Do They Know I'm Running

by David Corbett

  “Cops took them to the women’s prison in Miahuatlán, not that things were swell there, either. Alix got questioned, to use the usual euphemism, and the man in charge used a blanket when he kicked her so he wouldn’t leave marks. She was charged with assaulting police, sedition, destruction of public property. Mind you, I’m talking a nice middle-aged lady here, maybe weighs 110 after a heavy breakfast, who was trying to help somebody who was hurt. She closed up her restaurant after that. No more pork with mancha manteles mole. Haven’t heard from her in over a year.”

  The driver of the truck just ahead signaled that Bergen could pass. He downshifted, wound the Eurovan out in third gear, then ventured his move into the oncoming lane.

  “What I’m saying is, that’s the state of things you folks walked into. Just so you know.”

  Thanks for the tip, Roque thought, sinking in his seat. It was like they were trapped in some hellish video game where the longer they played the more their enemies multiplied.

  They hit two more checkpoints in short order, one just before Puerto Angel, the second at the lighthouse turnoff right before Puerto Escondido. Bergen’s magic seemed to be taking hold, they got waved through each time. After that their biggest problems were road washouts and wandering livestock until they passed Pinotepa Nacional-another checkpoint, but though they got stopped the soldier simply reached in, opened the glove box, checked inside for a pistol or drugs, then directed the van into the slow-moving queue for a giant X-ray machine, its white crane-like boom arching over the road.

  By midafternoon they reached Acapulco-or Narcopulco as it often got called these days, Bergen said. The cartels were jockeying for control of the port, with the predictable rise in body count, at least until the army got sent in. Things were returning to normal, more or less, or the illusion of normal. The southern end of town looked shopworn and sad, the northern more stylish and new. Pingo, from his perch up front, pointed to the top of one particularly stunning cliff with shameless reverence.-Check it out, that’s Sly Stallone’s house.

  Come twilight they pulled into a modest roadside hotel half a mile beyond a pig-filled swamp just outside Zihuatenejo-only a dozen or so rooms, high walls isolating each of the entrances, an armed guard stationed in the parking lot, another at the office door. Bergen explained it was a casa de citas; patrons paid by the hour, not the night, a favorite spot for a poke with the mistress. “I know the folks who run this place,” he said, killing the ignition, lodging the emergency brake. Beyond the hotel, the hillside rose with lush thickets of nameless greenery, crowned with mango and thorn trees. Across the highway, fishing boats thronged a network of docks. “It’s clean, it’s discreet, the van will be safe. And I’m guessing, given prior experience, you’re not all that eager to travel the roads at night. Me, neither.”

  Forty

  EL RECIO PUT HAPPY ON THE FRONT DOOR, KIKI WITH HIS TOP-KNOT watched the back. Osvaldo with his dumpy suit and roach killers joined El Recio and another man, Hilario, in the kitchen where they got to play butcher.

  How had he put it: I think I got something maybe could suit you.

  Happy couldn’t tell if this was their standard MO or whether they’d taken inspiration from what he’d described of the Crockett takeover. Maybe they wanted to see how he’d react. Using duct tape, they’d tied and gagged the cop and his wife and their son to chairs. The boy was seven maybe, blue fleece pajamas, matching blue socks. The pajamas had little bucking broncos on them. The parents were naked.

  El Recio made the parents watch as Hilario did the boy, using wire cutters and grain alcohol and a box of wood matches. Happy leaned against the wall, back turned to what was happening, but he could hear, he could smell. His memory emptied its sewer, he was back inside that claustrophobic room with Snell and his daughter and he would have sold his soul to get away except how do you outrun what’s inside you? Keep your eyes on the street, he told himself, focus on what’s out there, even if it’s nothing. Especially if it’s nothing.

  He threw back another slug of tejuino to buck up his nerve. It scalded his mouth and throat and simmered in his gut. El Recio said the Indians fermented it by putting a ball of human shit inside a cheesecloth and burying it in the corn mash, letting it molder. He clutched the bottle, fearing he might vomit. Worse, faint. What would happen, he wondered, if I went in there, tried to stop it? Nothing. Everybody would just get to watch me die too.

  The cop was bent, just not bent enough apparently. He’d talked to somebody, a shipment got stopped-of what? Migrants? Drugs? Guns? Happy wasn’t told, the wisdom of murder. He knew only this: Muffled screams howled into thick swaths of tape-the boy, his mother, his stupid on-the-take-but-suddenly-honest cop father-the rocking of wood chairs against the floor as the parents struggled to free themselves, the acrid smell of burned flesh and scorched fleece and smoke, but Happy was there and not there, unable to get the girl out of his head, like she was living under his skin, struggling to get out, her eyes so huge when he shot her old man, then kicking herself into the corner, trying to get away-from him, from her dying old man, from it.

  In the kitchen, El Recio sang in a clownish baritone:

  Hoy es mi día

  Voy a alegrar toda el alma mía

  There were no questions to ask, nothing to learn. This was a message. The killing would go slowly, over hours, then the rumor mill would kick in and every other cop in Sonora would learn that the boy died first, died horribly and slowly in unthinkable pain, followed hours later by his mother, most likely driven crazy by then, and only several hours after that, at the cusp of dawn, by the father, the man whose chickenshit conscience could be blamed for it all. After that, who with a badge wouldn’t take the money?

  There was a lull in the kitchen. Happy dared a glance over his shoulder. Hilario was wiping his hands with a towel, Osvaldo lit up a smoke. El Recio stepped into the doorway, looking skeletal without the snake.

  He approached slowly, almost wearily and Happy wondered what depths got tapped in the torturing of a child, then recoiled at his own phony righteousness. A birdlike hand reached out, resting on Happy’s shoulder.

  “Didn’t have time to tell you,” El Recio said. “Finally got word about Lonely. Now, what I heard, it’s like secondhand, thirdhand, some don’t even make sense, all right? But word I got is damn near his whole clique went down.” His lips were drawn. A vein the size of a night crawler throbbed on the side of his shaved skull. “Cops sent the riot squad in, storm-trooper shit, snipers and dogs and choppers overhead, shut the whole barrio down, went door to door like it’s fucking Baghdad. You know how those assholes love a show. Lonely and ten other dudes, slammed with gang beefs and that’s like no bail, no luck, no hope, know what I’m saying?”

  Happy had expected this explanation. It was most likely true and thus the perfect lie. The weightless hand lifted off Happy’s shoulder, vanished into a pocket, reappeared with an asthma inhaler. Two quick pumps: bob of the Adam’s apple, hiss of albuterol. He didn’t seem particularly short of breath. Maybe he just liked the taste.

  “And here’s the shit, güey. Way I hear it, this Guatemalan comandante your cousin got tangled up with, this clown named El Chusquero?”

  “I know who you mean.” Happy worried his hands around the tejuino bottle, the rough glass reassuringly solid. “We had to wire down money to pay him off.”

  “Yeah, well, he’s the one who made the call. Maybe it’s bullshit, you know how some of these idiots think, but this is what I’m hearing, all right? Supposedly this El Chusquero cocksucker got fucked out of some deal by your cousin, they was supposed to take some boat up the Mexican coast or some shit-”

  “I heard about this, look-”

  “Just listen, all right? Your cousin and uncle, they skipped out, last minute, and this El Chusquero asshole said: Okay motherfuckers, try this. He picked up the phone, tapped some old pals in uniform down in El Salvador, called in a favor, whatever. And the hammer came down.”

  Another thumb-punch on the
inhaler, eyelids fluttering, a clenching swallow of mist.

  “So, like, even if you did have some deal with Lonely, it’s useless now. I swear to God, I never heard word one, never saw a fucking dime, and now I’m not gonna, no matter what. Sorry, just the way it is.”

  He slipped the inhaler back into his pant pocket, rubbed at his eye. From the kitchen, ragged sobs.

  “Chécalo, there’s guys who seriously want to fuck your cousin up, given all the shit that came down back in San Salvador.”

  “Look, Roque’s not perfect, I get that.” Happy again had to bite back mention of his father’s death. “But way I hear it, Roque turned down this El Chusquero to honor the deal with Lonely. So why’s he in the shit for that?”

  “Law of unintended consequences, just the way it is. Besides which, there’s some girl supposedly in the picture too. I never heard about this till yesterday, some chick Lonely sent up to gain a little juice with Don Pato.”

  “I don’t know who that is.”

  “You don’t need to know. I need to know. Right? Just like I need to know who ropes the pollos, who rounds up the guías, who watches over the safe houses and makes the bribes and launders the money. I need to know all that because they rely on me. They rely on me to enforce the motherfucking law, right? You need to know one thing-what I tell you.”

  “Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean-”

  “I’m just making a point, okay? Don Pato knows about this girl coming up with your cousin. He knows what’s supposed to happen. I don’t make it happen, I look weak. I can’t afford that. I look weak, next day I’m dead.”

  Happy realized finally what El Recio was saying. “I don’t know why Roque would have a problem handing this girl over.” Thinking: Now who sounds weak?

  “Things happen, you know? I hear she’s like crack for the eyes, güey, and she’s got a voice. You know how all the big shots down here wanna be sung about. You’re nothing unless there’s a corrido on the radio pimping you up. There’s talk this pichona and your cousin, like, connected or some such shit.”

  “You want me to talk to Roque, explain what the deal is?”

  “When the time comes. Maybe, yeah. Meanwhile I got some bad news on another front.”

  Osvaldo appeared in the kitchen doorway, a disheveled silhouette, and made a chittering sound with his tongue and teeth. El Recio, without turning, gestured for patience. “Momentito, cabrón.” Reaching again into a pocket, this time he withdrew not the inhaler but a small plastic bag of salted plums called saladitos. They smelled like something plucked from the inside of a pig and brined in lye. He lifted one to his mouth, tilted the bag toward Happy, shrugged when the offer was declined, then continued. “This Arab dude you wanted to bring across. There’s a problem. An American showed up last week, frumpy motherfucker, kinda fat with crooked glasses, lugging this big old briefcase with him, he met up with Don Pato over dinner at El Gallo. Again, okay, I don’t know everything, but the fat guy was, like, way interested in this friend of yours and some kinda deal got made. Just so you know, the Americans are pissing blood over the way things are down here. Too many bodies, too much news about it, and the news is, like, freaky. They’re willing to go with a winner, even tip their hand, pick a favorite, if it means things calm down. None of this is official, it’s all secret-handshake spook shit, but whoever the winner turns out to be-and this guy was here to say they’d be happy with Don Pato-he’s gotta understand, we can’t be moving ragheads across the border. Them, we turn over to this frumpy fat motherfucker and his people. Hear what I’m saying?”

  He saved my life, Happy thought, wondering if he should believe that anymore. “What happens to him after you turn him over?”

  “Not your problem, güey.” The skeletal hand returned to Happy’s shoulder, a lingering squeeze. Deep in their sockets, El Recio’s red-veined eyes warmed. “You stepped up tonight. I wanted to see you carry your weight. You done good. You’re part of the picture now, right?” He licked bits of saladito off his teeth. “You got no place to go to up north, there’s serious heat on you there. And there’s people down south now want your fucking head, or your cousin’s head. Yours’ll do in a pinch, hear what I’m saying? Best idea you got, stay here with me. Don Pato, the others I mentioned, they’re serious cats-run the whole goddamn show, this stretch of the border. Anything moves across, it’s got their brand on it, otherwise you die. I do what’s necessary, they watch my back. Same thing with you and me. Be cool, stand up, don’t give me nothing to worry about, I’ll look the fuck after you. I’ll get your cousin across. The rest can’t be helped.”

  From the kitchen doorway, Osvaldo made his tetchy little sound again. The mother was mewling hysterically behind her gag. Hilario backhanded her but she wouldn’t settle down.

  “Back to business,” El Recio said, stuffing the bag of saladitos back in his pocket. “We’ll talk more over breakfast.”

  THOUGH THE WATER WAS TEPID THE SHOWERS FELT LIKE LUXURY-first Lupe, then Roque, finally Samir, each of them scrubbing off the grit and stickiness and toweling dry in the small spare room, nothing but a twin bed for furniture. What else was needed, given its usual hourly occupants? Bergen took a room for himself, Pingo would sleep in the van. The tally of money owed was inching upward-three hundred dollars per person for the ride, which Bergen said would barely cover gas, even at Pemex prices, then the room, food. They’d already pooled their money and handed over what they’d had, the rest being due on credit, for which Roque gave his address, the names of both Tía Lucha and Lalo as guarantors of his debt. Bergen had never promised charity but it all added up so fast. Still, Roque supposed, better that than paying out to some salvatrucho or pandillero who’d just keep the shakedown going forever back home. He got it now, it wasn’t just that nothing was free. The moment you agreed to pay, you opened the door to hell. Bergen was simply a friendlier breed of devil.

  Lupe joined him outside and they sat together beneath a roadside mango tree, gazing through the darkness and the day’s last traffic at the fishing fleet moored to its lantern-lit docks. The breeze carried the scents of sea salt and beach rot and the echoes of beery laughter.

  – We should have gone for a swim before the shower, he said.

  Using both hands, Lupe spread her damp hair to let the wind help dry it, lifting her face toward the starlight. The bruising from Lonely’s beating had all but healed.-It’s stupid to swim at night. You can’t get your bearings.

  – There’s plenty of light from the bar, the docks.

  – The waves can be dangerous. Her voice was adamant, almost shrill.-I heard of a woman whose neck was broken just a few months ago and she was a very strong swimmer. The undertow kills several people every year.

  For a second, he felt ridiculous. Then he figured it out.-You don’t know how to swim.

  She shrugged, shook her hair.-Let me guess. You want to teach me.

  – I wasn’t trying to insult you.

  – I’m sorry. It’s just… She glanced up into the dark tree.-

  We both know what’s coming. I’m tired of thinking about it. Get me a mango, would you?

  Climbing up a ways to one of the middling branches-the lower ones were picked clean-he tugged a plump mango from its rubbery stem and tossed it to her, then scrambled back down. Using her nails, she peeled away the skin so they could trade bites. Soon their faces were tacky with juice and pulp.

  Between swallows, he said:-I’m going to need another shower.

  She slipped her sticky hand in his, their fingers interlocking. He tilted his head to venture a kiss, only to see Samir approaching, chafing his burred black hair with a towel.

  – I am sorry to interrupt, he announced, sounding more flustered than contrite.-I have been thinking today, very much, very long, about our situation. I have thought of what Fatima would want of me. I have prayed. And I am here to tell you I am ashamed of how I have behaved. Yes, I need very much to reach America-not for my sake. My family’s. But I have been thoughtless, even cruel,
in how I have spoken. It needn’t be so. I had a chance earlier to talk with Pingo. He knows a man at the border, his uncle, he lives in a town called Naco, who could help us get across. There would be no need to deal with this El Recio character in Agua Prieta. For all they know we burned up in the car, right? Who can say differently, how soon? Months it will take, longer most likely, for them to determine for certain who it was in that car. Again, yes, there is the issue of money and Happy has told you there is none, fine, but things change. You, Roque, can pass over as you please, perhaps you could head home, ask among friends or family. I could wait with Lupe in Naco. He stood with his shoulders folded forward, as though preparing to bow. His deep-set eyes lacked their usual indignation.-I am agreeable, is what I am saying. I no longer want us to fight among ourselves. It is wrong.

  No more was said about it. But later, when the three of them settled in for the night inside the tiny stifling room, Samir took the floor in a sign of goodwill. Roque and Lupe negotiated the narrow bed, spooning though fully clothed, his stomach pressed into the hollow of her back as she pillowed her head on his arm. In time their breathing synchronized, drowsiness settled in. Samir fell asleep first, though, snoring with a chesty rasp. Perhaps we don’t know what’s coming after all, Roque thought, and shortly Lupe took his hand, nudged it inside her jeans, pressing it against the downy warm curls, holding it there in a gesture of possession, him of her, her of him.

  FROM HIS TABLE NEAR THE BACK, LATTIMORE SPOTTED HIM IN THE doorway, the distinctively scruffy beard and hair, the rumpled suit, the cockeyed glasses, the clownishly fat and battered briefcase-McIlvaine, the security man from Dallas, what was his company’s name-Bayonet? The man made eye contact, offering his tea-colored smile, then began picking his way through the tables and Lattimore felt his stomach plunge with an almost punitive sense of dread. His sandwich turned into a soggy wad of nausea in his hands. Banneret, he thought, that was it. “Jim!” McIlvaine thrust out his hand. “Mind if I sit?” Lattimore nodded to the open chair, setting his oozy sandwich down and reaching for a napkin. “Let me admire your investigative skills-you found me how?”