Depth of Winter

by Craig Johnson

  Behind the Plexiglas, a bored-looking young woman gestured for me to step forward. “American citizen?”

  “Yep.”

  “ID?”

  I pulled out my driver’s license and handed it through the opening at the bottom. She studied it for a moment, and I watched as her left hand slipped beneath the counter. A moment later another uniformed individual was standing beside her and motioned for me to go to the unmarked door to the right, not the general one to the left.

  “Is there a problem?”

  “Not really, except that you’re supposed to have a passport to enter Mexico, even if you don’t really need one to get back in the US.” The older man who was stationed behind the young woman motioned again, and she turned back to me with a practiced smile. “Just a routine check—you’re the lucky one-millionth customer of the day.” I nodded and followed my license; the heavy door buzzed, and I pushed it open and entered a short hallway. The Border Patrol guy appeared from the other side and pointed toward the door at the end of the hall.

  “Do I get a prize or anything?”

  “Oh yeah, it’s in there.”

  I walked down the hall and just as my hand touched it, the door buzzed and the lock sprang.

  FBI Special Agent-in-Charge Mike McGroder sat reading from a file folder at a metal table with his loafered feet on its surface. “I told you not to go by yourself.”

  “Your socks don’t match.” I sat in the chair opposite him. “I was just doing a little sightseeing. Did you know that Marilyn Monroe got her divorce from Arthur Miller in Juárez?”

  “No.”

  “Did you know he was hung like a cocktail sausage?”

  “Walt.” He glanced at the camera in the corner of the ceiling behind him. “You were reconnoitering in a foreign country, and you’re lucky I’ve got pull and can get you back in this one.”

  “As far as I can remember, I’m an American citizen.”

  “An armed American citizen in Mexico, which means you get the nicest corner cell in the shittiest maximum-security prison in the Free and Sovereign State of Chihuahua.”

  “I just wanted to get the ball rolling.”

  “Okay, Sisyphus.” He put his feet on the floor, tossed the file onto the table, and ran a palm over his crew cut. “I’ve got you a meeting with the AIC and the DEA guy here in El Paso tomorrow at four-thirty.”

  “I’ll already be gone.”

  “Walt.” He placed his elbows on the table, lacing his fingers as a chin rest. “They know you’re coming. Hell, they’re planning on you coming, and they’re going to have a very warm reception for you.”

  “I figure.”

  “I’m just trying to give you a fighting chance at survival.”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  “Look, let’s set ourselves up for success here. I think getting your daughter out of Mexico and you surviving it is what we’re shooting for.”

  “Me surviving would be nice, but I doubt it’ll happen.” I sat back in my chair with the image of a five-year-old girl with reddish hair dancing through a pasture as the horses looked on. “He knows I’m here, he knows I know he’s got her, and he’ll kill her if I don’t play by the rules.” I reached under my lightweight jacket and pulled the aforementioned .45 from the small of my back and placed it on the table between us. “That’s what I’ve got. Now I know I’m going into a fight, so I’ll gladly trade it for a rifle, a shotgun, an RPG, a Sherman tank, or an atomic bomb—but that’s what I’ve got.”

  “Not anymore.” He reached across the table and slid my Colt back toward him without looking at it. “You wait until tomorrow afternoon for the meeting with the authorities, and then we’ll formulate a plan to save your daughter.”

  I coughed a laugh. “You think those guys know what’s going on down there?”

  “More than some jumped-up sheriff out of Wyoming, yes.” He waited a moment and then added, “You arrived last night, what the hell is the hurry?”

  I stood, and for a lack of anything else to do, took a few short steps. “My daughter, Mike. It’s like I’m walking around with a hole in the middle of me, and all I can do is listen to the wind blow through. I’m going to do something, and I pray it’s not the wrong thing, but I’m going to do something.” I made the next statement to the camera lens in the corner. “I’m not waiting. He’ll know we’re planning something and then will fold up the tents along with Cady and they’ll disappear, and I can’t have that.”

  Mike came around the desk and sat on the corner. “You don’t know what you’re doing, and you could set off a cartel war that might wind up killing thousands of innocent people.” His turn to glance at the camera. “I need your badge.”

  “You didn’t give me this badge, the people of Absaroka County did.”

  “Let’s not make this any harder than it is, okay?”

  Turning my eyes back to him, I pulled the badge wallet from my shirt pocket, holding it for a moment, and tossed it on the table. “You’re arresting me?”

  “We’re not letting you back into Mexico.”

  “Try and stop me.” I walked toward the door where I’d come in, but the latch held fast. I turned to look at him.

  He picked up my sidearm and wallet, placing them together in one hand and stuffing them under his arm. “I just did.”

  * * *

  —

  It was a waiting room, but both doors were securely locked, so it might as well have been a cell. There were three chairs and the desk where McGroder had had his conversation with me. I’d seen a lot of those desks in federal buildings—somebody must’ve had a sale.

  I sat behind it and looked for the button McGroder must’ve used to unlock the doors but couldn’t find it. Opening one of the drawers, I discovered two paper clips, a busted Swingline stapler, and a thumb-worn biography of Ambrose Bierce so old that he might’ve owned it himself before disappearing into Mexico all those years ago.

  By chapter five, I’d decided that the book was actually pretty good and only lowered it when an elderly gentleman in coveralls opened the door through which Mike had disappeared.

  The custodian was holding a mop and kicking a commercial bucket in front of him as I stood. He saw me and started to close the door, but I recognized an opportunity when I saw one. “Hold on, I’ll get out of your way.” He paused for a moment, and I gestured with the book. “I can find somewhere else to read.”

  “Are you sure?”

  I clutched the door in one hand and looked out past his shoulder to the empty hallway behind him. “Oh yeah, it’s about time for me to get out of here anyway.”

  Truer words having never been said, I slipped past and then turned and held the door. “This thing sticks, so I’d just leave your bucket in the doorway if I were you.”

  It had sounded as though McGroder had gone straight down the length of the hallway, so I tried the corridor on the right and discovered a bathroom with a window just big enough to pass a house cat through.

  Abandoning that path, I tried the other side and discovered another holding cell—so, my old cell, which was being mopped, a new one, the bathroom, or door number one. I crossed back to where the old guy was mopping and carefully moved the bucket so that the door quietly eased shut.

  Clutching my trusty tome, I marched down the hall and swung open the door at the end, only to be confronted by an armed private first class in his battle dress uniform, who pushed off the wall and looked at me questioningly.

  Hanging on the door, I made sure he saw the book. “Hi.”

  He pushed off the wall. “Hi?”

  I threw a thumb over my shoulder. “Hey, none of my business, but I think there’s a janitor locked in that waiting room at the end of the hallway.” I gestured with the Ambrose Bierce. “I was headed to the bathroom and heard some pounding.”

  “Can’t you let him out?�
��

  “I think the door’s stuck, and like I said, I’m headed for the bathroom.”

  The private nodded as he brushed past me. “With the amount of holdees we’ve got daily, they sometimes use those waiting rooms as cells and they don’t have passage locks.”

  “Yep, somebody ought to do something about that.” As he strode down the hall, I slipped up another passageway and turned a corner where there was a glass wall connected to another, more elaborate conference room. I was close enough to see the back of Mike McGroder’s head along with a couple of other guys in suits going over what looked like a long list of items being pointed out by a young man whom I didn’t know.

  Since he was the only one turned toward me, I smiled, waved the invaluable Bierce, and mouthed the words, it’s really good . . . And kept walking.

  He paused for a moment, somewhat perplexed, and then waved and went back to his agenda.

  There were two large glass doors past what looked to be the public reception area and a counter where two more Border Patrol agents were talking to a long line of people. I knew the drill by now, so I pushed open one door and headed for the outside without pause. I was through and on the sidewalk when I heard someone behind me.

  I turned the corner of the building and headed for my rental truck that was parked in the four-dollars-a-day parking lot. The FBI man hadn’t taken my keys, so I popped the doors with the remote and wheeled out onto Sixth and then Santa Fe up to East Franklin, where I took a right and parked in the alley beside the venerable Gardner Hotel.

  I’d checked in late last night having just discovered the Gardner on this, my first trip to El Paso. With a wink, the nice lady at the desk asked if I wanted room 221.

  I didn’t see why not, and she’d handed me the key.

  It had been a cold, wet evening in 1934 when the front desk clerk at the Gardner had checked in a large party who had reserved a number of rooms under the name of John D. Ball and Company. They drank a little bit, danced a little bit, but all things considered, had behaved themselves pretty well that night. They had checked out without incident, and it was only when their luggage was saved in an Arizona hotel fire a week later that they were arrested by the Tucson Police Department and identified as John Dillinger and gang.

  Unlocking room 221, I went in and was greeted by a tall Hispanic individual sprawled on my bed with pointy-toed boots on his feet and a black Stetson parked on his head, the business end of a .357, which was pointed at me, in one hand, and an old, linen postcard, which he was studying, in the other.

  “Stick ’em up.”

  It was not Dillinger.

  I turned my back to him, picked up my duffel, and went about gathering my things, including the badge I’d palmed from my wallet, Henry Standing Bear’s stag-handled Bowie knife, and my real Colt .45, which I’d left in the dresser of my room—I wondered how long it would take McGroder to realize I’d handed him a paintball gun in a pancake holster and an empty badge wallet.

  “I’d ask how it went, but since you appear to be checking out, I’ll guess not so good?”

  I rested the duffel on the bed and progressed into the bathroom where I gathered up my toiletries. “I need to get out of town—out of the country, actually.”

  “Well, shee-it.” He threw his long legs off the bed and stood, shoving his big revolver into its holster and his sun-bronzed hands into the pockets of his faded Wranglers. “That bad, huh?”

  I took the postcard that he had left on the blankets, stuffed it in my shirt pocket, and dropped my dopp kit into the bag. “Bad enough. They find me, and they’re going to hold me; already did for an hour and a half.”

  “How’d you get away?”

  I pulled the book from under my arm and tossed it to him. “They aren’t going to let me across the border, either.”

  He studied the cover. “What, you threatened to teach ’em how to read?”

  Slipping the strap over my shoulder, I gestured toward the door. “I’ve got to get going.”

  He glanced up. “I can see that.” He tossed the book back and then walked past me and turned the corner toward the stairs. “C’mon, we’ll take my truck ’cause I’m sure they’re going to be looking for that rental of yours.”

  Stuffing the Ambrose Bierce into my duffel, I followed and started down the steps after him, but he stopped suddenly, and I almost sent him the rest of the way airborne. He turned his head and motioned for me to go back, which I did, as he retraced his steps in slow motion like a Peckinpah movie.

  In the safer confines of the hallway, he turned. “Two ol’ boys in suits, and I don’t think they’re sellin’ Amway.”

  “Only two? I’m insulted.”

  He pushed me down the hallway and grinned. “Well, you ain’t exactly Dillinger.” He gestured toward the window at the end of the hall. “Take the fire escape but go up not down, and I’ll keep ’em busy for a while.”

  “Then what?”

  “There’s three bars behind this place, the Tool Box, Briar and Hyde, and the Epic, all with sloping roofs that lead to East Missouri Avenue—turn right, and there’s Chiquita’s Bar. Go in there and tell Juan Carlos that Buck sent ya, and he’ll put you in my special booth, so you can face the door and have your back to the wall. You just wait there till I catch up. I’ll be along directly.”

  “Why that bar?”

  “’Cause they don’t piss in yer beer if yer a cop.”

  As I pulled up the window, I whispered back at him. “Guzmán, how is it I get the feeling you’ve done this before?”

  “Oh, and don’t go the other way because that’s the El Paso County Probation Department offices.” He gave me a thumbs-up, the end of the appendage missing, the result, I was betting, of a roping accident, and booted open the door to Dillinger’s room, while unbuttoning his shirt and singing in a very loud and somewhat off-key voice. “I had a friend named Ramblin’ Bob, he used to steal, gamble, and rob. He thought he was the smartest guy around. Well I found out last Monday, that Bob got locked up on Sunday—they’ve got him in the jailhouse way downtown. He’s in the jailhouse now . . .”

  Stooping, I crawled out the hall window, lowered it shut behind me, and swung onto the metal steps. Quietly ascending them, I popped out on top of the Gardner just as somebody threw open the window below me.

  I picked up my duffel, thumbed the strap onto my shoulder, and made my way around the air-conditioning units, which looked down at the one-story inset at the back of the hotel. I was about two doors down from what had been my room, and I could hear a lot of thumping, singing, and crashing as Buck Guzmán kept ’em busy.

  It was a quick straddle over the side and onto the adjacent building where it was so hot that the patched portions of the roof stuck to the soles of my boots.

  The next roof was a little bit steeper, so I tossed the duffel down first and then rolled over the side to land on my feet. I got across to the next one, walked to the edge, and squinted at a colorful mural just in front of a twenty-foot drop.

  I looked around. There was an escape ladder toward the alley, so I tripped the latch and it ratcheted to the parking lot below. Climbing down, I threaded through the cars and headed for the opening in the fence at the north end, expecting a black SUV or a Lincoln Town Car to slide in front of me at any moment.

  Safely making it to the sidewalk, I turned right as instructed, skimmed behind a tree, and pulled open the door of Chiquita’s Bar to step into the cool darkness.

  My eyes adjusted from the glare outside, and I could see the place was mostly empty except for a large group of noisy young people in a corner booth and an elderly bartender who was polishing glasses.

  I stepped toward the bar and asked, “Are you Juan Carlos?”

  He gave me a quizzical look. “Yes.”

  “Buck sent me.”

  A moment passed. “Sent you for what?”

&n
bsp; “Well . . . He said to put me in his special booth and that he’d be along.” Juan Carlos looked toward the corner where the young men, recovering from my entrance, were talking loudly again and laughing. “I’m sure any place will do.”

  He gestured toward the booth on the other side of the narrow building. “You want something to drink?”

  I nodded. “Um, water?”

  He stared at me.

  “A beer, please.”

  Nodding a hello toward the gang, I made my way to the other corner booth in the back, threw my duffel on the seat, and slid in after it. I tried to ignore the group who were looking at me and then whispering and laughing as the bartender approached with a paper napkin and a Lone Star.

  “Dollar seventy-five.”

  “I might be here for a while—do you want to run a tab?”

  “Dollar seventy-five.”

  Realizing that things get expensive when you’re on the lam, I pulled my wallet and plucked out a few bills. “Keep the change.”

  I sat there and thought about my situation and how I’d possibly made it worse. Buck had been the one who had set up my meeting with the Seer, but I wasn’t sure if he’d been aware of how quickly things could accelerate when dealing with federal government agencies. I glanced up at the clock behind the bar and could see it was already three in the afternoon, so I had a little less than six hours to get to Mexico and get started saving Cady.

  I tried to breathe regularly, but there was a pain in my chest that wouldn’t let up, a pain that had nothing to do with my physical condition. A million versions of my daughter haunted me, memories that sometimes appeared in sepia tone and others that were so clear that I felt as if I could almost reach out and touch her. They were not epic moments in our lives together, but rather small looks, brief exploits, or quiet words, like the time she’d confronted me when I was driving her to school at the wizened age of six. “I like it better when Mommy drives me to school.”

  I pulled up to Clear Creek Elementary. “And why is that?”

  She climbed out of my unit, pulling her backpack onto her shoulder. “It doesn’t look like I just got out of jail.”