Tequila Sunset

by Sam Hawken

  “I want to go home.”

  “I think we would all like that,” Matías said softly. “Now… tell me what you saw.”

  SIX

  CRISTINA WAS UP BEFORE THE SUN AND turned off her alarm before it had a chance to sound. The house was very still. When she moved, she moved lightly.

  In the kitchen she got things ready for Freddie’s breakfast. He liked chocolate-chip pancakes made in the microwave and drank chocolate milk. It was all bad for his teeth, but Cristina favored peace over battles in the early morning.

  Then she packed his lunch bag. Lots of carbs, like fruit and pretzels and chicken for protein. He was always happy when she gave him Oreos, but she had to draw the line somewhere. Besides, when he ate them he spent the day with a circle of black crumbs around his mouth that he never thought to wipe away.

  At the appointed time she went to his room and rapped on the door. “Freddie,” she said softly. “Freddie, it’s time to wake up.”

  She put on the bedside lamp and Freddie curled up into a tight ball under the covers. Cristina put her hand on his back and rubbed it. “It’s time to get up now,” she said.

  The boy was slow to rouse and when he sat up his hair stuck up crazily on his head. Cristina helped him out of his pajamas and lay his clothes out for him at the foot of the bed, always in the same order: underpants, pants, shirt, socks.

  “I’ll be back in a minute,” Cristina said. She would wait five and come back to see if he’d managed to dress himself. Sometimes he needed help with this, too.

  Today he put on his clothes himself, though he left his pajamas on the floor. Cristina dropped them in the hamper without scolding him and followed him into the kitchen.

  “Chocolate-chip pancakes?” he asked because he always asked.

  “Of course. Sit down.”

  “I want to play Roblox.”

  “Food first, then game. And you have to take your capsule.”

  The pancakes came out first. Cristina cut them up for Freddie and gave him the plate at the table. She went back to make his milk. Along with the powder, he had a crushed pill mixed in. He drank through a bendy straw.

  “Drink all that up.”

  She microwaved hot water for tea and toasted an English muffin. From time to time she checked the clock and Freddie’s progress with his breakfast. He was quick this morning.

  “Make sure you drink all your chocolate milk,” Cristina reminded him.

  When he was finished, Freddie got up from the table. “Can I play Roblox now?”

  “Capsule first.”

  The capsule was small, yellow and white, and could not be crushed. Freddie did not know how to put a pill on his tongue and wash it down with water so this morning, as on all mornings, he opened his mouth wide and stuck out his tongue. Cristina put the capsule halfway back and then flicked it to the back of his throat. She didn’t understand how he managed to swallow and not gag.

  “Now?”

  “Now.”

  Freddie went to the living room. Cristina steeped a tea bag in a cup and put butter and jelly on her English muffin. There was still plenty of time.

  She ate her food and followed Freddie out. He was deeply engrossed in the game, playing with virtual plastic bricks. Lots of other people played at the same time, making buildings and statues and everything else a person could make out of such things, showing off for each other. Freddie informed her that he was making an elevator.

  “We have to get ready soon,” Cristina said, though they had another fifteen minutes. “You have five minutes to play. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Cristina gathered his things by the door. Shoes, book bag, lunch bag, jacket. She ran the checklist in her mind. Pills all taken? Yes. Breakfast all done? Yes. Was there anything special Freddie needed for school? She couldn’t think of anything and it was probably too late already as it was.

  She let ten minutes pass before she interceded at the computer. “The bus is coming,” she said. “Come and get your jacket on.”

  Freddie was prepped to leave when Cristina realized she hadn’t brushed his hair. She rushed to the bathroom for a brush and did her best to bring it under control. They had to hurry out the door and down to the corner, time used up to the last minute.

  The bus was late. Freddie fidgeted by the STOP sign. “Is there no school today?” he asked.

  “No, there’s school today. The bus is just late.”

  “I don’t want to ride the bus.”

  “Well, you’re riding it.” A patch of yellow appeared three blocks down and quickly sized up into a small bus. “See? There it is.”

  The bus pulled up to the corner and Cristina ushered him aboard. She said good morning to the bus driver and waved to Freddie when the bus pulled away. He did not wave back. He didn’t even notice her.

  SEVEN

  THE BUS TRIP TOOK SIXTEEN HOURS AND passed through Abilene, Midland and Odessa on the way west. Flip spent most of that time dozing. There was little to see driving through the heart of Texas and the bus did not stop for sights, anyway. He had learned through long practice the art of sleeping when he wasn’t tired, as a weapon against boredom. When Coffield was locked down and there was nothing to do, nothing to read, there was always sleep.

  It was ten in the morning when the Greyhound bus reached the El Paso terminal. Flip unloaded with the other passengers and fetched his bag from underneath the belly of the bus. He went inside and bought a candy bar from a snack machine. It was the first thing he’d eaten since leaving Coffield.

  He made a call from the pay phones but his mother wasn’t at home. She knew to expect him, but not when, and he regretted not calling ahead once he learned the schedule. There was enough money left in his envelope to get him home, but he imagined himself sitting on the front step waiting. In the end he supposed it didn’t matter; he could not hang out all day at the bus station.

  A taxi carried him the rest of the way. Flip didn’t have money enough to tip the driver and he knew the guy was mad, but all he could say was, “I’m sorry,” and he got out of the car.

  His mother’s house was on a quiet street with other houses that looked exactly the same. Hers was a coral pink with white bars on all the windows and doors. The driveway was empty, a naked basketball hoop without a net hanging over the car park. Flip looked both ways up and down the street and there was no one around. At least no one would stare.

  He put his bag on the front step by the door and circled around to the back yard. His dog, Nacho, was dead now four years but the yard still showed signs of the holes he’d dug. Flip peered through the windows into the house, knowing he wouldn’t see anyone but doing it anyway. He saw empty rooms that looked the same as they had when he left: the same furniture, the same pictures on the walls, the same everything.

  Flip returned to the front in time to see his mother’s old Impala turning into the drive. She waved excitedly from behind the wheel and he raised a hand. He wanted to smile, but time inside had quashed that instinct.

  “Felipe!” his mother exclaimed as she got out of the car. “Oh, Felipe, have you been here very long?”

  “Not long, Mamá.”

  Flip’s mother was short and very round and she had to raise her arms above her head to embrace him around the shoulders. She squeezed hard. “I’m so sorry you had to wait. You should have called!”

  “I did call.”

  “Not the house, my cell phone! I would have hurried at the store! Help me with the bags.”

  They unloaded the trunk of the car and Flip’s mother let them in. The house’s smell returned to him immediately: the odor of cooking and scrupulous cleaning. The floors were hardwood and they shone. There was not a bit of dust in Silvia Morales’ home.

  Flip put the grocery bags on the kitchen table. At first he thought he should sit down while his mother put away her purchases, but then he felt strangely uncomfortable and chose to stand. If he had been back at Coffield, he would have retreated to his cell when this feelin
g came over him, or to some isolated table in the day room.

  “I have everything you like,” his mother told him. “We’re going to have a big meal and your aunts and uncles are coming. We’ll do it on Saturday. Tonight it’s just you and me. Is that all right, Felipe?”

  “It’s fine, Mamá.”

  “Where are your things?”

  “I left them outside.”

  “Bring them in! Your room is ready for you.”

  Flip gathered his bag from the front step and brought it to his room. It was the second largest of three bedrooms, the smallest a sewing room for his mother. He was glad to see that she had painted the walls and left them bare. The front rooms were an assault of family pictures and artwork. He was not ready for all of that in his space.

  His bed awaited, neatly made with a quilt on top. Sunlight from the side of the house slanted through the window, cut into slices by the burglar bars.

  He had a desk that was clear of objects except for a pad and pen. Maybe his mother expected him to write letters to his people back at Coffield, or maybe it was just an innocent thing. His red chest of drawers was the same.

  His things were mostly books and he arranged them on top of the chest of drawers. He had notebooks filled with scribbles and thoughts. These he put away in the desk where no one would see. When he was done he sat on the edge of the bed and let the hush sink in. It was never quiet in prison.

  “Felipe!” his mother called and broke the silence. “Do you want something to eat now?”

  “Okay, Mamá,” Flip yelled back.

  “I will make you something. Did you have breakfast?”

  “No, Mamá.”

  “Then you’ll have breakfast now.”

  Before long there was the scent of browning chorizo, distinct even from here. Flip slipped off his shoes and lay down on the bed, watching the ceiling. Despite himself, his stomach rumbled.

  He wished he could say that being here did not seem real, but it was real enough. The feel of the mattress underneath his body, the smells, the walls… all of these told him he was here now and not dreaming it. Soon he would sit down to eggs and sausage and a cup of dark coffee. His mother would ask him many questions and he would do his best to answer them without frightening her. Maybe to her the years in Coffield would be like something seen through a haze, but it was fresh in his mind and he did not foresee a time when it would not be.

  Flip closed his eyes, listened until he could hear the clink of cooking utensils and his mother muttering to herself as she cooked. He felt the warmth of the sun falling on his leg. As he did on the bus, he zoned into another place, letting time compress and speed past him. It wasn’t until his mother called to him again that he came back to this room, this bed, this body.

  “Coffee is ready!”

  “I’m coming, Mamá.”

  EIGHT

  CRISTINA SPENT THE MORNING AT HOME reading an FBI document about cross-border trafficking and related gang activity. The language was clinically dry and made her eyes roll into the back of her head, but she forced herself through all one hundred and twenty pages. In the end she felt she could sum it up in one sentence: business as usual along the border.

  In El Paso they had gangs and in Ciudad Juárez there were gangs. They traded with one other and helped one another and the common denominator was cash. On the US side they caught kids as young as eighteen with guns stashed in the dashboards of their cars. On the Mexican side it was the same, only it was marijuana and meth heading north.

  These were small-time deals, just a few gang-bangers looking to earn some money. The big fish swam in deeper waters, where a hundred kilos could ship without anyone batting an eye and dozens of factory-fresh AK-47s shipped south into eager hands. In Texas it was hard to get dope, but easy to get guns. In Mexico it was just the opposite.

  Cristina and Robinson did not handle the big fish. FBI and DEA were both in El Paso and they took care of the big-money deals, the heavy weight, the traffic in guns. Customs and Border Protection, too. Cristina had even met two agents of the ATF once, looking into weapons trafficking through the city. All eyes were focused on El Paso and its companion across the river, Juárez.

  She had an early lunch and drove to work. Robinson was already at his desk reading the daily reports. He had a big cup of Dunkin Donuts coffee on hand. “Afternoon,” he said.

  “What’s up?”

  “Not much. We’re the safest city in the US, you know.”

  “Are we?”

  “That’s what they say right here.”

  “Well, good for us.”

  Robinson passed the sheets over and Cristina scanned them. One of them touted the results of “an independent study” that showed El Paso’s overall crime rate was down one percent. In Central Regional Command, which was their domain, it was down five percent.

  “Safest city in the US,” Cristina remarked.

  “Yep.”

  “I guess I ought to just go home, then. No bad guys to catch.”

  “We should be so lucky.”

  Captain Cokley approached them with paperwork in hand. “How are the fearless crimebusters this morning?” he asked.

  “Getting by,” Robinson said.

  “Well, I’ve got something for you. Grocery store on 4th. Gang tags and possible protection racket. I want you to go out there, talk to the guy, see what you can dig up.”

  “We’re on it.”

  “And don’t stop for any juvenile delinquents on the way. You have real work to do.”

  Robinson drove. They pulled up into a yellow zone and put a police placard in the front window. Cristina had a view of the long side wall of the little family-owned grocery and she could see the graffiti from the car. “You got the camera?” she asked.

  “Right here.”

  First they took pictures of the gang tags. They were easy to read: the tagger’s signature, the neighborhood and the gang stamp: 21. “Aztecas,” Cristina said. Robinson took pictures.

  They went inside. The place had a peculiar aroma, of closeness and age, that wasn’t totally off-putting. This grocery store had been in the neighborhood forty years and it lacked the stark, almost antiseptic feel of a chain store. Fresh produce was displayed just inside the front door, still smelling of the earth.

  A teenaged girl stood at the register. Cristina showed her ID and asked for the manager.

  “The owner is here.”

  “That’ll work, too.”

  The girl disappeared for a while and returned with an old man in his late sixties, balding on top and widening in the middle. He nodded at their badges and shook both of their hands. “I am Ruben Delgado,” he said. “Mucho gusto.”

  “Do you have somewhere we can talk?” Cristina asked.

  “Come back to my office.”

  The office was a cramped space at the far end of the grocery behind a door marked GERENTE. Somehow Delgado had found room enough for a desk and two chairs for visitors. The walls had cheap wood paneling on them and were covered with framed certificates and civic awards.

  Robinson sat by the door and Cristina squeezed in next to the wall. Delgado settled behind his desk.

  “We saw the gang tags outside,” Robinson said. “What can you tell us about them?”

  “There’s nothing to tell. One day they aren’t there, the next they are. Those kids, they come by in the night and do it. We can’t afford security cameras outside. Not to watch a wall.”

  “Okay, then what is this about protection money?” Cristina asked.

  Delgado sighed. “One day last week, a young kid comes in to buy a soda. He talks to my girl at the front, says the soda is free. Then he says he has friends who will come around and want free things, too. She told me right away.”

  “Did they ask for money directly?”

  “No, just free things.”

  “Do you have a camera up front?”

  “Yes.”

  “If you have tapes from that day, we’ll need them. And we’ll need your
employee to come down and look at pictures.”

  “Does she have to go?”

  “Well, no,” Cristina said, “but if we can find out who’s hassling your employees, we can put a stop to it.”

  “The policeman I spoke to, he said that they can keep an eye on my store, watch for trouble.”

  “A patrol car can’t be here all the time,” Robinson said.

  “I just worry. My girl, she’s young. She doesn’t need no trouble.”

  “We’re trying to keep her out of trouble,” Cristina said.

  “When does she have to go?”

  “We won’t take her now, but if she can come down sometime this week, that would be good.”

  Delgado stood up. “You think they’ll come and wreck my store?”

  “Probably not,” Robinson said. “If these are just punk kids, they’ll mark up your walls, try to cause a little trouble and then get out. They’re not a serious problem.”

  “Good. I’ve been in business since 1972. We’ve seen some bad times down here in Segundo Barrio. We thought times had changed.”

  Cristina smiled for the old man. “Don’t worry about it. We’re on it.”

  They left their cards with Delgado and his cashier, then retreated outside. Robinson put on sunglasses against the glare. “That was a waste of goddamned time.”

  “I don’t know about you, but I didn’t sign up to be on free soda patrol,” Cristina said.

  “The tags and the kid probably aren’t even related,” Robinson said. “I don’t know any member of Barrio Azteca who’d stop at stealing soft drinks from a tienda. Somebody shows a gun, then they can start to worry.”

  “Broken windows, Bob. We’re chasing after broken windows. It starts with a spray can and ends up with an AK.”

  “You think that girl will even come down to look at mug shots?”

  “Nope.”

  “Me, neither. Want to grab some lunch?”

  “I already ate.”

  “Then you can watch me eat,” Robinson said.

  “Captain will want us on another call.”