by Brad Taylor
“Can I help you?”
She smiled, trying to disarm him, unsure of how to proceed. “Yes, I’m looking for someone who stayed here a few days ago. His name is Jack Cahill, but I’m not sure what he called himself when he checked in. He’s Caucasian, about five ten with brown hair—”
He cut her off. “Are you the police?”
She pulled a picture out of her purse and said, “No, no. I—”
“Then I can’t give you any information. Would you like a room?”
“No. I don’t want a room. I just want to know if you’ve seen Jack Cahill.” She held out the photo and said, “This is what he looks like. He would have checked out two days ago.”
She saw a flash of recognition in his eyes, but he said, “Never seen him. He never came here.”
“Can you at least tell me if he checked in? Maybe he came when you weren’t on duty. Can you look? Please?”
He held her eyes for a moment, then went to an ancient computer and tapped a few keys. After a minute, still scrolling on the screen, he said, “Nobody by that name checked in or out.” He turned back to her and said, “That’s all I can do. No Jack Cahill came or went. Now, if you want a room, I’ve got plenty. If not, I don’t know what else to tell you.”
She said nothing, simply staring, and his eyes slid away. He fidgeted from one foot to the other. Seeing all she needed to, she put away the photo and said, “Thank you for your time.”
He waved a hand, then returned to the back room, closing the door. She exited and saw a maid pushing a cart along the sidewalk. Jennifer glanced back through the office window, seeing the counter still empty. She walked up to the maid and said, “Excuse me, I’ve locked myself out of my room. Room twelve. Can you let me in?”
The wizened old woman, barely scratching five feet in height, said, “No hablo inglés.”
Jennifer pulled two twenty-dollar bills out of her purse and said, “Habitación doce.”
The woman glanced back at the office, then snatched the money and scurried to room twelve, unlocking the door. She returned to her cart, eyes downcast, ignoring Jennifer.
Jennifer entered the room and found it made up, ready for a new guest. Her heart sank. Anything left by Jack would be long gone. She searched it anyway, going through the closet and bathroom. Growing frustrated, she knelt down and peered underneath the bed. And saw something metal, hidden in the shadow. She lay down and stretched her arm out, batting the object until she could reach it from the side. She pulled it out, recognizing the device as a battery-operated digital recorder.
She stared at it for a good five seconds, afraid to hit the “play” button. Afraid it would display a disgusting amateur sex video. Or worse, a snuff film of her brother. She worked up her courage, opened the lid, and turned it on. What played was neither raunchy nor ghastly. A Caucasian man talking about information sharing with someone off the screen. She let it continue, confused as to why her brother would have made the recording — if he did. The men weren’t discussing drugs or anything about the cartels. It wasn’t until the end, when a new man’s voice came on, begging for his life, that she was sure. Whatever had happened here, it hadn’t been innocent. The man’s pleas testified to that. The screen went blank, and she considered her options.
Pike had admonished her about going to Mexico alone — in fact, had forbidden it — but the phone trace was all she had left. She’d talked to the police, aggravated to receive the same answer as her mother. No amount of pleading did any good. The police would do nothing for forty-eight hours, until Jack was considered truly missing. Forty-eight hours she could not afford to let slip. She found the answer idiotic.
There’s a damn TV show called The First 48, done by murder investigators who know that if they don’t solve a crime in forty-eight hours, they never will.
And now, with the hotel a dead end, she’d have to wait forty-eight hours to even begin.
She’d researched Ciudad Juárez, and all indications were that current conditions belied its nickname of Murder City. Drug violence was a third of what it had been only a year ago, and investors were returning. Surely she could drive over there in the daytime. Pinpoint the location of the phone. Just for atmospherics. Something she could use when the police were engaged.
At least that’s what she told herself.
13
Carlos waited for Eduardo to turn back from the window, wishing he had more information to provide. As the plaza boss for the Sinaloa cartel in Juárez, Eduardo had a very low tolerance for failure. It wasn’t that he was overtly sadistic, looking for something or someone to lash out at. In fact, he was more intellectual than most. It was simply a function of the job. Failure implied weakness, and weakness bred insurrection. To prevent any moves on his position or his terrain, he would show strength. Carlos knew it didn’t matter if the reaction had any bearing on the failure. It was the show that was important. The perception that the boss hadn’t grown weak, but that instead the men below him had, and thus were dealt with.
Luckily, Carlos had shown his own strength on numerous occasions and had rarely failed. He couldn’t easily be replaced, and he knew it. He also knew that Eduardo wasn’t prone to outbursts of violence, unlike the crazies who had preceded him. Eduardo preferred to analyze before striking, but that only went so far, and Carlos knew that his head was possibly on the block.
Eduardo said, “So do you think it was American Federales or someone else?”
“It’s too early to tell. All I know for sure is that he was taken. I don’t know if he’s even alive.”
“But who would have taken him in El Paso if not the Americans?”
“You could be right.” Carlos held up a smartphone. “He placed one call on this right before we got to him. The number is some random American company, but it could be a cover for an American agency. I have our contact checking it out, but the evidence from the hit doesn’t feel like American authorities. Everyone was killed, including the two watchers outside. If it was the Americans, they would have simply rolled up and surrounded the place. Instead, everyone was slaughtered. No lights, no badges, nothing like that.”
Eduardo turned from the window. “Was he a reporter?”
“He had the credentials.”
Eduardo scoffed. “I can make those in my basement. You don’t think the American Drug Enforcement Agency can do the same?”
Carlos said, “Yes, but he also had no weapon of any sort and was working alone. If you were an agent, would you get so close to the flame without a weapon? Would you do it alone?”
Eduardo shook his head. “You know this looks bad. Not only were we penetrated, but the very man who did it was snatched from our grasp before we could figure out why. It is bad. Very, very bad. Something needs to be done.”
Carlos tensed, knowing they had reached the decision point. Knowing what “something” meant.
Eduardo continued. “I want the motel clerk to pay, and I want it done in El Paso. A lesson across the border. He let the man place the cameras and microphones in the room. If he hadn’t given out Mr. Fawkes’s room number, none of this would be happening.”
Carlos visibly relaxed and said, “I agree, but I think we should wait on that a little bit. He’s our only alarm if anyone comes sniffing around the motel. There’s too much loose right now that we don’t know. Too many holes we cannot fill. He can help.”
Eduardo leaned onto the table, his face inches from Carlos. He raised his voice for the first time, the anger underneath spilling out into the room. “Then who should I punish right now? I look like a fucking fool. Perhaps I should punish the man who set up the meeting in the first place.”
Carlos leaned back, his hands in the air, saying, “Jefe, please. We need to find the informant. Yes, I set up the meeting, but someone told the reporter about it. Someone let him know it was happening.”
Carlos saw a vein begin to throb on Eduardo’s temple. He knew that in Eduardo’s eyes nothing was worse than disloyalty and he wanted to use th
at to deflect blame. The results were not as he hoped.
In a quiet voice, Eduardo said, “Why waste time trying to root out an informant? Maybe I should just kill everyone who had knowledge of the meeting. Starting with you.”
His face growing pale, realizing he was losing control of the meeting, Carlos played his last card. “Don’t make a bad situation worse. The greater issue here is accomplishing what I intended to do when I set up the meeting in the first place. I’m the one who found the contact. I’m the only one he will call when he’s ready. The only one he trusts.”
The tinge of a mirthless smile crept onto Eduardo’s face. “Yes, you are the one, but why should I even care? You keep driving forward like Don Quixote on something I’m not sure will even work. You think that makes you indispensable? I have a greater problem with this, beyond what I will gain a month from now. People who will smell the blood in the water. Will see weakness where there is none. I need to prevent that, whether your plan works or not.” The smile turned sour and he said, “As you know.”
Carlos felt his stomach dropping as if he’d misread his cards, turning over a deuce instead of an ace. And he’d placed his life in the pot as a bet. “Jefe, it will work. We can keep the American drones away from us. The Americans are using them completely to cover the border. They trust technology over men, and this is the way to defeat them. We can be the undisputed controller of the Juárez plaza. This isn’t something that is worth a bloodletting show of strength. I know what is needed. I’ve been here. Someone has to be sacrificed, but don’t give up the goal.”
“You had better hope it works. For your sake.” He turned back to the window, thinking. Carlos waited on the verdict. When it came, he let out his pent-up breath.
“Deal with the motel clerk. Make it public. Do it in such a manner that everyone knows why he was killed. Everyone knows our reach.”
Carlos felt his cell vibrate and glanced at it. Seeing who it was, he answered, holding his finger in the air to Eduardo, begging him to let the call go through. He talked for a minute, then hung up.
“That was the clerk. A woman came around asking about the reporter. Asking direct questions. He had his son follow her because he thought we would want the information of where she’s staying.”
“Who is she? Why was she searching? Did he say?”
“No, but we can find out ourselves. She didn’t go to a hotel. She’s coming across into Juárez.”
14
Waiting to cross the border, Jennifer spent the time pinpointing the last location of Jack’s phone. It was just across the Rio Grande, in the northwestern section of Ciudad Juárez. Googling further on her tablet, she saw the area was called Delicias and had the highest murder rate in the city. An indicator of why the phone was there, and a not-so-subtle reminder of the danger Jack was in. If he was still alive.
She plotted the location in the cheap GPS that came with the rental car and was dismayed to see the Mexican side of the border had no fidelity. The only streets listed in Juárez were the main north-south and east-west corridors. Something she should have expected, since the rental agreement forbade her from taking the car across the border in the first place. The plot appeared in a blank gray field, no roads listed. She would have to navigate there by blind driving.
She crossed the Stanton Street Bridge and passed through the customs facilities without issue, drawing a stare on the US side but nothing on the Mexican side. She felt her gut tighten as she entered Juárez, expecting to see narcos walking the streets with AK-47s proudly displayed or hear the popping of gunfire. Instead, it looked much like the city she had just left. A town of Mexican middle-class people trying to make their way. Families walked with their children, vendors on the street sold vegetables and fruit, and a healthy amount of traffic clogged the roads. It didn’t look like Murder City, but she knew the history of the bloody ground, including the serial killing of women like her over the past decade.
Still on guard, but somewhat relieved, she pulled over and booted up Google Maps on her tablet, happy to see a 3G connection south of the border. She brought up the city and now at least had a map for reference, although it wasn’t tied to the GPS and wouldn’t move as she did.
She started driving east on David Herrera Avenue, keeping an eye on every vehicle around her but seeing nothing suspicious. Mostly old pickup trucks and a few motorcycles. Nothing like the late-model SUVs the narcos supposedly drove.
She penetrated farther east, the buildings becoming more run-down and the town starting to fulfill its nickname. As she left behind the hotels and restaurants, the area became full of utilitarian concrete structures advertising car repair or dollar sales intermixed with one-story cinder-block houses, all unashamedly tinged with graffiti and fenced off from the street. She tried to look at her tablet as she drove but found it impossible without pulling over. The neighborhood was a compact mass of crisscrossing streets, and she lost her orientation. She threw the tablet on the passenger seat and decided to just vector in by the GPS. She glanced into her rearview and caught a glimpse of the same motorcycle she had seen right after she’d crossed the border, the man in the saddle wearing a lime-green full-face helmet from the 1970s.
She turned left blindly, and the motorcycle followed. She felt a trickle of alarm and studied the bike rider. He showed nothing overtly threatening. The bike was an old Honda with a milk crate bungee-corded to the back, holding bags of some sort. She turned right, and the bike continued straight. She relaxed.
Getting paranoid.
She looked at the GPS and saw she was within a quarter mile of the marking. She continued on, following the blind little GPS tag, weaving left and right, at one point backtracking because of the nature of the roads. Eventually, she reached the grid on the GPS, seeing three houses on a slight rise from the street, all of them protected with a healthy amount of fencing that was a cut above the chain-link and makeshift iron of the neighboring houses. Fencing that was custom built, which gave some indication of who owned the houses.
She slowed and used her smartphone for pictures, wishing she had the Taskforce’s ability to rig the car with three-hundred-and-sixty-degree cameras like she had done in the past. She wanted to provide the assault force the greatest fidelity possible when they came to break out her brother. Wanted to believe in the lie that someone was coming to help.
She passed the houses and picked up her pace, now thinking about how to get back to the border crossing. She took a right and stopped at an intersection. She pulled forward and saw the lime-green helmet to her left, sitting fifty feet down the road. Waiting on her.
She felt a bump in her heart rate but did nothing overt. She continued straight, heading east to the Paso del Norte Bridge. She glanced in her rearview mirror and saw the motorcycle fall in behind her.
She took another right to be sure. He remained with her. At the next stop, she studied her tablet but couldn’t pinpoint her position with any certainty. When the bike pulled up behind her, she moved forward, going faster than was allowed on the narrow road.
Continue east. Eventually you’ll hit the bridge road.
She was forced to slow down behind a battered pickup truck and was thinking about passing when the motorcycle broke off, taking a right and driving out of view. She exhaled and slumped in the seat, releasing the tension in her body. The pickup put on its brake lights and stopped. She turned the wheel to pass and glanced into her blind spot, seeing an SUV flying forward. She jerked back to the right to avoid being hit, but it didn’t pass. Instead, she heard tires scream as it skidded to a halt abreast of her car.
The sight collapsed her world like a black hole, causing all thought other than survival to be sucked in. Two years ago she might have panicked, frozen in place as the drama unfolded, but that girl was long gone. Destroyed in a cauldron not of her making.
She had the car in reverse before the SUV had even fully stopped, the engine of her little rental whining in protest as she floored the pedal. She traveled barely five
feet before slamming into a dented sedan that had pulled up behind her. She saw the driver fling forward against the steering wheel, and time slowed.
Trapped.
To her front the pickup’s passenger door had opened, and a man was exiting. The rear hatch of the SUV begin to rise, then she saw the motorcycle coming down the sidewalk toward her, the lime-helmeted rider holding a MAC-10 machine pistol in his left hand. He began firing as he came abreast of the pickup, shattering her windshield in a shower of glass.
She flung herself flat in the seat, Pike’s instructions from two years ago on surviving just such an ambush penetrating the chaos. Your vehicle is a weapon.
Still lying flat, she jammed the car into drive, jerked the wheel to the right and floored the gas pedal. She hit the curb and rocketed forward, colliding with brick and ricocheting to the left, the bullets still tearing the air above her head.
She crunched something to her front, the car grinding as the object was flung aside. The lime-helmeted rider appeared on her hood, bouncing in the air, the weapon gone. She jerked upright and slammed on her brakes, rolling him onto the sidewalk. As soon as he had cleared the hood, she hit the gas again. He made it to a knee and saw her coming. He held his arms out and screamed, his mouth open through the clear faceplate of his helmet. The bumper caught him just above the waist, slapping him back on the hood. But only for a second. He clawed, trying to maintain his position, the friction of his legs against the ground sucking him under. She rolled over the top of him, the car bucking as if she’d hit an asphalt speed bump. She jerked the wheel to her left and slammed into the street, the pickup and SUV directly behind her.
She kept the pedal jammed to the floor, but the SUV began to gain, its horsepower much greater than that of her rental. She desperately tried to recall her training.