Tony sat up in his chair.
Barnes handed over the article to Tony, who perused it quickly but then handed it to me directly across his desk.
I glanced at the headline on the first page: IN MEXICAN PRISONS, HOPE IS QUICKLY ABANDONED!
“All we had to do,” Barnes said, “was Google the subject of ‘Mexican Jails’ and voilà.” He made quotation marks with his fingers when he said, “voila.”
“I did a little more research than that,” O’Brien insisted.
“You know, you’re absolutely right, Donald,” Barnes said, lifting the paperback off my lap. “You also took a little trip to the bookstore. Now, there’s an excursion I’m going to insist you bill me double for.”
O’Brien’s lower jaw seemed as though it were hanging off his belt buckle. “I did spend a night in the library, Richard. My wife had to miss her bridge — ”
“Oh shut up,” Barnes said.
Chapter 7
Tony suggested we all calm down and take what he referred to, among men, as a “piss break.” Barnes retrieved a cell phone from his briefcase. He said he needed a few minutes to check up on some of his clients anyway. That left me alone to read the Internet article which, I noticed, had been penned originally for the New York Post.
A man making his way past the iron bars and concrete walls in the half light and foul stench of Monterrey Prison emerges upon a nightmare of humanity: dozens of tranquilized men and women packed together like sardines in six separate holding cells.
I stopped there and read the paragraph again.
First off, I was trying to comprehend co-gender incarceration. Then I was trying to imagine dozens of inmates packed into a few narrow holding cells where finding enough space to sit down would be a major problem. Even for a man who had spent most of his life in some of the most crowded prisons in New York, I couldn’t fathom how a prisoner would be expected to eat, sleep, and clean up in that kind of environment, let along survive from one day to the next.
Maybe that was the point.
I read on.
If the prisoners behaved themselves they might have the “opportunity” to move into a four-person cell after only a couple of months. A cell-block delegate who had agreed to be interviewed stated proudly that he’d been able to maintain five inmates to a ten-foot cell while a total of 344 men and women in his block managed to share three toilets.
Señor and Señorita, welcome to your worst nightmare.
The more I read, the more I realized it wasn’t the lack of personal space or proper sanitation that posed the greatest threat to Renata. According to one Amnesty International official named in the report, from January 1993 to April 1998 more than one thousand inmates had suffered violent deaths inside Monterrey Prison, not only at the hands of other inmates but also at the hands of the guards. It was even suspected that the prison warden himself (a suspected member of the Contreras Brothers crime family) partook in the death party from time to time. The stats, if they were accurate, astounded even me. Last year alone, Monterrey experienced 232 homicides, over one hundred attempted intentional body-damage incidents, eighty or so rapes, fifty-two inmate-to-inmate robberies, and over eighty drug-related, nonviolent crimes.
Because the prison’s total population stood at around four thousand and change, it didn’t take a genius to figure out that Renata had about a one-in-four chance of making it out alive. Maybe less, considering the rancid conditions. That is, unless someone or something acted fast.
That’s where I came in.
Or didn’t.
Tony was the first to return.
He took his usual place behind the desk.
Then came Barnes, O’Brien on his tail.
Barnes folded up his cellular. Instead of packing it back inside his briefcase, he stuffed it inside the interior pocket of his suit jacket.
I set myself on the edge of Tony’s desk, crossed my arms. Very official-looking.
“I know why you want to hire me, Mr. Barnes,” I said. “And I think I know what the job entails. But maybe you can shed some light on how exactly you’d expect me to pull it off.”
Without hesitating, O’Brien stepped forward. But then he stopped dead in his tracks when Barnes shot up.
“Please, Donald,” he said. “Just stay out of the way for now.”
There was a weighted silence in which I wasn’t quite sure if O’Brien was going to cry or throw up or both. Both, if I had to place a bet. But he just backed into the far corner where the glass and mahogany walls met and lowered his head like a scolded kid.
“I’m not going to pretend you can go this one alone, Mr. Marconi,” Barnes said, looking me in the eye. “I’ll be providing you with a contact.”
“What contact, Mr. Barnes?”
“Richard,” he said. “Please call me Richard.”
“Who would act as my contact, Mr. Barnes?”
He swallowed. “I have a man in mind who would be happy to take the job on.”
“Mexican man?”
“Of American and Mexican descent, actually. An antiquities trader who, on occasion, hires out as a guide.”
“How’d you find him?”
O’Brien tore himself away from the wall. “It’s none of your business how we run our operations, Mr. Marconi.”
I caught O’Brien’s eyes with my own, locked onto them. I was just about ready to tell him to shut up when Barnes made it perfectly clear that his “services would no longer be required for the remainder of the proceedings.”
O’Brien’s face turned Harvard red. “But who will you use as a witness, Richard? You just can’t solicit the services of a private investigator you know nothing about, even if he claims to be an expert on prisons.”
“That’s enough, Donald,” Barnes snapped. “Now, please leave the room before I ask you to return my retainer.”
Another silence. You could almost hear the pigeons perching outside Tony’s window. If there were a ledge for pigeons to perch on in the first place. O’Brien pursed his lips, bent over, and packed up his briefcase. “Well, then,” he said, in a strained voice, “since I am no longer wanted, I’ll take my leave.”
As he was going for the door, I shouted out for him to stop.
I grabbed the travel guide off Tony’s desk, flung it to him from across the room. O’Brien bobbled the book with his free hand but somehow managed to hang on. Not bad, I thought. For a dweeb.
He let out a breath and stared at the book’s cover until a broad smile appeared on his face. He raised his head and, at the same time, positioned the book in his right hand, like a Frisbee.
He tossed it back to me.
I caught it one-handed.
“Actually, Mr. Marconi,” he said, “I believe it’s you who’s going to be needing it more than I.”
And then he walked out.
After apologizing on behalf of his counselor, Barnes loosened the knot on his tie. His way of getting down and dirty, I supposed.
I asked him how he expected me to recognize this contact.
“He’ll recognize you,” Barnes said.
“What about weapons and a safe house?”
“You won’t have to worry about a thing. They’ll already be there waiting for you. Nor will you have to worry about Customs giving you a problem.”
Tony sat up straight. “If I may,” he said.
“Please, Anthony,” Barnes said.
He explained to me that Richard already had several business ventures in Mexico and other parts of Central America. “Some people owe him favors here and there,” he went on. “So you won’t have problems getting in and out, if you know what I mean.”
I knew what he meant. But the whole operation sounded a little too good to be believable. Just cruise into Mexico, break into a major Mexican prison, steal the damsel in distress, escape to the border, fly off into the sunset, run the credits and the closing music. Just one big easy. If Tony weren’t my friend, I’d swear he and Barnes were feeding me directly to the dogs. Or,
in this case, coyotes.
“What about your wife, Mr. Barnes?” I said. “I don’t know anything about her other than what I’ve read in the papers or seen on TV.”
Barnes reached down to the floor, picked up his briefcase, set it on the edge of the desk. He took out a manila folder. “In there you’ll find all you need to know about Renata. Photos, bios, and a copy of her novel.”
He set the package on his desk.
“Godchild.” I volunteered.
“Yes,” a suddenly morose Barnes said, as if the very mention of the novel caused the plug to be pulled on his heart. “Godchild. ”
He closed up his briefcase. “Well, if there’s nothing else…” He let it dangle.
He forced a smile and held out his right hand. I took it, shook it loosely.
“I trust the money would be to your satisfaction.”
“So long as it’s okay with Tony,” I said.
I took my hand back. It felt cold and wet.
“You won’t speak with me again,” Barnes said. “You can give your answer to Mr. Angelino. He, in turn, will relay your decision to me.”
He took his case and left, leaving me along with Tony.
I turned to him, after a time.
“Well,” he said, holding out his hands. “Yes or no?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“When will you know?” he said.
“Can you give me until tomorrow morning?” I asked.
He nodded. “Okay, sleep on it. But I can’t wait much longer than that. Renata doesn’t have that kind of time.”
I glanced at the Internet article on his desk. He was right.
“I’ll let you know first thing,” I said. “Now, how’s about a ride back to my motel?”
Chapter 8
The windowless cell measures about five feet by five feet. Almost a perfect square, with a tile floor and drain in the center.
There is a steel-framed bunk that supports a thin mattress pushed up against the concrete wall to her right. When she looks out the vertical iron bars that make up the door to the cell, she can see a gray concrete wall.
The cell is lit with only one exposed overhead lightbulb.
All around her come the moans and groans of the inmates. Sleeping the restless sleep of the drugged.
She zips up the front of her jumper, as if this makes her more secure, and moves toward the front of the cell.
“Hello,” she whispers out across the iron bars. “Is anyone out there who can hear me?” A deep, stale breath. In and out. “Hello…anybody?”
After a short time she hears a mans voice. “Hello,” comes the whisper.
She feels herself smiling, the muscles in her face tightening up, a shot of warmth and security shooting up her spine. “My name is Renata,” she says. “Where am I?”
“Beautiful Monterrey Prison,” he says in a heavy, throaty voice like the voice of an old man, although Renata has no way of knowing for sure.
She wishes she had her reporter’s notebooks, a pad of paper, a scrap, anything to write on. And something to write with. But she has nothing. They stripped her of everything when they dragged her in with that blindfold on.
‘‘Where in the prison?” she asks.
“Basement isolation” the man says. “Consider yourself lucky. Upstairs you have to share a box with ten or twelve people. Don’t take this the wrong way, but a woman like you…well, you wouldn’t last long.”
She wants to tell him he has no idea who he’s dealing with. But she lets it go.
“What’s your name?” she asks.
“Roberto”
“Why are you here, Roberto?”
“They say I murdered my wife’s lover.”
“Is it true?” she asks. If only she had a pen and paper.
“This man I speak of, he used to come across the border from Texas on Thursday afternoons. When I was at work.”
“Is that a yes or is that a no?”
“It was wrong for him to come across the border and do what he did to my wife.”
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
“What are you in for, Renata?” he asks. “If you don’t mind?”
“I write books,” she said.
He laughs.
“What’s so funny?”
“Good material here,” he says.
She smiles, although he cannot see her smiling.
Just then there is the sound of a lock being unlocked and a metal door swinging open as hard leather soles shuffle on concrete. There is the sound of chains and keys rattling and shaking.
They are coming for her. She has no way of knowing for certain, but then, she can feel it like a lump in her chest.
“Miss,” the invisible man says, his voice now urgent. “Here they come. Do not talk. Just do what they tell you.
She feels her heart beating suddenly as she slides back against the far wall, knees tucked up into her chest. She sees them then. Three men. Two soldiers. Perhaps the same two who brought her in here from the desert. Standing in between the men is the mustached man also from the desert. He is still dressed in his black suit. The soldier to his left is holding a plastic tray containing a plate of food and water. The soldier to his right holds an identical tray that supports something else entirely. A syringe and a vial containing a clear liquid.
The mustached man calls out for the guard to open the door. “Numero dos!” he shouts.
An electronic buzzer sounds and the gate slides open.
The mustached man steps in. The soldiers follow.
“Are you hungry, Ms. Barnes?”
She stares at him, stone-faced.
“I must apologize for the way you’ve been treated.”
“Don’t bother” she says, feeling her teeth begin to chatter.
He crouches, meets her eye to eye, his face so close to hers she can smell his Bay Rum aftershave.
“If it is any consolation,” he says, “I spared your life out there in the desert. Running drugs, as you know, is a serious crime in this part of the world.”
“Is it?” she asks, as if she doesn’t know.
“I’d like to go on sparing your life,” he says, “so long as you cooperate with me.”
She breathes in and out. Twice.
“What is it you’d like for me to do?”
He reaches out with his right hand, gently fingers the zipper on her leather jumper.
“Answer some simple questions.”
She slaps his hand away. “Touch me again,” she says, “and I’ll find a way to kill you.”
He stands.
His face is serious, with heavy, black-and-blue bags under each eye, creases in the tan skin that covers his cheeks and forehead.
“Take away the food,” he says to the soldier on his left, who immediately walks out with the tray. Then, to the second soldier, on his right: “Shoot her up. It’ll help clear her mind”
The soldier to his right takes the syringe and vial in one hand and, with the other, sets the tray down on the floor.
“Don’t you touch me with that thing,” she screams, shuffling back quick into the corner.
The mustached man approaches her, grabs her by the feet. “Your resistance is nothing to us,” he says. “As is your life.”
The second soldier is sticking the needle into the vial, pulling back on the syringe, sucking the liquid up.
“Get away from me!” she screams, trying to kick. But he’s got her tight by the legs.
“Just stick it through her clothing” he orders the soldier.
The soldier holds the syringe up at chest height. He depresses it just enough to allow a bit of the clear liquid to spray out. He comes for her.
“No, goddammit, no!” she screams again.
“Just do what they tell you to do!” shouts an invisible Roberto.
Chapter 9
You want to know what sleep was like for me? Let’s just say I hadn’t slept well in years. Not for lack of trying. Drink, pills, television, star
ing at the ceiling—nothing helped. Nothing could stop the memories that sped through the screen of my imagination like a videotape gone wacky.
This had always been the trick:
Attempting to sleep with my eyes wide open. If such a thing were possible, with my Colt laid out flat on my bare chest and the radiant heat making boiling and pinging sounds that reverberated against the paper-thin walls of the motel. I fixed my eyes on a popcorned ceiling that exploded in so much red neon with every flash of the Coco’s Motor Inn. Soon enough, the events were on their way back to haunt me in their perfectly calculated nap-time brilliance.
Me, at the wheel of the Ford Bronco, inching my way out into a four-way intersection. Fran, seated in the passenger side. She screams. I hit the brake in the middle of the intersection, like my life depends upon it. And it does. Only a split second later the Buick runs the red light, rams us, dead-on. Suicide seat. Fran slams forward, her head through the windshield, the sharp edge of the glass taking her head clean off at the base, her body falling back into the bucket seat as though nothing at all has happened. As though it was all a mistake. This is what immediately registers: the battered black Buick backing up fast, the tires burning rubber against the asphalt. Then the car quickly shifts into forward, swerving around the wrecked Bronco, shooting on past, but not before I get a good look at the driver. A bald man with a hoop earring and black John Lennon sunglasses. He looks at me before he takes off.
Forever.
But then he is back. Just like that. Driving through the gates of the Albany Rural Cemetery.
The battered black Buick come back to life.
Or maybe that too, is just another dream.
I woke up like I always did: in a pool of sweat, the .45 having slid off my chest onto the bed. Outside the motel room came the stop-and-go sounds of the jets taking off and landing at the Albany International Airport and the perpetual murmur of commuter traffic growing heavier and heavier. Men and women rushing home to their private suburban hells.
I lay there on my back staring at the flashing red neon letters. Suddenly my thoughts shifted to Val. I saw her almond-shaped brown eyes and her chiseled cheekbones and her smooth, shoulder-length, sandy-brown hair. I remembered her warm smile and her low, smooth voice. I wanted to call her. But then I rolled over onto my side and I saw the folded restraining order sitting out on the bedside table and I knew it would be wrong to even try. I had to consider the consequences. Consider the fact that not only was I breaking the law but that I was breaking her heart, and mine, in more ways than one. I knew the best thing was to let it all go. For her, for me. Forget there had ever been a wedding, or an engagement, or even a proposal.
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