Some Rise by Sin

by Philip Caputo

  She picked up on the “also” and nodded, explaining that she was a different kind of doctor.

  He turned and, with the boy, hurried back to the pickup.

  “Cornelia, what is it? What’s going on?” Lisette asked.

  There were two other men in the truck, one wounded in the shoulder, the curandera answered. He had been shot with a gun. The Tarahumara didn’t say who they were, but thought they must be narcos. He and the boy had found them on the road, one man walking, the injured one riding a donkey.

  “They have brought him to me.” Cornelia’s face furrowed with worry—no, Lisette realized, with fright. “Señora Lisette, I think it’s him. It must be him.”

  The news about the raid and Salazar’s escape had reached San Tomás within hours after it happened, by bush telegraph if by no other means. Lisette’s heart rate spiked instantly; she heard a low drumming in her inner ears.

  “I have never treated for a bullet wound,” Cornelia declared.

  Lisette swallowed and said, “Let’s see what we can do … together,” deciding not to reveal that she, too, had never treated a gunshot injury. Dear God. A few minutes ago, she’d been learning folk medicine; now she was to be an emergency-room physician, her patient a desperado, the most wanted man in Mexico. Another tutorial in the University of the Sierra Madre: everything can change in a moment.

  The vaquero, his son, and a tall man with a beer-keg torso walked the wounded man to the house. They almost had to drag him, his legs flip-flopping like those of someone afflicted with a neurological disease. One arm hung limp at his side, the shirtsleeve rust-colored and crusty with dried blood; the other was draped over the back of his companion’s neck, which looked as thick as a thigh. The injured man winced, then groaned with pain and relief as he was eased down onto the picnic table’s bench, as gently as if he were made of crystal. Yes, it was Salazar. Lisette recognized him from photos in the newspapers and on TV.

  Her insides quivered as the big man, two stainless-steel pistols jammed in his belt, turned to her and Cornelia, his face teak-colored, his eyes shiny, black, reptilian. A bristly mustache shaped like an upside-down U completed the picture of a central-casting outlaw. He had to be the henchman mentioned in the news reports, but she could not recall his name.

  “Which of you is the doctor?” he asked, in a mild voice that didn’t match his fearsome appearance.

  “We are both doctors,” Lisette replied.

  “The medical doctor,” he said.

  “I am.”

  “You must fix him.”

  “We’ll try,” she said. Cornelia looked petrified. “What happened?”

  “You can see what—he’s been shot. There was a disagreement.”

  “When?” she asked, observing that he and Salazar were dressed in expensive, western-cut silk shirts with mother-of-pearl buttons, fancy cowboy boots. Their clothes were filthy, the boots scuffed from their travels. “You’re dressed like you were at a fiesta.”

  “Sure. A fiesta. We’re mariachis, and someone didn’t like our music.”

  “You are a humorist,” Lisette said.

  “Do you understand me, Señora Médico?” His tone wasn’t mild now. “Stop asking questions and fix him.”

  She directed Cornelia to boil more water; then she and Anna went to her truck, her messy, mobile clinic. Bandages and gauze in this bag, scissors and digital thermometer in that bag, antibiotics and antiseptics in another. Anna spread the stuff on the table, on a clean cloth she’d managed to find.

  “How are you feeling?” Lisette asked her patient. “How bad is the pain?”

  “I have felt better,” he croaked. This was the terrifying boss of La Fraternidad? A slight, almost delicate build, sandy hair cut short, a three-day stubble dusting a light-complexioned, boyish face that still looked a little older than the one shown on the news. The deep lines bracketing his mouth and the cat’s whiskers flaring out from the corners of his eyes testified to a man in his forties.

  While Anna checked his blood pressure and temperature—the first was low, the other high, 39.7 Celsius—Lisette took the scissors to his shirtsleeve, cutting around the shoulder. He flinched and hissed when she peeled off the cloth. She sucked in a breath, recoiling from the smell. From the shoulder to within an inch of the elbow, his arm was swollen and had turned the color of burgundy; pus oozed from the red-rimmed entrance wound, a thumbnail-sized hole angling in just below the clavicle. There was no exit wound; the bullet was lodged somewhere in bone or muscle.

  “If I am permitted to ask a question,” she said, with a glance at Scary One, packing the pistols, “how long has his arm been like this?”

  “Shot three days ago. Like this since yesterday.” It was Salazar who replied.

  “Yesterday when?”

  “Afternoon.”

  Speaking slowly and haltingly in a flutelike voice, he said that he’d been wearing his armored vest but had been shot with a mata policías, a cop killer. His friend helpfully explained that a mata policías was a bullet that penetrated body armor.

  “You have been traveling for days on a donkey, with this bullet in you?” Lisette asked, incredulous.

  “Yes,” the wounded man answered. Light-headed, he swayed as he sat on the bench. “Es usted una americana? Your accent,” he added, now in English. “You must be … American doctor from San … from San Patricio.”

  Lisette nodded. That he knew who she was came as no surprise.

  “Me, too.… My mother … American. I was born in Arizona … in Douglas.”

  Feeling bolder, determined not to be intimidated, she made no pretense to a bedside manner. “Well, you’re going to die in Mexico if I don’t get you to my clinic and then to a hospital.”

  He showed no reaction.

  “Did you hear what I said? That bullet has to come out right away. My surgical instruments are at my clinic in San Patricio, and then we’ll have to get you to a hospital. That’s gangrene in your arm. Gas gangrene. It will kill you within forty-eight hours.”

  He grimaced as a wave of pain rolled through him.

  “It will take two hours to get there,” she added. “Two at least. We need to leave now.”

  Salazar made a slight movement of his head, then addressed the other man by name—Enrique—and explained in Spanish what Lisette wanted to do and why and that he thought it was a bad idea. Enrique concurred. Too many cops in San Patricio, too many soldiers. Too many bloqueos and retenos between here and there.

  “We can hide him in the back of my truck,” she pleaded. “The police and soldiers always let me through the roadblocks and checkpoints. They know me. And I can sneak him into the clinic through the back door.”

  She had spoken without thinking. Her proposal drew a low gasp from Anna, one that needed no elaboration. What if they were caught, transporting the jefe of La Fraternidad?

  “Too much risk. You will fix him here,” Enrique said, in a way that foreclosed on further argument.

  She made one regardless, pointing out the obvious: without her instruments and anesthetic, she could not fix him. Here or anywhere.

  “This woman,” said Salazar, inclining his head toward Anna. “Who is she?”

  “My nurse.”

  “Send her for what you need.”

  Lisette informed him that Anna could not navigate the mountain roads, and even if she could, five hours would pass before she returned. Maybe six, because it would be dark by then. With gas gangrene, every hour counted—

  “We can drive her. We know the roads.”

  This from the Tarahumara, who had been hanging back in a corner with the boy.

  The two men approved. “May God repay you,” said Salazar. “I pray … Santa Muerte to grant you … safe trip.”

  “And a quiet one,” Enrique added. “You will not say nothing to nobody,” he ordered, staring coldly at Anna.

  “I am not going to allow my nurse to be on that road at night,” Lisette argued. “I’ll go.”

  “You ar
e staying right here with him,” said Enrique. “Claro?”

  A look passed over Anna’s small, nutmeg-colored face, a pleading look that begged Lisette to stop objecting.

  “Claro,” she said, and handed her keys to the Tarahumara. Her truck, beat up as it was, looked to be in better shape than his; and with the clinic’s name on the door panels, there was less likelihood of his being stopped and questioned at a checkpoint. She drew up a list in her notebook—scalpel, probe, forceps, more gauze and bandages—then tore off the page and handed it to her nurse.

  “And don’t forget syringes and antibiotic, flucloxacillin,” she said, walking to the truck with Anna. “Lidocaine for a local. Don’t forget that.”

  Anna nodded, licking her lips.

  “It will be all right,” Lisette said.

  “I pray it will. It is him, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.” Lisette looked back toward the house. “And, Anna, please do as he says. Don’t say anything. I’m kind of a hostage here.”

  * * *

  What a shame that she was no longer in touch with her family. This story would perk up a boring Sunday in Watauga County. Dear Folks, I had a full day the other day, she thought, composing an imaginary e-mail. I took a bullet out of the shoulder of a drug lord, Mexico’s most wanted man, and saved his arm from amputation, maybe his life.

  A bit ahead of herself; she’d done nothing of the kind, as yet. Two hours, give or take, had passed since Anna had gone. Assuming no breakdowns or other problems, she would be arriving in San Patricio right about now. Cornelia had administered a dose of jaramatraca water to Salazar and rubbed his arm with the jojoba salve. Her folk-medicine wonder drugs. Lisette, after putting on latex surgical gloves, had squeezed pus from his wound, causing him to yelp like an injured dog, then cleansed and dressed it with hydrogen peroxide and a gauze compress. She’d cut his shirt into strips and fashioned a temporary sling, bending his arm across his chest (another yelp) and knotting the sling behind his skinny neck. Aspirin to reduce his fever, an oral antibiotic to fight the infection, and she’d done all she could for the time being. Now, covered by a serape against the chill of the mountain twilight, he lay on the picnic table, which would have to serve as an operating table.

  If he was an American, how and why had he become el jefe of one of Mexico’s most dreaded drug cartels? Lisette knew better than to ask. Enrique had ordered the curious villagers to go to their homes, which they had done. The smoke of cooking fires twirled into the air. Cornelia began to prepare dinner, and Lisette helped out, to stay occupied and stop herself from thinking too much. She was patting tortillas on a board when Salazar asked if she had a smartphone, one with a camera. She replied that she did.

  “Give it to my friend, please.”

  Despite the civil “please,” it was a command. With the aspirin and the antibiotic and, possibly, Cornelia’s remedies, he’d recovered a measure of his strength.

  Salazar sat up slowly, grimaced, and teetered, on the verge of falling sideways before Enrique grasped him under his good arm to keep him upright. “We are going to make a little video before it becomes dark,” he explained, as if this were the most normal thing in the world.

  She wiped dough from her hands and handed her phone to Enrique. Tapping the phone’s screen, he grumbled that it was stuck in photo mode.

  “Don’t tap it—swipe it to the left,” she said, and performed the action for him.

  “Okay, listos.” He pointed the phone at Salazar, who brushed his light brown hair with his right hand. This was beyond weird. Lisette imagined describing the scene to Nick, and her son pronouncing it “awesome.”

  “Good evening, brothers and sisters,” Salazar began, struggling to inject power into his voice. “This will be a brief message from the Butterfly. The enemies of La Fraternidad…” He halted to draw in a breath. “The Federal Police, the army, the autodefensas, those who remain loyal to the criminal Joaquín Carrasco … they will tell you that the Butterfly has been killed. Yes! That once again I am dead! More … lies. As you can see, I live … I live.… Thank you for watching.… Until next time.”

  The brief effort had cost him. He lay down again, with his head propped on a rolled-up blanket, his eyes shut. You’ll be lucky if you live through tomorrow, Lisette thought, and asked Enrique what they intended to do with the video. Post it, he answered. As soon as they were in a place with service.

  “Now I think you know who we are,” he said in that incongruously gentle voice.

  “No,” she answered, having acquired the habit that was second nature to Mexicans: pretend not to know what you know.

  “Yes, you do.”

  She gulped and nodded, remembering his full name now: Enrique Mora. He turned the phone off and pocketed it, meeting her request for its return with a look malevolent in its indifference.

  A truck pulled into the village. Lisette’s heart jumped, then fell when she saw that it wasn’t Anna but Cornelia’s husband—the cattle inspector—and their two sons. Lisette could not remember the husband’s name. He was a sturdily built, handsome man with the complexion of someone who spent little time indoors. Taking off his cowboy hat, he threw a surprised look at her and had begun to ask what had brought her to San Tomás when he noticed the two strangers, one leaning against a ramada post in the shadows, the other stretched out on his family’s dinner table.

  “Who are—” he started to say, then stopped himself, catching sight of Enrique’s pistols.

  “We are travelers who thank you for your hospitality,” Salazar said, his lilting voice faint, a febrile sheen on his face.

  Cornelia exchanged glances with her husband, and he understood that he was not to make further inquiries. He and the boys sat down on a floor mat. Cornelia hung two kerosene lanterns from a rafter, then served dinner: beans, shredded beef, tortillas. Salazar forced himself back into a sitting position. Enrique spoon-fed him with a kind of devoted tenderness, but Salazar could manage only a few bites. Seated on the floor with the family, Lisette didn’t do much better. Anxiety had coalesced into a hard little ball in her gut. Enrique devoured his meal like a starving animal. The boys threw looks of awed fascination at him and Salazar, until he said, “Eat your dinner, kids, and stop staring at us.” Trying to ignore the presence of his menacing guests, Cornelia’s husband said that he and his sons had found a dead calf in a barranca, the tracks of a big cat all around it. A puma, probably, but maybe el tigre. No one asked to hear more about this adventure. They ate in a tense quiet, as if in a nest of rattlesnakes that a noise or movement might provoke into striking.

  Lisette looked at her watch. A few minutes past seven. Anna should be on her way back. Cornelia offered to rub more jojoba oil into Salazar’s arm.

  “Put these on first,” Lisette directed, handing gloves to her. While Cornelia applied the oil, Lisette checked his temperature—it had risen to 40 degrees—and blood pressure, which had fallen to 100 over 65. Pressing the swollen, blackening flesh produced a crinkling sound, as if she were poking a potato chip bag. The gangrene was progressing, his bloodstream carrying the poison to other parts of his body. She fed him more aspirin.

  “You, you, you. Go into the house and stay there,” Mora commanded, waving a finger at Cornelia and her family. “You, Señora Médico, remain here.”

  Cornelia’s husband tightened his jaw; being ordered around under his own roof affronted his dignity. Masculine power, Lisette thought. Brute force, and right now the brute and the force were not with him. He meekly shepherded his wife and sons inside. Something furtive in their movements, in the shutting of the door, made her feel abandoned.

  Half an hour later, his temperature spiking, Salazar began to hallucinate, babbling about butterflies. Swallowtails. Monarchs. Painted ladies …

  “Don’t talk,” Lisette said. “Try to rest.”

  “Painted lady … very beautiful … orange and black,” he rasped. “God spoke to me through her.… Leave Texas.… Avenge your mother.… Ha! She did not like my butte
rflies.… If you collect them, you become one, a mariposa, a maricón, a faggot.… Leave Texas, save Mexico from the godless tyrants.… This came from God, in the voice of the Painted Lady—”

  He was using up what strength he had left with his raving. “Stop it!” Lisette cried out, thinking that once the gangrene reached his vital organs, God would not be speaking to him, nor he to God, through intermediaries. “You have got to rest!”

  Finally, exhausted, drugged on the painkillers, he let his chin drop to his chest, and he fell asleep. Enrique turned to her, one side of his face illuminated by the kerosene lamp, the other side in darkness, like a half-moon.

  “He knows and I know you are the doctor who was with that priest who ratted to the police.”

  “What? What do you mean?”

  “Search your memory, Señora Médico.”

  She did, and found there the poppy field, the heroin refinery. But hadn’t Tim assured her that the raid on them had been a coincidence? That is what she said to Enrique—how the raid, coming so soon after she and the priest had stumbled on the poppy field, had been a coincidence.

  “We do not think so.”

  No matter his temperate, mannerly tone, she sensed that he was keeping the lid on a vast reservoir of violence, and that the lid could blow at any second.

  “We also know you were not the finger, and in any case, it is in our code never to harm women,” he went on.

  It sickened her that she felt relieved and grateful.

  “It was the priest, but it is also in our code to warn someone who has fucked up not to fuck up again.” He paused and carefully composed a severe expression. “We sent him a warning. To be more careful who he speaks to, and what he says in his church. We are not sure he has taken heed…”