Ground Truth

by Rob Sangster

  But he’d left a trail. It was just a matter of time until someone started tracking him.

  Chapter 25

  July 4

  6:30 a.m.

  THE “CLICK” BARELY registered in his sleep-fogged mind. It had no context until he heard the bottom of the door to his suite brush across the thick carpet then close with another click. Someone was inside. Guzman had found him. Lying in bed, back toward the door, he was totally vulnerable. He’d have to roll out of bed and defend himself without knowing where Guzman was in the room or what kind of weapon he had.

  Before he could move, a soft voice asked, “May I come in? My cousin at the desk gave me the key.”

  He sat up and, in the faint light coming through the curtains, saw it was Ana-Maria. “What are you doing here?”

  “I was so worried about you I couldn’t sleep. I had to find out what happened.” She started unbuttoning her long gray cloak, the uniform many women in Juarez wore to fend off leers and jeers.

  “Nothing I couldn’t handle.” It was easy to talk like a Harrison Ford character now that he’d escaped from the plant. “But I didn’t find out where Juanita is.” He wouldn’t tell her that what he had found made it almost certain that Juanita was dead.

  From outside he heard the unmistakable yelps kids make as they jump into a pool. What time was it anyway? He checked his watch. Six thirty! Damn short night.

  Ana-Maria stopped unbuttoning her cloak. “I know where she is.” Her puffy eyes and flat tone said it all. “She’s dead.”

  “I’m so sorry.” He hadn’t been able to help Juanita. Had he somehow put her more at risk? “How do you know?”

  “My neighbor works a night shift for the city. He was down by the river when they found Juanita. His wife came to my house and told me. I’ve been crying ever since.”

  She undid the last two buttons, slipped the cloak from her shoulders and laid it on a chair. Her dress was dark blue, tied at the waist with a white sash, cut so low that her full breasts were almost bare. No bra. She sat on the edge of the bed, shoulders bowed, eyes downcast.

  He felt very naked under the covers.

  “They threw her away like she was nothing,” Ana-Maria said bitterly. “They made it look the same as the others so people would say, ‘oh well, another one.’ But I know better.”

  He reached out and squeezed her hand.

  “You’re a good man,” she said, looking up, “not like the others. I had to see you, to have you hold me.” She touched his cheek, stared at him for several seconds, then nodded as if she’d just made up her mind about something.

  She moved closer to him. Her fingers slid down the side of his neck then along his collarbone and across his chest, her eyes on his. She lightly touched his nipples, then took his face in both hands and kissed him gently, warmly, then more intimately.

  She was Montana’s assistant, so he had pegged her as an adversary, someone he had to persuade to reveal what she knew. Now she was a woman who smelled of musk and whose tongue signaled him that . . . what?

  She drew away and stood up beside the bed. Was she having second thoughts? Had he misunderstood? She looked slowly around the suite, taking in the carved furnishings and the Freda Kahlo print, maybe imagining the extravagance of staying in such a place.

  With her left hand she reached inside the dress and caressed her right breast. Her other hand undid two small buttons, and the blue dress opened down to the sash. She reached behind her back, untied the fastening, and the sash dropped to the floor. She shrugged her shoulders. Catching for a moment at the tips of her breasts, the dress became a dark blue puddle at her feet.

  Her audacity made her incredibly alluring. He reached out, but she shook her head slightly. She cupped her hands beneath breasts that needed no support; golden skin, aureoles that were a mysterious canvas for erect nipples. She squeezed them gently, as if milk might flow.

  Under the sheet, his penis had risen stiff as a totem.

  Her hips swayed side-to-side, more primal than dance, not performing, simply being. She brought her middle finger to her mouth, sucked it and used it to circle her left nipple. Her hand slid in slow motion down her smooth belly into the silky hair. She kneaded the knoll of flesh like a cat. Her hips moved toward him and away and toward him again.

  He’d never been so aroused, but wouldn’t reach for her until she was ready.

  Hands on her hips, she leaned slightly toward him. “I will fill your mouth with my breast and lick your nipples. And then, Mr. Jack Strider from San Francisco, you will make love with me until you can’t stand.”

  She drew the sheet away from his body and pushed him back on the pillows. She kissed him deeply, twisting her head from side to side, brushing her body over his. The weight and fullness of her breasts was driving him crazy. Her mouth started to search out his body’s secrets. Always, some part of her stayed in touch with his penis. He lost track of time.

  With a heroic effort, he tore himself away and dashed to the bathroom for the protection he always carried in his leather Dopp kit.

  Then, deep inside her, during seconds when movement was tensely suspended, he said things to her that came from a place he hadn’t known existed in him. Every time he was about to explode, she gripped his shaft and held back the tsunami. Then she didn’t, and he couldn’t maintain control, didn’t want to, and he erupted.

  Afterwards, he curled up behind her, cupping her body inside his, feeling their breathing slow. As his mind roamed back over where they’d been together, he realized she hadn’t climaxed. Her every move had been about him—to arouse him, tease him, bring him to a peak and hold him there and, finally, to let him cross over. He wanted to give her the pleasure she’d given him, so he put his hand on her thigh and slowly drew his fingers up between her legs. Heat radiated from her center. His finger rose into the silk.

  Her hand covered his and brought it back to rest on her thigh, her eyes open, watching him. He kissed her forehead. “You didn’t enjoy this as much as I did. Was it me?”

  “Not you. It’s something other men did, men who just took what they wanted. I learned to not be in the room when it was happening.”

  “I’m sorry.” He wanted to comfort her, wanted to erase those experiences from her memory, but he knew words couldn’t do that. But something bothered him so he asked, “Ana-Maria, why did you come to my room?”

  She turned her head away again. “To see if you were all right.”

  “Please tell me the truth. Did you have this in mind?”

  “All right, you want the truth, but maybe the truth is not so nice. Guzman will come for me next. I feel it in my belly. I can’t stop him. Unless you help me, I will die. You don’t know what it’s like to be helpless.”

  She was right. He’d lost a lot in the past weeks, but education, money, and a lifetime of success were firewalls between him and feeling helpless. It was a chasm between them he wasn’t sure he could cross.

  He wrapped his arms around her, felt the satin of her skin, kissed behind her ear. He wanted to admit the real reason he’d courted her at lunch, but couldn‘t risk telling her. She was okay with using him, but she might resent the hell out of him using her. “I’ll do everything I can to keep Guzman from hurting you.”

  She smiled slightly, fluffed up the pillows and lay back against them, hands clasped behind her head, bed sheet at her waist. “Then I’m ready.”

  After the intimacy they’d just shared, he was barely able to focus his eyes, but if she was ready again so was he. He leaned forward to kiss her. And this time he’d find a way to help her enjoy it.

  She gently pushed him away. “No, I mean I’m ready to tell you what I know about Palmer Industries.”

  The quick shift into the moment he’d been working toward surprised him. She was about to be his GPS.

  “Th
at’s good news. Do you know if Juanita had a computer on her desk?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s gone.”

  “Then Guzman took it. The workers are terrified of him. They wouldn’t go into that office if the door was wide open with a million pesos piled on the floor.”

  “The power cord was still there, so he didn’t care about using the computer.” He paused, considering where the logic took him. “He wanted to prevent anyone from getting into the hard drive and reading the files. But that doesn’t help us.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I don’t know what was on it and can’t prove he took it. It’s no more proof than the wire cutter, which I still have, that we can’t prove was Guzman’s. Even if his fingerprints are on it, he can say it was stolen. Think hard. Can you remember anything else Juanita told you about Guzman?”

  As she ran her fingertips through her hair, his eyes kept sliding to her breasts. Recent memories were about to get him way off track. He felt a stirring and shifted to hide it from her.

  “Maybe I know more than Juanita did,” she said. “When she told me about the missing fuel, it didn’t mean anything to me. Now it does. I know where it’s going. The fuel pumps are right outside my office window, so I see all the trucks coming in and going out. A while ago I noticed some trucks that were different.”

  “Different how?”

  “They’re all black and come into the plant close together, nose to tail. Nothing is unloaded from them except the crews that bring them in. There’s always a van waiting with new crews. They refuel and leave right away. They’re back the next day, sometimes early, sometimes later. The first crews, always hung over, take on more fuel, and leave. Then about a week ago a convoy of trucks began arriving in the morning too. They change crews, get fuel, and keep going. I don’t know when they come back because I’m off work by then.”

  Her description helped explain what he’d read in the Portland envelope, except that frequency of trips was increasing. “Anything else?”

  “Those black trucks are the biggest I’ve seen at the plant. At first, there were only three trucks at a time. Now, sometimes five or six. I tried to look them up in the trip files, but I couldn’t find them.”

  She couldn’t find those trip files because they were in a manila envelope in Guzman’s office. “How often do the trucks show up?”

  “I don’t keep track, but they never load or unload anything at Palmer.”

  “Where could they go and get back the next day?”

  “Quien sabe? Who knows. Chihuahua City? Even farther.”

  “Did anyone else notice them, maybe talk about them?”

  “The men work shifts. Anyone on duty when the trucks arrive wouldn’t be working when they come back. Only me, working all day, staring out the window when I get bored.”

  The mystery trucks only existed in hidden files. Now he had descriptions and schedules. In the meantime, he had to get back to what Montana was doing on-site.

  “I asked you before whether Montana keeps two sets of records, but you wouldn’t tell me.”

  “I didn’t trust you then. Now I do. There are two sets. One is in his office. One he keeps somewhere else. The set you saw shows purchases of equipment needed to treat hazardous waste. Some of those purchases never happened. And it shows payments to dump sites for disposal. Some of those payments were never made because nothing was sent.”

  “Don’t the government inspectors realize that equipment is missing?”

  “They walk around the plant for a few minutes, do a few tests, make some notes, then come to the air-conditioned Admin building to get out of the hot sun. They hit on women and tell stories until Señor Montana sends for them. All four inspectors are smiling when they leave his office. We don’t see them until the next month.”

  “Montana bribes them?”

  She gave him a look that said “only a blind pig wouldn’t understand what’s going on” and didn’t answer.

  “If the inspectors aren’t filing negative reports, why is PROFEPA going after Palmer?”

  “I overheard Señor Montana on the phone saying some local company that Palmer Industries takes business away from must have paid PROFEPA to get him in trouble.”

  “Could the PROFEPA lawyers have gotten a copy of the real records?”

  “No. All the data that goes into the real books, I enter into my computer. Then he stands over me while I transfer those files to a DVD. He takes it and watches me delete those files from my computer.”

  This information tied Montana to bribery and fraud, but so far, the evidence was all indirect. Montana had covered his tracks well. That’s why he was so cocky.

  “Anything else?”

  “A couple of weeks ago, a man came to the office with an envelope stamped “Confidential.” He had been ordered to deliver it only to Señor Montana’s hand and wouldn’t tell me who it was from. After an hour, Señor Montana returned and took the envelope. Later, while he was out of his office, I saw the envelope and what looked like some sort of form on his desk. I read it as fast as I could. It was a copy of a PROFEPA report that said the Palmer incinerator was sending out too much di . . . something.”

  “Dioxins?”

  “That was it, dioxins. The report said the fumes cause birth defects and poison the breast milk of some mothers.” She pressed her fingers against her own breast.

  In Alvarez’s hands, that letter could be the smoking gun he planned to use to nail Montana. “Did you make a copy?”

  “I was afraid. Señor Montana was still in the building.”

  How had PROFEPA gotten incinerator readings? Maybe one of the inspectors had taken a reading and accidentally let it slip through to a supervisor. What mattered was that PROFEPA had the information. Maybe that explained why Alvarez was being allowed to go forward.

  Ana-Maria’s oral testimony would be far less than conclusive, but for his purposes, she’d confirmed what Montana was doing, part of it anyway. He made a silent vow to take that miserable son-of-a-bitch down.

  An awkward moment settled on them. Ana-Maria had what she’d come for, his promise of protection. He squeezed her hand.

  “You need to be very careful. Juanita told Guzman about the missing fuel, and now she’s dead. Guzman knows you and Juanita were close friends, so he’ll think she told you. On top of that, they know by now that someone broke into Guzman’s office. Guzman and Montana will be mad as rhinos in heat.”

  What he needed to say next would change her life forever, but he had no choice.

  “You can’t go back to work. Don’t even go home. You said you want me to protect you. Then let me get you out of here. I’ll give you money and take you to the airport right now.” Then he saw the problem. “Do you have a passport?”

  “No.” She took a deep breath and let it out.

  “Then flying is out.” He started to say he’d take her across in his car, but she’d have to have a visa—and they’d check for sure.

  “Do you have a visa for entry into the U.S.?”

  “No, not even a driver’s license,” she whispered. She bowed her head and he imagined her thinking about Juanita, and about leaving her home and her country for the unknown.

  He knew she couldn’t get a visa at the border. It had to come from a U.S. consulate, and there was no time for that. If he tried to sneak her in and they were caught, Ana-Maria could wind up in the Juarez jail where Montana would have her killed if he found out. And if the U.S. authorities took Jack into custody, he couldn’t help her and couldn’t stop Montana. He couldn’t risk that.

  “There is a way,” she said, and determination replaced despair on her face. “My cousin knows a coyote who gets people across the border. But it is—”

  “I know. It’s expensive. I’ll pay for it.”

&n
bsp; She gave him a long look, as if measuring how safe she would be depending on a gringo who didn’t understand the streets. Then she rose from the bed, turned away from him, and got dressed.

  He hated having to trust a coyote, but it was the only way.

  ANA-MARIA SPOKE through the metal grate guarding the front door of a well-kept house on a Juarez side street a couple of blocks south of the Rio Grande. From what he overheard, the stout woman inside, wearing a shapeless yellow dress, seemed to be expecting them.

  “My cousin called her,” Ana-Maria said to him. “She says to come in. It’s not safe to stand on the front porch.”

  Ana-Maria and the woman left him alone in the front room. The three windows were covered with dark fabric thumb-tacked to the frame. The only dim light came from a metal lamp. He looked around. This coyote must be getting fat on the money he gets from people desperate to flee to the States, but he sure didn’t flaunt it.

  He had a bad feeling about the place. The coyote would assume he was carrying a large amount of cash, and no one knew they were there. They could be ripped off, even killed. In Juarez, that wouldn’t make a ripple. He cased the room for ways to defend them if he had to.

  He checked his watch. This was taking too long. He touched his wallet, as he had several times since leaving the bank where he’d withdrawn $6,000 U.S.

  He felt a little creepy. He was here to hire someone to smuggle a beautiful young woman into the U.S. Too damn close to what Peck had done. If they were caught, Rick Calder would rake him over the coals.

  Ana-Maria returned from deeper inside the house. “It’s done.”

  “Where will you be taken?”

  “She won’t tell me.”

  “I want to meet the man.”

  Ana-Maria spoke to the woman, who disappeared into the next room. After a minute or so, from the shadows in the next room, a man said, “Buenos dias, señor.”