by David Cole
So what have I pledged to Meg?
12
“Por favor, señorita,” the guard said. “Over this way. Over here.”
He reached out to steady me, but I jerked back from his hands. I didn’t want to be touched, I didn’t want to be handled.
“Señorita!” he said with some anger.
American tourista. I could see it reflected in his fake Gucci sunglasses. I could see my short hair, sticking up and sideways, very punk style. Gringita.
Looking at my reflection, I smoothed down my hair.
“What?” I said. “What do you want me to do?”
Twenty feet away, Kyle walked in a circle around his automatic rifle, shaking his head, his arms, occasionally rubbing his left temple. A Mexican guard tried to pick up the weapon, but Kyle grabbed it from his hands. For a moment, they each claimed it, all four hands on the weapon and moving toward the muzzle, like a pickup baseball team choosing sides, last hand on the barrel won the prize. But Kyle talked quietly to the Mexican, reassuring him somehow, and the Mexican gradually released his grip, one hand at a time, looking with regret and longing, and I realized he’d just wanted the weapon because it was better than his worn M-16.
I’m in a different zone, I thought. Down here, they take what they want.
“I want to help you.”
He really was concerned, it was just me that projected anger onto him. I do that, I react to people as though they’re angry with me. I just don’t know how to read them. He slapped my face, gently, as though he really didn’t want to hit me but knew no other way to keep me conscious. He bent down suddenly, a foot from my face, looking into my eyes.
“Señorita,” he said, not patient anymore. “What kind of drugs have you taken?”
Trying to wipe the blood from my hands on my jeans, leaving dark streaks.
I was weak.
I felt my knees start to wobble, I couldn’t stand up straight.
“The agricultural checkpoint, señorita. Across the line, on your side. Come with me. This moment…come with me.”
“Agriculture? I don’t know…I mean, what did you say?”
He started to fade. I couldn’t see my reflection clearly.
I couldn’t see anything.
Nausea. I doubled over, head between my knees.
Too weak…too…shock, I was in shock.
I started to pass out.
A Federales officer came up behind me, placed a hand on my elbow, and with his other hand waved the guard away.
“What happened?” I said.
“You fainted.”
“I’m okay, I’m…what are you doing?”
“Please come with me. To the agricultural guard booth,” he said quietly. “Over on your side.”
He swung me around so I was looking away from the bodies.
“I don’t want to go across. Why…what…what are you doing?”
“They have water in there. A faucet. You have blood all over your face, your hands and arms. You can wash up, at the U.S. agriculture station.”
“Wash?” I pulled away from him. “We need to find those men.”
“Señora. You are in shock. Please, come across the line.”
“I’m not in shock.”
Light-headed, I slumped against his shoulder, just for an instant, and pulled away, but it wasn’t deliberate, I was faint, sliding against his body.
“Follow those men,” I said.
“Which men?”
“They took my friend.”
Passing out again.
Kyle was kneeling on the concrete roadway, cradling my shoulders across his knees, my head gently supported by one hand. I sat up. It was just the same way I had cradled LynnMay’s head and I didn’t want the memory.
I stood up and swayed.
“What do you want us to do?” he asked.
“Follow those men. Find my friend.”
“I’ll talk to somebody.”
He propped me against a car. The soldier moved away deferentially as somebody tapped him on the shoulder, and Captain Cruz bent over to pull my hair away from my temple and look at my scars. He took out a checkered red and white bandanna and dabbed gently at the blood. Once I looked up and recognized him, he held out both hands, reaching down to pull me to my feet.
“I know you,” I said. “You’re…you’re name is…”
“Donald Duck.”
Protesting, I couldn’t stand, but he carried me into an administration building, some kind of control center.
“Your friend is dead.”
“No! They took her away. In the green van, they took her.”
“I am sorry. But your friend is dead.”
A tiny speaker squawked. Cruz turned and ducked his head, speaking quickly, into the microphone clipped to his uniform lapel.
“For the moment, señora. Come to wash your face.”
“Don’t lie to me,” I said angrily. “Don’t patronize, don’t, don’t bullshit me.”
Two Mexican policement at computers looked at me with annoyance.
An Anglo. A gringita.
“I want you to watch this videotape,” Cruz said. “There were five cameras working, but this tape is the best.”
“How does this help me get my friend back?”
He hooked a foot onto one of the computer chairs, dragged it over. I sat, reluctantly, and he grabbed the back of the chair and moved me into a position to watch one of the TV monitors.
I saw Meg facing the camera, a man standing directly behind her with one arm around Meg’s chest, his M-16 poking out from underneath her right armpit, the M-16 firing on full auto. He moved backward, one step at a time, dragging Meg with him, suddenly wrenching her around ninety degrees and pulling her down with him to a crouch. He kept firing and retreating, at one point jamming in a new magazine. They abruptly disappeared from the frame.
Cruz rewound the tape, slowed the recorder to a crawl, and we watched the same scene in slo-mo. Each shot flared in its six-pointed star, the flares repeating again and again. Just at the moment the man jerked Meg to the right and down, I could see a ripple in the side of her tanktop. Cruz slowed the playback to one frame at a time, finding the frame he wanted, and froze the picture.
“Your friend is shot. Here. Just a crease, we think. Across her ribs, on the right side. You can see there’s little blood until…there, it spurts, she’s hit again.”
“Why are you showing this to me?”
“By this time, the man has already killed two Federales. Then we can’t see it, but he dragged your friend to the van.”
I jabbed the monitor’s Off button. The screen shrank to a pinpont of light, went dark. Cruz reached out to turn it back on, but I grabbed his hand.
“Don’t,” I said. “Please. What are you trying to tell me?”
“There’s no easy way to say this. So, straight out. Your friend was a temporary hostage, a shield so these men could get away. By now…well, by now, she’s probably been killed and dumped.”
“You can’t know that.”
He held up a three-ring notebook, two inches thick, with a purple cover.
“Four of the gunmen were members of the Peraza drug cartel. This had to be a murder operation against Señora Martinez. She gave trial evidence against Luis Peraza, who put out a contract on her. They set up this hit.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Fine. Fine. Believe what you want. I’m just telling you what probably happened to your friend. It’s the way this cartel works.”
“Don’t bullshit me. Meg is still alive.”
Chatter erupted from two different police-band scanners, both voices in Spanish. Cruz ran to the door, waved for me to join him outside.
“All right, then. No bullshit. Señora Winslow. See for yourself.”
He pointed east, toward the sky over Nogales.
“Look.”
I squinted and shook my head. He removed a pair of binoculars, held them to my face until I took them. He leaned into me
, his right arm extended, his fist closed except for the index finger, and I sighted along the finger, twisting the focus wheel until I saw two helicopters. The speaker squawked again, but the officer didn’t answer.
“That was tactical command,” he said to me. “One of the vans was abandoned at the edge of a colonia. Everybody got out, into the other van.”
A faint crump in the distance. I scanned the hills, saw a thin plume of smoke.
“The first van just exploded.”
“My friend!” I shouted. “Can they see my friend?”
“Your friend is dead,” he said firmly, taking my elbow again.
“They all got out of the van,” I screamed.
Some of the police froze and looked at me, but the officer waved at them.
“She was shot in the head.”
“No. No! I saw her running. I saw them take her, put her into the van.”
“I don’t know about that. Please. Come. Wash yourself.”
“They fucking took her!” I said. “She’s alive!”
A torrent of words erupted from the tiny speaker clipped to his collar. He talked into his microphone.
“There is a woman with them?” I heard him ask.
He clicked the Send button on and off several times until the other man stopped talking.
“Yes? You are sure? You saw a woman, getting into the second van?”
I watched the helicopters until they flew behind one of the hills and disappeared.
“Tactical command says they have a hostage. You might be right.”
I was sliding down that slope again, slippery, toward unconsciousness.
He stood abruptly, and in standing he let go where he’d been holding me and I fell over. Kyle appeared, again. Cruz started giving hand signals to his men while he talked into his microphone. I sat up, stretched out my arms so I could hold tightly onto the tips of my Nike running shoes, and that kept me upright.
I looked around.
Police vehicles everywhere, police, Customs, U.S. and Mexican. Ambulances. Meg’s Tahoe, the driver’s side, shielding where LynnMay’s body must still lie. At least a dozen cars riddled with bullet holes.
I’ve seen this before, I thought. Where?
All I could think was that it was a movie.
Heat.
De Niro and Kilmer shooting their way down the Los Angeles street, their M-16 slugs ripping through police car sheet metal.
One of Rey’s favorite movies. In surround sound, you could actually hear the cartridge brass clinking on the concrete.
Oh Christ! Meg!
I had to call Rey and tell him about Meg.
I tried to stand up, but in standing, I drew the attention of a lot of people.
“Have to make a phone call,” I said to the two Federales holding my arms.
In the background, a woman was shooting photos. Five men were trying to stop her, but she ducked and weaved. I could even hear the shutter snicksnicksnick until somebody finally came up behind her and wrapped both his arms around her to violently swing her around facing north, facing the U.S. and away from the scene.
The policemen did not like me making calls. One of them kept swinging the muzzle of his M-16 near my stomach, not really aiming it, just a threat, you know what I mean, just a hint, Stop what you’re doing.
“Rey!” I shouted when I got him on the fifth call.
“Who is this?”
My onetime partner, my onetime lover didn’t even recognize my voice.
“Laura.”
“I can’t talk now.”
“Rey! I’m at the Nogales truck crossing. Meg’s—”
“I know.”
“—been kidnapped.”
“Just heard about it on my scanner. She’s being held as a hostage.”
“Are you coming here?”
“Maybe. I’ve got to go, I can’t talk right now, Laura.”
“Rey! Please. What do you mean, held as a hostage? Why?”
But he’d already hung up.
13
When I opened my eyes, an incredible cloud of hair settled in front of me.
“You okay?” the woman said.
I struggled to stand up, but she put hands on both my shoulders, holding me down. It felt good, her hands, it felt wonderful to have them on me. It felt…safe.
“Who are you?” I asked.
“Not here. Come with me, we’ll talk.”
Her hair looked four feet long. Thick, curly, almost kinky, mostly black strands woven through with gray streaks. She kept trying to tuck it behind her big ears which stood almost perpendicular to her head. She’d coil strands around one ear at a time, but it was hopeless, she just had so much hair and it was heavy. I reached out to get up just as she bent forward to help me. My hands went into her hair and she smiled.
“I love your hair,” I said with a stupid grin.
“What’s your sign?”
“Sign…sign…”
“Birth date.”
“January.”
“Capricorn. Saturn. A trinity with the sun, and sometime soon, Mars smiles on you. Very cool, nothing bad…no catastrophes. Success.”
“What? What?”
She caressed my cheek, moved to settle me in her lap.
“But that doesn’t mean it will be okay. So. You’re driving south, east, north, west…you’re flying, no idea where you’ll land, but not too far, you’re headed to success, you have to keep on trucking.”
Kyle came up behind her, knelt to look into my eyes.
“What the hell is she talking about?” I asked. “Who is she?”
“Intellectually, off the scale. Emotionally, off the scale. She’s a CNN reporter. She’s the woman who hired me, the woman who was kidnapped.”
She ran to her Land Rover, waved at me to come over.
“Watch out,” Kyle said. “She’s…how do you Yanks say…glitter?”
Standing, slowly, reeling, I couldn’t understand, and he saw it.
“Think narcissism. Think total narcissism.”
victorio
sister,
we got one, we missed the other…the woman who killed, we have her…I don’t have her, personally…but the cartel took her away. the other one, the computer woman, she escaped the taking…the people I hire down here, they are, at best, unreliable, they wanted so bad to kill the federal witness against them, they didn’t get the computer woman.
what can I say, when you hire those less than competent? which of our proverbs?
it is a bad workman that has a bad saw?
you do not drink soup with a knife?
incompetence…i will have to try again.
as to the request for three livers and two hearts, i have decided no more kidnappings, so i can only provide the third liver…but you will have everything else from the two people with me in the campo…but for now, nobody else…i want the computer woman, i want her badly.
in her memory,
v
14
“I love your hair,” I said again. “Uh…tell me again…who are you?”
“Jo.”
She’d come back from her Land Rover. I steadied myself between her and Kyle, but too much nausea, whoa. I bent over, had to sit down again.
“Joe is a man’s name.”
“Johanna.”
“You were taking pictures.”
“Yeah. Here. Come on. Upsy daisy.”
She held out both hands until I grabbed them. She pulled me to my feet, put one arm around my shoulders. Blood ran down my right cheek. She took out a lavender-scented handkerchief, put it against my right temple, pressed my hand against it.
“We’ll get that looked at. Come on. My car’s over here.”
Kyle went to talk to one of the Mexican Customs.
“Hey,” I said. “It’s the guy from Australia.”
“New Zealand.”
“Wait,” I said, “wait. I need to make sure they’re looking for Meg.”
“The one they took away w
ith them?”
“Yes.”
“In the van. They grabbed her, took her away, that was your friend?”
“Yes. Her name is Meg.”
“Well, your friend has been kidnapped.”
I stared at her in shock.
“No,” I said, “no. She was just taken hostage. So they could get away.”
“Don’t take that away from your head, you’re bleeding all over yourself.”
She took the hanky from my hand, gently swabbed at my temple, put the hanky back into my hand, again pressed my hand against the wound.
“How do you know she’s been kidnapped? They said she was just a hostage.”
“Yeah. Right. Look. Just come with me. I’ll tell you everything.”
“I need to get to my car.”
“Forget that.”
“I need—”
“It’s a crime scene, it’s—”
“—my Fujiyama.”
“—just not possible, they won’t let you near it.”
“Get it. Got to get it.”
“What exactly is this it you want?”
“It’s a SmartPhone. Prototype. It’s one of a kind. I really need to get it.”
Jo sighed, fumbled in her large shoulder bag.
“All right. Come on.”
The policia tried to wave us away, but Jo pulled out several IDs, all of them in Spanish. They snorted with dismissal at the first two, but actually snapped to attention when they saw the third card. An officer reached out to touch it; actually, he caressed its greenish letters and ran his finger around the crimson border on the card’s edge.
“Get it,” Jo said into my ear. “Just take it out of the car, hold it up in front of them, don’t make any really quick moves. Just. Do. It. Slowly. Now.”
My Fujiyama lay underneath the gas pedal.
They tried to take it from me, but Jo waved the ID card around. They asked a lot of questions in Spanish.
“They want to know why you have the weapon.”
“Weapon?”
“The gun. The shotgun.”
“It wasn’t mine. It’s just a gun, it’s not mine.”
“Yeah. Well. It’s a SPAS 12.”
I shrugged. I didn’t care.
