by Sam Hawken
“I don’t want to get involved in that.”
“Please, Mr. Rodriguez,” Cristina said. “I know it seems like a lot to ask, but it’s really very simple. I doubt your contact with José Martinez would extend beyond one meeting. And if we could get you to wear a wire at that meeting, it’ll mean that much more evidence to use against him.”
“A wire?!?” Rodriguez exclaimed. “You want me to wear a microphone? These thugs kill people. What will they do to me if they find out I’m helping the police spy on them?”
“You’d be under our protection the whole time,” Robinson said.
“No! Absolutely no!” Rodriguez came off the couch and gestured emphatically with his hands. “I work very hard to stay out of situations like this and I’m not going to get into one now. I’m sorry.”
Robinson stood up. “Mr. Rodriguez, just give us a chance.”
“No. I’m sorry. No. Now I have to ask you to leave. Please.”
Cristina and Robinson let Rodriguez herd them to the door. She wanted to say more, but she knew it would fall on deaf ears. Even Robinson had nothing to say. Rodriguez got the door open and almost pushed them out.
“Please don’t come back,” Rodriguez said, and then he closed the door.
TEN
THE BIG ROOM WAS QUIET AND ALL THE DESKS empty. Matías and Paco retired to the conference room and Matías waited while Paco struggled to load images from a flash drive to the room’s computer. The projector was on, showing a huge blue square where pictures should have been.
“Fucking thing!” Paco cursed. “How does this work?”
“Do you want me to show you?”
“No, damn it, I can do it myself.”
Lopez had put Matías and Paco together after Matías’ meeting with Romero. Matías was told it was because they wanted to reduce his workload, but Matías thought perhaps they wanted another man fluent in the Azteca situation if something should befall him. He did not blame them, and in truth he enjoyed having someone he could share his knowledge with. Paco was anxious to know everything and Matías was willing to tell all.
In the end the change had affected the amount of work Matías had to do himself. He was able to go home earlier, knowing Paco was there to pick up the slack. Some of the little things Matías would have handled himself he passed on. It was good.
Another few minutes of wrangling and the blue square changed to a picture of the computer’s desktop. Paco fiddled with the cursor until the right window opened. He clicked and the frame expanded to fill the whole screen.
The photographs were in high-definition color, a series of busy street scenes that were instantly identifiable as Ciudad Juárez. Matías could almost narrow the images down to a single street just from what he could see, and at the center of the snapshots, two men he knew equally well.
“There’s José Martinez,” Paco declared. “I don’t know the other guy.”
“Víctor Barrios,” Matías said. “Víctor is one of Guerra’s capos. He meets with José Martinez a lot.”
“How often is a lot?”
“Once every ten days or so. José slips across the border, has lunch or dinner with Víctor, and then heads back to the States. Víctor likes the ladies, so he and José party together.”
“I have a lot of pictures here with the two of them.”
“Any audio?”
“No. You can see they’re eating on the street. It’s too noisy to pick anything up, even with the new microphones.”
Matías frowned. “Show me something I haven’t seen before.”
“Okay. How about this?”
They were looking at a substantial warehouse from street level, trucks in motion all around, with others loading in the background. José was caught through the chain-link fence talking with a man Matías did not recognize. There were several of these, and the series concluded with José shaking the man’s hand.
“Where is this place?”
“A shipping depot off Vial Juan Gabriel. On the same day José met with Guerra’s man, he went here. Talked to this guy for a long time.”
“No audio there, either?”
“Sorry.”
Matías pounded the arm of his chair. “It’s no good if we don’t know what he’s talking about! It’s all about those damned trucks!”
“What should we do?” Paco asked.
“I’m thinking on it.”
Paco clicked through more photos showing the depot at large, the entrance and the armed guards. The men with their shotguns paid no mind when José passed through them, as if they knew him by sight, and perhaps they did.
“The first thing we have to do is increase surveillance on the depot,” Matías said at last. “And we need to find out the name of the man José talked to. Once we have that information, we can start digging through his life: who he is, where he lives, how much he makes. Does this place show up in any reports as a known way-station for drugs? Are the cartels using it? Do we have any information at all that would allow us to make a raid?”
“I’m working on it. Tomorrow I’ll start calling around and we’ll get this depot covered. José wants trucks? We can let him have some trucks.”
“That’s good,” Matías said.
“What about Guerra?”
“Guerra will put his head out,” Matías said. “Sooner or later he has to step into this and then we’ll have him. We’ll have all of them.”
Matías got up. It was late, but he wasn’t tired. He could make his calls right now, wake up some people and put them to work, but he had to be home for Elvira.
Paco clasped him by the shoulder. “It’s going to work, isn’t it?”
“If it doesn’t, then you had better start sharpening your own pencil. There’s always lots of paperwork to be done, and we’ll be doing it together.”
ELEVEN
MATÍAS KNEW SOMETHING WAS WRONG AS soon as he turned the key in the door. There was a sense of stillness on the other side that bled through the wood into the hallway. When he opened the door it was dark, all the lights out.
He didn’t call out. He stepped inside and closed the door quietly, thinking for a moment that maybe Elvira was sleeping, having gone to bed early. Once she would have waited up for him to all hours, but things had changed.
There was no sound. She was not sleeping.
Matías switched on the living room lights and went down the hall to the bedroom. He put on the lights in there and saw the bed was empty, still made. The closet door was half-open.
In the closet he saw the missing clothes, the empty spaces on the shoe rack where she’d taken away her favorite pairs. His things were undisturbed.
She had left no note in the kitchen or anywhere else in the apartment. She was simply gone.
They had a bottle of brandy from Spain that they had barely touched in the year since it was given to them as a present. Matías found the right glass in the cabinet and poured himself two fingers. He sat on the couch in the empty living room and stared at the picture on the opposite wall. The brandy burnt, but it had a fruity taste he had never noticed before. He would have mentioned this to Elvira.
After an hour he brought out his phone and called her number. It rang five times and went to voicemail. “It’s Matías,” he said. “I’m not angry. Please, just call me when you get this message.”
He put his jacket and tie away and rolled up his shirtsleeves. He took off his shoes and put his sockfeet on the coffee table while he had another glass of brandy. It was close to eleven o’clock and she did not call back.
“It’s Matías again,” he told her voicemail. “If you get this you can call me anytime, no matter how late. I’m going to stay up until I hear from you.”
It was not his drink, but another brandy would be good. He did not want to be drunk when she called, so Matías put it away. He rummaged in the freezer for something to thaw out and eat and settled on a pasta meal that only needed a few minutes in the microwave. When it was ready he ate at the kitchen table n
ot looking at anything, waiting for the phone to ring.
Midnight came and went. The energy he felt at the office with Paco had faded, but he knew he would not be able to sleep even if he tried. He did not like watching television very much and all the shows at this hour were pointless and stupid. There was a mystery novel in the bedroom that he’d been trying to finish for a month. Reading it now helped a little, though he immediately forgot everything he read as soon as he turned each page.
It was two o’clock in the morning when his phone vibrated and then chimed. He put down the book and cleared his throat and answered. “Bueno,” he said.
“Matías,” said Elvira. Her voice sounded far away, Matías thought, but then it could just be his imagination. “Matías, I’m sorry.”
“Where did you go?” Matías asked.
“I’m in Monterrey with my sister.”
Matías closed his eyes. He had been to Elvira’s sister’s home several times and stayed in the spare bedroom, which was made up like a sun-dappled field of yellow flowers. Imagining Elvira there made her feel closer. “Why did you leave?”
“It’s not you, Matías. It was never you.”
“I’m glad.”
“I can’t be in Juárez right now. I arranged for a leave of absence from work.”
“And then you flew to Monterrey. How long have you been planning this?”
“Not long. Or maybe that’s not true. I knew as soon as that night that I had to leave, only I didn’t want to go without you.”
“You know I can’t go.”
“I’ve thought about that. You can go. You said yourself that they want you to keep a low profile. Why not take some time off and come away with me? You have it coming to you, so why keep saving it? You can use it now.”
Matías thought of his meeting with Paco, of the things they discussed, of what would happen. Trying to explain all of this to Elvira was pointless; she wouldn’t want to hear it, but he would have to do it anyway.
“Matías, are you there?”
“I’m here.”
“Will you come?”
Matías felt a pain inside. “No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I have work to do here. If I go now…”
“If you go now someone else can deal with it.”
“I wish I could make you understand, Elvira.”
“So you won’t come. Even though I’m asking you.”
“I would if I could, but I can’t,” Matías said. “That’s all you need to know: that I can’t. The work won’t be done without me. They need me here.”
“I need you!”
Matías sighed. “I have to get up early tomorrow, Elvira.”
“You’re hanging up on me?”
“There’s nothing to be gained by continuing this discussion. You’ve told me what you want, I’ve told you what I can do. We could go on forever like this. I’m happy to know that you’re safe somewhere. That’s the most important thing.”
Elvira’s tone shifted and Matías knew she was crying. “I only want for both of us to be safe!”
“I know. Please don’t cry.”
“Come with me, Matías. I’m begging you.”
“Don’t do this to me, Elvira.”
“You won’t be happy until they get you!”
“Elvira, you know that’s not true.”
“Do you love me, Matías?”
“Yes, I love you.”
“And still you can’t do this for me?”
“No, I can’t.”
“To hell with your work!”
“We’ll talk again tomorrow. Get some sleep.”
Matías keyed off the phone and put it on the coffee table. Elvira did not call back.
TWELVE
CRISTINA SPENT THE MORNING LECTURING junior high students on the dangers of gangs. They called it the “speaking tour” and at different schools she talked to children as young as ten and as old as eighteen. Some were already in the life and nothing she said would turn them away. Those kids she would see again, locked in the back of a patrol car or in a cell.
Freddie’s school was not one of the ones she visited. The children there were not targets for recruitment. Cristina worried about them mostly because they could become targets – for bullying, for robbery, for assault – and they were unable to defend themselves. Freddie was not in a wheelchair, at least, and he didn’t need a walker. Cristina told him that if someone scared him on the street, he was to run away as fast as he could and keep running until he could find a police officer. She hoped he would never have to do that.
Because of the speaking tour she had the afternoon off and she went to pick up Freddie from school. She parked in the small lot and went in through the main entrance. The door was electronically locked from the inside and a guard had to buzz her in. At the front desk she was obliged to sign her name in return for a sticker that declared VISITOR in big, red letters. The stickers were dated so they could only be used on the same day they were issued.
The office was downstairs, below street level. Cristina signed her name again and scribbled down her reason for picking Freddie up. Bureaucracy was the same everywhere.
The secretary called to Freddie’s classroom. “Ms. Salas?” she asked after a moment.
“Yes?”
“Ms. Gillies wants to know if you’d come down. Freddie’s in the quiet room.”
“Okay.”
“Right down that hallway. She’ll meet you.”
Cristina followed the secretary’s finger down a corridor she hadn’t been allowed in before. She saw Ms. Gillies, Freddie’s teacher, waiting almost at the far end and she faintly heard the sound of screaming.
The screaming grew louder and more vehement the farther she went. She felt her breath catch in her throat because she knew what Ms. Gillies would tell her when she got there, but she didn’t want to know.
“Hi, Ms. Salas,” Ms. Gillies said. She was an elfin woman who looked far too young to be a teacher. Maybe a teacher’s assistant. Her expression was sympathetic. The screaming was very insistent now. “Freddie’s right through here.”
She was brought into a room with white walls and a few desks. A pair of offices branched off from the central hub, but two other doors were closed. They were marked ROOM 1 and ROOM 2. The screaming came from Room 1. Two staff were on hand, looking sober.
“We have the door closed and locked because Freddie is out of control,” Ms. Gillies told Cristina. “Since you’re here, maybe you can talk to him?”
Cristina nodded. She didn’t trust herself to speak. The noises coming from behind the door were brutish and animalistic. No child should make sounds like that.
Ms. Gillies went to the door. She spoke through it. “Freddie? Freddie, your mom is here. We’re going to open the door, okay?”
Something slammed violently against the door, shaking it in its frame. Cristina almost jumped. “He kicks the door,” said one of the staff members.
“Freddie, the door is opening now!”
Ms. Gillies unlocked the door and cracked it slowly open. It was dim inside the room, which was no bigger than a walk-in closet. A small bench was built into the wall.
Freddie was flush-faced and sweating, his hair stuck together. His eyes rolled in their sockets. He opened his mouth to scream again, but he saw Cristina and rushed forward instead. Cristina was caught around the waist, Freddie’s face buried in her stomach, and he was crying.
Cristina looked at Ms. Gillies and the others looking at her. They were watching her for some lead, some clue. All she could do was shush him and pat his head and neck. “It’s okay, peanut. It’s okay.”
“I’ll get his things for you,” Ms. Gillies said, and left the room.
She got Freddie to loosen his grip on her and Cristina knelt down to brush the hair away from Freddie’s face. His eyes were swollen with tears now and his cheeks were still ruddy. Breath came in hiccups and spurts. “It’s okay,” Cristina said again. “I’m here. It’s all
over.”
“One of the other students took a toy from him,” one of the staffers said. “He hit the student and we had to separate them. He wouldn’t walk to the quiet room so we had to transport him.”
“I w-want to go h-home,” Freddie said.
“We’re going to go home,” Cristina told him. “Let’s just get your book-bag.”
Ms. Gillies returned with the backpack. “His homework is inside and his point sheet.”
“Thank you,” Cristina said.
“Freddie, I’ll see you tomorrow,” Ms. Gillies said brightly. “Okay?”
Freddie put his head down and didn’t answer.
“Oh, well,” Ms. Gillies said. “He’ll feel better in a little while.”
THIRTEEN
GRACIELA DROVE THEM TO JOSÉ’S HOUSE. They were forced to park a block away. It was a big party tonight. Cinco de Mayo.
“Do you think José’s wife will be there?” Flip asked.
“Her?” Graciela answered. “Never. She doesn’t even live with him.”
“Huh,” Flip said. “Where does she live?”
“I don’t know. Somewhere.”
Coming to these get-togethers had become a ritual of a kind. The club was one place where the Indians gathered, but it was at the house that they really bonded. They were all under José’s watchful eye when they ate his barbecue and drank his beer. And Flip was always aware that this was the place where he had first been with Graciela. Conflicting feelings came to him with that memory.
Walking up the sidewalk toward José’s place, Flip looked for some sign of the detectives watching. Detective Salas told him they kept an eye on José, but he never saw anyone on the streets. A few of the other Aztecas said once they rousted a pair of cops who were taking pictures of a party, but Flip wasn’t sure if they were telling the truth or lies.
Graciela held Flip’s hand until they were almost upon the house, and then she spotted her friend Rosenda standing in the driveway. She kissed Flip on the cheek and said, “Got to go. Have fun.”
