by Sam Hawken
‘I just want to know someone’s doing something.’
‘I understand. Do you understand that this is all we can do for now?’
Jack dropped his eyes and nodded. His knee was still bouncing.
‘Let me buy you a cola. It’s no bother.’
Jack said nothing and Gonzalo went to the machine to buy two small bottles of soda. They were already sweating by the time Gonzalo returned. He offered one to Jack and the man took it without enthusiasm.
‘What else did the consulate tell you?’ Gonzalo asked.
‘That I should go home and wait.’
‘That’s good advice. You’ve done everything you can for now.’
‘I’m not real good at sitting on my hands.’
‘No, I don’t expect you are. May I ask what you do for a living, Sr Searle?’
‘I’m a contractor. Remodeling. Building.’
‘And before that?’
‘I was in the service. United States Marines.’
Gonzalo took a long drag from his cola, let it wash down cold and fizzy. ‘We have a great deal of experience with the military in this city. You may not have noticed, but they are everywhere. Like you, they don’t like to be kept on the sidelines.’
‘One of my girls is missing.’
‘And we’ll find her. The question is whether you will worry yourself to death before then. Go home, señor. You are in good hands with me.’
Jack slowly unfolded himself from his chair. Gonzalo stood with him and offered his hand to shake. Jack Searle’s grip was firm, but Gonzalo could also feel his reluctance. ‘I’m counting on you,’ Jack said.
‘I will not let you down.’
‘Okay.’
Jack turned away. Gonzalo watched him go.
SEVEN
ON THE DRIVE TO BERNARDO’S, JACK willed his phone to ring and Marina to be on the other end. It was all a huge mistake, she would say. She went to a friend’s house, someone Bernardo didn’t know, and she accidentally left her phone in the car where she couldn’t hear it ring. Apologies would come and Marina would turn up at her Uncle Bernardo’s house embarrassed and chastened. There would be tears of relief and Jack would be so thankful that the thought of punishing Marina would never even come to mind.
But his phone did not ring and Marina’s car was not parked on the street in front of her uncle’s. Jack discovered the front door slightly ajar and came into the front room to find the television silent and Bernardo sitting on the couch alone, simply staring at the blank screen. He looked up at Jack and the bleakness had not gone from his eyes. ‘We called everyone,’ he said. ‘She is not there.’
‘I talked with the consulate and I talked with the police,’ Jack said. ‘We’ve done everything we can do. Now we have to wait for them to do their jobs.’
Lidia emerged from the back hallway with Leandra in tow. The little girl held her naked baby doll close to her body, as if protecting it. Her expression was not as bleak as her father’s; what Jack saw there was confusion infused with sadness. He imagined this was what she saw in him.
‘How are you?’ Jack asked Lidia. He could think of nothing else to say.
‘I kept calling,’ Lidia said, ‘but now my battery’s dead. What if she tries to call me back?’
‘We’ll charge you in the truck. Where’s your aunt?’
‘In the kitchen.’
‘Bernardo, I’ll be right back. Reina needs to know what’s going on.’
‘I told her already.’
‘Then I’ll tell her again.’
Bernardo made a vague gesture with his hands, as if giving Jack dispensation, then looked again to the darkened television.
‘Are we going soon?’ Lidia asked Jack.
‘In a little bit.’
‘I’m going to sit in the truck with my phone.’
‘You’ll need the keys. Here. Don’t drive off.’
The joke went flat. Lidia did not smile. She touched Leandra on the head briefly and headed for the front door without her cousin. The child gave Jack that look again. He could scarcely bear to look at her.
Reina sat at the kitchen table where they had so recently eaten. Little Bernardo was with her, drinking chocolate milk with a straw and keeping vigil by his mother. For her part, Reina looked deflated, more worn than she had been at the start of the day. Jack imagined her husband telling her the news and with every word pressing her down a little farther. He did not want to do that.
‘Do you want something to drink?’ Reina asked him.
‘What? No, I’m fine.’
‘Sit down. You have to be tired.’
Jack did not feel tired, but he sat anyway, close enough that Reina was able to take his hand and hold it more tightly than her thin, work-worn fingers seemed capable of. She was the kind of woman who would hold on for the sake of the little ones and only let go when she was completely alone. Bernardo was near to broken already. If both of them went, there would be nothing left.
He told her where he had been and what he had done there. Reina nodded slowly, her expression no lighter. ‘Bernardo thinks…’ She glanced at Bernardino before she went on. ‘Bernardo thinks something terrible has happened to them. He doesn’t say so, but I know he’s thinking it because I am thinking it.’
‘You both have to stop.’
‘Why?’
‘Because it does no good. I would rather believe that it’s something we don’t understand yet. They got lost or they got distracted or something stupid that teenagers do. I want them to laugh at all of us when they get back. When they get back.’
Reina squeezed Jack’s hand again. She did not have soft fingers. They were toughened by work like Jack’s. Marina’s aunt was tough on the inside, too, because it was not enough in Mexico to persevere without inner strength. This was how the family was held together, how it was happy, how it prospered. ‘If you believe it, then I will believe it, too,’ she said. ‘When I make dinner tonight, I set aside Patricia’s portion. She has to be hungry and I will make her favorite.’
‘That’s good,’ Jack said. ‘That’s real good.’
‘What will you do? Will you stay with us?’
‘I’m going to go home. It makes sense for us to cover both places just in case. Wherever they might go, we should be there.’
‘Can I make you something to take with you? It won’t take long.’
‘No, that’s all right. Lidia and I will get something on the way.’ Jack slipped his hand from Reina’s and stood up from the table. She seemed tiny when he looked down on her.
Bernardo hadn’t moved from where he sat before. Jack stood between him and the television and only then was the spell broken. Bernardo lifted his eyes slowly. ‘Everything is done?’ he asked.
‘You call me the second you hear anything,’ Jack said. ‘I’ll do the same on my end.’
‘I will call you,’ Bernardo agreed without energy.
Leandra still waited in the back hallway, her doll clutched to her in an unbreakable embrace. ‘Adiós, Tío Jack,’ she said suddenly.
‘I’ll see you soon,’ Jack told her, and then he left.
EIGHT
THEY RETURNED HOME WITHOUT speaking to each other and Jack did not even turn on the radio to breach the silence. Lidia held her phone in her lap, a black wire curling from it to the dashboard lighter, and Jack’s, too. She only gave his back when they were in their driveway. Wordlessly they parted. Lidia let herself in the front door with her own key and vanished into her room.
Jack took the list of Marina’s friends from the refrigerator and sat down to call them. With each call he had to tell the story again and by the sixth repetition he was tired of hearing his own voice. No one had anything to tell him.
He thought about beer. The call was strong and the moment was right. He lingered in the front room for a few long minutes before going to the kitchen.
The first beer he polished off standing in front of the open refrigerator. The second followed quickly on that. He paused before he brough
t out the cardboard bottle-holder, four beers still nestled in its pockets, but finally carried it out through the back door onto the tiny patio with the folding lounge chair.
It was evening, but the sun was still high enough that somewhere near by someone was mowing their lawn. Jack cracked open his third beer and wasted no time finishing that one, too. The next three he would pace, he decided, while in a little place in the back of his mind a voice said they should go back into the refrigerator and be left for another day.
‘It’s not going to kill me,’ Jack said to the voice.
He brought out his phone and dialed Marina’s number. It rang and rang and then he heard her voice saying, ‘This is Marina. Leave me a message. Bye.’
‘It’s me again,’ Jack said. ‘Me and Lidia are home now, so if you want to meet us there, you can. I know you have a lot of messages, but I hope you’re getting this one. Listen, you probably… you probably think everybody’s mad at you, but we’re not. We just want to make sure you’re somewhere safe with people you can trust. So just call from wherever you are. It doesn’t matter if it’s late, all right? Just call and let somebody know you’re all right. Can you do that for me? Okay, I’m gonna go now. Call back.’
Jack closed the phone and it did not ring. He stared at it a long time, just sitting in his palm with the hour on its postage-stamp-sized display, until the phone went to sleep and the miniature window went dark.
Another beer. This one he took his time with, sipping instead of gulping, savoring the coolness in his hand and the chill of the liquid on his tongue and in his throat. These were the sensations that made drinking so agreeable, so easy. Being drunk was something teenagers and barely grown adults strove for, but not Jack. He believed in the journey, the steps toward the chasm. On the way he could forget the things he wanted to forget, long before they could be blotted out. He was a master of the craft and he had practiced it when Vilma was sick. When Vilma was gone.
He put the empty bottle on the concrete by the lounge chair and it painted a dark circle around itself. There was a pleasant warmth in his belly that asked for more fuel, but he held off. Better now to concentrate on something else, like the sound of the lawnmower going round and round on some stranger’s lawn, a faraway sputter that was absorbing, distracting, all-encompassing. Jack was thinking about nothing now. This was where he wanted to be.
NINE
GONZALO HEARD NOTHING ABOUT the missing girls from the patrol units during the rest of his shift and he left after midnight for home. Streetlights glowed here and there where they were not broken or burned out, and the roads were deserted. His only driving companions were the army vehicles that crisscrossed his path, slowly trundling down empty streets. Once he saw a truck from the Policía Federal doing a long circuit through a cheerless neighborhood, but that was all. He never saw a municipal policeman.
His apartment was a small one in an L-shaped building, the front doors facing a courtyard taken up primarily by a swimming pool that was not maintained. The basin of the pool was half-full, the water a deep shade of green. Time and the elements had loosened tiles on the sides and many had fallen to the bottom out of sight. The manager of the building sometimes claimed the landlord was going to pay for renovations but it had been four years since Gonzalo moved in and there was no change. He did not know how long things had been like this before he came.
He came inside and did not turn on a light, as enough filtered through the blinds to see by. A short couch and a chair bisected the main room of the apartment with holes in the upholstery. Gonzalo owned an old television that he watched only for fútbol games and it stood like an inkblot against the front window. The back half of the room was a kitchen with vinyl flooring, a little refrigerator and a stove with just two burners. A tiny cabinet opened up over the single-basin sink where a few unwashed dishes lay waiting.
The apartment door had three locks and a chain. Gonzalo set them all. Anyone who really wanted in could probably kick the door loose, but it was a comforting ritual to turn the bolts. Iron bars protected the windows in front and back.
In the bedroom Gonzalo left his weapon on the bed stand. In the darkness he took off his clothes and put his jacket up on a hanger on the closet door. He went to the bathroom where there was only a sink, a toilet and a shower stall crammed against each other and brushed his teeth. By now his eyes were used to the dark.
Wearing only his undershorts and a white T-shirt, he crawled into his unmade bed. He set his alarm for late in the morning and, without thinking another thought about his day, went to sleep.
Sunday-morning light tickled his face before his alarm could wake him. The room was bright despite the closed blinds, exposing four white walls with nothing on them. Once he had a framed picture of Jesus hanging over the bed, but the wire had broken and the whole thing fell on his head while he was sleeping. The picture was behind the door now, waiting for him to take it to a framing shop, but he had never remembered to do it.
He dressed. Putting his weapon in its holster made him feel ready for anything, though he knew it was being careful and not his pistol that kept him safe. It was for the Federal Police and the army to carry the big guns, and they were the ones who carried the water in battles with the cartels. The Municipal Police existed to clean up the messes, to work around the edges, to be the low men on the totem pole. Gonzalo knew he and his fellow officers were considered little more than ticket-takers and traffic guides, but when he stood in front of a mirror with his gun he still felt the tingling reminder of being a freshly graduated policeman ready for his first assignment. Nothing could change that for him.
He still had an hour before he was due at the station, but he left the apartment and got on the road anyway. He ticked over the things he must do when he reached the station, the leftover tasks from the last shift that still needed his attention. He thought about Jack and his stepdaughter. Maybe there would be good news for him to share.
A traffic snarl caught him up along the way, a fender-bender that blocked an intersection. By the time he was clear all his extra time was gone and he had to hurry just to make it to the station to check in. Armas was already at his desk sorting through the last shift’s reports. He raised a hand in greeting.
There was nothing in his basket about the girls. Gonzalo tried not to be disappointed. After a while he would call the uncle and see whether either girl had reappeared. He was willing to bet that they had. Most of these cases cleared themselves. It was much worry and gnashing of teeth over some little thing.
Gonzalo engrossed himself in paperwork and before he thought to check the time over an hour had passed. He found his copy of the missing-persons report, rose from his desk and went to the duty sergeant in his office. Sergeant Ahumada was a veteran officer, almost completely gray, and his belly strained at his uniform shirt. He was mostly found sitting or eating and here he was doing both, consuming a sandwich while thumbing through the thin white pages of a faxed report. ‘Gonzalo,’ he said.
‘Sargento, I wanted to ask if there was any word on those girls. You remember them? Two girls who went missing? I put their pictures out and we’re supposed to be watching for a car with Texas license plates.’
The sergeant grunted. ‘Sure, sure. I put the vehicle report on your desk.’
‘What? When?’
‘A couple of hours ago when I came on. You didn’t see it?’
‘There’s nothing on my desk about that.’
‘Goddamn it, I know I put it there for you.’ Sergeant Ahumada left his office and pointed toward a desk that belonged to Pepito Barriga. ‘It’s right over there.’
‘Pepito doesn’t even work on the weekends!’ Gonzalo exclaimed.
‘What can I do?’
‘You could have said something!’
Gonzalo found the paper on Pepito’s desk, a short note in Sergeant Ahumada’s scrawl. Vehicle found: white Mitsubishi Galant, Texas plates YRM-273. Impounded.
He came back to the sergeant. ‘It says the car w
as impounded. Where was it?’
‘I don’t know. You’ll have to ask the officer who called it in.’
‘It doesn’t say who called it in.’
‘Do I have to do everything for you? They’ll have all the details at the impound yard.’
Gonzalo hurried back to his desk and searched out the number for the impound yard. The line was busy. He called three times more and each time it stayed busy. ‘¡Mierda!’ he said.
‘Trouble?’ Armas called from his chair.
‘I can’t get through. Listen: will you cover for me? There’s something I have to check out.’
‘How long will you be gone?’
‘I don’t know. A couple of hours maybe? It’s important.’
‘You’ll owe me.’
‘Thanks, Amando.’
Official vehicles were for policemen on patrol or assigned to traffic duty. Gonzalo took his car instead and made the drive across town with the midday sun baking down. His air conditioner didn’t work and even with all the windows open he sweated freely. The impound lot was a large square of long grass and bare dirt enclosed by a tall chain-link fence casually draped with barbed wire. The vehicles inside were arranged more or less in rows, though they meandered. Some had been there long enough to start rusting and probably as many didn’t run as did.
Gonzalo stopped at the open gate where a cubical guardhouse splashed with white paint stood sentinel. A gaping window with shutters pointed outward, the inside of the building in shadows. After a moment one black shape moved against another and then a man appeared at the window. He wore a blue work shirt stained with perspiration and a badge was pinned to his breast, but he was not a policeman. The man was a segurata, a rent-a-cop.
‘Inspector Gonzalo Soler, Municipal Police,’ Gonzalo told the man. ‘I tried to call, but the phone is busy.’
‘The phone is broken,’ the man said.
‘How does anyone contact the yard?’
‘They don’t.’
‘It doesn’t matter. I’m here to see a vehicle that was brought in this morning.’