“Lomas, wondering if you could swing by the office today. Something has come up with the situation in Nuevo Negaldo that I would like your opinion on.”
It was his boss. His official boss.
Not Salazar.
Salazar was already dead. Lomas thought the drug lord lucky in that respect.
“Is it urgent?”
“A bit. Just come down when you can. Thanks.”
The phone went dead.
They knew of his involvement. Edward and Tyler had shown up and spilled their story. He had used the same tactic in the past and he was not about to let it be played on him. He had to leave. He had to get out of El Paso. He would decide on the road he would take, but for now, he had to move.
Lomas went to his bedroom and packed a quick bag, clothes, toiletries, a jacket. He tucked his firearm into his shoulder harness and went to the front door. He looked outside and saw an empty street, save for the mailman who was now delivering at the end of the block. He went outside, locked up the house, got into his car, and backed down the driveway.
He pulled down the street and thought about calling back into the office, making up an excuse that would buy him more time to disappear. He pulled out his cell phone, his other hand on the wheel, as he approached the stop sign at the end of the block.
Distracted by his hurried departure, he did not see the car pull up beside him.
He didn’t see the gun pointed at his window.
His peripheral vision barely caught the blast of the shot as his window shattered, his left temple exploded, and the world went dark.
Later that day, a car crossed the border in Juarez and proceeded southwest toward Nuevo Negaldo. The two men inside, now safely back on the right side of the wire, headed to Nuevo Negaldo, eager to make a name for themselves with the new plaza boss.
81
Ed pulled into the driveway of the house in Jennison and shut the truck off. Tyler was in the passenger seat, the swelling on his face subsiding, the bruises turning a deep purple. His eyes were looking at the house he had not seen in years. Ed could only imagine what thoughts might be going through his son’s head. Ed caught his own reflection in the rearview mirror and was reminded that he looked very similar to Tyler.
They hadn’t talked much on the way home once they got the truck in Deming. Each to their own thoughts, Ed found himself constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop. A car of Cartel assassins behind them, a gunman at the rest area, a sicario emerging from the bathroom at the gas station, but none of these things happened. But he couldn’t shut off his mind to the thoughts.
The road back to Kansas stretched out and condensed in a paradox of time. The miles whipped by even as the memory of Mexico moved in slow motion through his mind. Cars passed, the drivers innocent to the war that he had been through. Their naïve lives went on. Ed would always view his life differently. Every shadow, every noise, unexpected sensation would bring with it a twinge of fear, his nerves heightened and ready for flight.
When he pulled into Jennison and started looking for boogeymen around every corner, he realized these feelings would haunt him for years to come.
The house seemed smaller with the two of them in it. It was still in disarray from the ransacking it took before he left for New Mexico.
“Place is a mess,” Tyler said.
“Yup.”
“Salazar’s guys?”
“Yup.”
Tyler’s shoulders slumped as if realizing that his actions had brought chaos to yet another part of the world. Ed started picking up the stuff on the living room floor, sifting through what was broken and what was still salvageable. Tyler walked over and started helping. They returned to silence until the first floor was somewhat livable again and evening was setting in.
“Your old room still has the bed in it,” Ed said.
“Alright.”
“You can stay as long as you want.”
“You sure about that?”
“Yes.”
“Thanks.”
Tyler turned and took a few steps up the stairs, paused, and then looked back at his dad. “I don’t know why you came down to Mexico, but I’m glad you did.”
Edward thought about the words. He didn’t know what had moved him to begin the journey that almost cost him his life, to try to save a son he had written off years before, a son whose own actions and criminal mind had caused a war to erupt in a border town and the death of countless people. For his part, he doubted he had contributed anything to the miracle of their escape. He was lost across the border, he lagged on the trail, cowered in the basement of Salazar’s hacienda, and was strapped to a chair while a gunfight erupted around him. In fact, Tyler’s fortunes would have ended the same whether he was there or not.
“I really didn’t do anything.”
“You were there, you know. I’m just glad you were there.”
“Get some sleep,” Ed said.
Tyler went up to his old room and shut the door while Ed went to the fridge, managed to find a beer behind some food that had gone bad, and then made his way to the porch. He sat down in his chair, the sun setting in the west, and wondered at just what he had been through.
He looked down at his hands as one gripped the armrest and the other the bottle. The marks on them would probably last the rest of his life. The skin felt tight when he squeezed his fingers, the scar tissue glossy and smooth compared to the weathered leather. They would be visual reminders of his descent into the abyss.
He rocked and the door opened. Tyler stepped out onto the porch and leaned against the railing, looking out to the fields that he used to disappear into when he was a boy.
“Can’t sleep.”
Ed didn’t say anything.
“Place hasn’t changed much, has it?”
“I don’t know. It didn’t seem like it did, until now. Now it seems . . . smaller.”
Tyler turned to his father and listened.
“I guess my mind isn’t the same. This place was quiet. Solid. Perhaps I was fooling myself my whole life as to what the world was like. Who knows? I’m just staring down the drive now, waiting for a car of lowlifes to drive up and take us back. It’s like, once being part of it, I have this fear of being dragged back in.”
“Well, you don’t need to worry. You’re back home. It’s over.”
“You think this is over?” Edward asked.
“Isn’t it? Salazar is dead. So is everyone else. What’s left?”
“Something buried out in the desert.”
Tyler straightened a bit. Not much, but Edward saw it. That same tic every boy makes when they feel their inner conniving being sniffed out by a parent.
“That load you stole. Whatever it is, it’s still out there, isn’t it.”
“Possibly.”
“It is. Don’t lie to me. Not now. Not after everything we’ve been through. I think I deserve the truth.”
“Should still be out there. Like I said, everyone who knows about it is dead.”
“You really believe that?” Ed said. He stood up, went inside, and came back with the phone. “Here, why don’t you call the DEA or FBI or someone and tell them where it’s at, let them go pick it up.”
“Now? It’s already late.”
“Just get it off your chest.”
“Tomorrow, Dad.”
“Now, Tyler.”
Tyler pushed the phone away and stepped back into the house, went up the stairs, and into his room. The door shut behind him and he didn’t come back out. Edward finished his beer, locked up the house, and called it a night. The same old estrangement between him and his son slowly creeping back into the home.
When he woke in the morning, Tyler was gone.
82
The park in Hermosillo was quiet. El Matacerdos sat on a bench, his eyes searching his surroundings at every car and passerby. Attack could come from any direction at any time. It was never safe to meet like this, he knew that. His old mistress sat in a car in front of the st
ore. The young boy jumped out and went inside for a treat. El Matacerdos had already paid for the raspados, had paid for treats for anyone who might have gone into the store between noon and two, just to make sure the owners couldn’t tie the boy to him.
Soon, the boy came out with a cup and walked across the park. He sat down on the other end of the bench and took a mouthful. His eyes never landed on his father. He had been trained, schooled in the art of public meetings.
“How is school?” El Matacerdos asked.
“It’s fine,” the boy said.
“And your mother? Are you doing what she asks you to do?”
“Yes, Papa.”
“Good.”
“Where have you been?”
“You know you are not supposed to ask me these things.”
The boy looked down to his cup and scraped the wooden spoon around the edges. He had finished too soon. He would have to pretend to eat phantom ice cream for as long as he wanted to sit next to his father.
“Do you not want to be with me, Papa?”
“More than anything.”
“But the monsters won’t let you?”
“I leave to keep the monsters away. If I stay, they could show up here and hurt you. I will never let that happen.”
“Can’t someone else fight them?”
“No, Pepe. Once you start, you cannot stop. I didn’t know this when I started. Before you were born. If I had, well, I don’t know. But I must keep them away.”
“People ask where my papa is,” the boy said casually.
“And what do you tell them?”
“That he is in the north. Like the others.”
“Did you come up with that?” El Matacerdos asked.
The boy nodded as he continued to scrape the empty container. El Matacerdos smirked.
“You are a smart boy. Go on now, your mother is waiting.”
“Will I see you soon?”
“Yes, soon.”
“Okay, Papa.”
The boy stood and hesitated. He turned slightly, stole a quick glance at his father, and smiled. Then he walked across the park to the waiting car. A twinge of deep sadness passed through El Matacerdos. He had taught the boy he could never hug him in public. The life he had sentenced them both to.
El Matacerdos watched the car pull away from the curb and drive off. He sat there for another half hour before he got up and walked to his own car parked a few blocks away.
83
The bell over the door to the appliance shop rang and Edward’s heart skipped a beat. He doubted that would ever change. The feeling of dread at a familiar sound, a sound that for most of his life had been a welcoming chime, now caused a negative Pavlovian reaction in his gut. A part of him thought that someday another crew of hitmen would walk through that door. He would stand from his desk, walk out of the back room, and see an elderly townie still content to have an old machine serviced rather than buy a new one.
Today, it was no townie.
Camilla stood inside the door.
His heart quickened, but not in terror. He felt a smile cross his lips.
“Wow, it’s good to see you,” he said as he walked toward her. He didn’t know whether to hug her or extend his hand, and he was stuck between the two gestures.
She read his intentions and gave him a hug. “You too.”
“I never thought . . .” He tripped over his words. “What brings you to Jennison?”
“I came to see you.”
Ed’s words left him again.
“Is there a place we can talk?” she asked.
Ed looked at her and then rubbed his hands on his shirt. He suddenly realized how dirty he was.
“Sure. We can go across the street. Grab some coffee.”
Camilla nodded.
“Just let me close up real quick,” he said.
Ed grabbed his keys, flipped the Open sign over, and locked the door behind him. They walked over to the small eatery across the road, sat down at a booth, and waited for the waitress to bring them their drinks before another word was spoken.
“How are you doing?” Ed asked, not really knowing what to say.
“I’m making it, day by day. I miss him.”
Edward listened without interruption.
“I haven’t been back to Nuevo Negaldo. I do not think I ever will. Too many ghosts there for me. I sometimes think I never should have gone there to begin with. But where else could we have gone? He was so little then. I thought that he would be safe, you know? Safe because he was mine. My son. That my will for him would guide him. But, as with all boys, he was his own. He chose his own destiny.
“There is no one but me who knows the real Roberto. Remembers the real Roberto. The person he was deep down inside. The boy who would kiss his mother every night before going to sleep. Sometimes sneaking out of his bed to kiss me again. The man who was violent to the world but shielded his mother from danger. I am the only one who knows who he really was. It’s lonely.”
Edward reached out across the table and grasped Camilla’s hand. “I saw him. I saw that part of him too.”
Camilla smiled and wiped her eyes. She brought the coffee cup up to her lips and took a sip. Putting the drink down, she took a deep breath and smiled. “Thank you. I think that’s why I came. Hoping to find that I was not the only one.”
“Where will you go?”
“I don’t know. There is nowhere to go back to.”
He didn’t know what he wanted her to say, but Edward wanted her to stay. Like her, there was no one who understood what he had been through. No one to talk to. That’s the one thing about a shared history. It forever binds two people together.
“And where is Tyler?” she asked.
“Gone.”
She nodded, this time it was her who reached out for his hand. Her thumb ran over the scarring on the back of his hand.
“I guess, I don’t know,” he said. “I thought that after everything, he’d change. Get smart. Realize something. But after we got back home, he was gone the next morning. It makes me wonder why I even bothered in the first place. I got suckered again.”
“No,” she said. “You weren’t. You did the right thing. For our children, we simply do. Not for the reward. Not for something down the line. Simply for doing.”
He looked at her. She was truth and mystery all rolled up in one.
84
Ed had invited Camilla over for dinner, which she accepted. They sat in the kitchen making small talk, eating, and taking their time. It was nice to have someone in the house who talked with him. They did their best not to converse about Nuevo Negaldo, but as hard as they tried, the conversation always ended up there.
Camilla walked over to the couch while Ed began to clear the dishes. He turned on the TV, handed her the remote, and glanced at the screen as he picked up their plates. A small story ran across the ticker at the bottom, a major drug seizure out west.
Camilla glanced at Ed and flipped the channel.
Ed put the leftovers in the fridge, and as he closed the door, his eyes fell on the card hanging there under the magnet. The card the desert priest passed out. Toribio Romo. It was now a relic reminding him of things he both wanted to forget and to remember.
His hands in the sink, scrubbing dishes, he let his thoughts wander as he looked out the kitchen window, across the plains to the southwest, toward the memories that haunted him. Somewhere out there were men lying in a rocky crag, gazing up at the stars. Men sleeping in shacks, waiting for trucks to carry them north. Men walking through wilderness, blind to the paths and futures ahead of them.
Somewhere out there was Tyler.
He was drying his hands when he thought he heard a knock on the door. His stomach clenched, the ever-present dread rising. He sucked in a deep breath and went to open the door.
Tyler stood there on the porch.
“You mind if I crash here for a while?”
Ed looked at his son. He had no idea if he would be here tomorrow, or
the next day, or any day after that. But for now, here he was. And he was willing to take it for what it was.
“Yeah,” Ed said. “I’d like that.”
Prologue
The eighteen-wheeler pulled into the truck stop off I-15 and applied the airbrakes. The passenger door swung open and a young girl jumped out, waved a thank-you to the driver, and walked toward Las Vegas. She had a small backpack thrown over one shoulder of her denim jacket. All she had.
The driver had been a nice enough guy. He had picked her up along a stretch in Utah and enjoyed the company. He said that he had a daughter back in Memphis and that he couldn’t imagine seeing her walk the roads out west at her age. When they pulled into Vegas, he handed her forty dollars from his beat-up wallet.
“Here, take it.”
“You don’t have to.”
“No arguing now, hear?”
They both knew that she needed it more than he did. No doubt he also thought the money would soothe his conscience for leaving such a naïve creature on the doorstep of Sin City.
She walked most of the afternoon through the boarded-up streets northeast of the strip, thumbing the buttonholes on the jacket she held and wiping the sweat from her brow. The desert sun turning her shoulders red. She met the few catcalls and periodic requests for spare change with downcast eyes and silence. She was scared. This was not what she had come out west for.
Night crept in and the sidewalk shadows grew more menacing. She stepped into a party store and grabbed a can of Coke and a stick of beef jerky. She waited in line behind a fidgety man undecided on the best choice of liquor under five dollars, which he then paid for with two crumpled bills and a small mountain of change pulled from his sagging pants. Under the white light of the store awning, she sat on the sidewalk and ate her dinner.
The girl checked in to a rundown ’50s motel that was half vacant. She did not want to sleep outside tonight. Not here.
“You eighteen?” the desk clerk asked as he wiped some crumbs off his stained wifebeater T-shirt.
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