The Terror of Tijuana

by S. J. Varengo

  “Not a good idea. We’re going to cause enough of a stir as it is. No flashing lights.”

  “Alright. Was there any sign of Cara Rota?”

  “I’ve seen no one other than Manny since I came into the building. This place is weird.”

  “Agreed. Which building are you in?”

  Nicole felt an icy stabbing in her stomach. “Oh no. I just realized that if there was a building number or something, I didn’t notice it. And they all look exactly alike. Shit. Rookie mistake.”

  “Okay, okay. Don’t worry. You’re calling from an iPhone, right? I mean, it’s CUC standard, right?”

  “Yes, we issue them to everyone.”

  “Okay, then I can find you using that. Find the app.”

  “Luis, the signal in this basement is for shit. It took me ten minutes to get one bar to call you.”

  “Always about the bars with you, alcoholic!” Manny joked weakly.

  “It’s our best shot. Just try not to move around too much,” Luis said, unaware of the wounded cleaner’s gallant attempt at humor.

  “Okay, I’m putting you on speaker.” She opened the Find Friends app and immediately went to the “Add Friend” function. She started to type Luis’s name and his contact info popped up in a list. She touched the entry and sent her location. After what seemed like an eternity, Luis let out a little whoop.

  “Good. I’ve got you. Be there in ten.”

  Nicole turned to look at Manny again. “Better make it five.”

  “Roger,” Luis said as he disconnected.

  Manny let out a moan and Nicole was about to move to him when she thought about the phone again. It seemed to her that if she took the phone anywhere but the exact place she was now standing, she might lose the signal again, and she wondered if that would mean Luis would no longer be able to find her. Grr! She gave herself an angry internal growl. He said he had the location. Start thinking clearly, dammit! You don’t need to stand here looking at…

  Cole stopped dead in her mental tracks. She rarely used the Find Friends app. Luis didn’t even show up, as she’d sent him her location but hadn’t had him do the same. There were only three names listed on the app: Dan, J.J., and Tony. She’d added them all without their knowledge, taking advantage of the fact that all three often left their phones lying around the house. But she thought of it only as a sort of insurance policy. As far as she could remember, she’d only used it to check on any of them one time, and that was J.J. For the first few days after returning her to Notre Dame following their misadventure in Greenville, she’d watched her comings and goings, until she was satisfied that she was staying on or around campus, and that nothing out of the ordinary happened.

  Now, however, her phone was telling her some very odd and interesting things. It showed that both kids were together, which she expected. What she had not expected that they were together about twenty-five miles from her, in San Diego, California. She felt her temper rise a bit at the thought of the two of them leaving Denver without checking in. Then she thought they could very well have gotten permission from Dan. But none of this explained why Dan himself was showing up in Mexico! He appeared to be in the mountains not far to the east of Tijuana.

  “What in the name of…” she said aloud. Manny moaned in response to her voice, and she immediately refocused on her current situation. “Hang in there, Manny. The handler is on the way.”

  “Any water left?” Manny asked, his voice continuing to weaken.

  “There’s a swallow or two left, and Luis is bringing more.” She helped him drink the rest of the bottle. “Listen,” she said once he’d finished. “We’ve got to get you the hell out of here. I’m sure Luis will be able to find us a competent but discreet medico, but getting you from this shit hole into his VW is going to provide us with some challenges. I doubt very much that you’re going to be able to walk, even with us helping you. The best we’re going to be able to hope for is to get an arm around each of our shoulders and pretty much drag your ass out.”

  “Help me to sit up at least,” Manny said, the few gulps of agua rallying him once more.

  Nicole squatted beside him and slid her arm behind his neck. Slowly, she helped raise him into a sitting position. At first, the change in position seemed to disorient him, but after a good deal of unhealthy-sounding noises, he quieted and focused his one good eye on her. “This is a hell of a thing, ain’t it?”

  “It’s a hell of a thing, Manny. Do you know who did this to you? Was it Cara Rota?”

  “No.”

  Cole’s mind raced. Perhaps her nagging suspicion that the little street punk had sent them both into the building to be ambushed had been correct after all.

  “No, it wasn’t him that shot me. But he was here. I saw the ugly little fucker.”

  “Who then?”

  “I wish I could tell you…” Manny’s voice trailed off, and he coughed a few times. The pain of doing so showed clearly on his damaged visage.

  “Listen, you rest. Luis will be here any minute, and once we get you patched up, you can give me the details.”

  Manny nodded weakly but said no more.

  A scant minute later, Nicole could hear footsteps coming down the stairs from the lobby. She had set the gun back in her bag while she helped Manny, but now quickly drew it out again. The steps probably belonged to Luis, but they could just as easily be whatever hoodlum had shot and robbed Manny, coming now to do the same to her. She wasn’t about to wait unarmed in case it was the latter.

  But a few seconds after she heard the squeak of the hinges on the stairwell door, she heard a voice, clearly Luis’s, say, “Jesus Christ, this place stinks.”

  “Luis, in here. The third storage room.”

  The handler ran to the room and pushed the door open. “Oh damn! I thought it smelled bad out there!”

  “Yeah, it’s pretty awful. Come on, though. We don’t really have time to stand here sniffing.”

  “Holy hell, Emmanuel,” Luis said as he looked at the cleaner. Cole frowned at him, but Manny let out a weak chuckle.

  “Yeah, I know, Luis. I know.”

  “Quiet, both of you,” Nicole said. “Let’s just worry about getting you out of here with a minimum of attention pointed in our direction.”

  “I parked the car right in front of the entry.”

  Manny laughed again, “You’re gonna get a ticket doing shit like that.”

  “Come on. Let’s get him up.”

  They knelt on each side of Manny and helped him put his arms around their shoulders, then carefully stood him upright. He thanked them by immediately vomiting most of the water Nicole had given him.

  “Gilipollas!” Luis exclaimed as effluvium sprayed on his shirt.

  “No name calling!” Nicole laughed at the handler calling the wounded man a shithead despite herself. “Seriously, come on!”

  They made their way out of the dark room, absently leaving the door ajar.

  “The stairs are going to be too hard for him. And us. Mostly us,” Luis said after a few steps out of the room. He pointed to the right and said, “There are elevators this way.”

  Nicole debated with herself for a tick, but Manny’s weight pulling down on her convinced her that Luis was right. It would take them forever to climb the single flight of stairs, and she was afraid she might not be able to support him and make it up the steps.

  “Alright,” she said finally. “Let’s do it.”

  To their great delight, as soon as the button was pushed, they heard the humming of the elevator mechanism. The button even lit up, then went out again as the car arrived in the basement.

  “At least one thing works in this building,” Cole said

  Although the sky was starting to move towards twilight and the children were no longer playing in the parking lot, as they were exiting the building, a young couple approached, and they immediately looked at the trio with horrified expressions.

  “Vamos, borracho tonto!” Luis said as they shuffled past
the frightened couple. “Demasiada fiesta,” he said to them apologetically. Too much celebration.

  Manny laughed, and when the couple had gone inside, he said, “Call me a drunken fool again, asshole!”

  “You know I didn’t mean anything by it. ‘Drunk’ is a lot easier to digest than ‘face shot.’”

  They helped him into the back seat of the car, and Nicole sat with him. Luis ran to the driver’s door and jumped in, squawking the tires as he raced them out of the area, heading to a doctor known for his discretion. He’d already phoned ahead to warn that a man with a serious gunshot wound was on the way. Looking at Manny in the rear view mirror, he realized that he probably should have said “life threatening.”

  Back in the dark storage room, the pile of garbage closest to the door, which had appeared inert the entire time Nicole had been there, now began to move. The trash in this pile, however, didn’t rustle lightly the way Manny’s had. It exploded as Cara Rota emerged from it with a burst of choleric energy.

  “He will descend from on high,” he said, his voice a mix of ire and fear. “He will not forgive.”

  11

  9-1-1

  The doctor to which Luis brought Manny may or may not have had a license to practice medicine. Nicole certainly didn’t see any proudly displayed diplomas in his “clinic,” but that could have just as easily been because the weight of it would have been too much for the wall to handle. Had the building been in the States, it would have surely been condemned. There were numerous stains in the ceiling indicating a very leaky roof and the piss-yellow walls had several patches of plaster missing. The whole place smelled of mold.

  The good news was that after examining Manny, he announced that the bullet had miraculously passed through all soft tissue, aside from putting a nick in his cheekbone that the doc said would show after the flesh healed.

  “You’ll have a cheek dimple to match the one on your chin,” Luis joked, trying to lighten the mood.

  “You’ll have a fuck you,” Manny managed to answer groggily. The doctor’s chosen anesthesia had been whiskey.

  When they left the dingy building two hours later, both the entry and exit wounds had been cleaned and patched, and Manny was able to walk out under his own power, thanks to IV fluids and no thanks to the booze that he’d continued to consume directly from the bottle the entire time he was being treated. His face was heavily bandaged and he was giving off some serious “Curse of the Mummy” vibes.

  “We need to get you rested up, dude,” Nicole said to him as they drove from one depressed neighborhood to another. “Luis, take us to the Gamma del Fiesta.”

  “Ten-four, jefe,” Luis said, already navigating in that direction.

  “How did you find that doctor?” Manny asked him from the back seat.

  “Yellow pages, under ‘Doctor with good liquor.’”

  “Ha ha. I’m serious. Did you know of him before, or what?”

  “I’ve never worked with him before, no. To be honest, before this case, I’ve only had to come to Tijuana one other time. On business, I mean. And there were no doctors involved that go-round. But I do have contacts here, and I called one of them and asked for a discreet practitioner.”

  “Your contact is solid?” Nicole asked.

  “Yes, he’s an old friend. What are you two so worried about?”

  “Cartel,” Manny said, still sounding very much under the influence.

  “What?”

  Nicole had been thinking the same thing. He was just the sort of doctor the cartels would use as well. Not for the bosses, of course, who would have Johns Hopkins-trained physicians living at their private compounds. But every now and then, the gang battles left survivors, and if the bosses thought the wounded men valuable enough, they’d get them patched up. The guy that had helped Manny would be just the ticket.

  “Luis, we were thinking there might be some sort of cartel connection to all of this already. If we’re right, which I’m pretty sure we are, and if Dr. Bushmills there is on their shortlist, they might notify people we don’t want notified that Manny survived.”

  The handler shook his head. “I don’t know. It just seems like we’re assuming that we’re more on their radar than I think we really are.”

  “Yes,” Nicole said, but at the same time, she shook her head in the negative. “We’re making some assumptions, but they’re the sort that might lead us to make fewer stupid mistakes. I don’t think at this stage that paranoia is a bad thing.”

  “I agree,” said the semi-mummified cleaner.

  Luis nodded. “You’re right, both of you. It’s never smart to expect them to not be involved with anything. But I still think we’re probably okay. They’d have to put a lot of unrelated pieces together, I feel.”

  “Well, again, assuming they’re involved, then they probably know Manny got shot in the face, and this doctor just treated a seriously dehydrated man with a GSW to that area.”

  “All true,” the handler admitted as he parked the car in front of Nicole’s minimalist hotel. “What’s this place?” Manny asked as he exited the car.

  “This is where I’m staying.”

  “Darlene booked you into this place? Jesus Christ, I thought you two were friends!”

  “It’s close to the cell tower that handled your text. That’s how we found you. Well, that, and some seriously spooky luck.”

  “I should have never listened to that dirty little street-fuck,” Manny said.

  “What?”

  “I asked some kid if he knew Cara Rota and he sent me to the basement of that building.”

  “Holy hell. I wondered...”

  “What are you talking about?” the cleaner asked.

  Nicole opened the door to her room, and they helped Manny stretch out on the bed. “I think I might have got sent down there by the same little kid.”

  “Seriously?”

  “As serious as I know how to be,” she said, moving into the small bathroom and closing the door.

  Luis shook his head, a look of deep concern seizing his face. “Okay. Now I’m paranoid,” he said as he moved back to the door to turn the deadbolt. First, however, he opened it slightly to peek outside, proving he was indeed growing suspicious about these apparent coincidences.

  As he did, the door was kicked violently inward.

  Luis was thrown backwards by the impact, hitting the wall hard. He was badly stunned and slid to the floor. The first thing he saw when the little birdies stopped flying around his head was a hunched man with the most grotesque face he’d ever seen. He took one step forward and surveyed the room.

  “I do not know this one’s face. It may be he. It may be he. But that one you didn’t quite kill,” he said in Spanish, pointing to the bandaged Manny, who sat up on the bed at the sound of the commotion.

  The twisted man continued to prattle on, but both Luis and Manny quickly turned their attention to the man who followed him into the room.

  He was tall, taller than either of the CUC men, and he towered over Cara Rota, who looked at him much the way a puppy looks at his master as he sits beside a questionable stain on the carpet. Where Cara Rota was dressed poorly, wearing an open flannel shirt over a dirty white tee, this man was clad in a perfectly fitting slate blue Kilton Windowpane suit, and he was holding a AK-47.

  Luis’s mind cleared rapidly in response to the obvious danger, and he assumed by Cara Rota’s statement that this must be who shot Manny. The automatic rifle seemed to indicate that he was not going to risk a second resurrection. He smiled down at Cara Rota and said, “Lo has hecho bien.”

  Manny sat still on the edge of the bed. He’d had his weapons taken when he was attacked, and hadn’t rearmed himself, a bad decision he now realized.

  A handler was responsible for making arms available to a cleaner on assignment, but rarely carried one himself. Luis, however, had decided when Nicole had called to tell him Manny had survived that not packing was as foolish a move as he could make. As such, there was a Berett
a M9 in the waistband at the rear of his jeans, but the gunman was looking directly at him now, and he knew he’d be dead before he could pull it should he try.

  Now speaking English, the man said, “I must compliment you. The fact that you came looking for el ángel at all would be… what’s the phrase… a lucky shot in the dark.” He turned to look at Manny. “Obviously, my shot was not so lucky. But never mind that. What’s weighing heavily on my mind is the fact that a second person came looking for him so soon. To me, that sounds like someone who has done their math correctly is getting too close for comfort.”

  He stepped a little further into the room, moving past Luis toward Manny. The narrow entryway made it impossible to see around the corner where the room itself began, and he leaned his head to carefully look there.

  “But where is the woman?” he asked, seeing no one was hiding near Emmanuel. He turned back to face Luis once more and saw that the handler was slowly reaching behind him. He spoke rapidly to Cara Rota. “Que uno tiene un arma.”

  The disfigured man moved with deceptive speed and an agility that seemed impossible, considering his disabilities. He kicked Luis in the face and pulled the gun from the handler’s jeans.

  “Why would you do such a thing?” the man asked Luis as Cara Rota handed him the Beretta. “Surely you knew I would want to be the only one with a weapon in this situation. This is not the O.K. Corral.”

  Luis rubbed his throbbing jaw and looked up to see the AK was now inches from his forehead. The dapper man smiled.

  “I know much about the American Old West!” he bragged. “But this is not to be a fair fight. ¿Comprende?”

  Luis nodded.

  “Now I will ask for the final time: where is the woman?”

  Nicole could hear everything that was going on from the bathroom. She’d left her purse on the wall-mounted desk, but she still had a gun strapped to her ankle. She drew it now but still did not like the feel of the situation. It would take the man only a few seconds more to realize that “the woman” could only be in the bathroom. There were two bad guys out there, one who she knew had shot Manny and one who she believed had killed eight American women. It was three to two, but she felt outmanned.