“Where am I?” Tyler asked.
“Safe. You’re safe now.”
“Who are you?”
“Father Felipe. I brought you here almost two days ago. On request from Roberto.”
Roberto. The friend who had dragged him into the desert and shot him in the back. “Am I dying?”
“No. We have had this conversation three times before, Tyler. You are not dying. The wound in your back will not be the death of you. Roberto, it seems, knows exactly where to place a bullet.”
The priest stood, walked over to the cot, and lifted the bandage a little to look at the wound.
“Roberto is a master. One little bit this way, he would have hit your subclavian artery. That would have been bad. The bullet he used came straight through, no debris. If you are going to get shot, Roberto is the one to do it. It was the only way he could keep you alive.”
“So why are you keeping me here?”
“I am not keeping you here. You are free to go, anytime you like. But you would not make it a mile before you are picked up as a drunk or a vagrant. Then the Cartel will get you again, and this time, it will not be Roberto putting a bullet in your back.”
Tyler’s thoughts resisted his efforts to slow them down. He should have been dead. Was convinced wholeheartedly that he was going to die. When he was pulled from the car and heard Roberto’s voice in his ear, he felt like a death row inmate getting a midnight pardon. But now what? He was still in Mexico with no conceivable hope of salvation except for the passing fancy of this priest. He couldn’t rely on Roberto anymore. They were square. Even.
“What am I to do then, live here as your altar boy?”
Felipe smirked. “Ahh, gringo. Even in a time like this you cannot be grateful? I take a great risk keeping you here. Risk to my parishioners. Risk to myself.”
“I didn’t ask for any favors.”
“No, but Roberto did.”
“Why is that?”
“He is my nephew. And I know that someday, he will be in your position. Lying in the dust, bullets in his body. Perhaps by doing this I will secure the favor of God on his behalf. That when it happens, when his time comes, someone will pick him up and keep him from death.”
“All right, padre.”
“Yes . . . I guess it is all right.”
“So, what’s the game plan?”
“My role here was to keep you alive. It is someone else’s job to lead you out of Mexico. I have done my part.”
“And whose job is that?”
“I am still waiting on that. You cannot go out alone, as I have said. You cannot simply walk across the border. The police, the border agents, even the cab drivers—many work for the Cartel now. You would not make it far. No. Your only chance is by leaving Nuevo Negaldo and making your way to America by some other way. Unfortunately, in your condition you will not make it on your own. You will need someone to practically carry your bones for you. Judging by the little I care to know of you, those volunteering on that list are very few.”
Tyler chuckled, then broke into a cough that tortured his wound anew. “Yeah, you could say that.”
“But perhaps there is one person who would do such a thing for you. At the least, if he would not, then we would know that no one will.”
Tyler used all his strength and sat up on the cot. He placed his feet on the floor and watched the room momentarily spin before his eyes. His head swooned and then came back to balance. He looked at the priest.
“And who do you suggest that would be?”
“Your father.”
Earlier that evening, a car had crossed the border in Juarez and proceeded north toward I-40. Before dawn it had cut the corners of the panhandles of Texas and Oklahoma and driven into Kansas. One man slept in the back seat while the other took his turn at the wheel. The sun started to skirt the eastern horizon when they saw the first sign for Jennison.
13
The next morning, Ed was in the back workroom at his shop, his thoughts buried deep in the small world of a washing machine motor. He was at ease working with machines. Solutions were straightforward. Wire to connector, a to b, give it some power, watch it do what it was supposed to do. It was a world that ran as it should, and when a machine broke down, it wasn’t because it took off for a new life on the West Coast or pumped its insides full of drugs. It just broke down from old age.
It calmed his nerves, and after the information that had flooded his mind the day before, he needed this time to clear his head.
The bell over the front door rang and he could hear footsteps enter the building.
“Be right there!” he yelled. Ed put his tools down on the bench, wiped his hands off with a rag, and walked out to see his customer.
Two men stood in the store. A tall, skinny one was halfway to the front counter. The other larger one was standing by the front door like a bouncer at a nightclub. Ed could feel the tension in his neck rise as his hands squeezed the rag in his palms.
“Can I help you?”
“Are you Kazmierski?”
“Yes.”
“Tyler Kazmierski?”
“My son.”
The skinny man turned his head and nodded to the large one.
The big guy shifted on his feet. “When was the last time you spoke to Tyler?”
Ed looked at the man. “Who are you?”
“It doesn’t matter, when was the last time you spoke with Tyler?”
“Get out of my shop.”
The man walked closer, and Ed watched as his companion locked the door and flipped the Open sign. He had seen enough movies to know what was coming next.
“I need you to think very carefully and I’m going to ask you one more time. Tyler . . . when did you last talk with him?”
Ed’s veins went cold. The man’s face was devoid of any emotion. He looked like an automaton bent on getting what it wanted with little regard for humanity.
“Years,” Ed said. He could feel the crack in his voice and he hated himself for it.
“When?”
“Years. Last I heard from him was when he was in El Paso. In jail. Years ago.”
“Nothing since then?”
“No,” Ed said.
“No?” the man said as he stepped closer.
“I swear, nothing. For all I know he’s dead,” Ed said, and as soon as the words came out of his mouth, he felt like he had just compromised himself. A small grin crossed the man’s face.
“Who knows, maybe he is,” the man said and let out a forced laugh. He flicked his head toward the back room. “What’s back there?”
Ed turned his gaze, but before he could respond to the question, the man’s fist swung out, sending Ed stumbling back a step in surprise. Another fist landed on the side of his head and he dropped to the floor, the ceiling spinning in circles. It had happened so fast that, before Ed could make sense of what was happening, the large man by the door walked over, grabbed his feet, and dragged him to the back. The man cleared the workbench and lifted Ed, propping him against it.
“Don’t move.” The command was punctuated with a fist to Ed’s abdomen. He doubled over. The man grabbed Ed’s hand and placed it on the bench. He grabbed a long screwdriver and held it over Ed’s shaking limb, preparing to stake his hand to the table.
Ed had no idea the amount of pain that was coming next.
The bell over the front door rang and the world stopped around them. The tool held by the large man hovered over Ed’s fingers, its momentum suspended in time. The tall man stared wide-eyed at both of them as they heard the front door close and a voice.
“Ed? You here?”
It was Tom.
Good old Tom. One of the last of the old-school cops who had a key ring with every store owner in Jennison’s key attached to it, because who didn’t trust Tom to check on the security of their investments.
“Ed?”
The tall man pulled a pistol out of his coat and slowly inched toward the door that led to the front. He
pressed against the wall, waiting for the interloper to breach the opening. The large man pulled Ed to his feet and slapped his meaty paw over his mouth. His other hand produced a long serrated blade that almost instantly found the edge of Ed’s neck. He pulled Ed farther back into the shadows of the room.
They could hear Tom slowly walking up the aisle of the shop, a faint whistle on his breath.
“Ed, you back there?”
The tall man slowly extended his arm, the pistol held out, at the ready to fire at whatever came through the door. The gunman’s thumb moved onto the hammer. Ed could see the cylinder slowly turn as the weapon was cocked without a sound. Tom was just two more steps away from a bullet entering his left temple. His concern for the citizens of Jennison would be his end.
Then, as if by a miracle, the silence was shattered by radio chatter.
“Tom,” the static voice said, “we got an accident over on Lincoln and Newberg.”
The sound of a walkie-talkie being pulled from a leather belt and the click of the receiver.
“Anybody hurt?”
“Doesn’t seem like it. Ambulance is on its way over just because.”
“Alright, I’ll be right there.”
The sound of retreating steps echoed through the store, followed by the opening of the door, the ringing of the bell, and the noise of Tom locking the door again.
A collective breath exhaled in the back room. Ed saw the tall man uncock the gun and put it back in his shoulder holster. The knife came away from Ed’s throat, and the large man pushed him away.
Ed was convinced that his heart had stopped beating five minutes ago and he tried to take a deep breath. He couldn’t focus, as the adrenaline in his system was not letting him process what was happening. Relief came from an unlikely place. A fist hit him in the temple and he slumped down, unable to tell if he was blacking out or dying, but by the time his head hit the ground, Ed had surrendered to unconsciousness.
14
Roberto and Miguel found themselves in a caravan heading south to the airfield, Roberto knuckling the steering wheel, his nerves constricting at the thought that this was just a ruse. That as soon as they arrived, Salazar’s men would gather around and execute him, and probably Miguel too. The boss would use him as an example of what happens when someone doesn’t follow orders, doesn’t do the job.
Roberto wasn’t in with the Cartel. He was part of Los Diablos, a gang of poor Mexicans bound by ethnic locality. They were the enforcers for Salazar and his industry. Subcontractors who collected, intimidated, or murdered. It kept the boss’s organization clean. The Cartel was brutal in execution, they had no qualms about killing anybody who got in their way, but they had the money, money that every kid on the border wanted a piece of, and so they found that it was little cost to “hire” these gangs and thugs to do some dirty work.
It seemed to work, right up to the point when it didn’t. The Zetas had been trained by the US military to crack down on the drug trade in Mexico. But the money was too good, so they flipped the script and sold their services to the Gulf Cartel. As brutal as they were, they figured they might as well get rid of the Gulf Cartel and take over themselves.
The carnage was unprecedented.
Now, every capo was on alert to the ambitions of their paid enforcers. If Salazar knew that Roberto had not followed through executing Tyler, he was a dead man walking. He was so sure that this drive would be his last.
The airfield came into view and the train of vehicles pulled off the road and parked sporadically on the hardpan, dust rising all about them. Roberto stopped the car and Miguel woke up.
“We here?”
“Yes.”
Miguel opened the door, stepped out, and walked toward the assembling crowd of people. Roberto took a deep breath and did the same.
Was this his last walk?
He wasn’t afraid of death. Death hung around him like a cloud, and Lord knew he had dealt out his fair share of it. But it was always quick. He figured that when his time would come, it would be in a barrage of gunfire, a drive-by, or a nighttime assassination. But this long agonizing anticipation amplified the fear in his guts. He had seen others during this time, shaking and crying, begging for mercy, defecating and wetting themselves, crying to Mary or their mothers. Then the slow painful infliction of blows and cuts and acts that were only dreamed up in the depraved minds of men who had grown bored with simple killing.
He did not want that. He would not have that.
He felt for the gun in his waistband. He would empty the clip before they took him. Or . . . he would use it against himself and save himself from the humiliation of a slow death.
He walked up to the group and stood at the end of the line. Small talk among low-level thugs filled the still desert air.
A car arrived, its black exterior coated with grime from the drive, its darkened windows masking the people inside. It pulled closer to the landing strip and sat there idling. No one got out. Roberto watched in anticipation, his fingers on the cool steel on his back. He watched the others for any sudden movement.
And then, he heard it.
South, toward a distant hill rise, the sound of a plane coming in low. It materialized out of the sky and buzzed the airfield low, banked a wide arc, then came in for a landing. The aircraft taxied up the strip and stopped fifty meters from the car. Its door opened and a ladder was extended. Several men started to deboard the plane, and Roberto saw the same activity happening with the late-arriving car. He saw Salazar emerge from the vehicle and make his way to the newly arrived contingent. They all shook hands, and one of the men, a tall well-dressed individual, walked toward the shaded chairs with Salazar.
Roberto dropped his hands and he could feel the tension slowly draining from his shoulders.
So, this was legit. They were only here as a show of power for this clandestine meeting. The muscle that the politician brought with him huddled close to the plane while Salazar’s goons stood solemnly near the road. Whatever the two men were talking about was their business.
After thirty minutes, the activity followed a reverse order, and Roberto and Miguel were in their car driving back to Nuevo Negaldo. They didn’t talk. They simply drove, and Roberto knew he had a little more time to clean up the mess he had made and get Tyler out of his life forever.
15
The world slowly came back to him and Ed strained to see clearly. The ceiling of his workroom began to stabilize at the same speed as the pain in his head increased. Fully conscious, his skull throbbed. He got to his feet and made his way to the storefront. The place was empty. He went to the door, opened it, and looked outside. It felt like any afternoon in Jennison. A school bus was heading east down Main.
Ed went back inside and called Tom.
“What happened to you?” Tom said as he walked in.
“Got jumped by a couple of guys.”
“You know who?”
“No.”
“What did they want?”
“Take a guess.”
Ed could tell that Tom would have guessed right if he had been the kind of man to say anything bad about another’s offspring.
“You need me to get you to a doctor?”
“No, but I was wondering if you wouldn’t mind going out to the house with me.”
“You think they might be out there?”
“I don’t know. I just would like some backup if they are.”
“Sure thing,” Tom said.
Ed gathered his things and soon the two were in a mini convoy out to Ed’s house. Tom took the lead and pulled up closest to the house, parking so as to use the car as a shield, depending on what they might find. Ed pulled up behind.
The front door was open, the screen knocked off its hinges. From his vantage point, Ed could tell there were pieces of his life tossed to the floor, ransacked, parts blowing in the wind off the porch and into the fields.
Tom reached into his car and pushed down on the horn. It shrieked in the still air. They
waited but saw no movement coming from inside. Ed watched as Tom unholstered his weapon and approached the porch. Ed started behind him. Tom turned and motioned Ed toward the police car and made a pumping motion with his hands. Inside the car was a shotgun. Ed retrieved it and came up behind him.
They entered the house, and slowly went from room to room. Up the stairs, step by step, Ed could feel his stomach tightening. He had never been in a fight, never been close to being shot at, and within the past several hours that omission in his history was now filled.
The two men swept the house, but it was empty. Whoever the men were, they were long gone.
“What do you think they were looking for?”
“Tyler,” Ed said, deflated. “But I told them the same thing I told the agent on the phone, I haven’t seen him for years.”
“Well, wherever he is, he sure has stirred up some trouble.”
The sheriff asked more questions about the incident, told Ed he would get on the horn with state police and see if they could find the perpetrators, though Ed figured they were halfway back to Mexico by now.
“You want me to help you clean up a bit?”
“No, I’ll take care of it,” Ed said as he walked out to the porch, picked up the upturned chair, and took a seat.
“You sure?”
“Yeah. Go on home. Thanks for coming out here with me.”
Tom went back into the house. Ed could hear him opening the refrigerator and pulling a bottle out. The sheriff reappeared and handed a bottle of beer over, then placed his shotgun against the railing next to Ed.
“Those guys come back”—Tom nodded at the gun—“just shoot ’em first.” He headed for his car.
“Hey, Tom?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m going to head out tomorrow, go down and see what this might be about. You mind watching over my place until I get back?”
“No problem. Just take care of yourself.”
Ed nodded and watched as the sheriff left. Ed sipped his beer and the resolve in his gut quickened. If they came back, they would not find him here. He would be on his way to Nuevo Negaldo.
Border Son Page 4