just five minutes, he saw the claim wasn’t fanciful. The place was like a bazaar. Several long aisles had been formed by tables arranged swap-meet style, dozens of vendors on one side of them and several hundred people on the other. Milton recognised the hunters, but there were plenty of people buying for other reasons, too. He watched with a detached sense of professional interest as a rotund and cheerful white-bearded man, easily in his seventies, walked past with an ArmaLite and attached bayonet slung casually over his shoulder. A blue-rinsed lady of similar age negotiated hard for extra ammunition for the Smith & Wesson she was purchasing. Other shoppers were pushing hand carts of ammunition out to their trucks. Apart from the guns and ammo, there was surplus military apparel; first aid supplies; kippered beef in flavours like Whiskey BBQ and Dragon Breath; war movies; badger pelts; replica uniforms and flags from the Soviet Union, North Vietnam and Nazi Germany; knives, brass knuckles and katana swords; cougar skulls; crates of canned meat with expiration dates years into the future, ‘perfect for bunkers’; remote-controlled helicopters.
Milton sauntered along the aisle, looking for the right kind of seller. It didn’t take long to find one: the man had a table, covered in blue felt, with a selection of weapons sitting on their carry cases, a handwritten sign on the table reading PRIVATE SELLER/NO PAPER. The slogan on the man’s black wifebeater read “When All Else Fails, Vote From the Rooftops!” and revealed sleeves of tattoos up both arms. He wore a baseball cap with a camouflage design.
“Afternoon, sir,” he said.
“What do I need to buy from you?”
“Cash and carry. No background check, I don’t need no address––don’t really need nothing, no sir. This is a private party sale. What are you looking for?”
“What have you got?”
The man cast his hand across the heaving table. “I keep a nice selection. All the way from these little stainless steel Derringers, good for concealment, to the long guns. I got the Ruger .22––extremely popular gun. I got weapons with pink grips, for the lady, engraved pieces with inlaid handles and decorative stocks. Walthers, Smith & Wessons. A lot of people are shooting .40 calibres. Those are pretty vicious. I got revolvers––”
“No, automatic.”
“I have nice automatics. I got modern plastic guns. I got the Glock, I got the Springfield. And then, over here, I got the Mac semi-autos all the way up to the rifles: the .208s, the .223s, I got an AK-47 and an AR-15, a .50 calibre with fluted barrel and sniper green finish.”
Milton looked down at the metalware lined up across the table. They were all expertly made, although he found it easier to feel affection and admiration for the collector’s items with the wooden butts than for the coldly efficient and inorganic weapons that made sense only in combat. The cold grey foreboding of an AR-15. The leaden heaviness of the Czech MFP, modelled on the Kalashnikov.
He picked up a Springfield Tactical .45 auto.
“How much?”
“$480, cash money and it’s all yours, out the door you go.”
“I’ll take it.”
“You want ammo with that, too?”
The Springfield boxed thirteen rounds per magazine; Milton bought four, mixed factory hardball and jacketed hollow points from Federal and Remington, for a straight hundred.
He paid the man, thanked him and went back outside. It was seven in the evening by now and the winds had picked up. The faint orange dust that had hung in the windless morning had been whipped up into a storm and now it was rolling in off the desert. He took a taxi back to the border and was halfway across the span of the bridge when the storm swept over Juárez. Sand and dust stung his face and visibility was immediately reduced: first the mountains disappeared, then the belching smokestacks on the edge of town, and then, as the storm hunkered down properly over the city, details of the immediate landscape began to fade and blur. The streetlights that ran along the centre of the bridge shone as fuzzy penumbras in the sudden darkness.
Milton’s phone buzzed in his pocket. He took it out and pressed it to his ear.
“It’s Beau Baxter.”
“And?”
“Smith, are you outside in this?”
Milton ignored the question. “Get to i
t. Can you help?”
“Yeah, it can be done. You help me with our mutual friend, I’ll help get the girl where she wants to get and set her up with a nice new identity. Job, place to live, everything she needs. Want to talk about it?”
“We should.”
“Alright, buddy––tomorrow evening. There’s a joint here, does the best huaraches you’ve ever tasted, and I’m not kidding. I always visit whenever I’m in Juárez, compensation for having to come to this godforsaken fucking town in the first place. It’s at the Plaza Insurgents, on Avenue de los Insurgents. Get a taxi, they’ll know. Eight o’clock, alright?”
Milton said that he would be there and ended the call.
The lights of Juárez faded in and out through the eddies of dust and grit. The Hotel Coahuila’s neon throbbed on and off, the huge sign with a girl wearing bandolero belts and brandishing Kalashnikov machine-guns. He passed a police recruitment poster with a ninja-cop in a balaclava and the slogan ‘Juárez te necesita!’ ––Juárez Needs You. There was no-one in the gate shack on the Mexican side of the river. No passport control, no customs checks, no-one to notice the Springfield that was tucked into the back of his jeans or the clips of ammunition that he had stuffed into the pockets of his jacket. There was no queue, either, and he pushed his way through the creaking turnstile and crossed back into Juárez.
* * *
28.
THE STORM gathered strength. Milton took a taxi to the address that Caterina had given him. He told the driver to stop two blocks earlier and, paying him with a twenty dollar bill, told him to stay and wait if he wanted another. He got out, the sand and grit swirling around him, lashing into his exposed skin, and walked the rest of the way. It was a cheap, dingy area, rows of houses that had been sliced up to make apartments. He passed one house, the road outside filled with SUVs with tinted windows. The cars were occupied, the open door of one revealing a thickset man in the uniform of the federales. The man turned as Milton passed, cupping his hand around a match as he lit a cigarette, the glow of the flame flickering in unfriendly eyes. Milton kept going.
