She reached over, taking her coffee mug from me and half-folding her arms. “You are crying.”
“Sorry.” I laughed some more, wiping the single tear from my face, sitting there silent, afraid to speak. “It’s the normalcy of just sitting here with you and talking and drinking coffee—all this violence, chaos, and just plain madness.” I took a breath and slowly let it out. “I miss normalcy.”
* * *
—
It was a large bag full of small blue-and-white replica footballs.
“What am I supposed to do with these?”
Alonzo continued eating his breakfast on the other side of the small table in the hotel portico and smiled through rice, beans, and tortillas. “Sign them ‘Bob Lilly.’”
“So the guys last night were not Bidarte’s?”
“La Línea, Los Aztecas, scouts for Sinaloa, or maybe just independents, but they heard about you being here in Mexico and brought these footballs to have them signed.” He continued eating and glanced at his uncle. “This dodge might be the best ever—I’m not sure why we haven’t done this before.”
The Seer, a little hungover, sat on the wooden pew where his nephew had placed him, a piece of furniture that looked as though it might’ve been purloined from the destroyed mission. “One reason might be because we never had anybody who looked like they might have played American football.”
Pulling out my ubiquitous blue Sharpie, I found a smooth spot on the pebbled texture of each one and began signing. “When do we leave?”
“As soon as you finish signing footballs.”
“South, to Torero?”
“Sí, but not ending in Torero, eventually a small ranch to the west, the ORFANATO, where we lose the car and take burros.”
I wondered what Bob Lilly’s signature really looked like. “The only way up there?”
The Seer pulled his porkpie hat down over his eyes as he slouched in the corner of the pew. “There is a ridge road that takes four-wheel-drive vehicles, but it is heavily patrolled by Bidarte’s men who would kill us before we ever got to the village where they must be holding your daughter.”
“Must be?”
Alonzo finished his breakfast and slid the plate toward one of the women from the kitchen, who retrieved it and disappeared without a word. “The postcard of the rock formation is on the trail we are taking, the old road. If she is there, we will find her.” He shrugged. “You must remember, no one has seen her.”
“You’ve asked?”
Before he could answer, a voice rang from above. “Casually, so as to not solicit interest from unwelcomed quarters.” Adan Martínez descended the steps with a leather rucksack thrown over one shoulder, his roach-killer boots clattering on the sun-warped wood planks. “She is there.” The doctor rested his hands on Alonzo’s shoulders. “This is my country; it is my business to know these things.”
I stopped signing. “Someone has seen Cady?”
“Yes.” He grinned a toothsome smile. “How was your breakfast?”
I tossed the last of the tiny footballs back into the bag. “She’s alive?”
“Yes.”
I put the cap on the pen. “What condition is she in?”
“That, I do not know.” His hands slipped from Alonzo’s shoulders. “I have told you everything I can.”
I put the pen in my shirt pocket. “But not everything you know.”
“Fortunately, in my time with the government, I learned to not extrapolate on the facts.” He paused for a moment and then started toward the kitchen door. “We should be loading up the car so we can get going before the sun rises and it gets too hot.”
I stood and cut him off. “You need to tell me what you know.”
Casually stepping around me, he attempted to continue into the kitchen. “No, I don’t.” I reached out and took his shoulder, but he shrugged away and leveled a finger at me. “Don’t ever touch me again—I have killed men for less than that.”
We stood there for a moment more, and then he continued into the kitchen.
I thought about going after him but figured there was plenty of time on the trip south to get our house in order, so I turned and picked up the bag of footballs and handed them to Alonzo. “Anything else?”
He glanced in the kitchen doorway. “I have the feeling the two of you are going to have a dealing.”
“Maybe so.”
He stood, sliding the straps of the shopping bag onto his shoulder. “I want to check the oil in the godforsaken, goat-fornicating, flat-beer-tasting Caddy and see if Adan has any petrol.”
“I’ll get my bag.” We crossed, each of us going in opposite directions, and I paused to speak with the Seer. “Are you all right?”
He pulled the hat from his face, his opaque eyes searching for mine. “Yes, but I suppose I am tired.” He shrugged. “Getting old.”
“This kind of work can make anyone feel old. Can I get you anything?”
“When you come back, my chair—it is in the hallway inside. Alonzo has already put my bags in the car.”
“Have any scorpions in your room last night?”
He shook his head. “No, why?”
“Just curious.” I patted his shoulder and went to my room. I picked up the Dallas Cowboys gym bag, stuffed my book and Henry’s knife inside, and watched a small scorpion scramble under the bed.
There was some noise a little farther down to my right where a dining room connected to the kitchen from the hallway, and I could hear raised voices in Spanish. Again, I could only understand one in fifteen words and figuring it wasn’t any of my business anyway, I circled the Seer’s wheelchair and started back to the patio, almost running over Bianca who was hurrying down the hallway, her hand covering the side of her face, her eyes full of tears. I reached out, but she brushed by and continued on as Adan rushed out of the dining room.
She saw him and went in the other direction, and I can’t help but think he was a little surprised when I extended an elbow and bounced him off the opposite wall.
He looked after her and then at me.
“You want to kill me now or later?” He started past again, but I blocked him with an arm, leaning over and completely blocking the narrow passage. “My daughter?”
He looked up at me and for a moment, I really thought we were going to do it. “I do not have time for this right now.” He sighed. “The men who Alonzo spoke with last night, I know one of them, and he leaves me messages about the goings on at Monasterio del Corazón Ardiente. He says your daughter is there, but that was all he said.”
“Why didn’t you just say so?”
“Because he is my man, and I do not wish to compromise him, you understand?”
“With whom, the Seer, Alonzo?”
“Anyone.” Glancing around, he leaned in. “You are new to this country, and you do not understand—trust is like a broken mirror, you may still see yourself, but you can never dismiss the crack.” Ducking under my arm, he continued after his sister, and I stood there holding a wheelchair, well out of my depth.
* * *
—
After setting the Dallas Cowboys bag in the backseat, I opened the trunk of the Cadillac, placing everybody else’s bags inside along with the Seer’s chair, as Alonzo busied himself under the hood. I circled around and joined him. “Trouble?”
Looking at the big V-8 engine, he shrugged. “This misbegotten motherless son of a whore . . . always.” He gestured toward the firewall. “The heating core is leaking, and I’m out of antifreeze.”
“Why don’t we just close the system off by looping the hose?” I glanced up at the climbing sun. “I doubt we’re going to need the heat today.”
We set about pinching the hoses and undoing the clamps and reattaching them as Bianca came out of the kitchen. Straightening, I noticed that the red mark on the side of her face h
ad faded a little and watched as she came over to where we stood, holding a large carpetbag out to me. “Do you have room for my bag?”
Adan joined us, looking none too happy about the situation, standing on the stoop with his own bag and making an announcement. “I have decided that my sister will come with us to provide a sense of cover by posing as your wife.”
“What?”
She looked at me, the picture of defiance. “It is decided.”
I glanced at all of them in turn and then settled on Bianca. “Not by me, it’s not. Just last night you said I was putting your family in danger—”
“You will be safer with me along.”
I stared at her. “Safer?”
“Sí, I will only be accompanying you till we get to Torero.”
“What, like the people there aren’t going to know who you are?”
She walked past Adan, opened the passenger side door, and nudging the Seer, she forced him to move over so she could climb in the back. “I’ve never been there.”
I glanced at Adan. “All it takes is for one person to know who she is.”
“We will only be going into Torero for supplies, then we will go to the ranch where they have the burros—no one will know that we are there.” He threw up a hand in surrender and trudged toward the back where he deposited his own bag and turned to look at us. “Anything else to go back here?”
Adan closed the trunk and climbed in the seat beside the Seer, and Alonzo climbed in and hit the starter, then hit the starter again. The convertible shuddered and then lumbered to loping life.
“My wife? Have you people lost your minds?”
“She might be handy.”
Alonzo glanced back at her in the rearview mirror. “She’s a witch, maybe she can cast some spells or something.”
Shaking my head, I swung around and hoisted myself over the pink flanks of the monster car and settled into the spacious backseat. Bianca had slipped on an oversized pair of sunglasses and refused to make eye contact with me.
After a moment, Adan put on his own sunglasses and gestured forward. “Avance!”
Alonzo swung around, and we headed south on a road with crumbling asphalt and potholes that could’ve swallowed a fifteen-inch, bias-ply shod wheel with no trouble. In a few minutes he turned on the radio and mariachi music.
I couldn’t understand the conversation that was taking place in the front of the car and after a while found myself watching the mountains, the ridges bare and forbidding looking although the valleys looked lush.
I adjusted the gym bag and had started to lean back into the corner when I noticed Bianca studying me. She had been resting the nail of a forefinger between her teeth, but removed it to speak. “So, tell me about your family.”
I readjusted in the enormous seat. “It’s not very large, my family.”
She scooted forward. “You said your wife had passed?”
“Yes. We had only one child, Cady, the one who was kidnapped.” I sighed. “She was a lawyer in Philadelphia, but then she took a job with the attorney general’s office in Wyoming.”
“You are telling me about her job—tell me about her.”
“She has my eyes.”
She leaned farther forward, studying me with a frankness that was a little unnerving. “Gris.”
“Nickel-plated is what Cady calls them.”
She shook her head. “Not that cold, more like an autumn sky or like the ocean—clouded and deep.”
I thought about it. “She’s smart, really smart, and she can read me like a book.”
She digested what I’d said. “Your wife, she has been gone long?”
“It’s been a while now.” The silence returned, and I altered the subject. “Her daughter has different eyes . . .”
“Your granddaughter?” She slipped off the sunglasses and smiled. “And her husband, the father of your grandchild, what is he like?”
“He’s dead. He was a police officer in Philadelphia, in Pennsylvania, and I have reason to believe that Bidarte is responsible for his death.” We drove on, only the engine and the wind and the music making any sound. “How about you?” Glancing at her fingers, I reaffirmed the lack of a ring. “You’re single?”
She shrugged. “I was married, for a time.”
“What happened?”
“He was killed. He was also a doctor, but he had political leanings and they killed him.” She looked at the road or maybe the back of her brother’s head as her voice rose. “He was a radical—he had these crazy ideas that people should be able to live their lives without fear.”
“I’m kind of radical about that, too.” I waited a moment and then asked, “Any children?”
She shook her head. “No, we were only married for a few months.”
I nodded, realizing that she wanted to talk about her dead husband about as much as I wanted to talk about my dead wife. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
“When we first met, on the stairs?”
“Yes.”
“You referred to me in the plural, and now that I’ve gotten to know you I can see that it wasn’t a simple slip of tense, your English is too good. So what did you mean?”
She glanced toward the front and then studied my face. “You know what they call me.”
I thought about what Alonzo and the Seer had said before we’d arrived. “A skin witch?”
“A bruja de la piel, yes.” She raised a hand and touched her shoulder. “This, this is what I used to do.”
“Tattoos?”
She nodded. “I started as an apprentice in a shop in Juárez but then had an opportunity to work with a man in Los Angeles, a legend, Sebastian Ramírez. You have heard of him?”
“No, but I don’t know anything about tattoos.”
“You have none?”
“No, and I’m a Marine.”
She took my arm in her two hands and ran one over the inside of my forearm and I had to admit that it felt good. “First you have to shave the skin, even if the hair is fine, and then clean the surface with antiseptic. Then you apply a thin layer of deodorant to help the stencil image stick. The stencil image is taken from a drawing sandwiched into a ditto master and thermofax machine, which produces a thin paper with a gummy side you lay on the skin.” She allowed her fingers to pause there on some of my scars, and her voice became breathless. “Next you peel the paper away and tear open a packet of autoclave tubing, you know, like lab or hospital tubing?”
“That I’ve had experience with.”
She glanced at the ragged teardrop in my skin, but asked no questions, lost in touch. “Then you dip the needle into a tiny cup of ink and stretch the skin, which gives just a little before allowing the needle to penetrate. Dip, press, pierce a thousand times a minute.” Her hand stroked my arm. “The skin begins to rise and tiny blood bubbles appear with angry welts like flagellation.” Her fingers and eyes stayed on my arm for a moment more. “There is no art without sacrifice from the artist, no?”
“Or the subject, evidently.”
She leaned back and released my arm. “It doesn’t matter. Anyway, I learned the trade from him. When I began doing my own designs, strange things began happening.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I had to quit.”
“Why?”
She clutched a handful of wayward hair, pulling it back from her face. She looked at the road, steering the large, black sunglasses onto her face again and looking like some Italian movie star from the sixties.
“I began seeing things in them as I see things in you.”
“Meaning?”
“The dead, they hover near.”
5
We drove into town under a white homemade banner with handwritten blue lettering that read, BIENVENIDO BOB LILLY CAMPEÓN DE LOS COWBOYS
!
“In and out, huh?”
Adan turned to look at me.
“No one will know we are here, huh?”
It was a small village, but you wouldn’t have guessed from the amount of people who filled the narrow streets. “Mira qué cabrón . . . ”
Cars and trucks were parked along both sides of the road in the late afternoon sun, and people in Cowboys jerseys and T-shirts waved blue and white flags, all the time honking their horns and yelling.
Alonzo turned and smiled but still looked worried. “You seem to have a lot of fans here.”
“Boy howdy.” Now people were now rushing up with pens and things to be signed. “What do we do?”
“We roll with the punches, my friend.”
Alonzo slowed the car as we approached the center of town where a broken fountain sat in the middle of a tiny square. Four two-story buildings that made up the majority of the town flanked the crossroads, and there were lights strung over the street where small white tents had been set up. There was a platform beside the fountain festooned in blue and white crepe paper and my greatest fear, a podium.
When we stopped, a number of men in shabby suits, one of them wearing a Dallas Cowboys ball cap, approached the front of the Cadillac and began smiling and talking with both Adan and the Seer.
Bianca leaned over in the seat and spoke in a low voice. “Don’t be too impressed—I think they were preparing for the Día de los Inocentes tomorrow and must’ve decided to integrate you into the festivities.”
I glanced around. “This is really embarrassing.”
“Wait, it will probably get worse.”
Alonzo had turned in the seat and was listening to the dignitaries, smiling at what they were saying. “They have prepared a dinner. They are very apologetic, but they had little time to get ready.”
People were forcing their way to both sides of the car in an attempt to hand me scraps of paper and more toy footballs. “This has gone on far enough, you have to tell these people that I’m not . . .”
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