by Sam Hawken
The music inside El Pájaro was punishing and Jack felt it pulsing out the front door onto the street. A heavyset man in a black T-shirt looked strangely at Gonzalo, as if the man were trying to place a vaguely familiar face, but he gave ground and let them in without protest.
Gonzalo beckoned Jack close so that he could shout directly into his ear. ‘I have to move around and talk to some people,’ he said. ‘Stay at the bar and don’t leave. The girls here will try to get you to come away with them. Just tip them and say not right now.’
‘How long will this take?’ Jack shouted back.
‘I don’t know. Be patient. I won’t leave without you.’
Jack let Gonzalo break away from him and plunge into the space between shadowy tables. The interior of the place was lit up with blasts and flickers of light as the cross-dressing man on the stage performed a routine. There was an open stretch of bar. A man who looked almost exactly like a woman approached him for his order. He asked for beer. When he looked around again, he could not find Gonzalo anywhere.
NINE
HE HAD NOT EXPECTED TO COME HERE again, but he was not nervous or frightened. After Fregoso and Guadalupe, the scene in El Pájaro was more like a real policeman’s beat, with people and things he could at least understand. Today he had questioned himself too many times for someplace like this to bother him anymore.
The strobing lights left his eyes dazzled whenever there was darkness, so Gonzalo saw the people in the place only when they were brightly lit by the stage, their faces turned upward. Some were harder to spot as men dressed as girls gave lap dances on couches and in booths. But Gonzalo was not looking for customers, so the search was halved.
In his mind’s eye he had a perfect picture of the person he sought. He remembered the go-go dancer outfit, the streaming red hair, and the large breasts. He remembered the performer kissing águila when Gonzalo knew him only as the man with the gold watch. This person would know things.
Someone stepped into Gonzalo’s path. He saw a silhouette and a golden flash of blond hair and then a face revealed in a flash. Another transvestite, but a familiar one. ‘I know you,’ she said, and Gonzalo knew her, too. A name came floating up, carried on a sudden surge of anxiety mixed with panic.
‘Celia,’ Gonzalo said.
‘Come back again to look and not touch?’ Celia asked.
Celia stood with her legs apart so that there was no way around her. Tables hemmed them in on both sides. Celia was dressed like an American cheerleader, though she did not carry pom-poms. ‘I’m looking for someone,’ Gonzalo said.
‘Why not me? I’m not doing anything.’
When he had left Celia before, she’d railed at him and driven him out on a wave of attention. He did not want that tonight. The dancer with the go-go outfit was somewhere and he could not risk being thrown out.
‘Well?’ Celia demanded.
‘Okay,’ Gonzalo said.
‘Show me your money first.’
Gonzalo reached for his wallet and brought it out. He did not show Celia his badge. Such a thing would do no good and then he would be remembered. He showed Celia a fifty-dollar bill. ‘Is that good enough?’ he asked.
‘You want to go in the back?’
He made another slow turn. The techno music was exhausting, beyond deafening. He did not see the person he was after. ‘Yes,’ he said.
Celia took his hand and Gonzalo allowed himself to be led toward the stage. Looming out of the shadows was an archway that was practically invisible, shrouded by a curtain and painted jet black. Celia pushed the curtain aside to let them both through.
Off the main floor it was not so overwhelming, though the bass from the speakers reverberated through the floor and walls. They were in a hallway lined with doors, a staircase at the far end. Some of the doors were open and showed tiny spaces with beds small enough to be for children. Celia seemed to pick one at random and stood aside to let Gonzalo in. She closed the door behind them.
The room was like a closet and the bed took up most of the space. It had a headboard and a footboard painted white. The headboard had a design with pink roses on it. Light came from a bare bulb in a socket in the ceiling.
‘Fifty dollars US gets you a suck, but if you want to fuck me, it’ll be more,’ Celia informed him flatly.
‘I don’t want to fuck you,’ Gonzalo said.
‘Okay. Give me the money now.’
They were too close in the room and Gonzalo could smell sweat and perfume on Celia. Under real light it looked as though her hair was real, though bleached. She had it ponytailed, but it was long. It was also easy to tell she was not a woman. The planes of her face were too pronounced and the giveaway was the lump at her throat. Besides that, she had small hands like a woman’s and small feet.
‘The money.’
‘Just a minute,’ Gonzalo said. He brought out his wallet again and took one of Jack’s fifty-dollar bills out. When Celia reached for it, he jerked it out of her grasp. She scowled. ‘Just a minute, I said.’
‘If you came here to fuck around, I’ll get someone to come back here and kick your ass,’ Celia said. ‘Okay, imbécil? Give me that money.’
‘I’m not gay,’ Gonzalo said.
‘Of course you’re not. Give it to me!’
‘I’m not here for a mamada.’
Celia reached for the door. ‘That’s it, you’re fucking with the wrong girl!’
She had the doorknob in her grasp when Gonzalo brought his hand down on hers. He squeezed hard and for a moment they struggled as Celia tried to twist the knob. ‘Calm down,’ Gonzalo said. ‘You can have the money.’
‘Let go of me!’
Gonzalo released Celia’s hand. He offered the bill. ‘Here,’ he said. ‘Take it.’
Celia snatched the money from Gonzalo’s fingers and tucked it into the waistband of the short cheerleader’s skirt she wore. Her expression was curdled. ‘If you don’t want nothing from me then what’s the money for? You just want to yank it?’
‘I’m looking for someone who works here. Maybe you can tell me who she is,’ Gonzalo said.
‘Are you police?’
‘Would it matter if I was?’
‘I guess not. Who do you want?’
Gonzalo described the dancer in the go-go outfit to Celia in as much detail as he could remember. He was not finished when he saw the light rise in her eyes. ‘You know her?’ he asked.
‘Angélica.’
‘Is she working here tonight?’
‘No.’
Gonzalo bit his lip to keep from cursing out loud. ‘When does she work again?’
‘I don’t know. She hasn’t been in for a few days. Sometimes the girls don’t come back. They go to work in the cribs or they get out of the business.’
‘Was she the type to get out of the business?’
‘Angélica? Oh, no. She makes the big money.’
‘Sit down,’ Gonzalo said.
‘If you’re not going to get nothing, I should get back to work,’ Celia said.
‘I’m paying you for your time,’ Gonzalo replied. ‘You can talk to me for five minutes.’
‘Okay.’
Celia sat and Gonzalo leaned against the closed door. He covered his eyes with his hand and realized there was a headache brewing deep inside his skull. A sigh slipped past his lips. This day would never end.
‘Why do you want to know about Angélica?’
Gonzalo uncovered his face and looked down on Celia. ‘I want to know about her customers. One customer in particular. You may have seen him. A man about my height, wavy hair, wears a gold watch and Ralph Lauren Polo shirts.’
‘águila,’ Celia said.
Gonzalo’s heart leaped. ‘You know águila?’
‘He comes in here a lot. Spends a lot, too. You don’t want nothing to do with him.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘He’s a Zeta. Nobody fucks with them. Nobody.’
‘He doesn’t have a piece of this
place, does he?’ Gonzalo asked.
‘No, he just likes to come in. He’s fucked every girl here.’
‘Don’t you think the Zetas would have a problem with him fucking men?’
Celia’s expression blackened. ‘He’s fucking girls. Your type don’t see it like that, but he does. And there are lots of guys who think the same way. What do you think I am, anyway?’
‘I don’t know,’ Gonzalo said. ‘I’ve never thought about it before.’
‘I am woman, señor. I’m not something you can step on and then scrape off your shoe.’
‘All right, whatever,’ Gonzalo said. ‘You’re a woman, then. I’m sorry. You’re all women. But does he have a favorite? This Angélica, does he like her best?’
‘Maybe.’
‘No me jodas,’ Gonzalo said. ‘Is she his favorite, or what?’
‘Okay, she’s his favorite. So? I have some chicos who come here just for me. It doesn’t mean nothing.’
‘If I asked you, could you get me Angélica’s number? Her address? Some way for me to get ahold of her?’
‘We’re not supposed to give that kind of thing out. It’s not safe.’
Gonzalo went to his wallet again and produced another fifty. ‘This is yours if you can put me in touch with her. I don’t need a lot. Just a number will do.’
‘Give me the money first.’
‘After.’
‘Give it to me now or I won’t do nothing for you.’
Gonzalo gave her the bill. It disappeared with the other. She rose from the bed. He put out his hand. ‘Where are you going?’
‘You want me to find out for you, or what? I don’t know everything all by myself. I have to ask. You wait here.’
‘I told you: don’t fuck me about,’ Gonzalo said.
‘I won’t. Just stay here. I’ll be back.’
Celia slipped out of the room and closed the door behind her. Gonzalo allowed himself to sit on the bed. The mattress was stiff and unyielding and was too short to lie down on fully, but he supposed no one slept there. Outside in the hall he heard laughter in a strange register: not quite man, but not quite woman, either.
He looked at his hands. There was no blood on them and there would not be, but a part of him expected to find them soaked to the wrists. When he closed his eyes he could see Jack sinking the knife into Guadalupe over and over. Gonzalo’s thoughts were in a welter at that moment and they were barely comprehensible now. He understood what he was doing, but the why of it was still in flux.
By rights he should have turned Jack in the moment he killed Fregoso with a gunshot to the head. The Gonzalo who made sense of himself was one who would have taken out his phone and called in Alvares. Maybe Jack would have run, but he would not have made it across the bridge before the Federal Police or the army caught up to him. And if he had done that, Eliseo Guadalupe would still be alive.
Gonzalo did not feel sorrow for Guadalupe’s death. That was too simple an emotion. A part of him had hated Guadalupe for what he was and hated him still more when he confessed to his crimes, but the part of Gonzalo Soler that upheld the rule of law could not condemn him to death.
There was no tremor in his hands. He did not understand because he was no surer of himself, no less afraid. More than ever he was aware of what it would mean if the collusion between him and Jack was discovered. They would send Jack away for the rest of his life and they would be no kinder to Gonzalo.
A policeman in a Mexican prison would not last for very long.
Now he waited, and as the minutes ticked by he felt the tightness of the walls. In his mind he tried to picture águila in this place, the little skirt of Celia’s cheerleader costume pulled up, her bent over the bed… ‘Enough,’ he said out loud.
There was a step outside the door and then it opened. Celia returned. She handed Gonzalo a scrap of paper with a string of numbers written on it in ink. ‘Here is her number,’ she said.
Gonzalo stood up. ‘Thank you for your help.’
‘What will you do to her?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Are you going to kill her?’
‘No. Why would you think that?’
‘Your face. I saw it in your face.’
Gonzalo shook his head. ‘I’m not going to kill her. You don’t have to worry about that.’
TEN
JACK SAW GONZALO APPROACHING through the strobe lights and smoke and was relieved. A part of him had thought that if he let Gonzalo out of his sight, even for a minute, the man would flee and Jack would be caught with nowhere to go except across the bridge and away from Nuevo Laredo forever. That was not something he could abide, not after coming this far.
The beers he had drunk had no effect on him. They could not take the adrenaline edge off his perception, where everything was too loud, too bright, too crowded. Whenever one of the cross-dressing men came to him, he did as Gonzalo said and paid them off with dollars before sending them on their way. They seemed happy to get the money for doing nothing and they did not complain.
Gonzalo came close. ‘What did you find out?’ Jack yelled in his ear.
‘Let’s go outside,’ Gonzalo said.
His hearing was dulled on the street, fuzzed by the loud music and upraised voices. Foot traffic was busier and the little streets of Boys’ Town were filling with cars and trucks, trolling slowly for parking spaces or a glimpse at the girls. Gonzalo took Jack’s elbow and directed him away from El Pájaro, down the street.
‘Tell me,’ Jack said.
‘I hoped we might find águila there, but he has not been around,’ Gonzalo replied. ‘I talked to one of the… girls and she said he has a favorite. Her name is Angélica. I have her number here.’
‘What is she going to tell us?’
‘If what I was told is true, águila might have done some talking to this Angélica. Maybe he let slip where his favorite places are. Maybe he even took her to his home. We won’t know until we call.’
‘Well, what are you waiting for?’
They walked along a line of cantinas that could have been taken from anywhere in the city and set down here. No dirty pictures, no come-on men lying in wait. It suddenly seemed unusually quiet and Jack realized how quickly he’d become accustomed to the commotion of the main streets.
‘Call her,’ Jack urged Gonzalo.
‘I’ll do it now,’ Gonzalo said. He brought out his phone and dialed the number he’d brought out from the back room of El Pájaro. After a moment he put up a finger. ‘It’s ringing.’
Jack’s phone vibrated in his pocket. He had turned off the ringer before, but had forgotten to silence the phone completely. When he saw the calling number, he felt the blood pool at the base of his spine.
He answered. ‘Hello, Lidia,’ he said.
She was not crying, but she had been and not long before. Jack heard the hitch in her voice when she spoke, the elevated pitch of a throat held too tightly. ‘What are you doing, Jack?’ she asked.
‘I’m just taking care of some things.’
‘I wasn’t going to c-call you because I thought maybe you would come home, but you didn’t come home. Why are you over there, Jack?’
Jack glanced at Gonzalo. The man was talking, half-turned from Jack, oblivious. Jack took a few steps away. ‘I can’t let this go.’
‘I thought we decided that you would stay with me,’ Lidia said. ‘You can’t help Marina, Jack. The police have to do that.’
‘I told you, honey, there are no police anymore. And the army isn’t going to do a goddamned thing. I can do something here.’
Lidia fell quiet and Jack heard her weeping softly. If he listened hard enough, he thought, he could hear her tears falling. He felt a pain in his throat and swallowing did not make it go away.
‘Lidia—’
‘You’re going to die, Jack,’ Lidia interrupted. ‘They’re going to find you and they’re going to murder you!’
‘That won’t happen.’
‘How do
you know?’
Jack looked around, but there was no escape. At the end of the block a dark SUV turned the corner slowly, the front windows down. The passenger had his arm resting against the outside of the door, a cigarette between his fingers. It was strange the things you noticed when you wanted desperately to be somewhere else. ‘I just know,’ he told Lidia. ‘I’m not going to let it happen.’
‘You won’t have a choice! You think Tío Bernardo let it happen to him?’
‘I can’t argue with you,’ Jack said. ‘I have somewhere I have to be.’
‘Where?’
‘I think it’s better if I don’t tell you anything.’
‘Who am I going to tell, Jack? I’m alone. There’s no one here.’
‘I’m going to hang up now,’ Jack said.
‘Please, just come home,’ Lidia said, the words rushing out. ‘Come home and forget about it. We’re all we have left now. It’s just you and me. If you don’t come home, what will happen to me? What’s going to happen to me, Dad?’
Dad. The pain in Jack’s throat was sharper, more intense. He did not have tears, but he knew they were coming. His knees trembled. ‘I have to go,’ he roughed out. ‘I’ll call you.’
‘Don’t hang up! Don’t hang up on me!’
‘Goodbye,’ Jack said.
He ended the call. With clumsy thumbs he made it so it would not vibrate any longer. If Lidia called again, he would not know. It was better that way.
‘Is there a problem?’
Jack turned to Gonzalo. ‘No problem,’ he said.
‘Good, because—’
‘¡Oye, gilipollas!’
They looked at the same time and Jack saw the black SUV almost abreast of them. The man with the cigarette half-leaned out the window. He took a drag and the cigarette’s coal glowed hot and then he blasted smoke in a cloud around his face.
‘Ignore them,’ Gonzalo said to Jack. ‘Let’s go.’
Jack walked with Gonzalo down the strip of cantinas, but the SUV kept pace with them. He could feel the man with the cigarette watching him, and could almost see him out of the corner of his eye. ‘What about the girl?’ he asked Gonzalo.