Lisette stowed her equipment in the pickup, stuffed water bottles and packets of Virazone into a backpack, and left with Riordan in the vaquero’s truck, banging and slamming for perhaps twenty minutes until they came to a ciénaga beyond a village called San Tomás. The vaquero, whose name was Esteban, off-loaded his burro, saddled it, and gallantly offered it to la señora. Lisette slung her backpack over the saddle horn and mounted, and they sloshed across the ciénaga, spoiling an egret’s careful stalk.
On the other side, they continued up a stock trail. Esteban trudged in front of the burro, Riordan behind, huffing in the thin air. Cool as it was, he worked up a sweat. Half an hour later, in a narrow, rock-sided defile, the burro raised its tail and dropped a load of green horse apples. Turning as he stepped aside, Riordan recoiled and almost yelped as his eyes met the motionless eyes of a human head set in a niche illuminated by guttering vigil candles. Coarse black hair matted the skull; a mustache bristled under a blunt nose. More than a head, it was a partial torso, the broad shoulders clad in white cloth. The cry that had started in his throat died there, with the realization that he was looking at a plaster bust of Jesús Malverde, the mythical bandit who had become a saint in the narcos’ pantheon. Coins, small wooden rosaries, and other offerings had been laid around the idol. Recognizing that it was nothing more than a sculpture did not completely dissolve Riordan’s terror; it lingered, like the terror of a nightmare after awakening. The object’s placement, there in that dim, constricted passage, seemed like a macabre warning. He walked on feeling an uneasy alertness.
The trail led down into a mosaic of meadows and trees. Through bare stalks that sprouted in one of the meadows, he saw fifty-five-gallon drums ranked against a tin shed partly concealed in a pine thicket. Smoke curled out of a stovepipe in its roof, and a breeze from its direction carried with the resinous scent of pine an alien, industrial stink that heightened his apprehension, though he couldn’t say why.
His ignorance was dispelled in a moment. Lisette reined in the burro and stood in the stirrups, looking toward the shed.
“Did you know that was here?” she said to Esteban, a hint of alarm in her voice.
“Sí, señora.”
“Lisette, is that what I think it is?” Riordan asked in English.
Turning to him, she nodded. “A poppy plantation, and that shed is a heroin refinery. That smell? Like ammonia? Poppy sap being boiled down into morphine.” She said to Esteban, “Why didn’t you tell us they were making heroin up here?”
“I did tell you. A lot of narcos. It is not a problem. They know me.”
“But they don’t know us.”
“I am well known here, señora,” Esteban repeated. “It is not a problem.”
But it was, despite his fame. Nor, it seemed, had his notoriety spread to the two men who roared up from below on an ATV, pistols in their waistbands.
“Who the hell are you? What the hell are you doing here?” the driver asked, making it clear that there could be no right answer to the second question.
Esteban, giving his name, explained that he was guiding these people, a doctor and a priest, to the Tarahumara village, where there were many sick children.
The driver said nothing. His sidekick said nothing. They stared with the concentration of the predators they were, then swung off the ATV. Riordan thought that the Brotherhood had hired them for their menacing looks alone. The driver wore a walrus mustache, his eyebrows formed a single black line, as if someone had scrawled a Magic Marker across his forehead, and the onyx eyes below them were as hard and shiny as buttons. The other man’s face was gaunt, a famished face, the skin stretched so thin that the outline of his skull was visible.
The driver braced Esteban against the ATV and patted him down. (Professionally, Riordan noticed; the guy had probably been a cop, and maybe still was, this being Mexico.) While Gaunt One kept an eye on Esteban, Mustache searched Lisette’s backpack, pulling out the cardboard packets of the antiviral drug.
“What is this?”
She told him: medication for the sick children.
Taking two or three quick steps toward the ATV, he tossed the backpack inside.
“What are you doing?” Lisette cried.
He ignored her and said, looking first at her, then at Riordan, “Oye, a doctor and priest. So you must be the North Americans from San Patricio. Señora Moreno and the priest they call Padre Tim.” He pronounced it “Teem.”
“Seems like they know who we are after all,” Riordan murmured to Lisette in English. He did not mention that he found this knowledge disturbing.
“What did you say to her?” Mustache demanded.
“We’re surprised you know us,” Riordan answered.
“Who gave you permission to come here?”
“No one,” Lisette said.
“So you do not have permission.”
“We were not aware that we needed permission,” said Riordan.
“You do. Now you are aware.”
“Who do we ask for this permission?”
“If you don’t know, find out. This is as far as you go. Turn around.”
Lisette protested: There were sick children in the village! Mustache replied that she was not to concern herself with the sick children; he would see to it that they got the medicine. She hopped off the burro and faced him.
“Are you a doctor? You don’t know what to do!” She jabbed a finger at the backpack, on the floor of the ATV. “Give that to me!”
Her temerity astonished Riordan but amused Mustache. At any rate, he smiled, though there was something in the smile that said it was temporary. A nation of sheep and wolves, Riordan thought. Now, confronted by two members of the ravening pack, he did not feel much like the shepherd. More like one of the sheep.
“Easy, Lisette,” he said, touching her shoulder, making sure he spoke in Spanish. “We’d better do what he says.”
Mustache commended his wisdom, and warned that he better not see them again without their permission slip. Looking at a cowed Esteban, he added: “That goes for you, too, Señor Vaquero.”
The trio headed back down the trail, Lisette leading the burro by the reins, muttering that she was fed up with these goddamned narcos with their guns and arrogance. Riordan didn’t speak; it had occurred to him that he wasn’t a helpless little lamb after all. He was an angry little lamb. He began counting silently each time his left foot hit the ground. One pace equaled about five feet. Six hundred paces equaled approximately one kilometer. He made note of the terrain and the trail’s general direction; with some turns north or south, it ran eastward from the ciénaga, which, he determined when they reached it, was about four kilometers from the refinery. The odometer and speedometer on Esteban’s truck were broken, but Riordan was able to estimate its average speed, and he timed the drive to Mesa Verde at precisely eighteen minutes. Call it twenty to make the math easier. Around seven kilometers, making eleven altogether.
These simple observations and calculations renewed his confidence. He felt rather good, in fact. If you know something, say something. Now he knew something.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
In the early morning, as he performed his ritual, turning himself under the stars so that they seemed to be slowly wheeling above him rather than he beneath them, Riordan heard a rhythmic throbbing in the distance. The pounding of rotor blades grew louder, and it was close to deafening as the helicopters flew directly over San Patricio. He could see their navigation lights but not how many there were, or if they were military, though he assumed they were—they had come in from the west, probably taking off from the air force base near Hermosillo. He further assumed that their destination was the heroin refinery; two days ago, right after he and Lisette had returned from the Sierra Madre, he had called Inspector Bonham on the burner phone, reported what they’d seen, and relayed the results of his time and distance calculations.
His assumptions were correct, but he didn’t know that until the next afternoon, when the Hermosi
llo newspapers were delivered. “ARMED FORCES DEAL THE BROTHERHOOD A BLOW,” read a front-page headline. The raid was the lead story on TV, with video clips showing troops torching the poppy fields and the refinery, stacking morphine and heroin bricks (an estimated value, said the reporter, of more than $3 million) alongside a cache of captured weapons, and several handcuffed narcos, none of whom Riordan recognized as he watched in the rectory parlor with Father Hugo and the Old Priest. He hoped the two thugs on the ATV were among them.
Only Bonham and Valencia knew of his role in the raid. During the phone call, after he’d presented his information, Bonham ordered him not to tell anyone they had spoken. Not now, not ever.
“How about your girlfriend? Did you mention that you were going to call me?”
“She’s not my girlfriend, and no, I didn’t say a thing to her.”
“And you’re not going to,” Bonham repeated, with a sternness that was a little frightening. “The fewer people who know, the better. It’s for your own good. The narcos know you two were up there. After we hit them, they might do some simple arithmetic and finger you or her or both of you. And don’t think for one second your Roman collar or your gringo passport will save you. I’ll bet you didn’t consider that, did you?”
Riordan was silent.
Bonham promised to “throw out some smoke” by telling the media that the crew of a military reconnaissance plane had located a heroin factory while on a routine patrol.
“You did a damn good job. Even Valencia was impressed,” he said. “Don’t worry—I take care of my assets.”
The praise did not warm Riordan particularly; nor did the assurance. Asset. Is that what I am? An asset? he wondered. Then another question: What have I gotten myself into?
He answered it on the day following the raid, when he ran into Lisette and she remarked, “What a coincidence, right where we’d been last Tuesday. It was a coincidence, wasn’t it Tim?” she asked. What troubled him more than his lie was the ease and sincerity with which he told it. He seemed to have a capacity for dissimulation he’d been unaware of. What if the Brotherhood didn’t buy the cover story and did the simple arithmetic? He was ready—at least he thought he was—to suffer the consequences, but he couldn’t live with himself if anything happened to her. That possibility chipped at his resolve to keep the truth from her. Someone had to strike back at the wolves. Why not him? Emotion without action is sentimentality, and words could be action. He’d known something, he’d said something. But in exiting one house of silence, he’d entered another—the one where informants dwelled. That’s what he’d gotten himself into.
* * *
At the hour when last light drew the Sierra’s ravines and ridges into sharp relief, he crossed the plaza and walked half a block down Avenida Juárez to the Hotel Alameda. Riordan dined there now and then to mingle socially with his parishioners—and to get away from the cloistered, hothouse atmosphere of the rectory. The Alameda dated back to the 1940s, when San Patricio began to be known as a destination for adventurous travelers on the Mission Trail. It would take a foolhardy tourist to visit San Patricio today. Not one of the hotel’s ten rooms had been occupied for the past decade. But the bar and restaurant, grandly called the “Salón Alameda,” were still in operation, catering to a local clientele. Riordan loved its Bogie-and-Bacall ambience: ceiling fans, white and black hexagonal floor tiles, a mahogany bar, faux-marble tables.
The place was depressingly empty this evening. The sole occupants, aside from a customer at the bar, were the bartender and a waiter wearing a starched white jacket. Riordan took a small table against a wall decorated with movie posters plugging Mexican and American films from a bygone time, the names of the actors and actresses no longer remembered, with the possible exceptions of a sultry Gina Lollobrigida swooning in Burt Lancaster’s arms.
The waiter, rather ceremoniously, said that the hotel was pleased to see Padre Tim in its dining room once again. Riordan couldn’t help it—the respect in the man’s voice sent a tickle of pride through him.
“I know you like to read these when you eat,” the waiter added, handing him copies of El Diario de Juárez and the Hermosillo paper, El Imparcial.
He ordered a Herradura on the rocks and, without looking at the menu, a bowl of menudo.
“Is that all? You look thinner than last time you were here.”
“I am trying to fast.”
“We have cabrilla tonight. Excellent cabrilla. Broiled.”
“I promised God I would fast.”
“This cabrilla is fresh, Padre Tim. It was shipped here today from Guaymas.”
“You are the voice of the devil. Well, I suppose I can return to fasting tomorrow.”
“Yes. Better to fast tomorrow, when the cabrilla will be stale and dry.”
The news of the day required a stiff drink, and Riordan waited until the tequila arrived to read the papers. El Diario carried a front-page story about an attack on a drug rehabilitation clinic in Juárez, which had recently acquired an unenviable distinction: it was the deadliest city in the world, including Baghdad. Gunmen wearing “police-style” uniforms had stormed the clinic while the director was holding a prayer meeting, killing him and nine patients, some of whom were believed to belong to a drug gang called the Artist Assassins. No one was willing to say whether the killers were policemen or gang rivals disguised as policemen. A photograph showed a shrine to the Virgin of Guadalupe chipped by bullets, the wall behind it spattered with blood.
The waiter brought the menudo, steaming in a blue bowl. Tripe soup seemed fitting for his reading fare. EVITA CONTRERAS HABLAR SOBRE NARCOMENSAJES, read a headline in El Imparcial. “Contreras Avoids Speaking About Narco Messages.” Octavio Contreras had been the losing candidate for mayor of Hermosillo in this year’s elections. The messages about which he refused comment had been printed on bedsheets hung in several places throughout the city. They accused him of being an atheist, a front man for Carrasco’s old Sonora Cartel, and a thief. They concluded ominously, if obscurely, Ahora llega nuestro turno, “Now comes our turn.” And they were signed, “La Fraternidad.”
No comment. No comment. Avoids speaking about … Riordan thought. The house of silence. The broiled fish arrived whole on a platter, its flame-whitened eyes staring through a crust of spices and bread crumbs. From out of nowhere, the melody to “The Sound of Silence” started to play in his memory. He separated the meat from the bones and began to eat. He could not get the tune out of his head—an earworm, burrowing a channel into his brain. He had finished only half his meal when he felt something moving through him, a kind of pressure as words flowed into the channel, a swift tide of words that burst the banks and flooded his mind. He asked the waiter for a pen and some paper place mats. The waiter frowned, quizzically.
“To write on,” Riordan explained.
The requested items were brought. He turned a mat over to its plain side and began to write. He made no attempt to organize his thoughts, jotting them down as they came to him. He scribbled in a rush, compulsively, feeling like an overwrought coffeehouse poet. But he stayed within his theme: it was time for everyone in the parish to abandon their houses of silence. In fragmented sentences, he tried to express his contempt for the narcos and their savagery—and his disapproval of those in the parish who had shut their eyes, their ears, their minds and mouths to the scourge that was all around them. He had only a vague idea, at first, of his purpose in writing; but when he’d filled two mats with his near-illegible scrawl, it came to him that he was composing a rough draft, a very rough draft, of Sunday’s homily. It would be like none he’d given before.
He wrote on, in a physical as well as a mental heat, breaking out in a sweat, until the waiter interrupted him.
“Pardon me, Padre. Jamie wishes to buy you a drink.”
“What? Who?”
The waiter gestured at the customer at the bar, who swung around on the stool to face him. It was Jamie García, the man who had left the message with Domingo a
sking to speak with Riordan. How long ago was it now? Two weeks at least, maybe three.
“Another Herradura. On the rocks.”
It was delivered shortly. He rolled the chilled glass across his forehead to cool the fever in his brain, then raised it in thanks to García.
“Padre Tim, can I join you for a moment?” the man called from across the room.
Riordan motioned to him, and he came over and sat down, looking as if he could crush the table with his bare hands. García was six feet tall, with an engine block of a torso and fingers as thick and brown as cigars.
“You don’t mind? I see that you’re busy.”
“I don’t mind at all. I should have called you days ago.”
García wanted to have a word with Riordan about his middle son, Danielo, who had been keeping odd hours, coming home at dawn, sleeping in till noon, driving off to who knew where in his brand-new truck. Danielo claimed to have a job at the copper mine, working a night shift, which may have accounted for those strange hours; but he was never dirty, and he could not possibly afford such a fine truck on a miner’s wages. Jamie was worried that his son was using drugs or, worse, had become involved with “those people.” (That was how nearly everyone referred to La Fraternidad, as if too fearful to utter its name.)
“Would you talk to him, Padre Tim? He’s only twenty-one. He’s young enough to straighten out if he’s doing something he should not be doing.”
“Have you spoken to him?”
“Sure. And not only once. But I can say nothing to him without making a big fight.”
Riordan felt for the man. He knew that García had been a fairly prosperous apple grower whose small orchard in the Santa Teresa valley produced enough fruit for sale as far away as Mexico City, with some left over for export. NAFTA ruined him, along with a million other small farmers in Mexico. American apples, more aesthetic than the Mexican variety, tumbled into the country by the trainload, while those grown in the country fell into the grasp of agribusiness giants. García couldn’t compete, sold out to one of the big firms for half of what his orchard was worth, and had been scraping by as a seasonal field hand ever since.
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