South

by Lance Charnes

  Juan disappeared into the back yard while Nora, pistol drawn, edged onto the front step. She scanned all the rooftops and the few open windows for movement or faces, but only the hot breeze disturbed the stillness.

  Juan slipped through the side gate, nodded toward Nora. “Let’s make sure nobody’s home.” He unlocked the door, drew his pistol, and slid inside. Nora felt silly working an entry in this dumb dress, but she switched into work mode and followed close on his heels.

  The house smelled musty and sour with a topnote of mold and dust. They made it to the living room at the back of the house before Nora’s eyes adjusted to the murk. Juan nodded toward the side hallway, then led the way weapon-first. More debris, the stink of an unflushed toilet, a dead rat, buckling drywall from a roof leak in one of the two bedrooms.

  Nora stuffed down her disappointment. At least the other safe house didn’t smell this bad, and it had furniture. She could deal with this—she’d lived in worse in Somalia—but sleeping on the floor wouldn’t do Paul’s fluky back any good, and she could just imagine what the mold and dirt would do to the kids. “Any cleaning stuff here?” she asked on the way back to the front door.

  “I’ll get you some when I go for food.”

  Soon they had the Geely in the garage, the garbage in a big green trash bag and the water turned on, with every tap in the house wide open to clear out the rust. The children roamed the house with wrinkled noses while Nora, Paul, and Juan gathered in the kitchen.

  “About a quarter of the houses around here have squatters,” Juan said. “Like you. Keep out of sight as much as possible, lock the door. If someone knocks, don’t answer.” He shook a finger at Nora, who’d peeled off her wig. “Don’t go outside. You’re the web star, we can’t risk someone seeing you.”

  She’d been afraid he’d say that.

  Paul asked, “Can we let the kids out to play in the back yard?”

  “Don’t risk it. Wild dogs and coyotes live out there, the four-legged kind, not like me.”

  “Okay, but you may not have a house left after a couple days.”

  Juan smiled a little. “I’ll take that chance. Make a list of things you want, I’ll buy you supplies before I go home. Paul, do you have a burner?” Paul shook his head. “Great. I’ll get you one. You can use those knocked-down moving boxes in the garage for ground pads. Be careful with your phones and slates. If someone breaks in, Nora, take care of it. Questions?”

  Paul exchanged a dubious glance with Nora. “When are you coming back?” he asked.

  “I have to take care of some business and line up some stuff. It’s probably good to let things cool down a bit, too, so it may be a few days.”

  Locked in this dump? Nora shuddered. They’d all go stir-crazy.

  Juan pointed to Nora. “I’ll call you if anything comes up.” He checked their faces. “Look, I’m sorry this isn’t a spa. I’ve used this neighborhood a few times before and everyone came out okay because they followed the rules. So follow the rules, all right?”

  Nora nodded. Paul mumbled, “Okay.”

  Juan left through the garage door. Nora wrapped her arms around herself and stared through the twilight gloom into Paul’s eyes. They betrayed the same doubt and fear she felt. A voice in the back of her brain asked if they’d ever see Juan again—or if the next knock they heard would be the Bureau, come to haul them to a place from which they’d never return.

  25

  SUNDAY, 9 MAY

  Bel stared at her shadow on the door before her, cast by the weak fluorescent bulb in the hallway. Lucho was on the other side, still sleeping in the garage. The scratched doorknob scraped her fingertips.

  Today had been the worst, knowing he was out there on a run, knowing what happened last time, knowing she hadn’t told him “I love you” for over a week. It had to stop.

  Lucho wasn’t the enemy, Tavo and that asshole Ray were. He couldn’t have known those Cartel bastards would do this to him (but he should’ve!). Nothing she was doing hurt them one little bit; she was the one sleeping alone, worrying every day that something would happen to Lucho and she’d never get to tell that big doofus how aggravating he was and how much she loved him.

  She pushed open the door.

  After a moment, Bel saw light reflecting orange in a pair of eyes. The garage was even warmer and stuffier than the house—no windows, just a ceiling fan—and once her eyes adjusted, she could see Lucho hadn’t bothered with a blanket. She shuffled toward the light shape of his underwear and knelt beside him on the old sleeping bag he used as a cushion.

  She peered deep into his eyes for a long time. “Hey.”

  Lucho touched his fingertips to her bare knee. “Hey,” he finally said.

  His touch shot straight into her brain. Bel kept her arms locked tight around herself so she couldn’t reach out to grab him and hold him the way she’d been squashing his pillow for the past few nights. “Did it go okay?”

  “No, it didn’t work. We’ll have to try again.”

  Damn it. “Who are these people?” she asked after a stretch of silence.

  He cocked his head. “You sure? You usually don’t want—”

  “I’m sure. Who are they?”

  “A family. Mom and dad, a little boy and girl. They’re wanted, the guy’s supposed to go in a camp.”

  Bel shook her head. “Those poor babies.” She looked down at her knee and his hand and hugged her short, ratty robe tighter around herself. “Are they good people?”

  His eyes searched the garage ceiling for an answer. “I think so. They’re in a bad situation, you know how that goes. The guy’s nice enough, kids are cute. The woman…she’s a tough one.”

  “Good. They’ll need that. When are you going again?”

  “Couple days or so, once things calm down.”

  They never do. He used to come home from runs all cut up and exhausted and bruised and filthy. She’d keep the kids away, and while she patched him up, he’d do his best to convince her it’d been easy, no problem. But she’d read too much about the things that happened on the border, and what she read between the lines scared her witless.

  “You said they’re wanted. Does that mean you are, too?”

  “No more than usual.”

  “That bad, huh?” Bel stared at her knees. She heard all kinds of things he wasn’t telling her. After all these years, she could tell when he was hiding something, but she wasn’t here to start another fight. She took his hand in both of hers and squeezed. “You’re going to come back, right? All in one piece?”

  “That’s the plan.” He didn’t sound nearly confident enough to make her forget what he looked like in the hospital after he was shot. “I’m sorry, cariña. I never meant for this—”

  “I know.” She freed a hand, laid it on his chest, feeling his heart beneath his undershirt. She tried to memorize each beat. “You’re doing what you think you have to, I know. It’s just…” She chewed on the insides of her lips for a few moments. “You let the Cartel buy you—us—so you could go on saving people you don’t know. I don’t know if I should be mad at you for being an idiot or at them for changing the rules.”

  Luis sat up and ran his fingers through her hair. She pressed her head against his palm. “I’ll get us out of this. I promise.”

  Bel closed her eyes so she could concentrate on the warmth of his fingers on her cheek, let her hand trail down his chest. After a few moments, his lips found hers. She leaned into the kiss, giving him back a week’s worth of longing and exasperation and fear, and soon she had his face in both her hands and could feel his touch leave burning trails on her skin beneath her robe. Bel pulled back to catch her breath, then glanced down. “These look way tight,” she whispered, tugging at the waistband of his shorts. “We better get them off.”

  They made love in a rush, desperately making up for lost time and borrowing from the future, saying I love you and don’t leave me alone and I’ll always come back with their bodies and lips and eyes. When they at l
ast chased away each other’s dark shadows, Lucho settled onto his back so Bel could lie on top of him. She buried her face in the hollow of his throat, smelling his soap and sweat, riding each thump of his heart, each lift of his chest. He stroked her back from her shoulders to the tops of her thighs, up and down, slow and gentle, a sensation almost as erotic as holding him inside her.

  After drifting awhile, Bel stretched up to kiss him, then folded her arms across his upper chest and rested her chin on her forearms.

  Lucho gave her a lazy smile. “Am I forgiven?”

  “Duh.” She kissed his chin. “We haven’t done it on the floor in ages.”

  He shifted his hips under her with a little grunt. “For a reason, I think.”

  “Are you saying I’m fat?”

  “No.” He cupped his hands around her rear and gave her a squeeze. “You’re perfect. But the floor’s hard and my knees are old.”

  Bel laughed, kissed the little notch at the base of his throat. “I can fix that.” She sat up so she could gather her robe and his underwear, then stood and reached out her hand. “There’s too much bed for just me. I’ll share.”

  26

  A USA TODAY poll shows the average American spends approximately 46 hours a year in identification checks run by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, state and local police, and private security firms.

  — “POLL: Two Days in ID Checks,” USAToday.com

  MONDAY, 10 MAY

  Luis was in the shop’s toilet when he heard, “Immigration and Customs Enforcement! ID check! All y’all put your hands on your heads!”

  Goddamn McGinley.

  Luis had less than a minute before someone dragged him out front. He yanked his burner phone from his pocket, tapped the shred app, watched the red progress bar as it deleted and overwrote his call history and directory, then itself. He tore out the SIM, flushed the chip, dropped the phone in the restroom trash.

  A Costa Mesa contract cop wrenched open the door. “You! Get out here.”

  The rent-a-cop shoved Luis onto the shop floor. The five techs stood where they’d been when the raid started, hands on their heads, trading glances. The shop’s pulsing thrash-punta background music snapped off mid-shriek. A white ICE twenty-passenger bus with wire mesh over the windows blocked the driveway.

  McGinley leaned against the white Olympia in the middle bay, arms crossed, looking pleased with himself. “There you are,” he boomed. “What was that y’all said couple weeks back? You were born here? Well, guess what, amigo. You get to prove it.”

  Luis stalked toward McGinley. “What the fuck are you doing in my garage?”

  McGinley smiled. “Law says I can conduct an ID check in any public place or place of employment. So here we are.”

  The contract cops lined up the techs in the parking lot. McGinley pointed to Tyler, the only Anglo, then jerked his thumb toward the street.

  “No, sir,” Tyler said. “I’ll stay.”

  “Suit yourself,” McGinley said. He turned to Luis. “Give me your piece, your phone and your ID.”

  McGinley ran his ID through a field reader four times; each time it came up green. That didn’t stop him from throwing Luis into the bus.

  Luis couldn’t decide whether to be angry or scared. He settled for both and paced the aisle, praying he’d get to go home again. Was this about yesterday? Did they trace the car to him? No, there was no way. This had to be McGinley being an asshole.

  All McGinley had to do was call his ID fake, revoke his citizenship, and this bus would take him into the Sonoran desert. Being a citizen had nothing to do with it. He’d heard ICE liked to leave people in the middle of nowhere with nothing, not even water, sometimes not even clothes, and let the bandits or the Zetas get the ones who didn’t die of thirst or exposure. No phone call, no appeal, no due process.

  He finally perched on the back seat. Breathing took a continuous act of will, and his heart threatened to explode with every beat. The last time he’d been this scared was when that gabacho contractor had shot him on the border.

  After an hour—long after ICE was done with the techs—McGinley swaggered up the bus’ steps with a 7-Eleven coffee cup. He said to the driver, “Why don’t y’all take a walk?” Once the man left, McGinley unlocked the steel-mesh cage fencing off the seating area, ambled inside and sat sideways on a front bench seat. “Here we are again, Ojeda, just me and you.” He knocked back some coffee. “Octavio Villalobos. La Almádena.”

  Luis stuffed down any reactions before they could show up on his face. “He’s some cartel heavy, isn’t he? In the news?”

  “Aw, now, ain’t it a little early to be shoveling that kinda shit?” McGinley actually looked disappointed. “Get your sorry ass up here. I ain’t gonna yell at you all day.”

  “This is bullshit, you know,” Luis said. He edged into a seat across the aisle and a couple rows back from McGinley. “You want to talk, come in and talk. Don’t hassle my guys. It’s hard enough to make a buck these days.”

  “Don’t you be telling me how to do my work. Let’s try this again. Friday night ‘round seven you went to La Paloma. Nice place, pretty waitresses. Y’all remember?”

  Mierda. “Are you following me?”

  “Why, no. But we do have an interest in that place, you might say. I’ll assume you remember being there.”

  If they were watching the bar, did they have it bugged, too? Someone inside? How much did they know? “Yeah. A friend of mine works there. Sometimes I go by to see him, have a beer, you know.”

  McGinley smirked as if Luis had confessed to being a terrorist. “Your ‘friend’ at La Paloma is Ramiro Esquivel, ain’t that so?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “I mean, we got enough pictures of the two of you together. Army buddies, you used to work in the local government before it went private. Are y’all gonna waste my time saying you don’t know this man?”

  Luis stewed a moment before saying, “No.”

  “Well, that’s progress, then. Now, are you gonna tell me you don’t know he works for Villalobos? I sure hope not, ‘cause I’m a betting man and I bet there’s more’n bone in that cabeza of yours.”

  Luis tried hard to think of what his reaction ought to be. Surprise? Outrage? Fear? He couldn’t come up with anything fast enough to keep it from looking fake. “I don’t ask about who owns his bar. He doesn’t ask who owns my garage.”

  McGinley shook his head, then stared out the windshield. He drained his coffee, stuck the cup on the floor, then turned back to Luis with a tired-of-the-world look on his face. “Ojeda, I’m not in a mood to play this bullshit with you. So before you go on insulting my intelligence, let me tell you something about me.” He swiveled in his seat so he could stare down Luis more easily. “There are two things I’m real serious about. One of them is catching terrorists. I don’t like terrorists, I don’t like them coming here, I sure as hell don’t like them living here, and I don’t like the things they do here. I hope we don’t have an argument about that.”

  Luis stifled his answer. Anything he said right now would probably be wrong.

  McGinley shook his head. “The other thing I’m serious about is Zetas. They are evil sons-of-bitches and you can’t believe the things they do ‘til you see it with your own eyes. I reckon they’re worse than terrorists, ‘cause at least terrorists do what they do for their Allah, but the Zetas do it for money and for just plain mean. We got enough problems of our own without them animals bringing their shit over to this side of the line. Is all this clear to you?”

  “Yeah.” At least he hadn’t babbled about it being his Christian duty to run the mud people out of the country. It meant he might not be a complete nutjob. There were a lot of those around, and they’d always scared Luis. The more the man talked, though, the more confused Luis got. “I don’t have anything to do with terrorists or Zetas. What do you want from me?”

  “Hold up, amigo, we’re getting there. Y’see, we know the cartels have this nice little business going, running rags over
the border. The rags pay good money to go. They got skills y’all can use down south. Some of them even got military training, you can always use that. And every so often, one of them comes back up here, ain’t that right?”

  “I told you, I’m not—”

  “You’re not in that business, yeah, I know. But you were. Seems my local compadres here know all kinds of interesting about you, but never did anything about it. I ain’t had time to find out why just yet, but I do have the notion that maybe you’re someone’s CI so they just let you be. If that’s so, then y’all won’t have a problem snitching for me, too, now will you?”

  The locals hadn’t done anything about Luis because they had way too much else on their plates, and compared to drugs and gun-running and cross-border hits, he was small change. But if the file had half of what he’d done, the thought of it getting into McGinley’s hands made his insides shrink.

  His normal way to respond to fear or uncertainty was to come on hard. He couldn’t go that way with McGinley, though, not when he was locked in a bus that could take him straight to Hell. “I…don’t know how I can help you,” he finally said. “As far as travelers go, I don’t know if they’re still in that business.”

  “Oh, they are. They had some ol’ boy called Federico Salcedo moving the meat, so to speak. You know him?”

  “No.” They knew about Rico?

  “So it won’t bother you none to hear the Zetas handed him his head in Mexicali, and that ain’t no figure of speech.”

  Jesus. Ray and Tavo had told him Rico was dead; they hadn’t said who’d killed him. Mexicali was supposed to be Norte turf. When did Zetas show up there? “That sucks for him,” he finally said.

  “That is a true thing. And let me tell you something else. Remember them runners I asked you about last week? The ones from Barstow? Well, we found ‘em. They were with Salcedo, leastwise their heads were.”

  The picture that leaped into Luis’ brain came so quickly and was so clear he couldn’t mask his disgust fast enough. He turned his face to the window, stared out through the wire mesh while he got control of his gut.