Do They Know I'm Running?

by David Corbett

  Using the envelope, he gestured to the door. “Shall we?”

  The techs had already scraped and sampled everything they wanted, there was no need to put on the booties. Lourdes was sitting in the kitchen, a chunky woman cop standing guard. Dunn collected the sergeant who’d done the original photo displays and Lattimore gave him the pictures of Happy and Godo, told him to work them into six-packs for a follow-up.

  They ambled into the kitchen and pulled up chairs across from Lourdes. Having cried herself out, her eyes were raw; her face, though, was a closed door. She sat there, hands clasped, waiting for the next bad thing to happen. Dunn smiled and did his magic-hand thing again as the sergeant arrived and placed the six-packs on the table.

  He said, “We’d like you to go through some more pictures, Lourdes,” pronouncing it Lurdz. “We’re not saying the men you haven’t been able to identify yet are in here or not. We’d just like you to look them through—no pressure, no problem one way or the other, we appreciate all you’ve done so far—look them through and see if any of the faces ring a bell, okay?”

  She swept an invisible strand of hair off her face. “My daughters—”

  “We’ve sent someone from CPS to watch over your daughters. They’re fine.”

  “I would like to talk to them.”

  Dunn’s smile slid a little downhill. “Let’s go through the pictures first, Lourdes. These men are at large. You want us to catch them, right?”

  She turned her attention to her task. On the third set she stopped, looked, blinked. “This one.” She pointed, bottom center. Happy. “He the one who talk to me. The leader, I think. We talk a lot. All night.”

  Dunn took a pen from his inside pocket, thumbed the plunger. “Take a good look, Lourdes. No rush. Be certain.”

  She shook her head. “It is him. I know. His eyes. The chin.” She docked her head a little. “Hair, yes, this is different. And he look older now, more thin …”

  That’s it, Lattimore thought, let her talk herself out of her own ID. “Lourdes—”

  She waved her hands, fending off doubt. “It is him. I sure.”

  Dunn pulled that set aside, jotted down the group and position numbers. She went on, picking through the photo sets. Reaching the one with Godo, she looked it over, paused, looked it over again, then moved on. So much for that theory, Lattimore thought. She was already scouring the next group when her face bunched up, she went back, looked at the last set again.

  “Him,” she said, pointing out Godo. “I not recognize him first time. He different now.” She circled her hand about her own face. “Picoteado. I see him out there, the farmhouse, with the others. He was the big one I tell you about. Quiet. He was quiet.”

  From behind, a uniform cleared his throat. “Agent Lattimore?” A finger drumbeat on the doorframe. “AUSA Pitcavage just signed in at the barricade. Said you should meet him outside?”

  LATTIMORE WAITED ON THE PORCH, WATCHING PITCAVAGE ADVANCE through the swirls of blue-and-red light. He had another attorney in tow, a corn-silk blonde in a smart gray suit, no overcoat, bucking the wind with a power stride, holding her hair out of her face with one hand, the other clutching her briefcase. Pitcavage came empty-handed, like a pasha. They climbed the driveway, the woman impressively sure-footed in her pumps. She had a Midwestern prettiness, everything in its place, dull as a prairie. Nice pair though, Lattimore thought, something even the suit couldn’t hide.

  Pitcavage gestured him off the porch for a private conclave, shooting the blonde a knowing glance that told her to stay put. Like a collie, she obeyed. Ambling toward the garage, hands in his pockets, he waited for Lattimore. Overhead, a turkey vulture sailed toward the strait.

  Pitcavage crossed his arms and made sure none of the local cops was within earshot. “Anything new on where Mr. Orantes might be?”

  Lattimore shook his head and tried to straighten up, assume full height, if only to reassert that crucial inch over the lawyer. “You mean from what I’ve found out here?”

  “I mean from what you’ve found out, period.”

  “His cell phone tracks to somewhere out in the wetlands, little north of here.”

  Pitcavage cocked an eyebrow. “We couldn’t be so lucky he’s lying right there beside it, could we.” It wasn’t a question.

  “I suppose we could get the locals to dredge around, look for a weighted body.” He found himself ambivalent on the merits of finding Happy dead.

  “Ask,” Pitcavage said, pulling a stick of gum from his pocket, peeling away the foil.

  “Sure.”

  “If he’s alive—and halfway smart—he’s in Mexico already, maybe El Salvador.” He balled up the foil wrapper, dropped it discreetly, chewing noisily. “He’s got connections down there, or am I wrong?”

  “Of a sort, yeah.”

  “You see him running somewhere else?”

  “No. El Salvador, because it’s familiar. Mexico, because it’s Mexico.”

  “He gets caught, tries to use his CI status to buy his way out? The lid comes off this thing and there won’t be any putting it back on.” Pitcavage crossed his arms, the unhappy prince. “We become the idiots who green-lighted a comical case with a bent snitch. That’s something I can live without. Which reminds me: You’ve shut the thing down. Or Orpilla has?”

  “Of course.”

  “But you’ve still got two of the relatives, the CI’s father, his cousin or something, wandering around Central America somewhere.”

  “Along with the interpreter, the Iraqi, Palestinian, whatever. Samir Khalid Sadiq.”

  Pitcavage winced. “Fuck me.”

  “They were in Guatemala last time we knew for certain. The cell phone we had a bead on went dead about a week ago.”

  “A week?”

  “Jon—”

  “And your CI had what to say about that?”

  “Said his cousin turned the phone off, save the battery. It’s not like they’re staying in Sheratons down there, 220 wall sockets everywhere they stop.”

  “And you believed him?”

  Lattimore felt a sagging weight, pulling him down, losing the crucial inch. “At that point, I had no reason not to.”

  “A week. Jesus.”

  “Not a whole week. Four days. Maybe five.”

  Pitcavage pinched the bridge of his nose. Posturing. “Give me your sense of the locals.”

  Toeing a clump of dead grass rooted in a crack in the driveway, Lattimore said, “I haven’t caught wind of any axes to grind, if that’s what you mean.”

  “They’re not going to ass-fuck us in the press?”

  There’s a picture, Lattimore thought. “Not yet.”

  “Until they can’t close the thing. Then they’ll start pointing fingers, say one of the two still at large was a federal informant. Oh how lovely that will be.”

  “Like I said, I’m not sensing any agendas.”

  “Make sure it stays that way. Let them know, as far as cooperation’s concerned, anything and everything’s on the table. It’s not going to be the usual one-way street. They want you to sharpen pencils, you do it. They want you to blow every drunk in the holding tank—”

  Another picture. “There any chance we can get a wiretap on the aunt’s phone? She may be the only point of contact between our CI and the three guys heading north for the border. That’s likely our best bet for getting a bead on everybody.”

  “Under Title III? Not a chance.” Pitcavage went to spit out his gum, caught himself; it was a crime scene, after all. He glanced down at the foil wrapper but didn’t pick it up. “Prove to me her phone’s being used to advance criminal activity, show me there’s no other way to advance the investigation, maybe. But not if we’re fishing. Locals might have better luck under state law, which returns us to the subject of making nice. Keep them happy. For your own sake if no one else’s.”

  He clapped Lattimore on the back with staged camaraderie, then turned and strode back toward the street, signaling the ample blonde in the prim
gray suit to come along. Lattimore wondered how long they’d been lovers.

  He went back in, saw Dunn wrapping up with Lourdes, gestured him into the living room. He worked up a good-buddy smile. “I know somebody you’re going to want to talk to.”

  TWO NIGHTS NOW, GODO STILL HADN’T COME HOME, NO CALL, NO MESSAGE on the machine. Lucha decided to remake his bed as though that might conjure him back. The sheet felt papery crisp beneath her hands as she spread it flat, tucked it tight, that bracing smell. For a moment at least she felt something like hope, even happiness, opening a window to let in some air. What a stench that boy could have, so much worse since he came back from the war. Not just the wounds. He didn’t take care of himself. She grabbed the trash basket and went around the room, collecting balled-up tissues, shredded bits of newspaper—he did this as he watched TV, like a hamster lining its cage—candy wrappers, beer cans. Next she gathered his dirty clothes into a pile, shrinking from the smell. Finding one particularly rank tennis shoe, she hunted for its mate, got down on her knees, checked beneath the bed. The shotgun and pistol were gone. She checked the nightstand, rifling open the drawer. That gun wasn’t there, either, nor the pills.

  Don’t get worked up over nothing, she told herself, sitting on the bed. He’d talked the past few weeks about going out with a group of friends, target practice, the shooting range, showing them a proper respect for their weapons. He said it helped him get over his nerves, so noises didn’t make him jump quite so much. And he had, she thought, seemed more relaxed, more focused, stronger. Then, like that—poof, gone, no word. It was like him in some sense, so thoughtless, so unpredictable. And yet she couldn’t shake a bad feeling. Her dreams had been strange and violent but that had been true since they’d sent Faustino away and it had only grown worse after Roque went down to bring him back. She spent all day trying not to think of what might happen to them, only to have it float up without warning in her sleep.

  Then there was Happy. He came and went, sometimes the crack of dawn, sometimes the dead of night, careful to the point of paranoia. Still, his visits were a comfort. He’d changed, grown more respectful. More like his father. He too had vanished, not a glimpse of him for days.

  Her loneliness seemed heavier, harder to bear. She felt afraid.

  A moment later—was it longer?—the phone rang and she tripped over her own feet, banging into the doorway, running to answer it. Gripping the receiver with both hands, she shouted into the mouthpiece, “Sí. ¿Aló?”

  “Tía Lucha?”

  It was Roque. He sounded odd. Different.

  —Where are you?

  —Tía …

  —Tell me—where are you?

  —Somewhere in Mexico. Tía—

  —Are you all right?

  —Is Happy there?

  Why would he want to speak to Pablito?—I haven’t seen him for days. The same for your brother. Roque—

  —Godo’s not there?

  —No one is here. I am here. What’s wrong? Talk to me. For the sake of God and his angels, she thought, get a grip on yourself. The line went still for a moment, just the hiss of static.—Roque?

  —Tío Faustino …

  His voice trailed away. Lucha felt her stomach turn to stone. The taste of copper rose from her throat, her ulcer. As though she were suddenly standing somewhere else in the room, she heard herself say:—No.

  —Tío Faustino is dead, Tía. I’m sorry.

  She braced herself against the table. No …

  —There were bandits on the road, hired killers, somebody. I don’t know who it was. I don’t know why they attacked us. We buried Tío in a cemetery here, behind a church, the priest has been very kind. I’m so sorry, Tía. I wanted to bring him home for you. I wanted …

  The hand holding the receiver drifted downward as Lucha stared at the Día de los Muertos figurines on her display shelf, the skeletal mariachis, the unicyclist, the doctor and nurse with their patient in his bed. The truck driver. The bride and groom. Come November, she would have to choose which grave to decorate for the holiday, her sister’s close to home here or Faustino’s far away in Mexico.

  Setting the phone down gently, she glided back to her room, unaware of her own footfalls, and pulled open the closet doors. Faustino’s clothes hung there tidily, waiting for his return. One shirt in particular caught her eye, her favorite. It was long-sleeved and white with pearl buttons, gold piping across the shoulders and at the cuffs, a cowboy shirt, but the collar had a subtle touch of embroidery along the edge, very delicate and yet manly. Faustino, with all his simplicity, his rustic manners, his ample belly, had always looked so elegant in it, so handsome. He wore it sometimes when they went out to dinner and the waitresses always smiled at him. And I would get jealous, she reminded herself, and then we would argue. She lifted the sleeve to her cheek, closed her eyes, waited. What kind of monster are you, she thought, unable to muster a single tear for your marido?

  A knock came hard at the trailer door and it felt like a hand plunging into her chest. The shirtsleeve dropped, she was stumbling toward the sound, saw the phone hanging by its cord where she’d dropped it. A voice called out, “Police! Open up!”

  “NO OFFENSE, MIND YOU, BUT I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU HONESTLY thought you could pay some clown at one end of the pipeline and think he’d get you all the way home. Those days are over, folks. Have been for a while.”

  His name was Rick Bergen, the resourceful American eccentric the priest had collected. Floating somewhere in his middle years, he was suntanned, well fed but not pudgy with a full head of ash-blond hair. Laugh lines creased his eyes, a handclap of a smile.

  They were gathered around the dining-room table, Bergen and Lupe and Roque and Samir. Father Luis had gone off to bless a local fisherman’s lancha; Dolor was mending altar linens in the sacristy. The basket of chapulines sat at the center of the table, back for an encore. Everyone but Bergen ignored them, though his enthusiasm was almost infectious.

  “I relied on my cousin to arrange that side of things,” Roque managed to say. He still felt only half there, the other half still on the phone, waiting for Tía Lucha to come back on the line.

  “Your cousin misunderstood the playing field,” Bergen said.

  The man dressed, Roque thought, as though hoping to be invisible: simple sport shirt, tan linen slacks, no jewelry beyond a weatherproof watch. He could have vanished in any crowd of expats. When asked what it was he did, he’d replied simply that he “tried to help out here and there.” At one point he let slip that he was a pilot, or had been.

  Roque stared at the tiny basket of fried grasshoppers as though the things might come alive. “My cousin paid the same people to come across just a few months ago.” He heard his voice as though he were sitting in a different room. “It worked out okay then.”

  Bergen snagged a fistful of chapulines from the basket, tumbled them like dice in his palm, popped a few in his mouth. “Your cousin got lucky.”

  Across the table, Lupe had drifted off into her own world, unable to follow the English. When she glanced up, Roque ventured an absent smile. Pregnant, he thought as she timidly smiled back. I won’t punk out like my old man, end up nothing but a question.

  Samir slouched in his seat, one arm hooked across his chair back, eyeing Bergen like he was poisonous. “Okay. We are unlucky. Are you here to help or call us names?”

  Bergen chafed his hands to rid them of lingering bits of insect. “I’d say that depends. I need to know a little more about who I’m dealing with. You in particular.” His eyes shuttered with vaguely hostile mirth. “And don’t lie to me. I’ve spent some time in your part of the world, not just this one. I don’t fool easy.”

  Samir, thin-skinned as always, rose to the bait. “Let me tell you something, I have not lied to you. What have I had time to lie about? You have been blah-blah-de-blah ever since you walked in the door.”

  That seemed only to amuse Bergen further. “From what I hear, you proved yourself better than average wit
h a weapon out there the other night. You held off an ambush almost single-handed.”

  “Not true.” Samir nodded toward Roque. “I had help.”

  Bergen’s smile lamped down a notch. “You’ve got a military background. You’re an Iraqi Arab. You told that much to Father Luis. You either come clean with me or you can find your own fucking way to America.”

  Even Lupe, lost behind the language barrier, detected the change in temperature. She glanced back and forth between the two men, who were locking eyes, then turned to Roque for reassurance. He offered a shrug, still feeling strangely disembodied, as though floating over the table, watching himself.

  “I was in the war with Persia,” Samir said finally with a flutter of his hand, as though nothing could be more matter-of-fact.

  “Excuse me but I find that puzzling,” Bergen said. “Palestinians normally didn’t serve in the Iraqi military, even in the war with Iran.”

  “How do you know these things?”

  “Like I said, I’m no stranger to that part of the world. Besides which, I’m a pilot. You spend a lot of time hanging around airfields, waiting for people and things—or money—to show up. Plenty of time to catch up on your reading.”

  Samir leaned in toward the table. “A pilot for who—the airlines? The CIA? The cartels?”