by Sean Black
Lock straightened up and, shielding his eyes from the strengthening mid-morning sun, took in the vista below. Santa Maria lay before him. Official estimates put its population at 1.5 million but that was almost certainly out by at least half a million. Like the other border cities along the Rio Grande, the city had drawn in hundreds of thousands of people from the poorer south of the country to work in its maquiladoras. Free trade between the countries had allowed American companies to shift jobs a few miles across the border and save themselves tens of millions of dollars in lower wage costs and taxes.
The workers in the maquiladoras were mostly young women. They were considered more dextrous when it came to the assembly line, and the factory owners could pay them less than they would men. They were also the ones who had been turning up dead for more than a decade. Thousands of them, spirited off the streets, raped, murdered and dumped, often mutilated or dismembered, like trash, all over the city.
The roadside crosses were one part memorial and one part caution. No one in Santa Maria was safe from the ravages of a crime rate that had made it the most dangerous city in the world. But young poor women were the most at risk. It was the same the world over, but here, in Mexico, it had taken on new depths of depravity. Worst of all, no one knew who was behind it. There were theories and whispers, but no answers. Only more killings.
Lock reached out to touch the picture of the girl and his mind forced him back to Melissa. He rose, packing away his feelings. He and Ty had a job to do. A job that wouldn’t afford them any distractions. There would be time to mourn the dead when they were done. First they had to find Mendez.
He walked back to the car, opened the trunk and pulled out two large black canvas duffel bags. Staying on the roadside and shielded by the car, he deposited the first bag, marked with a red and white tag, on the back seat. He dropped the second bag, which had no tag, next to it. It was the second that he unzipped. He pulled two hard plastic black gun cases and two side holsters from it.
He opened the first and took out a SIG Sauer 226. He clicked a fresh twelve-round clip into it and checked it over. He repeated the same procedure with the second 226. Then he closed the cases, zipped up the bag, shut the rear door and got back into the front passenger seat.
The guns had been purchased from a contact Ty had in El Paso, a dealer who didn’t care whom he sold to as long as the money was good. No paperwork had changed hands, aside from a thick bundle of twenty-dollar bills. If they had to use them, the only way the weapons would be traced back to them was if they left their fingerprints on them. On the other hand, to venture into Mexico looking for Mendez unarmed would have been guaranteed suicide.
The most nerve-racking part had been passing through Customs Control on the US side of the border. Tourists generally didn’t use the US/Santa Maria crossing because of what lay on the Mexican side. But gun runners did, although not usually in regular cars. Illegal traffic across the border was a two-way process. Drugs went north, and firearms went south to the cartels.
When they had been questioned, Lock had shown two carry permits and informed the guard that they were private security contractors going south to guard a fictional American executive and his family, who were living in Santa Maria. As cover stories went, it was plenty plausible and they had been waved through.
He handed the second weapon to Ty, who checked it over, put on the holster and slid the gun into it. ‘What happens if we get pulled over by the Federales?’ Ty asked.
Lock stared hard into the glare of the sun. ‘We do what everyone else does. We pay ’em off.’
Ty grimaced. ‘And if they won’t be bought?’
‘What colour do you think we should get our crosses?’ Lock asked.
‘Well, not pink, that’s for damn sure.’
Lock glanced back at the roadside and forced a smile. ‘I dunno … pink might bring out your eyes.’
Ty waited for a gap in the traffic and pulled back on to the highway as a truck roared past them in the fast lane. As he drove, his eyes flicked back and forth from the road ahead to the rear-view and side mirrors. They were relatively safe on the freeway, but in a moment they would be on surface streets until they reached their first port of call.
Ty nudged his way through the thundering lines of trucks, returning home to pick up fresh loads, towards the off-ramp. He kept the turn signal off. He waited until he was almost at the final stretch of the median, where the ramp ended, then spun the wheel hard right. He gave the rear-view mirror a final check to see if anyone had followed but the ramp behind was clear.
Lock checked the sat-nav app on his cell phone. ‘Okay, right at the bottom,’ he said to Ty.
Ty didn’t signal this time either, and again waited until the last possible moment before making the turn, swinging out wide and almost clipping a green and white taxi cab travelling in the opposite direction. The road opened up into a wide boulevard, with a concrete median running down the middle.
‘Over here,’ said Lock, and they pulled into a second-hand-car dealership with an auto-repair body shop on one side, presumably operated by the same owner, and a dentist on the other. The body repair and the dealership were two halves of the same business. The place was a yonque, or chop shop. They were known as bone-yards, or huesarios, in the interior of the country.
Ty pulled the car through a set of gates into a small yard shielded by panels of corrugated iron. A dog sat scratching itself next to a dark blue Dodge Durango with the deep tint on the windows that seemed standard here, rather than a factory option. The dog rose slowly, took a piss against one of the tyres and ambled away as Lock went to greet the owner, a portly man wearing a flowery shirt that was two sizes too small, and a fedora.
Lock pointed to the Durango. ‘Cuánto cuesta?’ he said to the dealer. How much?
The man took off his fedora and stared at Lock with a bemused smile. The Durango had probably been an insurance write-off, bought at an auction in Texas, repaired in the chop shop, the plates changed to Mexican ones and put up for sale. The car Lock was driving was a white Ford Ranger, worth perhaps ten times what the Durango would fetch. That was the exact reason they couldn’t ride around in it. At best they would stand out a mile. At worst they were risking a car jacking, which would be messy. Lock knew that in order to move around they had to do their best to blend in, which, given their colouring, was hardly going to be easy.
The dealer shrugged and walked over to the Durango, no doubt extolling its virtues and leaving behind Lock’s scant grasp of Spanish as he did so. Finally, eager to keep the exchange as short as possible, Lock dug into his pocket and pulled out a thousand dollars in cash. ‘You give me the keys now, I give you the cash, and we leave,’ he said in English, gesturing to the gate.
The man disappeared inside his little wooden shack of an office and reappeared a moment later with a set of car keys. Lock took them and tossed them to Ty. ‘Take it for a spin round the block. I’ll wait here.’
Less than five minutes later, Ty was back. He climbed out of the driver’s seat. ‘It’s a bucket, but it’ll do.’
Lock handed the money to the man, who stuck it quickly inside the lining of his hat, still not quite believing his good luck. Ty took the Durango, and Lock the Ford Ranger, and they drove in convoy out through the gates and on to the road. A half-mile further on, Ty pulled into the multi-storey parking lot of a small shopping mall. They both took a ticket at the barrier, drove past the armed private security guard at the entrance and up on to the roof.
While the lower levels had been crowded, the roof was quiet. Lock scoped the area for cameras but there were none. In a city where violence was explicit and wanton, and where your identity decided whether you would be arrested or face the courts, closed-circuit security systems were hardly a deterrent.
With the Ranger and the Durango next to each other, they moved their gear into the Durango. They pulled two more black canvas bags from the back of the Ranger and placed them in the rear compartment of the Durango. They
drove back down a few levels. Lock parked the Ranger, got into the Durango next to Ty and they left the parking lot.
Driving through the middle of Santa Maria, the Durango’s down-at-heel exterior, with the blacked-out windows, allowed them to blend in with the rest of the traffic. The stares that the Ranger had drawn from passers-by and fellow motorists fell away. They could watch their surroundings as others did, no longer outsiders, as long as they stayed in the car.
Ahead, on a street corner, a small crowd had gathered. Ty slowed the Durango a little. Outside a convenience store a middle-aged woman was hunched over the body of a young man, blood still fresh on his shirt.
What struck Lock was the expressions of the people who had come to watch. There was no shock or panic, only a dull, tired acceptance. It was the same reaction a minor fender-bender would elicit in LA – just something that happened. Only the woman was crying. It was a scene sadly familiar to him. The only difference between here and the other cities he had seen it played out in was that those had been officially declared war-zones.
He cracked the window just enough to hear her wails as she cried for her dead son. The scene slid past them and the sound of the woman’s pain faded.
Twenty-nine
IT WAS THE cold that woke her. That, and a sensation of sticky dampness running down her legs. She listened but could hear nothing. Slowly, she became aware of her body and realized she wasn’t lying in a bed. Air was moving over her. Her mouth was so dry that her tongue seemed to be glued to the roof. She literally had to will her eyes open and when she did open them it was so dark that she wasn’t entirely sure if her eyelids had moved at all.
After a moment, her eyes began to adjust to the gloom. She couldn’t see behind her. The floor was bare concrete. The walls were a blank grey. She was lying on the floor. The ceiling was bare, apart from a single light-bulb, which hung from six inches of electrical cord at the far end of the room.
She started to get up but couldn’t. She twisted her head to one side. Her neck had a crick in it. She could see her hand. It had a rope around it, which was fastened to a metal ring buried in the concrete floor. She moved her neck to the other side. Her other hand was also tied down. She tried to lift her legs and felt rope around them too.
Panic flooded her. She struggled and thrashed but the ropes held firm. By sheer force of will she forced herself to stop. She had to think.
Her mind felt heavy, as if her brain had been wrapped in cotton wool.
Think.
Think about how you got here.
What do you last remember?
She remembered walking out of the resort hotel and finding the bar.
Charlie.
She had been speaking to him. He was cute. He had bought her a drink. A margarita. She had kissed him.
There had been stairs. She had stumbled. His hands had been all over her as he had helped her up the flight.
Other things were coming back to her now. Things she didn’t want to remember, didn’t want to think about. Maybe it was better not to think about how she had got here and focus on how she could get out.
What if she had been left here? What if someone had dumped her in this room and something had happened to them? She didn’t have water. She would die. The panic rose again and this time she couldn’t force it down.
She tried to shout but the noise that came out of her mouth was little more than a croak. She tried again. It was louder. She kept crying out, she didn’t know for how long.
After a while a key rattled in a lock. She tried to raise her head. She hadn’t seen a door but she heard one open. It must have been behind her.
A hand settled on the side of her face. She shuddered. It rubbed her cheek. A finger traced a line across her lips.
‘Please,’ she heard herself say. ‘Please don’t hurt me.’
She could feel the person crouching behind her. She could hear them breathing. They didn’t answer. They withdrew their hand and lifted her head, settling it on their knees.
The hand came back into view, this time holding a water bottle. It tilted the bottle so that she could drink. Some of the water trickled from the side of her mouth on to the floor. She was so thirsty that she chased it with her tongue. When she had finished it, the person lowered her back on to the floor.
‘Please, let me go,’ she said. ‘My parents have money. They’ll pay you.’
The person didn’t respond. She heard the door close and she was alone again.
Thirty
ARRIVING IN DIABLO, they found a hotel in the centre of town. It was part of a large American chain. There were lots of vacant rooms – no surprise, given the wave of violence engulfing some of the border towns and cities.
Ty checked them in using a fake ID, paid in cash, and then they drove straight to the bar to meet his contact. Lock was hoping he would be back for a second evening. He had already decided that if he saw Mendez in public he would take him there and then.
When they arrived, the parking lot behind the bar was already crowded. Ty found them a spot as close to the back door as he could manage and they got out of the Durango. Lock plucked the picture of Mendez from the sun visor as he got out.
They walked around to the front of the bar. Ty glanced up at the sign. ‘This is it.’
Lock squared his shoulders and, with Ty a pace behind him, pushed his way through the front door. The first thing he noticed was the smell of cigarette smoke. Presence of the abnormal if you had just come from California: smoking in public was worse than farting. He had tucked the picture of Mendez into his back pocket.
At the bar, he ordered two beers and checked out the crowd. It looked to be mostly locals but there were a few Americans.
Lock clinked glasses with Ty.
‘What should we drink to?’ Ty asked.
Over Ty’s shoulder, Lock noticed a white guy sitting alone, nursing a Boilermaker. He seemed to be tuning in to their conversation.
‘Let’s drink to a great vacation,’ Lock said, tipping the neck of his bottle against Ty’s. He half turned, so he was square to the bar. The barfly caught his eye. ‘You guys American?’ the man said.
‘How’d you guess?’ said Lock.
The guy gave a modest shrug. ‘Suppose I’m just good at reading people.’
‘You want a drink?’ Lock asked.
The guy smiled. ‘Sure.’
Ty nodded towards a table of tourists, mostly young and female. ‘I’m gonna go circulate, brother.’
Lock slid his beer down towards the guy and grabbed a stool. He’d already spotted something he could use: a battlefield cross tattoo on the guy’s right biceps. ‘My buddy over there was in the Corps.’
‘Good times, man,’ the American said, raising his glass. ‘Your health.’
‘And yours,’ Lock said, taking a gulp of beer. ‘Where did you serve?’
‘Here and there. Did my final tour in Iraq. First time round. Desert Storm.’
That was the phrase Lock had been waiting for, the phrase that told him they had found Ty’s contact. He lowered his voice but kept the tone conversational. Just two dumb-ass Americans shooting the bull on vacation. ‘So what you got?’
The American dug out a pack of cigarettes. He offered one to Lock, who declined. ‘He was in here last night.’
‘You’re sure it was him?’ Lock asked.
The American lit his smoke. ‘Yeah. Soon as I saw him I knew who he was. Kind of surprised to see him here, though.’
‘How’s that?’
‘You get tourists in here.’
‘He was with a girl?’
The American blew a smoke ring, which settled over the bar. ‘There’s a resort not too far from here, still gets some trade. She came in on her own. They were talking, he bought her a drink. She must have been pretty blitzed because he had to help her walk out.’
Lock’s heart almost stopped. ‘She couldn’t walk?’
The American shrugged. ‘Kids come down here, they can’t hold their liqu
or.’
The bartender was back, asking if they wanted more drinks. Lock waved him away. ‘He left with the girl?’
‘They went upstairs. I didn’t see either of them again for a while until this Mexican dude came to get him.’
‘A bodyguard?’ said Lock.
‘Looked like it. Here,’ he said, digging into his pocket and pulling out his cell phone. ‘I didn’t get a chance to snap your boy but I did get a picture of the muscle.’
The American pulled up a grainy picture on the tiny screen. The bartender was still hovering. ‘Great boat, ain’t she?’
Lock played along as he took the cell phone and studied the picture. It showed a man in profile as he walked out of the bar. He was dressed in shorts and a wife-beater shirt. Mexican. Heavyset, with hooded eyes and a boxer’s squashed nose.
‘So why you selling her?’ Lock asked.
The American shrugged. ‘Low on cash, you know how it is.’
Lock handed the cell phone back. ‘Hey, send me that picture so I can show my wife, okay, and we’ll work something out.’
‘Okay, will do. Listen, good meeting you.’
They shook hands, the American slid off the stool and walked out of the bar. A few seconds later the picture flashed up on Lock’s cell. The contact would be paid by wire transfer the next day as per their agreement.
Ty was still talking to the crowd of girls. Lock joined him. ‘Hate to break up the party, but we gotta go, brother.’
Ty slid his chair back from the table. ‘Catch you later, ladies.’ He shot them a backward glance. ‘I asked them about an American girl maybe going missing.’
‘And?’ Lock asked.
‘Hadn’t heard about anything like that.’