by Неизвестный
Breakfast arrived at five-thirty. Fresh scrambled eggs and toast. Real eggs, not the powdered crap most jails served. Cardboard knives and forks, stiff cardboard plates. A guard came by with a trolley containing small plastic cups. Some of these were given to the women for urine samples, a degrading experience, since the stainless steel toilets were completely in the open. Other women got medications.
Throughout the morning, women detainees continued to come and go. Most of them were processed in batches according to when and where they were taken into custody. The night shift guards addressed me twice as Miss Winslow. A counselor spent ten hurried minutes with me, informing me in an apologetic tone that I shouldn't be in the immigration detention center, that I'd be moved later the next day.
Moved where? I asked. The counselor shrugged. What were the charges against me? I asked. The counselor flipped through a folder, bit her upper lip, said nothing.
By eleven, I was entirely alone in my cell block.
Alone and staggeringly depressed.
Lunch was a tuna sandwich on whole wheat, Fritos, cranberry juice, and two individually packaged oatmeal cookies. Another batch of women were led in, processed, sorted into different cells. Throughout the afternoon, the women were taken away. I felt isolated, abandoned, wanting to be processed with them if only to experience some sense of change, of destiny, of knowing a possibility beyond the holding area.
At four o'clock I was again the only woman in the cell block. A shadow crossed my eyes, then another. Two women and a man stood outside the bars, backlit by the sunlight coming directly at me from a window in the holding area. They waited, motionless, for several moments, until a guard shuffled down the hallway, stopped outside the cell, and clanked keys in the door. One of the women and the man stayed outside, the man gripping the bars with one hand.
The other woman came into my cell.
“I'm the reason you're in here.”
She spoke with that eloquent Castilian Spanish accent you seldom hear in Mexico. The slurred dyou for you, the elongated vowels. Standing against the cell door, the sunlight from windows across the hall backlit her hair, so all I could make out was a dark face surrounded by steel-wool kinky hair, a maze glowing with golden fibers. She wore a pale yellow suit of nubby silk, her jacked unbuttoned and loose over a darker yellow cotton blouse. She seemed anywhere from forty to sixty years old.
“Why am I here?”
“People. . . some people don't know quite what to do with you.”
“And you?”
“My name is Pinau Beltrán de Medina,” she said finally. “I am a judge from the Public Ministry of Mexico, the office of the Attorney General.”
She motioned to the man, who leaned against the cell door, moving it open a few inches, then closing it. He seemed fascinated by the flutter of the door, shifting it several times, swaying his head as he moved the door.
“This is Hector Garza, an investigator from my office.”
Garza pulled the door shut with a clang.
“Pinau,” I said without thought. “That's a Hopi name.”
“My mother. From Kykotsmovi. I lived there until I was seven, when she died. My father came from Chihuahua and took me back to Mexico. You're also half Hopi.”
She looked at a sheet of paper in front of her.
“Kuwanyauma.”
I was stunned and couldn't help showing it.
“So,” I said with some irritation, “so. . . why am I here? With these immigrants, these illegals, these people without a country.”
“Undocumented workers,” Garza said.
“Excuse me?”
“That's the politically correct term. Undocumented workers.”
“To us,” Pinau said, “they're not illegal at all. Just hungry.”
“Whatever,” I said angrily. “Why am I here?”
“You were arrested.”
“There are jails in Tucson for federal prisoners. Why here?”
“Uncooperative,” Garza said. “Somebody wanted to teach you a lesson.”
“Who?”
He shrugged. Pinau opened her briefcase and took out a blue-bound legal document. She tapped it with the French-manicured nails of both hands, a drumming sound in a particular rhythm. She took out another document, paused, and gestured at the woman standing outside the cell.
“That woman is a US Marshal.”
The marshal wasn't in uniform, wearing instead a dark green jumpsuit. She was small, hardly five foot two, but large-breasted, with twin black braids doubled back and woven tightly. Across the left breast of the jumpsuit I could read the words Tucson Expediter stitched in looping blue italics.
“In a few minutes, she's going to take you to Tucson to meet a US Attorney. You can ask her who stuck you in this place.”
“You're not together?”
“We're part of a joint task force to resolve border issues. Like illegal immigrant crossings, drug smuggling, crime.”
“I have no idea what you're talking about.”
She laid the document on my bunk, caressed its pages.
“This is a CIA report. Illegal Trafficking of Women into the United States. It's two years old, but has still got enough relevant statistics. All you really need to know is that there are major smuggling rings that deal only with women.”
She hesitated, thinking she'd seen something in my eyes, but I sniffed and blinked and covered up my reaction to what she'd just said. Xochitl's stories made a bit more sense to me now.
“And not Latinas, but women from Eastern Europe. A few from Asia. Many from Russia. Most of them are tricked into thinking they've paid for guaranteed smuggling into the US, with citizenship papers and relocation to a major US city. Except it's all a hoax. They wind up as indentured servants, prostitutes, exotic dancers, you name it. The smuggling ring gets the women across the border, where they're sold.”
“We know that the smuggling ring is based in the state of Sonora,” Garza said. “We've intercepted cell phone calls, radio messages, tons of email.”
“Yesterday, before you were arrested, the Border Patrol rounded up a group of forty-seven women from Russia and Eastern Europe. According to your friend Meg Arizana, you apparently saw these women.”
“An accident.”
“Surely an accident.”
“Why are you here?”
“Exactly right,” she said. “To the point. Officer Wheaton, could you please go process the paperwork. I won't be much longer.”
“Wheatley.”
“Officer Wheatley.”
“You want me to leave?” the marshal said.
“If you don't mind. Just for a moment.”
“Then ask me to leave. Don't bullshit me about going for paperwork.”
She left the hallway, and the man came into the cell.
“Guard?” I shouted.
“They're all processing paperwork,” Garza said. “I'm here for your protection.”
I flattened against the wall.
“Exactly right,” Pinau said. “Who is Bobby Gittes?”
“What?”
“Have you ever met him? Do you know where he's based?”
“No.”
“How do you work with him, if you've never met him?” When I didn't answer, she began the fingernail-tapping, this time impatiently. “I'm the person who agreed to the contract about embezzled Mexican funds.”
The first client!
“Because of the amount of money involved, Bobby Gittes told me the name of the woman who'd be handling the computer search for the money. In offshore banks. I can tell by your surprised look that you've never heard of me before.”
“Guinness.”
“What?”
“His name is Guinness. Jake Gittes was the detective in Chinatown.”
“Guinness. Gittes. Whoever. You've not heard of me?”
“Just the job. That's all Bobby passed on to me.”
“There is nobody else? No partners? No couriers from Bobby? Nobody visiting you w
ith messages, documents, details?”
“Nobody. Why are you telling me who you are?”
“When our task force heard about the underground bunkers at the ranch, the European women arrested, we also got identity packets on everybody involved. Your name, Laura Cabeza, got all my radar bells clanging.”
“Why not work through Bobby?”
“I'd prefer that. But the Border Patrol arrested you. The US Attorney in Tucson has his own interest in you. I don't want you to forget my interests. So. I thought it over, decided that I'd have a better. . . how shall I put it, control, yes, that's the word. I want better control over what you're doing for me.”
“For you? Or for the Mexican government?”
“For me. As an agent of the government.”
No matter how well gamblers can hide expressions, all of them have a tell, to use Donald Ralph's expression. Pinau kept her eyes locked on mine, but as she said those last words, her tongue moved out between her teeth and then quickly darted back. She'd done this twice before as we were talking. Once, when she talked about being Hopi. The second time when she began asking about Bobby Guinness.
The thing about a person's tell, you can't give away that you've seen it.
You may need it at a critical time. If somebody's lied and you know how to mark the lie, believe me, you file that away for keeps.
“So,” she said, “I know from your record, as Laura Marana, that you're very familiar with using computers to transfer money to offshore banks. And to hack into those banks to find out who's keeping what inside. Right?”
“I've done that,” I said neutrally.
“Naura.”
She took a single sheet of paper from her briefcase and handed it to me.
“One of those islands that don't have much money or principles. They literally sell you the right to set up your own bank.”
“Are you saying that the money is in a virtual bank in Naura?”
“Maybe. There's a list of fifty known countries that allow private accounts. Bobby Guinness had asked me to highlight likely countries. I was going to send him this list, but you showed up. Knowing you is like knowing the devil. I'd rather that you know who is controlling you, and that you are known to me.”
“Without a name, this list is useless. Even if I could hack into the bank records, I'd need somebody's name to verify that they have an account there.”
“Hector.”
“Yes?”
“Tell the lady your theory about King Kong.”
“It's the wall,” he said, sitting on one of the bunk beds. “You've seen the movie, right? You know about the big wall?”
“What are you talking about?”
“The natives. They're scared shitless of this monster ape. They build this huge wall to keep him in the jungle. You've seen the movie, right?”
“Yes.”
If seemed to be what he wanted me to say.
“Right. So. They build this wall. . . which version did you see?”
“Jessica Lange. Jeff Bridges.”
“I like the older one. Anyway, they've also built these big doors. Now this is an ape that climbs the Empire State Building, right? He climbs up that building, but he's not going to climb over a stupid fucking wall. No. He's not. Because the stupid fucking natives, they've made these doors. Why? That's the question. Why the doors? Somebody on that stupid fucking island wants to open the doors.”
He went to the cell door and again swung it open and shut.
Open and shut.
Pinau handed me a long list of names.
“Check all of these doors. One hundred thirty-seven names.”
“Tell me, Hector,” I said. “What's your part in this? Are you the ape?”
After a moment, he exploded with astonished laughter.
“I've got to admit it. You're good,” she said with a smile. “Sometimes, when Hector tells his theory about King Kong, people urinate in their pants.”
But I was afraid. And they knew it.
“And he didn't even tell you his theory.”
“The doors,” he said. “You think they're built to keep him out. But I think that he's the one that opens the doors. Whenever he wants somebody in the village.”
“Who are they?” I asked. “The people on this list?”
“Most of them are either politicians or law enforcement. From the Zedillo government. You have two days.”
“To check one hundred thirty-seven names against bank accounts in fifty countries? You must think I'm God, that I can do the impossible in two days.”
“On the third day, God created grass, herbs, fruit, the earth itself.”
“I'm hardly a god.”
“Just think of me as your god,” she said sharply, as though lashing me with a whip. “I am your controller, the person who holds your future in my hands.”
I thought of her as a terrifying person, and I had absolutely no idea why she was visiting me. But I've been in jail often enough to know not to say anything when someone pulls a power trip. You do not talk back to guards and jailors and visitors in the night. You don't talk at all, especially when the ape holds the door shut.
You just listen and wait to get out of there.
She stood up.
“When you meet the US Attorney,” she said as an afterthought, “remember that he knows nothing about this list. He knows nothing specifically about embezzled monies. This is strictly an affair of the Mexican government.”
I nodded, not trusting myself to say anything. She handed me a business card with her name and title. On the back, she'd written a phone number.
“That's a cell phone. I will use it only to hear from you. I expect a report every twenty-four hours, or at any time you find out something about the money.”
Hector swung the cell door open.
“You're free to go.”
“Except I have to go with the US Marshal.”
“Well. There is that. You can go with her, or stay here and wait for the ape.”
She leaned suddenly toward me, her face just inches from mine.
“After all, they've got a dozen federal arrest warrants for you. And they'll want to control you even tighter than I do. But say nothing to them about our talk.”
I nodded again.
She left with Garza, and Wheatley came back.
“Come with me,” she said, and started walking away before I could even rise from the bunk. She carried a brown shopping bag. At the end of the hallway, the jailor let us through a set of doors, unlocking one at a time. For a moment I stood pressed close to the two of them, the jailor sweating and smelling of corn chips or Cheetos. The jailor unlocked a small conference room and left us alone.
“Get dressed.”
Wheatley laid the shopping bag on the floor and leaned against a wall.
I thought the shopping bag held my own clothes, but inside were clean panties, a crosstrap running bra, and another dark green Tucson Expediter jumpsuit.
“Just put it on,” she said. “Then we'll get out of here. But remember this.”
She pressed a hand close against my stomach, her palm flat, the other hand underneath my chin.
“I'm a United States Marshal. I'm going to escort you to Tucson. I've got handcuffs and even leg chains, but I don't see much need for them. Do you?”
I shrugged off my underwear and dropped it on the floor.
“Nope,” I said, pulling on the clothing from the bag. “That dog and pony show from Mexico. Are they really part of some task force?”
“Yes.”
I waited, but she wasn't going to say anything more. I finished dressing and pulled on the leather work boots. Everything was my exact size. The boots were stiff, but comfortable. The jumpsuit was made of high-quality cotton, smooth against my skin. Finished, I looked around the cell and swore that nobody would ever find me again and put me in such a horrible place.
She saw the angry look in my eyes. She placed her hands on my shoulders as though she wanted to hug me
.
“Where are you taking me?” I asked, shrugging off her hands.
“Out of this place. And if you're really as good with computers as I've heard, I'll give you a whole new life.”
“I have a life,” I said angrily. “Let me go back to it.”
“Keep your anger,” she said. “Feed it, nourish it. There is no shark like hatred. That will get you through the next few days, and then you'll be free.”
But I wasn't free, not yet. She locked me into the back seat of an unmarked police car, the back door handles removed, the doors securely locked, and a solid steel mesh barrier between me and freedom.
14
“Laura Winslow,” the man said. “Won't you please sit down?”
He stood at the far end of an oak conference table, across from Jake Nasso, who fiddled with the frayed cuffs of an old rodeo-cowboy's shirt. Wheatley leaned against a wall of built-in bookshelves.
“You've arrested the wrong person,” I said.
He pointed at a chair.
“Please. Sit down. You've met Jake Nasso. Border Patrol Tactical Unit.”
BORTAC. La Migra's SWAT team, the organization that pulled Elian Gonzalez out of his relative's Miami home.
“I thought you were a US Marshal,” I said to Wheatley.
“Wheatley is part of the Marshals' Special Operations Group,” the man said. “An expert in Internet computer fraud. Identity theft. But back to you.”
“If she's a US Marshal, why is she wearing that jumpsuit? Why am I wearing this stupid thing?”
“Later Taá is going to take you to a very private place. Show her the papers.”
Taá stepped to my end of the table as the man slid a thick, rubber-banded folder toward her across the tabletop. They moved like a team, as though they'd rehearsed the bit with the papers. He stared at me, silent, a half-smile on his face, as he shrugged out of an expensive suit jacket and folded it meticulously before laying it across an empty chair. Inch-wide suspenders decorated with elephants lay taut against a crisply laundered pale blue shirt. He folded his hands in front of him and waited as Taá took out several clipped packets of paper, riffling through them until she found what she wanted.