by Неизвестный
“Play it as it lays,” I said. “Just tell them that I'm part of Mari's team.”
I lagged behind while Meg explained things to Mari and Alex. Mari turned to give me a nod and a large wave. Alex gave me a thumbs up.
I've got it covered, I thought.
What I should have done is just ride in the other direction and make my own way out of the canyon. Shoulda, coulda, woulda. If I'd only known.
12
We rode slowly down the mountainside through a stand of saguaros and moved toward the razor wire fence. A light breeze was blowing, somewhat unusual for this time of the morning. Palo skittered sideways on a patch of loose shale, but Meg pulled beside me to steady the horses. We stopped several hundred yards away from the ranch compound.
“The bikes,” Alex said, standing in her stirrups and pointing.
The main fence gate was slid back and wide open. Fifty feet inside, near the barn, the two dirt bikes were propped on their stands. I couldn't see anybody. Meg took out a pair of binoculars but shook her head twice.
“Nobody around.”
Meg took out her radio and tried calling the Border Patrol.
“We're in a pocket,” she said finally after several calls with no response. “The ground units can't hear us, and the chopper's not up high enough.”
“Let's get outa here,” I said.
Two men appeared. One came out of the ranch house, the other from the barn, both moving backward, bending, wiggling their arms, and shuffling. Meg studied them through her binoculars, her forehead screwed up in a frown.
“You've got the best eyes,” she said to Alex. “What are they doing?”
“They've got plastic jugs,” she said. “They're. . . waving the jugs, no, they're dumping water out of the jugs onto the porch, onto the ground.”
We could see both men get on the dirt bikes and heard both engines snarl. One man rode to the gate, planting his left foot on the ground as he did a slow circle, scanning the canyon walls. He saw us immediately, and we heard him shout at the other rider, who threw away his plastic jug and reached inside his leather jacket.
“He's got a cigarette lighter,” Alex said. “He's got. . . he's wadding up a bunch of paper.”
“That's not water,” I said. “That's gasoline. He's going to burn down the house.”
The rider lit the paper, waited a moment until it burned vividly, and then frantically tried to separate the burning mass into two pieces. He'd not twisted the pages together tightly enough, and they fluttered around him, all of them burning so fast that he finally just flung the paper mass toward the trail of gasoline, and as it left his hands, it separated into sheets and sheets. One landed on his handlebars, and he whacked at it with his hands to get rid of it. Several pages blew into the gasoline and ignited it, causing a furious rush of flame across the ground, up the porch steps, and through the open front door. The entire front end of the house exploded in flame.
Riding to the gate, both riders stared at us for a moment, then roared along the roadway, disappearing around the first bend.
“Let's go down there,” Mari urged. “Come on, there might be somebody trapped in the house.”
She kneed her horse, riding ahead of us and through the gate. Meg shouted at her and motioned Mari back. We dismounted at the gate, where Meg quickly looped the reins through the chain links of the fence as Mari ran toward the house. Alex hesitated only for a moment, then followed her mother into the compound. Meg sighed and shucked a shell into the shotgun.
“Hello the house,” she shouted when we got to the front porch.
Nobody answered.
“Look in the barn!”
Man pulled back one of the heavy barn doors and disappeared inside with Alex.
“Gotta check the barn,” Meg cried. “There may be animals in there.”
But Mari and Alex came to the doorway, shaking their heads.
“Nothing in here,” Mari shouted at us.
“Do you smell gasoline?”
“Yes!”
“Come on.”
Meg shucked the shotgun slide, forgetting she'd already done that, and a shell flew out the port and just missed my forehead.
“I found a light switch,” Alex shouted.
“Don't turn it on!” Meg cried. “The fumes are too strong. I don't want an electrical spark setting this place on fire.”
Gasoline fumes filled the bam. Meg ran to the other end and slid open the back doors. A breeze whipped through the barnway, clearing out the fumes. Sniffing, she waved at Alex, who flipped the light switch. I expected normal barn lighting, but blinked at the heavy-wattage industrial lamps that came on in banks. Meg went quickly through the eight horse stalls, four on each side of the aisle.
“Nothing in these stalls for months,” she said.
“Did you know these people?”
“Not really. I think it was a family named Anderson. Or Billings. I don't get down this far very often, and a lot of people have bought land in the past year. The old ranchers sold out. Too many coyotes, too many illegal immigrants begging or stealing food and water.”
“Hey!” Alex shouted from the far end of the barn. “Come here.”
She was struggling with a heavy door set into the concrete floor. With two of us on either side, we slowly raised the six-by-eight wooden door and let it fall backward with a bang. I could see hydraulic pistons on either side of the door.
“Must be motor-controlled,” I said. Meg went to her saddlebags and came back with a four-cell Maglite. Fifteen concrete steps down, and the gasoline stench rose out of the hatchway.
“You're not going down there!” I said.
“Got to make sure nobody's here,” she cried, already at the bottom. “Here's a light switch.” Fluorescent tubing hummed and buzzed into life down below. Mari and Alex quickly ran down the stairs, and I followed. It was a large, bunkerlike room with cinder-block walls and supporting beams holding up a seven-foot-high ceiling that ran back directly under the barn breezeway. On the left and right walls there were heavy steel doors, three on the left, three on the right. Gasoline had pooled on the unevenly poured concrete floor, and its cloying smell got stronger as we walked toward the other end.
“Don't turn on any more lights,” Meg warned.
Alex went to the first metal door on the left and tugged on the handles. It slowly squeaked open. Meg ran the Maglite beam around inside, and we all stood silently in shock. The room was about twenty feet by thirty. Three-level bunk beds lined the left and right walls, and four chemical toilets stood at the far end. The walls were covered with graffiti, but the Maglite beam wasn't strong enough for us to read.
Impatient, Alex ran her fingers on one wall in the dim light, and then darted up the stairwell to return with her video camera. She attached the light and battery pack and turned it on. Meg started to protest, but the four of us quickly realized in the bright floodlight that the graffiti was all names.
Women's names.
In all shades and colors, some of them written in lipstick, some with ballpoints, a few just smudged lines as though written in mascara.
“What is this place?” I whispered.
“Get the names!” Mari shouted to Alex. “That's what we came for, the names.”
Alex started shooting video of the walls, moving the camera slowly to capture as many of them as she could. As the lens zoomed in and out, Meg called from outside.
“There's gasoline all over this place.”
“Steady, Alex. Laura, check the other rooms, see if there are names in there.”
I opened the other metal doors.
Names, names, names.
Alex moved from one room to the next.
“Jesus!” Meg said, “We're not thinking. If the wind blows cinders from the burning house toward the barn, it could light the gasoline. Run!”
“Not yet,” Mari shouted. “Alex?”
“In the last room, Mom.”
“What are you doing?” Meg screamed as we heard a cr
eaking noise from the barn above us. “Are you insane? We've got to leave now!”
We crowded in single file onto the stairs, Alex moving backward as she continued to shoot video until Mari grabbed the camera out of her hands. We ran out the front barn door. The horses were spooked and wild eyed, and Meg finally just freed the reins and urged them outside the main gate. The house was burning solidly, like in a disaster movie. Meg was shouting into her radio, but nobody responded. With a whooomp the barn exploded into fire. A burst of black smoke ballooned into the sky.
“Well, we don't need a radio now,” Meg said. “By the time that reaches a hundred feet, the Border Patrol chopper will already be on its way.”
“I don't want to wait,” I said.
But it was too late. A BlackHawk appeared almost immediately and set down just inside the fencing. Three people leaped out of the chopper. Two wore Border Patrol uniforms, the third an immaculate western-style shirt with pearl buttons. About fifty years old, he walked with the confident stride of somebody twenty years younger, although his face and neck had the lizard leather look of people who've spent a lot of time in the Sonoran Desert sun. His boots were snake-skin, a gold band running around the tips. He studied our faces quickly and motioned one of the patrolmen over to us.
“Check their ID.”
“Jake,” Meg said. “You know who I am.”
“Well, Meg, honey, I sure know that voice, but you're forgetting the dinky detail that we've never actually met. It's all routine. I just need to know you're really who you say you are. And you others. I need to know you too.”
“Jake. We've met a dozen times. You bought me a beer once.”
“Can't afford to say I remember that.”
The patrolman held out his hand. Nasso moved off to the barn. Meg, Mari, and Alex dug out their wallets and began removing driver's licenses. I hesitated, uneasy at showing my fake license to anybody. Not that they'd spot it as a fake, it was too good. But once they saw it, the name Laura Cabeza would go into their databases. The patrolman turned to me, the other licenses in his hand. I couldn't afford to seem at all resistant, so I got out my wallet and gave him the license. He immediately started writing down names and addresses. Nasso came back.
“Jake,” Meg said, “do you think you might remember me enough to radio somebody to drive my horse trailer up here?”
“We're not a limousine service.”
“The horses are spooked by the fire. Besides, it's almost a hundred degrees. They'd never last the two-hour ride back to the trailer.”
“For the horses, then,” he said with a smile. “Where's the vehicle key?”
“It's on top of the rear inside tire. On the trailer.”
“Cute. Dumb, but cute. Horses before women. I never used that line before.”
He waved another patrolman over and told him to ride the chopper and drive back the horse trailer.
“So tell me, ladies, whatever are you doing up here?”
“These people are clients.”
“I'm filming a documentary,” Man said. “About. . . about the ranchers, how their whole lives are changed by the waves of illegal immigrants.”
“Uh huh. Keep talking to the hand, lady.”
“What does that mean?”
“It's from rap music,” Alex said. “Talk to the hand, cuz the face don't understand. He's saying he doesn't believe you. Who do you listen to, Jake?”
“My boys listen. I try not to, but in order to understand half what they say at breakfast, I've got to learn that language.”
The patrolman finished writing down information and handed back our licenses. Nasso stuck out his hand, collecting the licenses and piling them like playing cards. He riffled through them slowly, finally putting one at the bottom while he scanned another. I could see he was memorizing the information.
“Mari? This your daughter?”
“Yes.”
“And you live in Springfield, Illinois?”
“Yes.”
“Laura Cabeza. Like the Cabeza Prieta Wildlife Refuge. And you live in Yuma?”
“Yes.”
“Goddam hot over there.”
“Yes.”
“Nice woman like you, living in a goddam hot place like that.”
He shook his head in obvious wonder at some private thought.
“Okay, ladies. That's all. I'm going to look over the property, and when the chopper gets back, I'm due in Nogales two hours ago. So it's adios, amigas, and we'll have to do this again sometime.”
Hours later, sitting underneath my ramada, beer in my hand, I had nothing more on my mind than waiting for the AOL logfiles to be delivered.
Well, almost nothing more.
The fire was terrifying enough. But the underground rooms. All those names. I'd recognized that many of them were either Russian or Eastern European, just like the women we'd surprised while riding, just like the women who were murdered.
You knew about those names, I'd said to Man.
No, she'd said, I was only told to look for. . . for whatever I could find.
Who told you that? I'd demanded, but she just shook her head in fatigue.
I don't like coincidences, I'd said. I don't believe in them. These things were connected, and you've got to tell me what I'm getting into because I'm thinking of getting out. I also didn't like the fact that the Border Patrol had recorded what was on my fake driver's license. For the first time in months I felt a flutter of anxiety as I realized that I wasn't quite so anonymous any more.
Another beer or two. I decided to soak in my spa. I heard an engine in the distance, not uncommon where I lived. The sound grew louder and louder until I realized it was the whopwhopwhop of a chopper.
It landed fifty feet from where I was sitting.
Two men climbed laboriously out of the chopper and came over to me.
“Hello, Laura.”
A slow smile worked at the corners of his mouth. I didn't answer.
“I'm Jake. Jake Nasso. United States Marshal.”
“So? I remember who you are.”
“Well. I want you to remember something. Remember this moment, Laura.”
“If you're all done toying with me, I'd like to take a bath, now that I'm home.”
“And which home would that be? Back in Tucson? As Laura Marana? Or in Tuba City? Back to your life as Laura Winslow?”
That stunned me, just as he'd intended. My lips flattened against my teeth in despair, the loss of hope. Defeat. He saw it in my eyes and shook his head sadly, the smile melting away.
“Yeah. I know. You're somewhere between the first and second stages of denial. You're in a mixture of anger and defeat. But you'll remember this moment. I can't tell you why, not just yet. But trust me.”
“Fuck you.”
His cell phone chirped.
“Yeah?” He listened for a moment. “Yeah. Uncooperative.”
“Damn you!” I shouted, and he smiled because he'd provoked me.
“See? Okay.”
Switching off the cell, he clucked at me from the side of his mouth, the kind of noise I'd make when I wanted my horse to respond to a knee or hand signal. He punched in a number on the cell and waited.
“They want her in Tucson,” he said into the phone. “But I don't think she's ready to cooperate yet. Uh huh. Uh huh. And you'll meet her there in the morning?”
He sighed, ended the call, and put away the cell. Inexplicably, he smiled and patted my arm as he waved an arm at the chopper. The pilot punched up ignition of the twin turbines, the prop blades jiggled and slowly started rotating. Nodding, smiling, he gestured at one of the border patrolmen behind me, who took out his handcuffs and gathered my arms behind me.
“Hook her up,” Jake said. “But don't make them too tight.”
He started walking back to the chopper.
“Hey!” I shouted. “Where are you taking me?”
“I'm going back to Nogales. Have some cervezas, microwave a burrito, watch a rerun on my dish TV of
the 1982 Daytona 500.”
“What about me?”
The cuffs bit into my wrists and as I twisted them to ease the pain, the border patrolman behind me gently put the palm of his hand on the small of my back and urged me toward a white, unmarked Jeep Cherokee Grand Laredo. He sat up front on buttery-smooth leather, driving in comfort, while I sat behind him on a stained Naugahyde bench seat, staring at a stainless steel mesh grille between us. There were no door handles, and the power window buttons had been disabled.
The next person who talked to me was the booking sergeant at the Florence Illegal Immigrant Detention Center.
13
Prisons vary from country clubs to fortresses, but they have one thing in common. They're built for inmates, convicted felons, whether for stock market swindlers or rapist murderers. Prisons have common and recognized routines.
Jails are the next degrading step down the institutional food chain. I'd been in jails seven times in my life, but nothing I'd ever experienced prepared me for the night I spent in the immigration detention center.
Six-woman cells, really nothing more than barred cages separated from the next cage, the line of them disappearing beyond what I could count. Across the hallway, about forty women were confined in a holding area, waiting to be processed.
Clean blankets. Guards who smiled. A counselor.
None of this mattered.
I wore a vivid orange, freshly laundered jumpsuit and clean underwear. The guards took particular care that each woman had clothes that were approximately the right size. No belts. No strings in the work boots.
At one point, a string of women filed down the corridor, chains fastened around their work boots with padlocks, all chains connected and not long enough, forcing the women to walk in that humiliating, shackled-prisoner shuffle.
I shared my cell with three women from San Luis Potosi who chattered in Spanish constantly and knew very little English. Talking with a woman through bars, I learned that all of them had two things on their minds. Being sent back to Mexico, and contacting their families. Detainees came and went throughout the night. Sleep was improbable because of the constant noise, although all the women shared an unspoken agreement that sleep was necessary. The few who talked did so in whispers.