Sugarman

by Vincent Vargas

  I had my next target.

  Chapter Thirty

  Some things that you see in life burn into your retinas, and as I drove back to El Paso for my shift at the agency, the kidnap victim being dragged by her hair was like a watermark across my vision. I tried to shake it. She wasn’t my problem. But I couldn’t help but think of what would happen to her. How she’d end up like Lucia. Maybe worse.

  There’s always worse.

  I joined Border Patrol because I had too much time to think, and it saved me again this day. The tunnel takedown was still the hot shit on everyone’s lips, but the daily grind hadn’t stopped because of it. There were still illegals to round up. Mules to stop. Patrols to carry out. Paperwork to fill in. I wasn’t the kind of guy who asked for days off, and I didn’t want to break patterns, so I clocked in and out like it was any other day, and I didn’t have blood on my hands, and plans for more to come.

  My last job of the day was to process a couple of illegals who’d been picked up in town. They were young guys, their chins on their chest now that they knew they were going home.

  “Please don’t send us back, sir.” One of them said to me in English. "It’s a war.”

  I shook my head, and answered in Spanish. “Your home is your home.”

  He almost looked pissed. Again he spoke in English. Someone in your family wasn’t born here. What about their home?”

  I’d heard it before, and didn’t reply. It’s not like I didn’t believe the kid had a point. As far as I knew from my dad, my grandpa had come to the States from Mexico during World War 2, when they needed immigrants to backfill the jobs left by men going off to fight. I didn’t have answers for this kid. Instead I told him “Good luck,” and left the building.

  How could I have known I walking into an ambush?

  Chapter Thirty-One

  She was waiting for me right outside the door, a cigarette in her hand and a tired smile on her face.

  “Anna-Maria.” She looked like she’d clocked some miles since I saw her full of jokes at the kid’s restaurant. “Hey.”

  “Hey.” She dropped her cigarette and ground it out beneath a hiking boot. “Can I buy you dinner?”

  I didn’t know what to say to that. I had plans, and they involved looking into how best to kill people. My stomach had its own ideas though, and opened my mouth for me. “Sure, I’d love to.”

  We chatted small talk and bullshit as we walked to a bar a little down the street. “Have you eaten here before?” She asked me.

  “All the time. Pulled pork burger’s really good.”

  She pulled a face. “I’m Vegan.”

  “In Texas?”

  “Yeah. Don’t turn me in.”

  “We’ll find you a pickle or something.” I joked, regretting it instantly as I realized the innuendo.

  “Don’t threaten me with a good time.” She laughed, and for a second she looked more like the woman I’d met the first time.

  “Long day, huh?”

  She took a seat at a table, and sighed. “Long fucking day. But then, they usually are.”

  I didn’t say anything. I sensed this needed to be a one way conversation.

  “I have a charity. I run a charity.”

  I let my silence ask her more.

  “We help illegals.” She paused here, waiting to see my reaction. There was none. “We give them water, food, all that kind of thing, and then we try and provide them with legal counsel. I say try, because, well, you know…”

  Because the border’s fucking overwhelmed, I thought, but instead I just nodded and said, “I know.”

  “There are good people in law enforcement.” Anna-Maria said in a way that implied there were plenty of bad ones too. “I feel like we need to be pulling together more than we are. Everything feels so hostile, Dom.” She said, looking more tired with every word. “When did we become these tribes and stop being people?”

  I had no answer for her, and I was glad when the server came over to take our orders. I wasn’t surprised that Anna-Maria went for a beer along with her vegetarian sides. I ordered my usual. I was here for fuel, nothing more.

  I kept quiet after that, and after a moment, Anna-Maria filled the space. “It just feels like it’s all point scoring, you know? Agencies feel like if they help us, they’re losing in some game, and… and honestly, I know the feeling, because I’ve had it myself. We haven’t bent on what we wanted sometimes, and I gotta ask myself, is it just because of pride? What are we doing here, Dom? These are people.”

  She said my name, but I could tell the words were for her.

  She needed to have this conversation out loud with herself, and I decided it was time to tell her as much.

  “You’re right.” She said. “Fuck it, Dom, it’s such a mess.”

  I expected she wanted more than my ear. “How do you think I can help?”

  Our beers arrived. “Cheers.” The glass bottles clinked, and she took half of hers down in the first pull. “You give a fuck, Dom. I can just tell. I don’t know how we can help each other yet, but would you be open to me bringing things to you? Maybe we could work on packaging ideas together in a way that would get the agencies and law enforcement more likely to want to work together with us. I’m not stupid, and I know that the barriers are going to be up when it’s coming from a vegan who’s never worn a uniform in her life.”

  She smiled at that dig at herself. I took another sip of my beer. “I’ll do what I can.” And I didn’t know if I was saying it because I wanted to end the conversation, because I did care, or because there was something in her blue eyes that was dangerous and magnetic. I couldn’t put my finger on what it was. She seemed so caring, and gentle, but I’ve been around enough sharks to recognize the look, and she had it. Fuck. Even with the shit storm raging, I wanted to know more about this woman.

  “So what are you doing tonight?” She asked me.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Anna-Maria’s eyes are promising me a lot. A lot of things that I want, but there’s something I want more.

  “I gotta go.”

  I see more surprise on her face than disappointment. She’s beautiful, and by the looks of it, driven. This isn’t the kind of thing that happens to her. “But I’ll call you.”

  She shakes her head. “I’ll call you.”

  That’s probably the end of that, then. She’s taken back control.

  I pull some money from my wallet, but she holds up her hand; “I asked you out, remember?”

  I don’t push it. Just thank her, and leave. I’ve never been the kind of guy that women fall over themselves to get, but there’s a certain kind of girl that I swear can smell damage, and it pulls them in. Some come to pick your bones clean, others to try and put you back together. Considering what she does with her life, I figure Anna-Maria’s the second kind, but like all of us she’s got an ego, and I probably just bruised hers. I doubt I’ll hear from her again. Maybe just to tell me that I missed out.

  I have twenty minutes to think about that as I drive across town to Sarah’s motel, and knock on the door. She opens it in her workout gear, her arms and shoulders jacked. Exercise is medicine, and she’s been drinking hers by the bottle.

  We hug, and say hello. I figure I’m going to have to push her into what she’s about to do, but I needn’t have worried. She walks over to the bed, and picks up a file of papers. “This is everything I could get.” She tells me. “Read it and burn it.”

  I take it with a nod. “I can do it here?” I tell her, knowing that this kind of thing ends careers, but she shakes her head.

  “You were Ethan’s brother.”

  I hold her look, then turn for the door. My hand’s on the doorknob when she speaks to my back. “I heard about the tunnel house.”

  I say nothing. Don’t move.

  She continues. Her voice is calm, like she’s talking about the weather. “No one knows who did it…”

  I turn and face her. Hold out the files. “You don’t need to give m
e these.” I tell her. She knows, and she deserves a chance to bail.

  She doesn’t take it. “I know. She says. “Just be careful, Dom. Be really careful.”

  I turn back for the door, and step out into the sunlight. I’d walked into that room to an FBI Agent, and left her as an accomplice to murder. It wasn’t just my ass on the line, now.

  I stop at the door to my truck, and look at what’s in my hands. It looks like a pile of papers, but to me, I’m seeing a rope to put around Lopez’s neck.

  Time to get to work.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  When I get home Diego is watching superhero movies. I ask him if he has everything he needs.

  He doesn’t.

  “Where are my mom and dad, Uncle Dominic? Are they coming back soon?”

  I scramble, and make up some bullshit about them having to visit a family member. “But you and me can have fun here, right?”

  “Sure.” And he smiles, but there’s a look in his eyes of a kid that misses his mom. Those guys were joined at the hip, and he’s hurting. How’s he going to handle that the rest of his life? There’s only so many superhero movies.

  “Are you okay in here while I do some work in the kitchen?” I leave him under the supervision of the TV screen and place the folder Sarah had given me on the kitchen table. It was thin, but I wasn’t looking for War and Peace, and I’d been specific in what I’d asked her to try and dig up; information on kidnap victims who had ties to family or loved ones in America. As a Ranger, we carried out relatively similar missions again and again with the same operating procedures, and I didn’t think that the kidnappers would be any different. They’d find a formula that worked, and stick to it. I told myself that I’d read through the case notes once, and then come back through and write down any commonalities, but I was only five victims in when something jumped out at me; the next of kin of three of the first five victims were active military or veterans. I made a note of that, then continued to work through. The victims were almost all women, and like Lucia, they had been killed even after ransoms had been paid. Some were missing presumed dead because the ransom calls had stopped. Others had been found on both sides of the border, horrifically mutilated. It was hard for me to keep a check on my anger and stay focussed, but by the end of my second read of the pile I looked at my notes, and saw that that twenty-two of the forty-eight victims had next of kin that had served, or were serving, with the US Military.

  I thought about that for a second. Nearly half of the kidnapped and murdered women found in and around El Paso over the last year had either fathers, husbands, or brothers who had fought for Uncle Sam.

  I sat back in my chair. Folded my arms. Closed my eyes. It didn’t take me long to come up with the answer; Texas was a military state. Over 10% of Uncle Sam’s children came from here, and a lot of those are from closer to the border where it’s harder to get low paying jobs that get taken up by migrant workers. As a kidnapper, you don’t want the people you ransom to talk, and it stood to reason that veterans would be able to handle the pressure better than most, and come up with the money.

  I closed the file and got to my feet, carrying it out to the empty burn barrel, the ashes long since scattered by me in the desert on my way out to the crime scene that morning. Now it was the turn of Sarah’s guilt to burn, but as I added each page to the flame, I couldn’t help but linger a look over the photo of each victim. I’ve seen a lot of death, and to some degree I think I’ve built my callouses, but the sight of a woman tortured turned my stomach. With each photo I saw, the memory of the victim I had seen getting dragged inside by her hair grew stronger. By the time that the last page was ash, my mind was made up.

  I wouldn’t let her die like the others.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  I had planned to wait. To plot. To plan. I wanted Lopez’s head, but I knew I couldn’t take him down in his place as easily as I had done with the tunnel house. It was in another fucking country, for one thing, but as much as I knew it was a bad idea, I knew that the thought of abandoning that girl to the same fate as Lucia was one that I couldn’t stomach.

  A loud voice in my head kept telling me I was booking myself a one way ticket to the dirt, and I couldn’t disagree. I left Diego in the truck as I went to Sarah’s motel for a second time that day, and told her about the boy who would one day have become her nephew.

  “He needs a place to stay.”

  She didn’t ask me where I was going. My eyes told her. I was never the life of a party, but before a mission there was a dark edge to my movement and tone. Emotion was stowed. My speech was clipped. There was an economy in my movement. It was like my body and mind were trying to save every last bit of energy in my cells for when I really needed it.

  Sarah came over to the truck with me and introduced herself to Diego. He lit up when he found out who she was. I’d never seen Sarah cry, but in that moment I thought that I was about to.

  “I’ll take him inside. See you tomorrow.” She didn’t wait or look for a reply. She was gone, and I needed to be, too.

  I drove my truck to where I’d left the Camry in town and switched cars. I hit the border as the sun was going down, splashes of violent red scattered across the horizon. For once I was glad of the unmoving traffic, and I drank in every second of the sunset.

  I didn’t expect that I’d ever see another.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Midnight. Mexico. I’m back on Lopez’s street. Parked, the opposite end in. No sight of cops drinking at the restaurant. There’s a couple of guys stood outside there, smoking, but they look more like architects than bangers. The police patrolled this area in the day, so I know they’ll be back in the dark, and I wait for them before I make my move. No bag of tools tonight. No night vision devices. I’ve bought a machete and a six inch kitchen knife from a hardware store. I could have run the risk of crossing the border with heat, but if I got pulled up then it’s all over. Lopez lives, and I can’t live with that. I’d rather risk my skin than the mission.

  I lift the machete from down by my side and hold it low across my lap. I’ve used one to clear bush in the jungle, but never a guy’s head. First time for everything, right? I used to have a squad leader who’d played Division One Football and he told me he used to visualize every play before every game. I’d picked up the habit in Iraq, but tonight the only thing I could visualize was that blade plowing down between Lopez’s eyes.

  I was too angry for this mission. Too involved. Too distracted. I didn’t know who I was going up against. I didn’t even know who I was trying to rescue, but that didn’t matter. It never had. I sure as fuck hadn’t been put on the planet to have a good time, so this must be it.

  I see lights coming. Sink back into my seat. A cop car rolls by. I smell weed, and then they’re gone.

  I take one last look at my machete, and then I pull the Sugarman mask over my head.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  The six foot wall is topped with broken glass set into the structure, but nothing more, and it’s easily taken out quietly by laying a thick pile of sacking across it. I still feel the glass pushing at me as I haul myself over, but nothing cuts.

  I expect dogs on the other side, and I don’t have a string of sausages in my pocket like the movies. If they come at me, I’ll have to deal with them with a blade, and I’m not happy about that - either for me, or the dog - but I have no other choice; Cesar Millan couldn’t make it along for this mission.

  I see no cameras, but that means nothing. My best warning of my ambush will be my ears, because bad guys tend to get shouty when they’re spooked; especially ones with a readily available supply of party drugs.

  I cross the yard quickly and find some shadow against a wall. Stop and listen. So far no atmospherics in the neighborhood have changed. My breathing’s a little more heavy from the wall, and in the distance I hear a gunshot, but that’s Juarez as usual in a city that averages four murders a day - I could almost smile at that. No matter what happens
in the next five minutes, no matter who dies, it’s just going to be another stat in a war without end.

  Satisfied that I haven't been seen - or that I’m about to walk into an ambush, and get a quick death at least - I move up to the nearest window. There are no bars on the outside, and I don’t expect to see any on the inside, either; this is a nice neighborhood, protected by cartel and police, and the rich don’t need to worry about ugly things on the windows when they have guys with guns in their employment.

  I try the window, but it’s locked from the inside. So are the next two that I try, and the others all have faint light behind the curtains. I move back to the first, furthest from them, and take a roll of tape from my jacket pocket, quickly applying it from side to side on the glass. Then I take out a spark plug, and as quietly as I can, I go to work on the corners of the pane using its hard ceramic end. The glass breaks, and held together with the tape, comes out in my hands. I place it down on the floor, and without giving myself a second chance to think about it, I enter the house with the machete in my hand.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  There doesn’t seem to be any sounds of panic as I move inside of the house. I’ve come into a utility room, but none of the machines are running. I can hear a couple of voices, maybe a TV, but no sounds of tears or torture. From the work that I saw on Lucia’s body, I figure that there must be a basement.

  I’m split in my decision. I want to get to the kidnapped girl, but the rescue could be short lived if I don’t deal with the people who took her. Bad guys sleep too, and it’s late, so some of them will be in their beds.