by Sam Hawken
‘Hey, I’m talking to you two faggots!’ shouted the man with the cigarette.
Gonzalo stopped. ‘Look, we’re only walking here. We don’t want trouble.’
‘Are you two boyfriends or something?’
Two men emerged from a cantina and, seeing the SUV, doubled back inside. Jack looked at the truck, which had stopped just short of them, very close to the rear bumpers of the parked cars along the street. The man with the cigarette flicked his butt away and it struck sparks off the roof of a car before falling out of sight.
‘Like my friend said, we don’t want trouble,’ Jack said.
The man was so lean-faced that he looked like a leather skull. His eyes were black. ‘You look lost, hombre.’
‘We’re just looking around.’
The rear doors of the SUV opened and three men piled out of the vehicle onto the street. Jack braced himself, conscious of the pistol in his waistband, knowing it was there and knowing he could not bring it out. Gonzalo was at his elbow.
‘Run,’ Gonzalo said quietly.
The three men slipped between an old Malibu and an orange Camry. Jack took a step back.
‘Run!’ Gonzalo yelled, and then they were dashing down the row of cantinas. The three men were behind them and Jack heard the rush of the SUV’s engine as the vehicle surged forward. Across the street prostitutes standing outside their cribs hollered at them as they ran and one laughed.
Later he was not sure how it happened, but they reached a bend in the dirty road where an earthen turnabout cut into a greening stand of hardy summer trees and somehow one of the men got his foot underneath Jack’s and Jack fell hard. He skinned both palms on the ground and still landed hard enough to knock the wind from his lungs. In a moment Gonzalo was down, too, and the three men swarmed over them.
Something black and confining passed over his head and for an instant Jack felt as though he couldn’t breathe, but it was not a plastic bag. He struggled to take a deep breath, a man’s knee on his back. The lean man, the one who smoked the cigarette, called out, ‘Hurry up, hurry up!’
Cold metal on his wrists. They cuffed his hands together behind his back and made the bracelets tight. Unseen hands rooted around in his waistband and his pistol was taken from him.
Jack deliberately dragged his feet when they lifted him off the ground. The men were strong and they muscled him toward the black SUV, which he heard idling noisily in the street. Suddenly he was thrust forward, something hard catching him across the shins, and he tumbled onto short, scratchy carpeting over steel. He was in the back of the SUV, on the floor. A moment later Gonzalo was jammed in beside him, Jack’s knees against Gonzalo’s chest. He could feel Gonzalo breathing quickly, like a rabbit.
Doors slammed. It was cold in the truck, the air conditioner turned up high. The driver stomped the accelerator and Jack rocked against a solid panel. The material of the bag on his head stuck to his lips and he spat drily to break them free.
‘Watch for soldiers!’ someone said.
The SUV made a sharp turn and then another and its wheels chirped on asphalt. They were outside Boys’ Town, on a real road. The big vehicle roared as they picked up speed. Jack did not know whether they were headed north or south.
‘Jack.’ Gonzalo was not breathing so hard anymore and he whispered.
‘Don’t talk,’ Jack said.
‘Are you all right?’
‘Hey, you shut up back there!’ shouted someone from the seats in front of them. ‘You say another fucking thing, I’ll dump your body on the side of the road!’
The top of Jack’s head was pressed against the flexible material at the back of a seat, but he could feel the coils underneath and they poked him whenever the SUV hit an uneven patch on the road. They made more turns, and though they slowed down Jack still had no idea of their direction or even how far they had come. On television it looked so easy, but he was lost in the picture inside his mind of crowded streets patched with trees, each block blending into the next.
He tried moving his wrists. He was lying on them and the handcuffs cut into his flesh. The movement made his knees dig into Gonzalo’s chest and Gonzalo groaned. Jack tensed for another outburst from the men in the SUV, but there were no more corrections forthcoming.
Someone put on the radio and the sounds of Tejano filled the void. A station identifier came on. They were listening to KJBZ out of Laredo. When the next song came on, one of the men began to sing along. Soon others were, and they swelled into the chorus as the SUV drove on.
ELEVEN
TIME AS WELL AS DISTANCE ESCAPED JACK. He only knew that after a long while the SUV slowed down and ground to a stop on a gravel surface. The men in the front of the truck abandoned their seats and Jack heard them talking to each other outside.
The door holding Jack and Gonzalo in place was opened and the pressure between them was released. Gonzalo was able to relieve the weight on his chest and blood returned to Jack’s calves. His bent knees had cut off the flow as surely as the handcuffs on his wrists.
Hands were on him and he was dragged out. Jack teetered, but someone held his arm tightly and he didn’t fall. He felt sharp stones under his boots, and dirt. It was quiet here and Jack thought maybe they had driven out of the city proper and were somewhere beyond its limits where no Federal Police went and the army did not venture.
‘Walk,’ said someone very close to him. Jack walked.
Jack tripped on the edge of something, a raised flat that felt like concrete. It was a patio or a walk of some kind. The guiding hand on his arm was unwavering. Ahead of him there came the sound of a door opening, a television playing. Men greeted one another without using names. Jack stumbled again on the threshold.
He was led across carpet to another door that had a bad squeak. This time the man on his arm said, ‘You have to step down here.’ Jack felt with his toe where the floor dropped off and he did not lose his footing. Now his steps were hollow and he smelled cement dust. Jack knew the sounds and smells of an incomplete room.
‘Sit.’
Jack sat when a chair was nudged against the backs of his knees. Someone unfastened the cuffs and then refastened them, securing him to the chair. This time they were not so tight, but he would never be able to slip them. A clicking and ratcheting came from very close. They were doing the same to Gonzalo.
His heart was beating fast, but the fear was not overwhelming. There had been an edge of panic when they chased him down, when the bag went over his head, but Jack had numbed to it on the drive. A part of him expected the kiss of a gun against his head and sudden blackness, but the longer this went on the more he began to hope that things would not end that way. He let that hope be his beacon.
‘Is he here yet?’ asked a voice.
‘No, not yet.’
‘I need something to drink.’
‘Come on, then.’
There was the sound of wrinkling plastic and the scuff of feet on bare flooring and Jack felt that they were alone. He waited until he counted off one hundred before he risked saying a word. ‘Gonzalo,’ he said.
‘I am here.’
‘Who are they?’
Gonzalo was slow to answer. ‘Zetas.’
Now the cold press of alarm coiled up in his stomach and his carefully cultivated hope shattered. A shiver passed through him from head to foot.
‘How do you know?’ Jack asked.
‘I know.’
Jack opened his mouth to reply, but he heard a footstep and he went silent. Again there was the sound of crinkling plastic and the sense of someone near. A man said, ‘Are you two talking?’
They stayed silent.
‘I know I heard you talking,’ the man said. ‘And I told you before: if I hear one word out of you, I’ll shoot you and dump your fucking body. Did you forget what I said? Answer me!’
TWELVE
JACK LACED HIS FINGERS TOGETHER behind his back. If he could hold them tightly enough, he would not shake. His mouth was dry. ‘I di
dn’t forget.’
A hammer clicked. Something solid and metal pressed against Jack’s temple. This was the moment he had waited for. The next would come quickly and then he would know nothing else. At least he wouldn’t be alive for them to torture. ‘If you didn’t forget, then why are you talking?’
‘It won’t happen again.’
‘It had better not, idiota. You don’t know who you’re fucking with.’
The gun went away. Jack had been holding his breath and he let it go now. His bowels felt loose. This was the fear, he knew. The tireless, crawling fear that could not be defeated by wishful thinking.
‘I hear you make one more sound, I come in here shooting, entiendes?’
This time Jack only nodded. He hoped the man could see.
‘Good. Now just sit there and wait. It won’t be long.’
He listened to the man walk away. In the other room there was the murmur of a question and the man answered, though Jack could not hear what was said. The television was the clearest thing, ringing out like the tone of a bell. Jack had never thought he would die to the sound of a Chespirito rerun.
After what seemed like an eternity the television was switched off and Jack was alert again. The place where they were kept fell deathly silent, as if the TV had been the only thing with a semblance of life and the men watching it had all gone. He heard his heart beating.
The men came into the unfinished room then, their footsteps clear in the quiet. Jack tried counting them, but it was impossible. There could have been a few or many and they would have sounded the same to him. He wondered whether Gonzalo was able to do any better, if he had a trained ear for such things. He wanted to ask out loud, but he kept his mouth shut and his teeth clenched together. His jaw ached.
Someone poked Jack in the ribs with something blunt and hard. ‘What is your name?’ a voice asked.
‘Jack.’
‘Are we friends now? What is your whole name?’
‘Jack Searle.’
‘How about you, cabrón?’
‘I am Gonzalo Soler.’
‘Okay,’ said the voice.
Jack tried to put an imaginary face to it. Was the man short or tall? Was he fat or skinny? He could not even tell whether the voice was young or old. Why did he think he could do this thing? What had he been thinking when he came across the river?
‘Would it surprise you to know that I already knew your names?’ the voice asked. ‘You can answer.’
‘No,’ Jack said.
‘You shouldn’t be surprised. Nuevo Laredo is not a large city. Word gets around. Especially a Mexican cop and an American man working together. You two are like a couple of big, stupid bears putting on a show for the rest of us. Watch the bear ride a bicycle, you know? Watch it do something it was not meant to do. And everybody laughs.’
Someone grabbed the bag on Jack’s head and whipped it off. Lights shocked his eyes and they started to water. Instinctively he tried to raise his hands, but they were still locked behind him. A teardrop formed on his cheek.
Across from him, Gonzalo was unblinded. They were seated facing each other and around them was a ring of seven men. All of the men had guns, some in their waistbands and others held casually, as if it was the most natural thing in the world. The room was fairly large, about the size of a garage, and had bare drywall everywhere Jack could see. The floor was plain concrete, but it had been spread with a blue plastic tarp.
Gonzalo’s eyes were wide and his hair mussed. He looked panicked and Jack wanted to put a hand on him and bring him down. Now he tried to catch Gonzalo’s attention, but he was too busy watching the men.
One of the men took a step forward. He was a bit older than the rest. They seemed mostly to be in their early twenties, but he was in his thirties and had started to form lines on his face. His pistol had mother-of-pearl grips and stood out above a big silver-and-turquoise belt buckle. He wore cowboy boots and a red shirt like a workman might. The rest were shabbier, in T-shirts or knockoff Ralph Lauren tops. ‘Welcome,’ the man said.
‘You’re águila,’ Jack said.
A man moved out of the ring and smacked Jack hard on the back of the head. Jack recognized his voice when he said, ‘Don’t say nothing unless you’re answering a question!’
‘It’s okay,’ said the older man. He waved the other back and looked down on Jack without smiling. ‘No, I am not águila.’
Someone came into the room with a handheld camcorder. ‘I found it,’ he said.
‘Hurry up and get started, then. I want their faces first.’
The man with the camcorder stepped in between Jack and Gonzalo and recorded first Gonzalo’s face and then Jack’s. He stepped back to get a wider shot of the two of them together, close enough that Jack could reach out with his foot and just touch Gonzalo’s knee. The little red light on the face of the camcorder glowed. The man held it low so that no one else could be identified.
‘What’s that for?’ Jack asked.
‘For my people to review later,’ the older man said. ‘They want to know if I’m doing a good job. If I ask the right questions. If you give the right answers. Some people are very curious about you.’
‘I’m not interesting,’ Jack said.
‘Oh, but you are. You have no idea.’
‘Jack, don’t say anything,’ Gonzalo said. His eyes were still tinged with wildness.
‘Don’t listen to your friend. If you talk, things might turn out all right for you. If you don’t, then I can make no guarantees. Videos like these go on the internet for everyone to see. If they’re bloody enough.’
‘Look, if you’re just going to kill us, then kill us,’ Jack said with nerve he did not have. ‘I’m ready.’
‘I don’t think you are.’
‘Jack…’ Gonzalo said.
‘What do you want to know?’ Jack asked the older man.
The man smiled thinly and Jack saw he was missing a tooth. Something like that he could use to identify him later to the police, only there would be no report and the police would never know they had been here. Though Gonzalo was there, Jack felt very alone.
‘What do you want to know?’ Jack asked again.
‘Let’s start again,’ the older man said. ‘I will tell you my name, except it is not my name. You can call me Guadarrama and I will call you Jack. Your friend the policeman we will call señor, because policemen are very important.’
Jack’s eyes flicked toward Gonzalo. ‘What he’s doing is for me, not for the police.’
‘I know. But we are very fond of policemen here. Aren’t we, cabrón?’
All the men laughed. Gonzalo kept his mouth shut, but Jack could see he was shaking despite himself. In that moment Jack was more afraid for Gonzalo than he was for himself, and abruptly he wondered whether the reverse were true. He might never get the chance to ask.
‘You want to know things,’ Jack said quickly. ‘I’ll tell you everything.’
‘All right,’ Guadarrama said. ‘Let’s begin.’
THIRTEEN
‘YOU DON’T KNOW HOW MUCH I KNOW already,’ Guadarrama said, ‘so if you lie and I catch you, it will go badly for you.’
‘I’m not going to lie.’
‘Let’s start with something simple: you say your friend, Inspector Soler, is not working for the police. He’s working for you?’
‘Yes, I’m paying him.’
‘Paying him to do what?’
‘To find my stepdaughter and her cousin.’
Guadarrama reached into his back pocket and produced a square of paper. Slowly he unfolded it and then held it up for Jack to see. ‘These girls?’ he asked.
Jack looked away from the flyer. ‘Yes.’
‘How long have they been gone now?’
‘A month,’ Jack said.
‘And the army does nothing for you? The Federal Police do nothing? You have to hire some nobody from the Municipal Police to help you? Every one of them is corrupt down to the last officer. If I told you
how many of them my people own, you would be shocked.’
Jack saw Gonzalo hang his head. He tried to catch his eye. ‘Gonzalo isn’t one of those. He’s an honest man.’
‘The last honest man in Mexico,’ Guadarrama said.
‘I trust him,’ Jack said. Gonzalo looked up. Jack nodded to him. He tried to smile, but his lips would not obey.
‘So what has this great detective uncovered, Jack? Has he told you where the girls are?’
‘No. Not yet.’
‘That is the way it is with police here. They promise a lot and they deliver a little. It’s a good thing they were all put out to pasture. The new ones won’t be any better, but the old ones were fucking useless.’
‘He found out that you took them,’ Jack said sharply.
Guadarrama looked puzzled. ‘I?’
‘Your people. You Zetas. You took them.’
Now Guadarrama smiled broadly and the gap in his teeth was on full display. He nudged the man next to him and that man smiled and suddenly there were chuckles and smiles all around the bare-walled room.
‘You really don’t know anything at all, do you?’ Guadarrama asked.
Jack saw Gonzalo sit up in his chair. ‘You’re Golfos,’ Gonzalo said.
‘Maybe Inspector Soler is not so useless, after all!’ Guadarrama declared.
Jack racked his brain trying to think of everything he knew about the Gulf Cartel, but his mind kept turning up blanks. On the news it was always the Zetas who were responsible for terrible things. A shooting. A kidnapping. A case of extortion. The Golfos were no better, but they did not make the headlines.
‘You look confused, Jack,’ Guadarrama said.
‘águila is a Zeta. He’s not even one of yours.’
‘No, he is not.’
‘So why do you care about my girl? She’s got nothing to do with you.’
‘You want to kill águila for taking her.’
‘I just want to bring my stepdaughter and her cousin home.’