The gloom deepened as the trio hurried along the empty street. Their shift had ended earlier, but Emilia had been forced to delay their departure for an unplanned meeting with her supervisor. Exhaust and sewage wafted on the breeze along with the pungent smell from the nearby Rio Grande river basin, its brown seepage only a few hundred meters away separating them from the United States and its world of impossible luxury and boundless prosperity.
“Slow down, Rosa,” Emilia said. “This isn’t a race.”
Rosa, the tallest of the three, her long legs wrapped in skintight jeans, her makeup garish as a showgirl’s, slowed and twisted her head toward Emilia. “You may not have a life, but I do, and I have a date tonight, so I need time to get ready.”
Emilia rolled her eyes. “You have a date every night.”
The third girl laughed, her eyes dancing as they flitted to Emilia. “You would too if you weren’t so standoffish.”
“You mean selective, don’t you, Marisol?” Emilia replied. “Is it my fault I won’t hop in the backseat with every shop clerk or truck driver with a smooth line?”
“Don’t knock it,” Rosa said with a shrug.
The glow of a street cart illuminated a corner of the empty intersection as they approached, and Marisol’s nose twitched at the aroma drifting from it. “Just a small one,” she said, and Rosa nodded.
“Not for me,” Emilia said, eyeing the fresh churros hanging from a bar over the cart front. “My mom’s making dinner.”
“This is dinner for me,” Rosa countered, smoothing her blouse over her flat stomach.
“That and a dozen Tecate Lights,” Marisol said, and the girls laughed.
The vendor wrapped their selections in brown paper and exchanged them for a few pesos before returning to his newspaper, the evening rush over, his only hope now to pick up a few stragglers late to work on the night shift. The maquiladora section of the city was a buzz of activity when the crews changed, but deserted much of the rest of the time. With over three hundred plants turning out everything from printers to hair dryers, the area along the border was a magnet for those without options, but nobody lingered in the factory strip after dark – the crime in Juárez was infamous, and even if you minded your own business, robbery or worse was a constant threat.
Emilia checked her watch as her friends chewed on the fried confections, cinnamon dusting their hands as they ate. Her stomach growled and Rosa eyed her, one brow raised, hip cocked at a saucy angle. Emilia laughed at the vision, her friend’s provocative outfit completely out of place on the dusty street.
The wages Emilia made amounted to a little over a hundred dollars a week, paltry even by Mexican standards, but better than nothing. With no degree or vocational skills, young women in the border town were limited in how they could make a living, and those uninterested in prostitution or serving fast food were faced with grim choices in a labor market constantly swelled by a surge of unskilled Central American workers hoping to build nest eggs before sneaking across the river to the promised land beyond.
The girls finished their treats, wiped their hands on scraps of paper that served as napkins, and proceeded down the street toward a larger intersection with a dozen bus stops within a block of each other. Rosa’s cell phone chirped from her back pocket as they passed a narrow alley, where an emaciated dog with drooping teats from a fresh litter foraged for scraps near a pile of garbage.
“Hello?” Rosa answered, and then giggled at something the caller said. Emilia and Marisol exchanged a knowing look, and Emilia shook her head as they slowed so their friend could fake amusement at whatever her latest suitor was saying.
A pair of dim headlamps swung from behind them and bounced over the uneven pavement. Rosa chattered on her phone as the vehicle approached, but Marisol slipped her arm through Emilia’s, her expression troubled. Ciudad Juárez had long been synonymous with unexplained disappearances of young female factory workers, and even though the crime wave had abated, rumors still circulated about this girl or that who’d ended her shift, left for home, and was never seen again.
Emilia’s brow furrowed as the van drew near, and her mouth formed a silent O when it screeched to a stop beside them and the side door slid wide with a clatter. Two men wearing dark leather jackets and jeans leapt out and rushed the girls, who drew back in shock. Rosa screamed as the assailants waved handguns at them, and the nearest slapped the phone from her hand.
Marisol’s eyes widened when the second gunman stuck his pistol in her face and then shifted his aim to Emilia, who stood frozen, purse clutched to her chest. The man eyed her terrified expression, and then his gaze drifted to her yellow top and black pants and his mouth twisted in an ugly grin. He nodded to his partner, and they lunged forward and seized Emilia by the arms. She struggled and cried out as they manhandled her toward the van. Marisol ran after them, swinging her purse like a weapon, her stocky frame moving surprisingly fast. The bag caught one of the men in the back of the head, and he cursed and spun around. Marisol tried to kick him in the balls, but he saw the move coming and sidestepped it. A brutal blow from the pistol to the side of her head sent her sprawling to the ground. Her attacker stood, pistol leveled at Marisol curled in a ball on the sidewalk as his companion forced Emilia into the van.
“You’re lucky tonight,” he snarled, and then made for the door, where Emilia was staring from the interior with a look of horror on her face as the other gunman pressed his weapon against her temple.
The engine revved, and the second attacker jumped into the van. He pulled the door closed, and the vehicle tore off with a screech of rubber, leaving Rosa and Marisol to choke on a cloud of exhaust. Rosa squinted at the back of the van, trying to make out a license number, but there was no plate, only a pair of cracked taillights flickering above a dented bumper. Marisol struggled to her feet and screamed for help. Rosa moved to where her phone lay on the sidewalk and scooped it up, and then swore when she saw the shattered screen.
“Don’t just stand there,” Marisol cried. “We have to do something.”
Panicked tears coursed down Rosa’s face as she held up the broken cell for Marisol to see, and then she joined her in screaming for help, their voices echoing off the ribbon of pavement that stretched endlessly into the gloom.
Chapter 2
El Paso, Texas
A faded sign announcing Whispering Pines, Apartments 4 Rent rattled in the morning breeze before a dilapidated string of low-rent dwellings around a courtyard devoid of anything resembling conifers. A harried-looking young woman emerged from one of the apartments and rushed along the path to the front gate, a battered messenger bag in hand and a purse hanging from her shoulder, auburn hair pulled back in a loose ponytail as she scanned her cell phone screen through heavy black-framed glasses.
“Leah! Hold up. You got a minute?” a scratchy female voice called from the first unit’s open doorway.
Leah paused, her lips pursing in annoyance. “Not really, Aunt Connie. I’m late again.”
Aunt Connie stepped from the doorway, hair in curlers, her face weathered by decades of cigarettes and drugstore bourbon. “Didn’t see you come in last night.”
“I worked late,” Leah said, her tone reasonable.
“You might have called to let me know.”
Leah drew a measured breath. “I was really busy with a story.”
That drew a worried frown. “I was worried about you.”
“We’ve talked about this before. There’s no reason to be. The hours go with the job.”
Aunt Connie’s scowl deepened. “I don’t like not knowing where you are.”
“I appreciate that. But you really don’t have to worry about me.”
Leah’s aunt eyed her baggy cargo pants and hastily chosen top with a raised eyebrow. “I thought that maybe you had a date or something. That would be nice. But then when it got so late…”
Leah groaned inwardly. Not this again.
“Your concern’s appreciated, but–”
> “You’re still seeing that nice Bill boy, aren’t you?”
Leah bit back the sharp response that rose in her throat in favor of something more diplomatic. “No, as I explained before, we broke up when I moved to New York.” Leah had brought Bill, a co-worker she had been dating at the time, to a family event four years earlier, and he’d obviously made a lasting impression.
Aunt Connie nodded sadly. “Oh, that’s right. Well, it’s just a shame to see you…spending your life without a family.”
“You’re family, Aunt Connie. And I’m not lonely, really. But what I am is late this morning, so…”
“I know I’m the only family you have here, Leah, and that’s why I worry, girl. It’s just… I don’t want to get in your way, but I’d appreciate the courtesy of a phone call if you’re going to be out half the night. These days you can never be too careful.”
“I know, and as I’ve said before, I’m always careful. And I was at work. Inside. At my desk. Working.” Leah glanced to where her beater car was parked only a few yards away. Only a few of the units had a parking slot, and so she was one of the unlucky ones relegated to battle it out on the street. She did her best to avoid letting her impatience show. “We can talk about this later, but I really need to get moving if I’m still going to have a job at all.”
Before her aunt could respond again, Leah spun on her heel and made for the car. Ever since she’d returned to El Paso three months earlier, she’d been trying to get along with a relative she’d never known very well, and one who seemed compelled to mother Leah as if she were twelve. Leah accepted that she was exchanging some amount of companionship for a more-than-reasonable rent, but she wished she could go about her business without feeling she owed an explanation for her lifestyle, let alone her whereabouts.
Leah’s gray Chevrolet Malibu’s lock resisted her effort to open it, as it did every morning, and she forced herself to calm down and not take it personally. The clunker had been a budget purchase from a questionable used-car lot that extended credit at usurious rates and had been willing to accept a paltry down payment, so what could she expect? That it ran at all was a minor miracle, and she gently worked the key until the lock flipped open, reminding herself to be thankful for what she had.
The thought stopped her.
What she had was a cracker-box apartment, with noisy plumbing and pot residue on the ceilings, that was rock-throwing distance from the border, in a complex inhabited by meth heads and stragglers on their last legs. Her life was in shambles, her career all but at an end, and with no social life to speak of beyond a nosy relative she couldn’t connect with.
Leah tossed her bag and purse onto the passenger seat and slid behind the wheel, sniffing automatically as she did so. The car smelled vaguely like something had died inside after burrowing deep into one of the seats, and the faint odor was another reminder of her current reality versus the one she’d imagined for herself only a few years earlier.
She twisted the ignition and the car rumbled to a stuttering idle. Leah pulled the windshield wiper lever to clear the thin film of Texas dust off the glass so she could see more than hazy outlines. An anemic stream of water spurted forth, and the blades smeared the beige dust into a series of muddy streaks. She sighed as she put the transmission into drive and pulled from the curb, narrowly missing a migrant worker riding a bicycle the wrong way down the one-way street, who saluted her with a middle finger by way of thanks.
Leah stopped at a convenience store for a cup of coffee and stood impatiently in a line that was a microcosm of El Paso charm – a rail-thin man in his thirties with a Stetson, oversized belt buckle, and straight leg jeans who’d never been near a horse in his life; a pair of yard workers cradling jumbo bottles of full tilt Coke and speaking softly to each other in Spanish; a crone shuffling forward in sweat pants and a stained T-shirt to buy a pack of menthol cigarettes; a woman standing by the register with a meth twitch and furtive eyes.
How had Leah wound up back in a place she’d spent her entire life escaping? It was worse than any punishment she could have engineered. She’d aced her exams and won a scholarship to Columbia University, majored in journalism, and come back from New York to spend two years in El Paso plying her trade before her mentor at school had suggested her to the New York Herald as a promising recruit.
The day she’d gotten the call from the Herald had been the best of her life – the beginning of her ascent to a higher level in her chosen profession and her ticket out of El Paso. Her mother had passed away five years earlier, and her father had sold his hardware store shortly thereafter and moved to Argentina to live the good life at the base of the Andes, so there had been nothing to return to – not that she’d ever planned on doing so, after living in the Big Apple for three years, a rising star in a dream job that had exceeded her wildest aspirations.
Leah’s ruminations were cut short when the cowboy bumped her with his elbow as he reached for his wallet, and a sluice of coffee splashed from a slot in the lid and christened her shirt. She gasped at the burn, but he didn’t even notice, too busy buying a fistful of lottery tickets and a pack of Marlboros, unaware he’d just ruined her blouse.
A glance at a mirror mounted on a rack of cheap sunglasses confirmed that the stain would be noticeable, and she frowned at her reflection – hazel eyes artificially small behind thick glasses, a face that her mother had described as cute or pretty, but never beautiful, the cheeks a tad too round for her liking, as were her curves. Leah was always twenty pounds from what she considered her fighting weight, but could never bring herself to push for the final stretch, seeing little point, especially now that she was back living in Purgatory.
As the cowboy sauntered off like a B-movie extra, Leah shuffled forward with her coffee, resisting the urge to check her watch every thirty seconds. She tossed a fistful of coins on the counter, shifting foot to foot as the clerk counted them with agonizing slowness, and then bolted for the exit, the coil of anxiety in her stomach tightening with each passing moment.
The remainder of the drive to the squat two-story building that housed the offices of the El Paso Examiner was the typical morning stop-and-go misery. Other drivers were aggressive for no apparent reason, their tailgating a symptom of a pressure-cooker society. One particularly domineering SUV stuck to her bumper for the final stretch like she’d stolen the driver’s wallet, and she took perverse delight in keeping to the speed limit even though she was beyond late for work now.
She pulled into the Examiner lot to an angry roar of exhaust from the lifted truck and smiled as she found a spot near the building – no point in getting an ulcer over what was already done if the driver was willing to do it for them both.
Leah bustled past the receptionist and took the stairs two at a time while debating stopping at the restroom to do some damage control on the coffee stain – but decided to wait until she’d checked her messages – it had dried in the car’s air conditioning, so there was no hurry.
She was halfway to her desk in the corner of the newsroom when a woman’s voice called out from behind her with a tinkling laugh.
“Mason! Finally decided to grace us with your presence?”
Leah swallowed a knot and stopped, reminding herself to play nice, given that she badly needed the job.
“Good morning, Margaret,” she said, turning with a half-smile in place.
“Got stuck in traffic, I suppose?” her supervisor said as she made her way toward Leah. “I guess you haven’t quite figured out the timing from your new apartment, but…” Her voice trailed off as she stared expectantly at Leah, obviously waiting for an apology.
“Well, I was here until eleven last night,” Leah said innocently. “You wouldn’t know, of course, since you left at five.”
“Well, nobody asked you to stay till all hours. That’s always your choice if you don’t finish your work. But I have an assignment for you, and not being sure if you were coming in today, or when, I was scrambling to find a replacement.”
“An assignment?” Leah asked suspiciously. Assignments from her supervisor were rarely good and inevitably tedious and demeaning.
Margaret did a poor job of trying to hide her dislike for Leah, possibly borne from jealousy when Leah had landed the plum job in NY and left the paper. Now that she was back, Margaret seemed to enjoy subtly reminding Leah of the pecking order by delegating countless menial jobs to her and keeping her busy with stories Leah judged to be nonsense. Either that, or Margaret really did believe her constant exhortations to “find the extraordinary in the ordinary” – something Leah had a difficult time buying into.
That Leah had just broken the first installment in a story that had caused a local sensation and been picked up by the wire services didn’t alter Margaret’s treatment of her; if anything, it made the jealousy worse and Margaret more determined to teach Leah her place.
Margaret’s face broke into a brittle smile. “That’s right. A new strip mall at East 3rd, down by the border. They’re having a grand opening. We want a thousand words on it by the close of business today.”
“A mall opening. Are you serious?” Leah said, her voice flat. “How about I write it now and skip driving over there?”
Margaret’s smile hardened. “No, I want you to go down and talk to some of the shop owners. Get some local color to sprinkle through the piece. How excited they are, that sort of thing. I don’t know how things operate in New York, but here what sells papers is local color. Personal interest. People like to read about themselves and the places they go. You may feel it’s beneath you, but we know our market.”
Leah had two options: she could refuse and go to Ridley Talbert, the editor, to protest being handed an assignment that was a complete waste of her time; or comply, keeping the fragile peace with Margaret but flushing her day and the research she’d hoped to continue on the series she’d started with such a bang.
The Day After Never - Perdition (Book 6) Page 25