by Carmen Amato
The next day, after the squadroom had eaten Silvio’s doughnuts for a change, Emilia, Rico, and Silvio met in el teniente’s office and decided to organize surveillance on both entrances to the Maxitunnel. To do it, they’d have to pull in most of the squadroom. At a special meeting with all the detectives later in the week Emilia sat quietly as Silvio announced that the Inocente murder investigation was taking a new turn.
Sharing the risk, Emilia thought as she listened to Silvio outline in terms everyone could easily follow what they had so far and how it connected with Agua Pacifico, the Morelos de Gama kidnapping, the Hudsons and the counterfeit, the El Machete gang and the concrete structure outside the city. A quiet surveillance was put on Morelos de Gama and word went out on the street that there was a reward for anyone who could bring in Horacio Valdes Ruiz. Repeated efforts to find the El Machete member had resulted in nothing. There was a new bartender at Los Bongos. The apartment above the bar was empty but still smelled of cat urine.
As if to remind Emilia that the clock was ticking, a few minutes after the meeting broke up a woman from Carlota’s office called and scheduled her for an “information session.” This, as it was explained, would be all about positions in the mayor’s administration.
☼
It took a week to organize the unofficial Maxitunnel surveillance and place cops on both sides of the tunnel. On the Acapulco side Emilia and Rico sold candy to drivers approaching the toll booths while Silvio and Fuentes played toll takers, wearing Maxitunnel employee polo shirts and making change.
It was grueling work and all too familiar. Along with about eight other people, Emilia and Rico stood wilting in the hot sunlight holding the small oblong boxes of guava jelly candy. To hide her gun in its shoulder holster, Emilia wore a long man’s shirt over a tee. Her gun was hot and heavy against her side as sweat trickled down her back. Her cell phone was in her back pocket.
She and Rico were much older than anyone else out there. The man who organized the workers and provided the candy constantly eyed her. He was a fat, sweaty little man who ruled over the vendors with an iron hand, bringing them to the tunnel around 6:00 am in a van and collecting them again long after dark. Rico, a sullen red-faced presence one car row over, had already argued with him and Emilia had had to smooth things over.
As the cars slowed to pay the toll, the candy sellers lined up on the driver’s side of the cars. There were four lanes of traffic approaching the tunnel and every seller carried at least a dozen boxes.
Over the course of three days a number of Agua Pacifico trucks paid the toll and entered the long tunnel, the longest in Latin America. Emilia had read everything she could find on it, length, width, how many water sprinklers and emergency stations and how the rescue team trained. She’d found out a lot about its construction but nothing about unauthorized branch tunnels.
Macias and Sandor worked the toll booths on the Guerrero side, with a couple of uniforms posing as vendors selling cell phone chargers and cheap covers. They made sure that the Agua Pacific trucks came out when they should, communicating with Silvio and Fuentes via radio. The trip through the dark tunnel took most cars about ten minutes, depending on traffic. Every night Emilia got an earful how this was the stupidest stakeout any of them had ever been on.
As she stood like a zombie in the hot sun, Emilia tried out different scenarios, always coming back to the timeline and el teniente having had sex. It was the only piece that didn’t fit.
Emilia idly waved a box of candy and to her surprise a car stopped and the driver rolled down the window. It was an older man. “You want to get out of the sun?” he asked. “Maybe we can have a little party in the dark. Fifty pesos and I’ll drop you off at the other end.” He made a slight popping sound with his mouth.
“I’d bite yours off, you pendejo,” Emilia said.
“Puta,” the man said and hastily rolled up the window. As the car drove past her to the toll booth Emilia memorized the placa number. She’d give it to Alvaro. He’d be creative with it.
☼
“One more day,” muttered Silvio darkly that night at the station. “They’re driving through the tunnel and not stopping. That’s all we’re going to know unless we start following every fucking water truck.”
“Three more days,” Emilia argued. “We’ll do it for a week. If they have any sort of schedule, it’ll be a weekly one.”
Emilia looked around the squadroom. The 9:00 am meetings had turned into 9:00 pm. A few of them had stayed on, almost too tired to go home. Foil taco wrappers and empty paper cups littered the table they’d made out of two desks pushed together.
“I don’t care,” said Macias. “It’s easy work.”
“A week,” Emilia said stubbornly, looking at Silvio. “If nothing after a week we’re done.”
“And then what?” asked Rico. He yawned and crumpled up a chip bag.
“I don’t know,” Emilia said wearily. She pulled a trashcan over to the desks. “Anybody check dispatches today?”
“Loyola and Ibarra were up next. Took the one that came in,” Fuentes said, looking at the chart.
“Good.” The rota was actually working. It had happened so naturally that Emilia had hardly noticed.
Chapter 26
The Agua Pacifico truck was in the far right lane. Emilia watched as Rico offered a box of candy and was obviously turned down. The truck swung into the narrow shoulder by the tunnel administration entrance and the driver got out. He walked around to the right side of the truck, putting it between him and the lanes of traffic. Emilia backed up to the toll booth where Silvio was stuck making change.
“Do you see him?” she asked out of the corner of her mouth.
“He’s bringing jugs into the administration offices.”
“A lot of them.”
Up in his elevated booth, Silvio could see over the parked cars. “The jugs look dark.”
Emilia nodded. “When he leaves I’m going in.”
“Take Portillo.” There was a gap in traffic and Silvio swung partway out of the booth. He grabbed Emilia’s shoulder and gave her a little shake. “Ten minutes and I’m coming in after you. Don’t do anything stupid.”
The man who ruled the vendors marched up, glowering, and Emilia went back to the candy line. She gave a slight nod to Rico over the hood of the car in the lane between them and he nodded back.
Emilia felt her stomach clench in anticipation. When the water truck left it backed into the line of traffic, causing a brief moment of chaos. But it was early afternoon on a weekday and the traffic was not heavy. The truck maneuvered its way into the lane, the driver paid Fuentes the toll and then the truck entered the high vaulted tunnel. Emilia saw Silvio talking on his radio. Fuentes was, too, and making change for the next car in his lane at the same time. Macias and Sandor were probably bitching like two old women how they’d been called twice.
She waited two minutes then pressed her boxes of candy into the arms of another seller and ran across the lanes of cars, swerving to avoid being hit. The sound of revving engines and the calls of the candy sellers masked the slight grate of metal on metal as she pulled open the door. She felt Rico behind her and they both slipped inside.
☼
They were in a small, empty office. The room was long and narrow and had no windows. A row of security camera screens showing the toll booths at the Acapulco end of the Maxitunnel lined one wall. Two desks were placed at right angles to the screens. A water garrafon was upended into an ordinary jug holder with a spigot. It was full with real water that sloshed when Rico prodded it. Another full garrafon was on the floor. A cabinet held paper supplies, pens, and an odd assortment of cups. There was nothing extraordinary about the office except that it was empty.
“Hola!” Rico called.
They could hear the rumble of traffic but nothing else.
“Come on,” said Rico.
The next room was a bathroom that someone had used recently. There was soap in the dish and a few drop
lets of water in the sink.
They backed out of the bathroom and tried the only other door. The next room appeared to be a large supply depot, with hoses, electrical cords, shovels, and other maintenance supplies stacked neatly along the sides of the room. Three substantial fire extinguishers hug from wall brackets.
“Listen,” Emilia whispered.
The traffic noise was less now and a distant rattle came back to them.
“They’re rolling the garrafons,” Emilia said.
“What are you doing here?”
A short, weathered man wearing a dirty Maxitunnel polo short stood in the entrance to the room.
“Looking for the bathroom,” she mumbled, looking down, slipping into candy vendor mode.
“Get out.” The man jerked his chin at the office but his eyes darted to the rack of fire extinguishers.
Rico walked toward him. “She only needs to find a can. She’s pregnant, you know.”
“This office is off limits.” The man spat on the floor. “Get out.”
Emilia couldn’t see around Rico but there was movement and a grapple and then Rico was stepping backwards and the man was on the floor. He was unconscious and blood tricked through lank hair.
“Something tells me we’re on the right track,” Rico said. “He didn’t work here.”
“We’re going to have a problem if he does,” Emilia said.
“He’s wearing boots,” Rico said. “Nobody in Acapulco wears vaquero boots. Only the northern sicarios coming down to make trouble.”
Emilia checked out the expensive lizard cowboy boots and had to concede the point to Rico. “What did you hit him with?” she asked.
Rico held up his heavy handgun. “Never did that before.”
“What do we do with him?”
“We’ll leave him for Silvio.” Rico gagged the unconscious man, then tied his wrists and ankles together with safety flags found with the other supplies, and dumped him in the bathroom.
Emilia ran her hand over the rack of extinguishers, looking for a latch or something. To her surprise it simply pulled away from the wall. It opened to reveal a long narrow hall that sloped downward and was lit by bare bulbs every hundred yards or so.
“They took the jugs down here?” Rico peered into the gloom.
“It’s the maintenance tunnels,” Emilia said. “Probably have some sort of staging area somewhere.” She found two hardhats with the supplies and handed one to Rico. “Here. Our disguise.”
“Sure, we’re maintenance,” Rico said.
They shut the door behind them and started down the narrow tunnel. It was only wide enough for one person. Rico went first. Both had weapons drawn.
The sounds of cars driving overhead made the tunnel vibrate with a deep rumble. The noise deadened as they went deeper but the vibration remained, sometimes becoming more profound. Bigger vehicles, Emilia thought. Or poor tunnel construction. They neared the first light and saw a door cut into the curving wall of the tunnel. It was marked with a number stenciled in orange paint. Rico tried the door handle. It was locked.
“Keep going,” Emilia said.
The tunnel bent slightly, obscuring their view of its end.
“Bet it goes all the way to the other side,” Rico said.
A hard grating sound made Emilia jump and then she felt a breeze. There was a box fan set into the ceiling just a few feet above her head. “Look,” she whispered and pointed to a series of ventilation chutes protruding from the wall at the ceiling line. “Ventilation shafts.”
“Not big enough for the jugs,” Rico said.
They continued walking, Emilia in front this time. Doors on the right were marked with numbers. From her research she knew behind them were supply depots for repairs and firefighting equipment. Doors on the left were secured with long levers and led into the main tunnel itself. The ceiling lights seemed to be further and further apart and she wondered if this was like coal miners felt like, descending into the bowels of the earth, not knowing if this will be the day they’ll never see the sky again. The traffic rumble was ever-present, magnified by the vaulted ceiling. She was grateful for Rico’s solid presence.
Two more numbered doors were locked. Emilia figured they’d walked for at least 20 minutes when she stopped and held up a hand to make Rico stop walking. She felt him pause behind her and strain to hear. A man’s voice, hollow and indistinct would be heard faintly, a sound masked by the drone of the traffic, noticeable only in the lull after a car had passed overhead and the next one was not yet upon them.
Emilia could identify more than one voice. All were distorted by the strange tunnel acoustics. She started walking again. The distance to the next light was greater than before and Emilia realized that a light bulb was either missing or burned out. She felt her way in the inky darkness, sweat dripping down her forehead under the hardhat.
As they neared another ventilation chute, the voices grew more distinct. They were coming from below.
They passed the chute and kept going. The tunnel curved again.
A rime of light showed around the next door along the corridor.
As they neared the door swift footsteps sounded in back of them. Emilia turned to look and the door swung open, flooding the darkened tunnel with light. Emilia blinked in the sudden brightness as two shots rang out, as deafening as a freight train in the tunnel, and Rico pitched forward.
He toppled into her and Emilia fell heavily, disoriented by the noise and light. The hardhat popped off and went flying into the dark, the rap of the hard plastic lost in the reverberating roar of the shot in such a confined space. Before Emilia could orient herself, a hand grabbed her arm and wrenched her to her feet. A backhand across her face sent her reeling into the wall and her gun clattered away. As her head spun and she fought nausea, Emilia was dragged down a long rough slope and propelled through a doorway.
She was in some sort of mechanic’s workshop, with silver ventilation ducts snaking overhead and a long thin overhead fluorescent light casting a greenish glow. Electrical wires snaked along the duct and one dangled from the ceiling, the end taped off with black tape. The air was chilly and smelled strongly of mold and sweat.
The dimensions of the room were roughly that of el teniente’s concrete wonder. Across the space was an entrance that was a mirror image to the one she’d just been thrust through.
Several men had evidently been working. Two she didn’t recognize; small hard men with rugged jeans, big silver belt buckles, and vaquero boots. Another had dragged her into the room.
And then there was Villahermosa. He seemed to fill the small space, all shoulders and blunt features, and a gun held casually as if Emilia was something to be toyed with.
“The little girl detective,” he said mockingly.
“It was you,” Emilia heard herself say. Her mouth felt wrong, as if it had been dislocated by the slap, and her brain was sluggish, struggling to process information as if it couldn’t remember how.
There were at least forty dark blue plastic Agua Pacifico jugs stacked on their sides up against a wall. More were open like clamshells on a rough worktable. Twists of marijuana was being taken out of the jugs and repackaged into dense packages the size of bricks. Emilia realized they probably used the trucks to take the marijuana down from the mountainsides around Acapulco, and used the tunnel as a convenient repackaging site. Cars like the Hudson’s Suburban transported it as far north as El Norte for the unquenchable norteamericano market.
“You were supposed to keep them out,” Villahermosa said to someone behind Emilia.
Something jabbed Emilia hard in the ribs.
“I got her partner in the tunnel,” Fuentes said. “She doesn’t know anything.”
“Go get the body,” Villahermosa said.
They all waited while two of the men dragged Rico’s heavy and unresisting body into the workshop and dumped it next to the jugs.
Emilia looked at Rico. Even in the dim light she could see the smear of blood across his ch
est. He wasn’t breathing and suddenly neither could she. Rico was gone, she was alone and if Silvio had been lying then he wasn’t going to help her; he was partners with Fuentes and Villahermosa and he’d sent Fuentes in to kill both her and Rico. She was going to die and the thought that she’d never made love to Kurt Rucker, never felt his body jerk and judder between her legs, made her sit down abruptly on a metal stool by the door. Please Hail Mary make Silvio who he says he is. Make him come.
Villahermosa waved at Fuentes with his gun.
“Take her to the truck.” He indicated Rico’s body. “Dump both bodies.”
Fuentes grabbed Emilia by the arm and hauled her to her feet.
“Does Morelos de Gama know what you’re doing?” she blurted. “Starting up again even after Lt. Inocente kidnapped his son?”
Fuentes stopped hauling on her arm. “What?”
“You were in it with him, weren’t you?” Emilia babbled. “Kidnapped his son and held that child until the ransom was paid in counterfeit money. And when Morelos de Gama realized the real money was switched for counterfeit he had Lt. Inocente killed. Or you killed him because he cheated you all.”
Villahermosa stepped close and shoved his gun into the soft underside of Emilia’s jaw, just where she’d hit the now-missing Horacio with the beer bottle. “Nobody’s a kidnapper, puta. What are you talking about counterfeit money?”
The pressure of the gun made it hard to talk. Her eyes ran with the pain. “The ransom,” Emilia managed. “You kidnapped that child and the ransom was paid in counterfeit.”
“Who says?” The pressure didn’t abate.
“The money was in a white Suburban.” Emilia could barely breathe but she saw the confusion in Villahermosa’s eyes. “We left it on the road. The next morning the money was gone and the child was left in it. The ransom was paid in counterfeit Estados Unidos bills that some people named Hudson had muled in.”
