The Janes

by Louisa Luna

  * * *

  —

  The kid started talking. His left leg vibrated up and down, and he rubbed his hands on his dirty jeans. His Spanish was so fast and familiar and had traces of dialects Vega didn’t recognize offhand, so she had a little bit of a hard time following, but she knew she could get details later from Otero, who seemed to understand.

  “We weren’t always poor,” Rodrigo said. “Until a couple of years ago we had a little house with food and a washing machine that worked. Microwave.”

  He paused and then shook his head and swiped his hand through the air like a director calling “Cut” on a set.

  “We weren’t rich,” he said, clarifying. “We lived outside the city, where everyone is poor, but we had extra for a long time. I didn’t know what my father did for a job until I was thirteen. I thought he was a driver for a lawyer in the city. Then one day I’m looking around the back room where my father kept his papers, like his office, because it was my birthday soon and I wanted to see if they were hiding a skateboard.

  “In his room there’s a cooler I never saw before. I thought maybe there’s some beers in there I can share with my friends. So I opened it.”

  He paused again and bit both of his lips so that they disappeared. He moved around in his seat like he was suddenly cramped.

  “Go on,” said Vega.

  “It was full of hands,” he said, holding up his own and drawing a line along the wrist with the finger of the opposite hand. “Men’s hands that were cut off. They were mostly blue,” he added.

  “I didn’t tell anyone. When my father came home from work, I told him I had found the cooler. He wasn’t angry.” Rodrigo’s face softened at the memory. He continued: “He said his boss wasn’t a lawyer but a very important man, a man who could help us for a long time. He said we had to keep it a secret from the women, that I was a man now and had to protect them, too. He said all I had to do was never tell anyone, so I didn’t.”

  He looked away from them now, out the window and up at the parking lot floodlight, then kept talking.

  “Two years ago my father starts working more and more but there isn’t as much money coming in. Then my mother is killed. My father tells me it isn’t safe for me and Maricel anymore, that we should come to America and get jobs. He and my grandmother will stay behind.”

  Rodrigo stopped speaking. He returned his gaze to them.

  “The rest is like I told you. I promise you.”

  He didn’t seem desperate for them to believe him. He looked tired, and like he had nothing left to lose or gain by lying.

  “Can I ask you,” said Otero. “Do you know the name of the man your father works for?”

  “Only a nickname—Lalo.”

  Otero leaned back on his seat like he’d been pushed in the chest.

  “Who is it?” Vega said in English.

  “Eduardo Montalvo,” said Otero. “He’s the jefe of one of the top two cartels out of Mexico City.”

  “And Rodrigo’s father worked for him,” said Cap, putting it together from the Spanish he knew and Otero’s reaction.

  “Yep,” said Vega, quickly recalling the rest of Rodrigo’s story. She switched back to Spanish and asked him: “Did you know the other people in the car, in the trunk with you when you crossed the border? The other girls or the driver?”

  “I didn’t know the driver. Not even his name. We knew the girls,” said Rodrigo. “They were from families we knew.”

  “Do you remember their names?” asked Vega.

  “Dulce Díaz and Catalina Checado,” he said right away.

  “Checado,” Vega repeated. Then to Otero and Cap, “There was a girl in the house they called Chicago. She had a burn mark on her head from Rafa. I found her in one of the downstairs rooms with a john.”

  “To Davis’s ear,” said Otero, “Chicago would be an easy nickname for Checado.”

  “How old was Catalina Checado?” said Vega to Rodrigo.

  He shrugged, said sixteen or seventeen.

  “And Dulce Díaz?” Vega asked.

  “Twelve or thirteen.”

  Vega paused, reached for her phone, and searched for a picture.

  Otero continued: “Did the fathers of these girls work for Lalo, too?”

  Rodrigo answered immediately: “Yes, that’s how we knew them. Our families were all friends.”

  “The other families sent the other girls for the same reason, because there was no money?”

  “I think so,” said Rodrigo. “All the money had stopped coming.”

  Otero caught Vega’s eye at that; he seemed to be trying to tell her something. Vega nodded at him.

  “Is this Dulce Díaz?” Vega said, handing him her phone.

  It was the head shot of Jane 1, after the brain had been removed. It was clear the scalp was a separate piece; it appeared to balance on the frame of the face somewhat loosely.

  Rodrigo winced briefly, then thrust Vega’s phone back at her.

  “Yes,” he said, turning toward the window. “That’s her. I’ve known her since her first communion.”

  “So she, and Maricel and Catalina Checado—all three of them went with Coyote Ben when you got here?” Vega said.

  Rodrigo nodded and hit his forehead with his palm twice.

  “It doesn’t matter to me anymore,” he said, angry. “If I go back home, if I stay here. I don’t care if I wash dishes or clean the toilet. I did that one thing. I let her go. I let them all go.”

  He poked at his own chest and sighed irritably, then looked up to Vega and said, “Can you take me to my shitty house now, please? I have nothing left.”

  * * *

  —

  They dropped Rodrigo off at his house, and Otero did not wait for him to get inside before driving away. He also didn’t wait a full second after Rodrigo got out before he started talking.

  “If the money ran out for his family two years ago, that tracks with the time line of Lalo Montalvo’s cartel,” he began. “Perez started to edge them out about two years ago—that’s when we started to see more tunnels, but Montalvo couldn’t keep up. He’s still in business but hanging on by a string.”

  “So all the girls, or these three at least—all their fathers worked for Montalvo. So we think Mackey has something to do with the trafficking of these particular girls?” said Cap.

  “Who wants him to do that?” Otero posed.

  No one answered right away.

  Then Cap said, “Maybe it’s Montalvo.”

  Otero’s eyes batted back and forth as he thought about it.

  “He sends his employees’ daughters here to Mackey to protect them so he traps them as sex workers?” he said, disbelieving. “There’s a lot not fitting there.”

  “Lara might know. I’m thinking he’s the link between Mackey and the Salton house. Any idea where we can find him?” Vega asked Otero.

  “I heard he was released against the advice of medical personnel from the ER of UCSD Med earlier today,” said Otero. Then in defense, “They couldn’t make him stay, and we didn’t have a thing to hold him on.”

  “Recuperating at home?” said Cap hopefully.

  “Or headed to the airport. Let’s not waste time looking for him,” said Otero, tapping on his phone. “I’ll have someone survey his residence, try to confirm if he’s there.”

  “Meantime?” said Cap.

  “Let’s go back to the guys in the house,” said Vega, as she typed an email to the Bastard.

  “Davis,” said Cap.

  “Do you know where he is?” Vega asked Otero.

  “He was at Southland Gate, where you two were, but then he was moved to County General, near the station, so he can be charged and arraigned after he’s released.”

  “He may know who the real boss is, or have some ideas,” said Vega.


  “Unless all he knows is he works for Mackey and/or Lara,” said Otero, watching the traffic ahead.

  “Worth an ask,” said Vega.

  “I’d like to join you with Davis,” said Otero, stern and courteous.

  “I’m fine with that,” she said. “And we’re still not going to have any problem moving around?”

  “Not with me you won’t,” Otero said. “I don’t expect Mackey to be there.”

  “Has he contacted you since we came in?”

  “No,” said Otero. “I texted him that the situation was controlled. Far as he knows, I have you both.”

  Vega glanced at Cap in the side mirror. He was looking at his phone, the glow from the screen reflected on his face. She could see the circular burn mark on his temple.

  “The fat guy with the Glock who I clipped in the elbow and the knee?” she asked Otero. “Is he there, too?”

  “Yes, he’s conscious. I think the wounds were messy but fairly superficial,” said Otero. “The other one’s there, too, the really big guy. I can’t imagine he’s awake and coherent yet. You got him in both legs.”

  Cap finally met her eye in the mirror, and she saw it all right there. Gun-shyness, hesitation, fear, all ringing out in concentric circles from the trauma.

  “Good,” said Vega.

  Otero raised an eyebrow.

  “Cap can take the fat man if that’s okay with you,” she said to Otero, who nodded.

  It was after midnight now, the cars sporadic, the sky deep and dark. Vega spread out the fingers of her right hand and then made a fist, skin stretched tight over the knuckles so she could see every vein and bone in the passing freeway lights.

  * * *

  —

  Second hospital in one day.

  Cap felt his shoulders tense up around his neck as they entered the main lobby, Otero not needing to flash a badge as most people seemed to know who he was: the women at the front desk, security guards, and when they reached the fourth floor, the uniformed officers placed in the hallway and at the nurses’ station.

  Otero stepped away from them to speak to an officer guarding a room. Cap heard the hospital noises: the phones, the machinery, the low chatter of the nurses. He winced at the lights.

  “You okay?” said Vega.

  He nodded quickly.

  “You can take this guy, Fat Mitch?”

  “That’s his name?” said Cap.

  Vega made a face, eye roll plus lip contraction. Cap thought that if someone could shrug with her face, it would be what she was doing right then.

  “What about you and Davis?” he asked.

  Vega straightened out her features, and now her expression was calm and cold, reminded Cap of a time right after he’d first met her, when she’d caught a skip lowlife Cap had been looking for and shoved him in her trunk. She’d brought him to Cap as an offering and an example of exactly what she was capable of. That day on the street outside his house in Denville, he felt like he saw the first flash of who she really was and that was someone to avoid fucking with.

  “Hopefully they gave him a mouth guard or something,” she said, tapping her top row of teeth. “So he can talk.”

  “You guys will have a lot to catch up on,” said Cap. “So much has happened since you saw each other last.”

  Vega smirked at Cap’s joke, and he didn’t know if she actually thought it was funny or was just trying to make him feel good. He didn’t care much. At this moment, he knew he’d take a smirk from Alice Vega over a full-face all-teeth smile from almost anyone on or off the planet.

  * * *

  —

  Ben Davis had his eyes closed when Vega and Otero came into the room. He was in a gown, and his ankle was in a sling with a cast over his entire leg running up to his hip where Vega had hit him with the bolt cutters. He was wearing some kind of headgear on his face, a blue chin guard and a brace on his forehead connected by a thin metal rod, four thin wires running into the corners of his mouth. Other than the wires, his lips were sealed shut, a brown line of dried blood between them, the half of his face from the nose down mottled with purple and blue bruising.

  Otero advanced to one side of the bed and looked Davis up and down. Vega didn’t know him very well, so it was impossible to be sure, but it seemed to her he was impressed.

  “Mr. Davis,” Otero said quietly.

  Davis’s eyes opened immediately; he had not been asleep. He turned his head to Otero and flinched at the pain. He slowly returned his head to its previous centered position and then caught sight of Vega standing by the open door. He began to scoot his body upward onto the bed, like he was trying to get away from her, pushing with his arms off the mattress, and then screamed through his closed mouth.

  Vega waved and called, “Hey, bro.”

  Davis made another sound, his head coming off the pillow like he was trying to point at her with it. Tears budded from his eyes.

  “Relax, Mr. Davis. Ms. Vega can stay over by the door if it makes you more comfortable. Does it make you more comfortable?” said Otero.

  Davis looked back and forth between the two of them and nodded.

  “Okay. We met this morning, though you may not remember me,” said Otero, crossing his arms. “I’m Commander Otero of the SDPD, and we’d like to ask you a few preliminary questions, before you’re charged.”

  Davis shrugged and pointed to his mouth, glared at Otero like he was a dummy.

  “I see you have some unusual challenges, but I’ve done a lot of interrogations in my career,” he said as he glanced around the room. “I’ve learned to get creative.”

  Otero picked up a small whiteboard with a black marker attached on a cord from one of the bedside trays. On it was written “TOILET WATER FOOD.”

  “Here we go,” said Otero, taking a tissue from a box, also on the tray.

  He wiped the whiteboard clean and handed it to Davis.

  “Good thing your hands are okay,” joked Otero.

  Vega was genuinely beginning to grow fond of him.

  Davis wrote something quickly on the whiteboard and flipped it so Vega and Otero could see.

  “HER. OUT.”

  Otero shook his head and said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Davis, Ms. Vega and I are working together now, so I need her here, I’m afraid.”

  He didn’t give Davis a chance to write down an objection before launching into the first question.

  “Can you please write down the name or names of who was paying you to run the Salton house?”

  Davis nodded and scrawled something, flipped the whiteboard again.

  “1. FUCK. 2. OFF.”

  Otero smiled politely and turned to Vega.

  Vega kicked up the doorstop with her foot, and slowly the door closed, making a sound like air getting pumped into a bike tire. She walked toward the bed, taking her time.

  “Mr. Davis, I’ve known Ms. Vega only a short time,” said Otero. “I don’t mind telling you, it doesn’t appear she suffers fools.”

  Vega pulled up a wheeled stool and sat on it near the foot of the bed, right next to Davis’s leg in the cast, but a bit too far for him to grab her if he lunged forward.

  Vega reached her arm out toward his leg, and his eyes grew. Again he pushed up on the bed with his arms but didn’t have a lot of range of motion. Otero watched her intently, didn’t seem about to stop her but had a look in his eye like he might intervene at some point soon.

  She extended her index finger, tapped three times on Davis’s cast, like she was testing the quality. She pulled her arm back and said nothing, didn’t need to, enjoyed knowing that all that was between them, at most, was a little plaster.

  * * *

  —

  Cap stepped into the room and recognized the fat man from the waiting room at the Salton house. He had no shirt on, just white boxer
briefs and a thick tan bandage wrapped around his right elbow multiple times, his right leg propped up on pillows with another bandage around the knee, his left ankle chained to the bed rail by leg irons.

  “Who the fuck are you?” he said to Cap, his voice low and phlegmy.

  “Max Caplan,” said Cap. “I’m working with the police. You’re Mitch, right?”

  “That’s what white people call me, yeah,” he said. “You got any candy?”

  “No.”

  “I’m not answering any questions unless I get some chocolate or something with a little peanut butter in it. Even chips, okay? I’m hungry, and the food here is shit.”

  Cap approached the bed but didn’t sit.

  “I’ll see what we can do for you,” he said. “But I need to know you have information that’s a little useful first.”

  Mitch sighed and shifted his body to the right. He had a layer of sweat glossing his skin, his breasts resting on his stomach like sacks of rice.

  “And, Mitch—Fat Mitch, right?” said Cap, not waiting for confirmation of the nickname. “I hate to break it to you, but you don’t really have much of a choice here.”

  Mitch sneered and grabbed a washcloth from the tray attached to his bed, mopped his forehead.

  “You know a guy named Devin Lara?” said Cap.

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “Was he your boss?”

  Mitch shrugged, grabbed an empty plastic Jell-O cup from the tray next to him.

  “He gave us the money, made sure we had everything we need.”

  “So just to be clear,” said Cap. “Devin Lara paid Ben Davis to run the house in Salton, and Davis hired you.”

  Mitch laughed, swept his finger inside of the Jell-O cup.

  “Yeah, man, you want me to sign something, I’ll sign whatever you want,” he said, licking his finger.

  “Something funny?” said Cap.

  Mitch shrugged, tossed the Jell-O cup on the floor.

  “You think going to jail for homicide for the rest of your life will be funny, too?” said Cap.