The Beasts of Juarez

by R. B. Schow

  The last time he and Tanya visited the park together, they had come for the Feria Juárez, a summer event he and Tanya agreed was one of their favorite experiences. That weekend, they ate from half a dozen Mexican food stands until they were stuffed. As the sun began making its way to the horizon, they spread out a blanket, lay on the grass together, and listened to a concert. Tanya wanted to smoke with a fun couple they met that day, so they all got high and laughed, and it was the best time ever. This was no longer that park, not anymore.

  Due to poor maintenance of the softball fields, the surrounding grounds, and even the uneven walking paths, Modesto Gomez was now a source of complaints by the locals. After COVID happened, with the world in such an unsteady state economically, the park fell upon even harder times.

  That didn’t change the determination of some families to enjoy it, or for some seniors to continue putting together pickup softball games on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Ever since Tanya left him, though, he hadn’t picked up a bat or even thought of hitting a ball. His whole life had gone to hell after she left. Now all he wanted was to get out of this grimy wasteland.

  Colorado was gorgeous from what he’d seen in pictures and on the internet. He could move there and take up snow skiing, live off-grid in a cabin in the woods, or even go hunting whenever he wanted. But that was a pipe dream. Even now, nine minutes after the courier was supposed to be here, he felt that dream swiftly unraveling.

  The truth was that if this job worked out, if the courier would just get his dumb ass there on time, he would officially be in bed with the kind of people who wouldn’t want him leaving town just yet. And if these people continued to pay the way they were paying him now, he’d probably stay a little longer. It couldn’t hurt to pad the savings account a bit before making that midnight run to Aspen.

  In the side mirror, Otis saw a maroon-colored Impala make the turn from Francis Street onto Edna. He breathed a sigh of relief, took one last drag of the cigarette—a short one—then flicked the second butt into the street where it would smoke itself out.

  The lowered Impala cruised past him, the tinted passenger window rolled halfway down. The driver’s head was covered with a blue bandana, his eyes were hidden behind big black sunglasses, and he wore a white wife-beater that showed off what might be a nice tattoo on a sculpted shoulder. The guy looked big, like he could take Otis if push came to shove. Otis hoped it wouldn’t come to that. If it did, he’d just as soon put a bullet in the guy.

  The Impala’s driver gave him a nod of acknowledgment—which Otis returned—then he drove up the road far enough to turn around and head back Otis’s way. The Impala moved like a shark swimming through shallow waters knowing it could kill anything it wanted at any minute if only it made the decision to do so.

  Otis reached over and grabbed the envelope with his left hand because in his right hand was a throwaway pistol he’d picked up a few years back. It was a .38 Special, six in the wheel, the hammer cocked and ready for action. Discreetly, he checked his surroundings. It was just the two of them for now.

  The courier pulled up next to Otis’s truck and showed him the picture of the carpet van crossing over the border. He verified the markings with what he’d been told to expect and zeroed in on the van’s plates. They matched. Satisfied, Otis reached out and took the picture. He slid his finger onto the .38’s heavy trigger. The revolver rested sideways on his lap, aimed across his thighs at the Impala just in case he needed to shoot through the doors.

  Calmly, like it was nothing, he handed the courier the envelope. The man took the cash, nodded, then slowly drove off, just another predator cruising through shallow waters, deciding what he wanted to kill, what he wanted to eat.

  Otis carefully decocked the hammer then set the gun aside. Picking up the phone, he dialed the client’s number.

  When the old man whose real name he did not know picked up the phone, he fell into a brief, phlegm-rattling cough then said, “Yeah.”

  “It’s done,” Otis said. “They made it across.”

  “You have the photo we requested?”

  “It’s in my hand as we speak. I’ll take a picture of it and text it to you.”

  The grumpy prick said, “You’ll have your payment by this time tomorrow. If anything is out of order—”

  “It isn’t.”

  “Yes, but if it is…”

  “I’m aware of our arrangement.”

  “Good.”

  The client hung up before Otis could thank him for his business. Drawing a deep breath, looking at his half-empty pack of smokes, he shook a cigarette loose, lit it, then sat back for a second and smiled.

  Feeling good about himself for the first time in years, he put the Ford in gear and started up the road. Slowly, he drove up to the park and cruised through the huge parking lot, glancing at the large stadium lights and the fields beyond.

  Across the highway, and the border wall beyond that, was a massive sculpture of a giant red X. The la X at the front of the Plaza de la Mexicanidad was a great place for fairs, concerts, outdoor activities, holiday events, and some pretty amazing ice cream. Looking at the monument, he couldn’t help but think he should have taken Tanya and Janie there when they had asked. He’d been such a stickler about not going to Juárez because of the crime that he had denied all of them the opportunity to enjoy a piece of Mexico.

  If he ever got a do-over…

  His phone vibrated. He looked down and saw that a text had come through. He opened up and saw it had come from his work.

  WHERE ARE YOU?

  He texted back: ON MY WAY.

  He should never have agreed to pick up a few hours on Saturdays. Shaking his head, he changed into his work shirt, adjusted himself in the rearview mirror then popped a Tic Tac into his mouth to freshen his breath. Twenty minutes later, he arrived at the West Texas Anti-Gang Center where the security guard said, “Good morning, Agent Fykes.”

  “Morning, Bryan,” Otis said. “How’s your sister?”

  “Fat and tired,” he replied.

  “Is she still alive?”

  “I’m pretty sure she hasn’t died yet,” he replied.

  Otis looked over his shoulder as he walked away. “Give her my best.”

  “Will do,” he said.

  Bryan didn’t have a sister; he was just a crabby old fart who seldom smiled. The sister joke between them was funny for a few months, but then it became routine. For years, this was the only conversation between them and then they started to become friendly. Now it was a reason for both of them to smile when neither of them really felt like it. And to think, this odd friendship had all started from thirty words meant to be a good morning piss off by Otis. It’s funny how things begin. But now that he’d hit the big leagues, how would things end? Hopefully with him giving the FBI notice and high tailing it out of El Paso.

  Having served on federal task forces for years, he knew that when you play with dirty money you almost always get a dirty ending. Not him, though. Otis was smarter than that. He knew gangs and drugs and trafficking better than most. Then again, he only knew one side of the racket. Now he was learning about it from the other side, the more lucrative side.

  When the animals wanted to bite off his head and take everything from him, he vowed to already be gone. He and Janie would be kicking up their feet in the cool Colorado air far away from this garbage life and all of the misery that came with it.

  Chapter Eight

  CAMDEN FOX

  Camden Fox was on live TV when he was interrupted by a hefty woman in a really smart pantsuit that fit a bit too snugly for a television audience.

  “You have an urgent call,” she whispered from beyond the camera’s reach.

  The fact that she was about to disrupt a live broadcast had him smiling extra wide for the viewer audience. He did that when he got angry. Camden’s only hope was that his anger wasn’t so transparent while he was on TVs all across the nation.

  “Not now,” he said with a tempered smile. He was
so mad he’d forgotten her name in that minute. “We’re on live TV.”

  In politics, single moments like the one Camden had crafted were precious, especially when your audience was on the edge of either supporting you or tuning you out for forever. The balance was so delicate, even the shifting of winds could send everything into chaos. It wasn’t just the words or the way they were said that sold an idea, it was all the little things that added up to something large. It was the fear in a child’s eyes, the dire conditions of an overfilled plastic cube or a tiny bathroom, the stymied look on the border patrol’s faces when they were asked tough questions for which they didn’t have the answers. If all these little things were done right, they had the power to help shape a nation. And then something like today happened and the momentum behind all of those little things was lost.

  “Sir, it’s your family’s bodyguard,” she said. At that moment, her name came back to him. Mary.

  “Thank you, Mary. Can you ask him to hold a moment?”

  There were sweat stains under her armpits, the smell of too much perfume wafting through the air, a stiff head of hair held in place by hairspray or some other aerosolized lacquer.

  “Um, no,” she said, seeming uptight. “He said you need to take it now.”

  Smiling wide, the expression weighing about a hundred pounds on his face, he politely excused himself, then turned and quietly said, “What about my bodyguard?”

  “He said…there’s been an…incident,” she said, scratching her neck, her face hesitant, anxious, worried. “He said it’s urgent.”

  Three red welts lifted off her skin where she’d scratched herself a little too hard. Otherwise, her face was pale, chilled with the kind of bad news that warranted this. He felt a pit form in his stomach, one he instantly dismissed.

  “Did he say if…if…everything is okay?” he asked, his smile faltering.

  The woman slowly shook her head.

  Looking down, Camden saw that she was kneading her fingers. For a second he felt bad for her. Whatever news she had was important enough to warrant an interruption. How should she handle that? He didn’t know, but if she was breaking into a live feed…

  He was about to say something comforting when he heard the reporter behind him say to her cameraman, “Keep it rolling.”

  The higher Camden’s cheeks lifted as he apologized to the reporters for having to break away, the more he let loose with a string of internal cursing.

  Discreetly, he leaned toward Mary and whispered, “If this is anything less than life-altering I’m going to make sure you never work another day in your adult life.”

  Startled, she said nothing, but the look on her face remained unchanged. She handed him a phone and said, “I stand by my decision.”

  He took the phone from her. “This is Camden.”

  “Sir, the family was taken,” his bodyguard said, breathless.

  “Where are you?” Camden asked, bloodless, a dozen pairs of eyes on him. If this was bad news, these people wanted it on film. Vultures... maybe useful vultures, though.

  “I…I don’t know, sir. Someone got the jump on me. A lot of someones, I think. I’ve been talking to people in the vicinity to see if they had actionable intel. One guy gave me the plate number to one of the vans, but other than that…”

  “Other than that, what?”

  “They’re gone.”

  Camden took a deep breath, felt the world around him tunneling down, pulling him into a tiny pinprick of existence where he could neither move nor breathe. For a second he tried to imagine what his wife and daughters were going through, what they must be feeling, and then unexpectedly, he felt himself starting to fall apart inside.

  The phone slid from his hand, bumped off his foot, and skidded across the floor face-down. He took an unsteady step backward, aware that the camera was still rolling.

  Someone took his arm, led him to a chair. “Sit down, you’re looking…Jesus man, you’re looking…green.”

  “Cut the feed, stop rolling,” he heard the reporter tell the cameraman.

  He didn’t know who was telling him he looked green but he didn’t appreciate it. The squeeze of tears was brief but powerful. When they came, his tears leaked out warm and plentiful, and then he wiped them away.

  He turned to Mary and said, “My family was just taken.”

  “Taken how?” she asked.

  “Kidnapped.”

  She drew a sharp breath. “What are you going to do?”

  “I…I don’t know,” he stammered.

  “You have to call the police,” a man said, someone he didn’t know. He went and picked up Mary’s phone and handed it back to Camden. Thankfully the screen wasn’t cracked. He handed it back to Mary.

  “I think I should make a call,” he said as he fished his own phone out of his pocket.

  His fingers were weak, his countenance in total disarray. It was like he was being swallowed into a void, one so dark and all-consuming he knew that soon there would be nothing left of him but sadness, fear, and regret.

  He dialed his closest friend in the world, a former federal prosecutor living in San Antonio. Damien Stone.

  “Damien,” he said when his friend picked up, “this is Cam.”

  “Hey Cam, what’s going on?”

  “Sydney and the girls were just grabbed in El Paso.”

  His friend paused for a long moment then he let out a breath. “That’s right on the border,” he said. “Are they still in the US?”

  This is actually happening, he told himself in disbelief. For a moment, he felt this unbearable disconnect between this tragedy and the stark reality of the situation.

  Looking up, he saw the sad eyes of several people around him. One of them was an unattractive female reporter for CNN.

  “What was the bad news, Congressman?” the reporter asked.

  “It’s a family matter,” he replied, covering the phone so that Damien didn’t have to hear all of this. He absolutely hated reporters. “That’s off the record, of course.”

  “Of course,” she replied.

  He wiped his eyes then said to Damien, “The border, yeah…I…I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “You know as well as anyone that they’re grabbing girls from El Paso and taking them into Juárez for…well, this could be a bigger matter than either of us thinks,” Damien said. “Did you contact local law enforcement yet?”

  “And say what?”

  “Tell them what happened!”

  “No,” he said in a desperate voice as he ran a hand through his hair. “I thought maybe, if you wanted to reach out, if you could…I don’t know. Do you know anyone here, or even close by that might have influence or free rein between here and Mexico?”

  “If this is an international incident, Camden, things could get convoluted really quickly. It’ll be even worse if the cartel is involved. If that turns out to be the case, we’re going to find ourselves in the middle of a shit storm of catastrophic proportions.”

  “What do you suggest?” Camden asked.

  “Be quiet, let me think,” Damien replied. Then: “I have a guy. He’s not cheap, but he and his team are more than capable.”

  “Capable of what?”

  “Capable of getting your family back and vanquishing the threat, permanently.”

  “How much does he charge?” Camden asked.

  “I don’t know. I’ve never personally used him or his team. How liquid are you?”

  He leaned in close to his phone. “A million, maybe two?”

  “Overseas or local?”

  “I don’t have—”

  “I know the drill with you guys. This isn’t the time to dick around, Camden. How much do you have and is it local?”

  “Seven million,” Camden whispered, “most of it offshore.”

  “I’m going to give you a phone number but once you call this number you need to treat the situation like everything is in play.”

  “Meaning?”

  “When you hire t
hese people, you are ringing a bell you can’t un-ring,” Damien said, cryptically. “The kinds of people you’re about to employ, you don’t want to cross them, let alone disappoint them, because they are about to unleash hell on your behalf.”

  “It’s my family, Damien.”

  “Do you have a pen and paper handy?”

  “Yes,” he said, exhausted already. Standing up, he spotted a woman with a pen in her hand and a sheath of papers next to her. She looked up when he approached her. “Can I borrow the pen and paper? It’s an emergency.”

  “Yes, Congressman Fox,” she said, blushing, “of course.”

  He took the pen and paper and returned his focus to the task at hand. “Okay, Damien,” he said, “Who am I calling now?”

  “A man named Leopold Wentworth.”

  “Is that his real name?”

  “I don’t think so, but that’s who he decided he wanted to be a very long time ago.”

  “That’s fine,” Camden said. “I’m ready for the number.”

  Damien gave it to him, then said, “Good luck and keep me posted.”

  “Will do,” he said. “And thank you.”

  Chapter Nine

  LEOPOLD WENTWORTH

  Leopold Wentworth stirred at the sound of his cellphone ringing somewhere in the bedroom. With the blackout drapes closed, it could be night even though he suspected it wasn’t. The phone rang again. Rolling over, he checked the clock on the nightstand, but the numbers were blurry so he rubbed his eyes hard and blinked a few times.

  “Shut it off,” the girl next to him complained. He fell still for a second as bits and pieces of last night’s activities worked their way back into his brain.

  “I’m trying,” he said to the mystery girl.

  Half sitting up, he patted the comforter and the bed sheets, but he couldn’t see a thing. The phone just kept ringing. He finally reached over and turned on the bedside lamp, flinching at the sudden burn of light. That’s when he saw the back of a girl’s head and her bare shoulders. The phone was ringing closer to her but she wasn’t doing a thing to help him find it.