by Don Winslow
There are 280 of them.
He copies the names in a notebook he bought at 7-Eleven on his way in. Then he goes through those to see if any of them were arrested near McAllen on or around May 25, because when the illegals come across the river, they often come in groups.
He gets lucky.
There are seven.
Cal photocopies their intake photos, underlines these names in his book, and then he replaces all the files the way he found them.
When he walks back out into the hallway, Peterson is standing there.
“What brings you here at night?” Peterson asks.
“I left my damn wallet in my locker.”
Peterson smirks. “Twyla’s on duty.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“You didn’t know that?” Peterson asks. “I thought maybe you came back to get you a little somethin’.”
“You’re an asshole, you know that?”
“Take it easy, I’m just joking,” Peterson says. “You need to lighten up a bit there, Cal. It’s grim enough around here already, all these kids crying.”
“I thought you didn’t hear them.”
“You know what these little bastards are to me?” Peterson asks. “Fat overtime checks. They’re gonna buy me a new truck.”
“I’m happy for you.”
“I’m happy for me, too,” Peterson says. “But hey, listen—if you and old Twyla there need some alone time, I’ll cover. What can it take, a couple of minutes? Lighten up, just joking.”
“I’m gonna go now.”
“Give Twyla my best,” Peterson says. “Or your best.”
On the way out, Twyla asks him, “Did you get done what you needed?”
“I’m getting there.”
“Cal—”
“What?”
“I’m worried about you,” she says.
“Yeah, I’m kind of worried about me, too.”
He walks out the door.
First thing in the morning, Cal goes behind the chain-link fence into the adult holding area and calls out the names of the seven Salvadorans.
He calls them by name and by A-numbers.
No one answers.
They avoid his eyes or look back at him with fear and suspicion. Why shouldn’t they? he thinks. It’s a man in my uniform who put them here in the first place.
“Sólo estoy tratando de ayudar,” he says. “I’m just trying to help.”
They don’t believe that.
He points across the room toward Luz. “Esa niñita por allí.” That little girl over there.
They don’t believe he wants to help her either.
Tired, dirty, hungry, scared, angry—they don’t believe in much of anything anymore.
They don’t believe in America.
“Okay, we’ll do this the hard way,” Cal says. He goes through the holding area with the photos and one by one finds his people. And one by one they tell him exactly shit.
None of them know Gabriela Gonzalez.
None of them know her daughter except for seeing her here.
None of them came up through Mexico with her.
Or crossed the river with her.
No sé, no sé, no sé, no sé.
“What are you doing?” Twyla asks him.
“Trying to find that girl’s mama.”
“How, by bulling your way through the pens?” Twyla asks.
“You got an idea that I don’t?”
She says, “No, but I have an X chromosome you don’t.”
“The hell does that mean?”
“I’m a female,” Twyla says. “Look, the men in here aren’t going to say anything. The women might, but not to a man. Half of them have probably been raped or at least assaulted on the trip up here. The other half are running away from violence perpetrated by men. And then you go in there threatening—”
“I didn’t threaten—”
“You’re big, Cal,” she says. “And you’re in uniform. That’s an implicit threat.”
“‘Implicit’?”
“I had a semester of community college,” she says. “Look, let me see what I can do.”
“I already told you—”
“I know what you told me,” Twyla says. “But you don’t tell me shit, Cal. I do what I want.”
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
Okay.
The last three nights have been bad.
Usually the attacks come only once a week or so, but Twyla’s had them three nights running now, and she doesn’t know why. Maybe it’s the long hours, she thinks, or maybe the stress.
Twyla goes into the adult section of the pens to see a woman from El Salvador named Dolores. She has a fourteen-year-old son they located in the Tornillo camp, and ORR is trying to reunite them, but the paperwork is taking forever.
It’s hard to find space in the cramped cell, but they move to a corner, and Dolores gives the others a stern, leave-us-alone-a-minute look.
“Is it a problem?” Twyla asks. “You being seen talking to me?”
“If it is, it’s their problem, not mine.”
True that, Twyla thinks. She’s observed that no one messes with Dolores in here. She’s a leader among the women, and probably among the men, too.
“What do you want, m’ija?” Dolores asks.
Twyla thinks it’s funny Dolores calls her “daughter.” “My friend Cal—”
“The big one.”
“The big one.”
“What’s he thinking?”
“You know men.”
“Oh, I know men,” Dolores says. “So this one of yours—”
“He’s not mine.”
“Lie to yourself, m’ija,” Dolores says, “not to me. Your man, he’s trying to find that Luz’s mother.”
“Can you help?”
Silence.
“Woman to woman,” Twyla says.
More silence.
“You’re a mother, Dolores.”
Twyla waits for it.
“Maybe I can find someone here who knows something,” Dolores says.
“I’d be grateful.”
“Enough to get me a phone call with my son?”
“I think I can work that out.”
Woman to woman.
Dolores gets her phone call.
Cal gets his guy.
His name is Rafael Flores, and he came up from El Salvador with Gabriela. Crossed the river the day before she did, was arrested the same day, ended up in Clint because McAllen was overcrowded.
“When I asked you before,” Cal says, “you didn’t know nothin’.”
“That was before.”
“Before Dolores talked to you?”
Rafael nods. Thirty-four with a wife and two kids already in the States, up in New York, he went back to El Salvador for his grandfather’s funeral and got caught coming back in.
“What did Dolores promise you?” Cal asks.
“Granola bars.”
“Granola bars?”
“She said you’d give me more granola bars,” Rafael says. “Did you bring them?”
“First the talk,” Cal says, “then I’ll get you your granola bars.”
There are no humanitarians in cages, Cal thinks.
Turns out Rafael’s from the same barrio in San Salvador as Gabriela Gonzalez.
“So you know her,” Cal says.
“A little.”
“What’s her story?”
The details differ, the story is always the same.
Gabriela’s husband, Esteban—Luz’s father—belonged to Marasalvatrucha. Didn’t want to join the gang, but on that street in that barrio you were in the gang or you had to pay renta, a bribe to stay in business. Esteban had a little taco stand, so he joined, got his tattoo, became a marero.
Until a government Mano Dura death squad, cracking down on the gangs, forced him to his knees in the middle of the street and shot him in the head in front of his wife and child. Then the chief of the squad told Gabriela that he wa
s coming back that night.
She could take his pistol or his cock in her mouth, her choice.
Gabriela grabbed up her daughter, joined one of the caravans that was headed for El Norte and hoped to apply for asylum.
“Does she have people up here?” Cal asks.
Not that Rafael knows about. “But I barely know the Gonsalvez family.”
“What did you say?”
“I barely know the Gonsalvez family.”
Five minutes later Cal is in the ORR office.
“It’s possible,” the lady says. “Yes, it’s possible that if a call came in asking about a Luz Gonsalvez, the computer search would not come up with a Luz Gonzalez.”
“We’re talking two letters here.”
“I’m aware of that. If she had referred to the girl’s A-number—”
“Would she have had it?”
“Not necessarily,” she says with a sigh.
“So we wrote her name down wrong, and now a mother can’t find her child.”
“Agent Strickland, you know the volume of—”
Cal walks out.
Turns out Rafael has a cousin who has a friend who has a sister who works with Gabriela Gonsalvez’s aunt.
Who has a cell phone.
“Give the number to ORR and let them take it from here,” Twyla tells him.
“Because they’ve done such a great job so far?”
“Because you’re getting in over your head,” she says.
“My daddy used to say, ‘When you’re halfway across the river, it’s a little late to start worrying about how deep the water is.’”
“He have any other great folksy sayings?”
“Lots of ’em,” Cal says. “Like, ‘When you want a job done right, do it yourself.’ I’ll give ORR all the info after I’ve made the call.”
He calls the aunt.
And hears, “No, Gabriela is not here.”
“She came back, didn’t she?” he asks.
“Yes, but she left again.”
At least she’s alive, Cal thinks. “Do you know where she went?”
“Mexico,” the aunt says. “She’s trying to find her daughter.”
“We have her. Do you have a pen or pencil or something?” He gives her Luz’s A-number and the incorrect spelling of her name, then asks, “Does Gabriela have a phone?”
“No, no phone, but she said she would call.”
“When she does, please give her this number.”
“I will,” the aunt says. “How is Luz? Is she okay?”
“She misses her mom,” Cal says.
It’s the best he can think of.
Jaime gets on the horn. “Hey, what’s up? What’s happening? What do I need to know?”
“Your old cuate Strickland,” Peterson says.
“What about him?”
“He’s asking a lot of questions about some cerote named Gabriela Gonsalvez. We got her brat here.”
“What’s his interest?”
“Hell if I know,” Peterson says. “But he’s rattling cages.”
“Okay, okay. Keep an eye on it.”
“Keep my envelopes coming on time.”
“I’m on the pill, my little white brother,” Jaime says. “I’m never late.”
Jaime clicks off.
The fuck is that shitkicker Cal up to? he wonders. What does he care about some Salvadoran and her kid?
More important, how can it benefit me?
Cal hitches a rope to Riley’s bridle and walks him out of the corral. The horse expects to be saddled but is bound for disappointment—Cal don’t want to put his weight on him.
So they’re just going to go for a walk down the old dirt road toward what used to be the cotton field. A lot of people are planting peppers now, jalapeños for a growing market, but that takes irrigation, and Cal knows Bobbi don’t have the capital to lay out for all the new equipment it would take.
The old man would have gotten a kick out of it, though, Cal thinks. The man put sliced jalapeños on everything and then doused it all with tabasco, jabbing the bottle at his food like he was stabbing it with a knife.
“You sure you ain’t part Mexican?” Cal asked him one time, watching him mix jalapeño in with his eggs.
“If I am, you are,” Dale said.
“There are worse things, I suppose,” Cal said.
“True enough. You could be part banker.”
Fat chance of that, Cal thinks now.
There are a lot of Stricklands in this part of Texas, generally categorized into two distinct groups. You got your “Money Stricklands” and your “No Money Stricklands,” and he definitely hails from the latter category.
Riley gives him a push from behind: Can we please walk a little faster?
“You got somewhere you gotta be?” Cal asks. But he steps up the pace. It’s getting hot, and the horse probably wants to get back in the shade under the ramada Cal built.
So Luz’s mother, Cal thinks, the woman who “abandoned” her, who didn’t care enough to make a phone call, apparently cared enough to get back to El Salvador, turn clear around and make the long, dangerous trip back to the border to try to find her child.
Well, she’s got a better shot at it now.
He looks at the failed cotton field for a few seconds, then turns himself around and leads Riley back to the corral.
When he gets to Clint, the ORR lady wants to see him.
Toot sweet.
“I hear you located Luz Gonsalvez’s family,” she said. “Would you like to share that information with me?”
Cal tells her what he knows and gives her the aunt’s phone number.
“I’ll contact the aunt and tell her that if Gabriela calls her, she should tell her to call me,” the lady says. “We’ll take it from here. Are we clear about this?”
His boss tells him pretty much the same thing. Cal runs into him in the hallway, and the post commander tells him he won’t put up with any “cowboy shit” in his unit.
Then you probably shouldn’t have hired a cowboy, Cal thinks.
Luz looks at him.
What those eyes have seen, Cal thinks.
“I got her to eat a little something,” her caseworker says.
“We keep trying,” Twyla says.
“There’s a possibility of getting her back with her mother soon, I hear?” the caseworker says.
“Yeah,” Cal says.
“That’s good,” she says. “Because otherwise . . .”
Yeah, except it is otherwise.
Two days go by, then three.
No call from Gabriela.
They don’t hear from her, neither does her aunt.
Then Cal hears that it don’t matter anyway.
“The hell do you mean?!” he hollers.
The ORR lady says, “I’m only telling you this as a courtesy. It really is literally none of your business. I thought you might want to know.”
That Esteban Gonsalvez had resided illegally in the United States for several months in 2015, was convicted on a DUI and deported. So ORR will not return an unaccompanied minor to a custodian with a criminal record.
“In addition to that, he has a gang affiliation,” the lady says.
“He’s dead!”
“But by extension the wife also has a gang affiliation,” she says. “Furthermore, she hasn’t made contact—”
“Because we got her goddamn name wrong!”
“—this is going to be deemed a case of abandonment.”
“You’re telling me that even if we locate the mother,” Cal says, “you won’t give Luz to her?”
“That’s what it amounts to.”
“What’s going to happen now?” Twyla asks.
“Seeing as there is no family in the United States to take sponsorship,” the lady says, “the girl will be put up for adoption.”
Cal leans over the desk. “The. Girl. Has. A. Mother.”
“Where?” the lady asks. “Where, Agent Strickland? Where is she
?”
Cal’s never been much of a drinker.
He is tonight.
Him and Twyla hit Mamacita’s up on the 10, order a pitcher and then another.
“This is going to sound stupid, but I went to Iraq because I loved America,” Twyla says. “Now I feel like I don’t even know this country anymore. We’re not who I thought we were. Something’s broken in us.”
“We can’t let this happen.”
“What are we going to do about it, Cal?”
“I dunno.”
There’s happy drunk, there’s angry drunk, and there’s sullen drunk, and they sit there in sullen-drunk silence until Cal says, “You ever get tired of losing?”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s just that it seems the past few years we’ve been losing, you know?” Cal says. “Losing our jobs . . . our land . . . losing what we used to be. I’m just sick of losin’, ain’t you?”
Twyla shakes her head. “You can’t lose what you never had.”
“What did you never have?”
She looks over the pitcher at him for a few long moments, then says, “It doesn’t matter.”
“Matters to me.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
Then she says, “Cal, I’m . . . self-conscious, you know . . . about my hip . . . the limp.”
“It don’t bother me.”
“It bothers me,” she says. “I mean, I’m not, you know, exactly, you know, beautiful.”
“I, on the other hand,” he says, “constantly get mistaken for Brad Pitt.”
She looks at him with new appreciation. “That was the perfect thing to say.”
They’re that close. That close to getting up, going to his place or hers, falling into bed together, maybe falling in love.
Except Cal’s phone rings.
He looks at the number, sees it’s from Mexico.
“Is that you, Cal?” Jaime says. “Hey, I hear you’re looking for a woman named . . . let me check my notes . . . Gabriela Gonsalvez?”
“What about her?”
“Well, she’s right here,” Jaime says. “You want her so bad, why don’t you come down here and get her, hoss?”
They sit out in his truck.
“Let the higher-ups handle it,” Twyla says.
“Already seen how they handle it,” Cal says.
“Jesus, what are you thinking of doing?”
“Taking the girl to her mother.”
“I knew it,” Twyla says. “You take that girl, it’s kidnapping, it’s a federal crime. They’ll put you away for the rest of your life.”