Border Crossings

by Michael Lee Weems

  “It’s fine,” he told her. “You know I’m sorry about it. We can’t go back, though, right?” He kicked his boots under his bed. “Why are you calling me, Catherine?” It wasn’t an ugly question, just honest.

  “Matt, I’ve got some trouble.”

  “Uh, oh,” said Matt. “Wolf snatch another sheep off the ranch?” Several years ago, when one of the Americans working in Belize was kidnapped, Catherine had been called in to consult on the ransom negotiations and liability risks. The company that hired her also hired another company to assist . . . one with a more sinister name at the time. That’s how she met Matt. They’d been fortunate in that one. The oil company had kidnapping insurance, which paid the ransom, and the worker was released. A small transmitter was in with the money, and Matt led a team that tracked them down. They killed two in a brief firefight before the rest surrendered. Whether it was the dramatic circumstances of their meeting or a lingering, adolescent attraction towards bad boys, Catherine and Matt soon began an intense romance. Something happened later down the road that effectively ended their relationship, yet bound them together forever at the same time in a different sort of way.

  “Have you heard anything about the missing girl in Cancun?” Catherine asked him.

  “Yeah, I heard something about it. Don’t tell me you’re caught up in that mess.”

  “She was the daughter of a close friend of mine,” said Catherine.

  Matt put his Gatorade down. “Hell. I’m sorry to hear that, Catherine.”

  “I’m here in Cancun,” she told him, “but things are getting out of hand. Someone tried to kill me today. I was wondering if there was any way . . . “

  “Someone tried to kill you?” he asked, his tone low and ominous.

  “Yes. With a machine gun no less.” It was met with silence at first.

  “I’ll finish here tomorrow morning,” he said. “Do you want to meet tomorrow evening?”

  Catherine breathed a sigh of relief and chastised herself for ever having a doubt. “Yeah, that would be wonderful, Matt. I’m heading to Houston soon with Kelly Woodall’s family, but I’m looking after a boy here and can’t leave him alone.”

  “He’s not yours is he?” he asked, half joking. It was entirely possible after five years.

  “No. To be honest he was the real target today. He’s a witness and someone is doing their best to kill the poor kid.”

  Matt listened as she tried to explain what had happened. “You weren’t kidding,” he told her. “You are in a mess.”

  “Yeah,” she agreed, “believe, me, I know. “

  They made their arrangements to meet. Catherine was definitely relieved, but also a little frightened at what it would mean to see Matt again. “Thank you, Matt.”

  “I meant what I said,” he told her. “I’m always here.”

  “I know.” The intervening pause was sorely uncomfortable for her. “I’ll call.”

  The next morning Matt made a phone call of his own. He used his work connections and hired a sub-contractor he knew about who had a twin-engine private aircraft available.

  “Did you have a good trip?” asked the pilot.

  “I did.”

  “Cutting things a little short, huh? Headed for a vacation?” asked the pilot, reviewing the flight plan.

  “Something like that.” Next to him Matt placed two bags, one a backpack with two weeks’ of clothes, consisting primarily of camouflage. He’d have to buy some civilian clothes when he got there. The other was an army duffle bag filled with weapons that would have set off the alarms in customs like a fourth of July extravaganza. Luckily, he wasn’t going to have to go through customs. The sub-contractor who leased out the plane had a bonus package. It wasn’t cheap to upgrade, but Matt had it put on the company’s tab. They’d be pissed as hell when they got the bill, but he figured he’d earned them more than enough to cover it with all the hours he’d been putting in.

  The plane was headed for a private landing strip with a government clearance. He’d have to be careful, though. There weren’t any permits for the things he was carrying and once he drove off that strip he was on his own. He had an M-14 assault rifle, two 9mm’s, one Glock .380,the same model Catherine carried except his had a silencer, his thin boots, and a small black knife with no hilt, only a slender unibody that edged out on one end into a razor-sharp blade. It was the same knife he kept by his bed at nights . . . just in case. Someone tried to kill her, he thought to himself. And he took the knife from his bag and rubbed its edge. Does that bother you, Matt? A voice somewhere inside asked. Even after all these years? The answer was a resounding yes. Old feelings die hard, said another part of his conscience. And so will whoever tried to kill Catherine if I get my hands on them. He had a debt he owed Catherine James, but he knew his emotions weren’t simply stemming from that unpaid bill. His mind drifted back to the past for the rest of the trip, when things were better between them. He had no expectations of any possible re-kindling of romance. That boat had sailed. But the potential to repair something of what they once had, maybe even salvage some resemblance of a friendship, was enough to give him some hope that he might yet make things right between them.

  It had been two days since Yesenia’s encounter in the hot box. Like a nightmare, it played over and over again in her mind. The smell of the dog piss in the air, the crazy man screaming jubilantly as she did everything she could to fend him off, and of course the pain and humiliation of it all. Jose had come out and dragged her, naked, across the ground back to the Pepto-pink mobile home.

  “That’s what happens when you don’t do what you’re told,” he told Yesenia and the other girls as they helped her inside.

  Imelda was furious enough to rip Jose’s eyes out. She had gone to Arnulfo, banging on his door. “How can you just let this happen?” she demanded.

  “She brought it on herself,” Arnulfo told her. “Now go back to your room before Miss Lydia hears you. You don’t want any part of this, believe me.”

  It was the most disgusting, horrific trauma of Yesenia’s life. I’m disgusting, she thought. The things he’d done to her, the way he used her body as though she were nothing but his plaything.

  Half the next day, Yesenia slept late in a slumber of nightmares.

  “Are you okay?” asked Catalina. She had walked over to visit as Yesenia lay listless in her bed, her right eye swollen badly from the mechanic’s handling. “I know what he’s like. I’ve had to be with him a few times, and he’s always the same, never nice, always too rough. I don’t know why Miss Lydia lets him keep coming back. He’s on drugs, you know. That’s why he jumps around and yells all the time and why he’s so skinny. He’s skinny but strong. We’re all scared of him.”Yesenia rolled over. She didn’t feel like talking. “He choked me one time,” said Catalina, continuing on. “So hard I passed out. I thought he was trying to kill me. Really. Miss Lydia threatened not to let him come back after that, but he gave her a couple of hundred dollars and she let it go. I don’t know what kind of mechanic he is but he makes money, I guess.” Yesenia looked out the window, lost in her sadness. “She gave me fifty of it like that was supposed to make it all right. But it didn’t. It’s not right she lets some of them treat us like that.” Yesenia lay limp and un-answering. “He told me to choke him one time,” she told Yesenia, who now rolled over and looked at her. Catalina’s face lit up. She wanted to desperately to cheer her up. “It’s true. He kept saying ‘Come on, girl! See what you can do.’ So I did. I was scared at first. Scared he’d turn around and beat me up, but he didn’t. So I tried to choke him as hard as I could. His eyes started going all crazy and I quit ‘cause I thought he might die or something.” She rolled her eyes towards the back of her head and thrust her chin up, breathing heavily as though someone gasping, “He looked like this.”

  Catalina looked like a cartoon character and it was enough to make Yesenia let slip a smile.

  Then Catalina stopped her impression and laughed. “I don’t know wh
at would have happened if I didn’t stop. I think he might have let me keep going ‘til he passed out. There are all sorts of weird ones,” she told Yesenia. “One man pays Miss Lydia fifty dollars just to lick my feet.” She crinkled her nose. “Gross, huh? That’s all he does. I don’t even have to take off my clothes. He just licks my feet then whacks off. It’s pretty weird, but I’m not complaining. I’d rather just sit there and let him do that than the other.”

  “He licks your feet?” asked Silvia, who had just walked in and heard this last part. “What for?”

  “I don’t know,” said Catalina. “That’s all he ever wants to do, though. He loves it. It’s like watching a cat with a bowl of milk. Just lick, lick, lick, purring like crazy.”

  “Which one is that? Is he a regular?” asked Evelyn from the room next to them.

  “Yeah, it’s that skinny, pale guy who’s bald. He drives the minivan. The one with car seats,” she added.

  Then Evelyn walked across the hall and into their room. “That’s nothing. Tell them about Jose.”

  Catalina stifled her laugh and shook her head no.

  “Go on,” said Evelyn.

  “If he finds out . . . “

  “Oh, he’s not going to find out,” she assured. “Tell them.” She smiled wide and her eyes laughed.

  Catalina looked as though she was frightened to speak of it, but she couldn’t help giggling at the thought. “Okay, but you have to swear never to talk about it. If he hears us laughing at him, we’ll all be in big, big trouble.”

  “Tell us,” said Silvia mischievously. But Yesenia wasn’t sure she wanted to know. She had already learned what big trouble could mean.

  “Well,” began Catalina. “Jose cries sometimes when he does it.”

  “What!?” cried Silvia, laughing in enjoyment that Jose wasn’t the big, bad, boogie man he liked them all to think he was.

  “It’s true,” confirmed Evelyn. “Cries just like a baby while he tells you how much he hates you.” She jumped on Catalina, pushing her back against Yesenia on the bed and then laid upon her, squinting her eyes together, imitating Jose pumping away while bawling his eyes out, “Boo, hoo, hooo. I hate you. Booo hoo hoo. I hate you, whaaaaaaaa.”

  “Oh, quit, Evy, quit,” Catalina cried through laughs. All the girls were laughing, now.

  “He tells you he hates you? Why does he cry?” asked Silvia.

  “Cause he’s a freak!” laughed Evelyn, getting up and leaving Catalina looking disheveled. “That’s why you have to stay away from him. He can be a real mean drunk anyway, but when he starts doing that he just cries and yells at you. Boo, hoo, hoo, boooooo, hoooo, hoooo,” she mocked, her voice rising higher and her physical imitation more dramatic.

  They all laughed and even Yesenia couldn’t help her smile. She rather liked the idea of Jose bawling his eyes out.

  “Don’t ever say anything to him about it, though,” warned Evelyn, her laugh quickly fading. “Imelda got in an argument with him once and called him a cry baby. He nearly broke her jaw because he hit her so hard. So for God’s sake, never let him hear you talking about it.”

  Silvia stopped laughing. “I wonder what’s wrong with him.”

  “It’s probably because of Miss Lydia,” Evelyn said. “She’s always pushing Jose around. She’s really messed her little boy up.”

  “I hope he doesn’t do that with me,” said Silvia.

  “If he does, just lie there. Whatever you do, don’t laugh,” said Catalina.

  “Oh, I’d never do that.”

  “Yeah, well, we all say there are things we’d never do, and then we end up doing them. That’s just what happens after you’re here a while,” said Evelyn. “Just make sure that’s not one of the things you end up doing because he’ll go crazy.”

  “I think all men are crazy,” said Silvia.

  “Not all,” said Yesenia quietly. “My Papa was a good man.”

  The other girls continued talking and laughing in the saddest of ways about some of the stranger men they’ve met like gossip at a slumber party, but in the back of Yesenia’s mind she was thinking to herself, I have to get away from here . . .have to.

  The knock at the door came around four in the afternoon. Catherine and Julio had spent the day talking and getting to know each other more, watching a few movies and ordering food. He was still running a fever, but it was coming down. Except for calling Jim, Catherine had talked to no one and they’d gone nowhere. She had wanted to be as far off the grid as possible for the moment.

  She checked the peephole to make sure it was Matt and her heart raced a bit faster as she saw his squared and stubbly jaw and dark brown eyes under the mop of his dark brown hair. She opened the door with an awkward smile. “Hey,” she said.

  Matt stood in the doorway looking at her. She was still striking with her black hair and blue eyes, though for the first time since he could remember her porcelain features seemed to be wearing. Perhaps it was age catching up, perhaps just the stress. She was still a knockout, though, and he surmised she probably always would be. “Hey,” he said back.

  Relief swept over Catherine. She instantly felt like she’d just been thrown a life preserver while floundering in the sea. She stepped up to his broad shoulders and put her arms around his neck. “Thanks for coming,” she said. “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it. I didn’t know if you would.”

  “Of course,” he said surprised, dropping his bag and putting his arms around her. “You know you can count on me.”

  She felt her shoulders and ribs warm up as though the blood in her suddenly flowed freer, like she’d been freezing in a cold room and someone just turned on the heat. “Well,” she said, “Thanks just the same.” She stepped back and aside to let him in. And as he walked through he saw the little boy she’d told him about sitting on the bed watching them curiously. “This is Jose,” she told him. “He’s just about the bravest kid you’ve ever seen,” she said in Spanish with a smile.

  “So I hear,” Matt told the boy. “You’ve been having a hard time lately, I hear,” he told the boy, hoping it sounded sympathetic. He wasn’t used to kids.

  Julio nodded, “Yeah, I guess it could be worse. If I hadn’t met Ms. James, I think I’d already be dead.”

  The kid’s a straight talker, thought Matt. He appreciated that in anyone. He handed Catherine his bag with his clothes and asked, “Mind helping me put this in the closet?” She knew there must be a reason for the request as Matt could have put it in the closet himself quicker than asking her, but she took the bag anyway and they both leaned in the closet to put the bags down. As they did Matt unzipped the other bag a little so Catherine could see what was inside. They didn’t say anything but she nodded that she understood. Then Matt sat down in the chair Catherine had been sitting in just before he arrived and said, “So, what’s first?”

  The next day and a half consisted of the media circus going to the main event. Kelly’s parents were prisoners in their hotel room. If they so much as ruffled the drapes by the window, a hundred cameras outside zoomed in, prepared to catch even just a glimpse. The shear enormity of the story was mind-boggling, and everyone wanted some kind of scoop over the others. Reputable reporters had resorted to paparazzi antics in an effort to get the story. Everyone who went in and out of the hotel was surrounded and questioned about whether or not they were involved in the case, and if so, what information did they know. One Telemundo reporter went so far as to dress as a hotel employee and snuck up to the Woodall’s room. Security pulled him away as he pounded on the door, “A word! Just a word! What do you want the people to know about what’s happened to your daughter?”

  “Damn vultures,” said Amy Woodall, her arms crossed as she’d taken to doing so often. She peered out of the window through a slit no bigger than a dime, then turned and spoke to Fuentes, who had come to visit. “I don’t want my daughter to be cut up,” she told him. “If an autopsy has to be done, it can be done back in Texas.”