by Leylah Attar
Esteban nodded. Even though he had developed a bond with Juan Pablo and Camila, he had suspected as much. But he was almost there. He couldn’t stop now.
“Everyone has a reason.” Juan Pablo flicked his cigarette away. A reason to get involved, to get their hands dirty. “What’s yours?”
“My mother. She’s in jail, but she’s innocent.”
“Around here, everyone is guilty until proven innocent. You go to jail and wait for a trial. And if someone has greased a few palms to keep her in there—a jealous boyfriend, a business partner—it could take forever. You can’t trust anyone, Esteban. Not the police or the judges or the guards. They all want a piece of the pie.”
Don’t get your hopes up, Juan Pablo was advising him.
Esteban pushed the hair away from his forehead. Hope was the only thing he had going, and if money was going to unlock the door to MaMaLu’s cell, he was going to make lots of it.
There was another man at La Sombra, sitting at the table with Cantina Man. They were talking in low tones. Well, the man was talking. Cantina Man was listening. Esteban skirted around the front and walked into the kitchen. Something had boiled over on the stove, and the pot was now charred.
Esteban shut off the burner and walked over to the service window through which Camila passed the dishes to Juan Pablo. He helped himself to some corn chips as he waited for the visitor to leave. Cantina Man had a lot of meetings when he was in town—different people, different times.
Esteban popped his head through the window, hoping to catch Juan Pablo or Camila. He didn’t see them, but someone had splattered ketchup all over the walls and tables. Esteban followed the trail and froze. Not ketchup. Blood.
Camila was lying on the floor, next to Juan Pablo. They had both been shot in the head. Juan Pablo’s face was contorted. His eyes were still open. His gun was half way out, lying by his side.
The stranger Esteban had seen earlier had a gun pointed straight at Cantina Man. He was resting it on the table, so it looked like the two men were having dinner, but his finger was on the trigger. Cantina Man’s knuckles were white as he clenched his walking stick.
Esteban knew he should back off, retrace his steps and run like hell. He knew he shouldn’t crawl into the dining area, pick up Juan Pablo’s gun, and wipe the blood off so it didn’t slip from his fingers. He knew he shouldn’t aim the gun at the back of the man’s head and try to keep his hands from shaking as he took aim.
Esteban knew all of that, but the only thing he could see was the stranger putting a bullet in Juan Pablo and Camila. He saw the man turn the same gun to Cantina Man. He saw the bullet rip into Cantina Man, spewing blood and death over Esteban’s only chance of seeing MaMaLu. Esteban saw fifteen pesos about to be splattered on the walls. He saw the prison guard asking him for lunch. He saw himself sitting in the shadow of the prison, day in and out, always short, always close, eating fucking peanuts like a fucking idiot.
He squeezed the trigger. The recoil sent him crashing into one of the tables.
Esteban wasn’t sure if he’d gotten the man, who was still sitting in the chair. Then he toppled over sideways and hit the floor. A stream of blood sprang out from the back of his head.
Cantina Man and Esteban looked at each other.
Holy fuck.
Esteban let go of the gun like it had just burned his hand. His ears were ringing from the deep boom of the shot.
Cantina Man walked over to him and kissed him on both cheeks.
“I just wanted to see my mother.” Esteban was shaking. He couldn’t believe he had just killed a man. “I just wanted to see my mother.”
Cantina Man picked up the gun and wiped it down. Then he put it back in Juan Pablo’s hand. “I will take you to your mother,” he said.
He made a couple of calls. A few minutes later, a dark car pulled up to the curb.
“Where is your mother, boy?” Cantina Man asked. He ushered Esteban into the back seat.
“Valdemoros. But they won’t let anyone in at this time.”
A police car screeched to a halt outside the cantina. Two uniformed officers got out.
Cantina Man rolled down his window. “Look after it.”
As the car pulled away, Esteban saw the police men line the back seat with garbage bags and throw three dead bodies in the car.
“Juan Pablo . . . Camila . . .” Esteban’s voice no longer sounded like his. He felt like his body and soul had been snatched. His friends were dead and he had just killed a man.
Cantina Man didn’t say anything. He tapped the glass partition between him and the driver with his cane. “Valdemoros. Vámonos!”
Valdemoros was even more imposing at night. Without the noise and activity of vendors and visitors, it was like a massive ghost ship stranded in the middle of nowhere. Spotlights were trained around the perimeter and someone from the tower beamed one straight at Cantina Man’s car.
The driver got out and summoned one of the guards. “Concha!”
She walked over to the car and greeted Cantina Man.
“Escort this young man inside. He’s here to see his mother,” he said.
“Si, Señor. Please come with me.” She banged her baton on the heavy, metal gate. It lifted with a loud thunderous rasp.
And just like that, Esteban was in. No waiting in line, no lunch money, no logging in.
“What’s your mother’s name?”
“Maria Luisa Alvarez.” Esteban’s heart was racing. He wished he had a comb. He wanted to look good for MaMaLu.
“Is my shirt clean?” he asked the guard.
Can you see any blood? Please don’t let there be any blood. I don’t want to shame my mother with the blood of the man I just killed.
“Maria Luisa Alvarez!” Concha shouted as they exited the short tunnel and stepped into an enormous outdoor compound. Various rooms surrounded the prison yard: dormitories, workshops and prison cells. Almost nobody was locked up in the cages. Women and little children, dressed in shabby street clothes, peeked out from the dormitories.
Concha conferred with a woman in dark military garb. She disappeared into an office and started rifling through the cabinets.
“You are looking for Maria Luisa Alvarez?” asked one of the prisoners.
“Si,” said Concha.
The prisoner took a long look at Esteban before calling them into her dorm.
The women had constructed their own little rooms in the giant space, using stick frames attached to blankets. Some had narrow bunk beds, some had cooking equipment and shelves for clothing, but they were all crammed on the rough cement floor like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Babies suckled on their mothers’ bosoms while others slept on makeshift mattresses. The air was stale with the odor of confinement and hair oil and piss and sweat.
“Maria Luisa Alvarez.” The lady walked over to her space and handed Esteban a rusted metal box. It was green, with a red circle in the middle that said ‘Lucky Strike’, and underneath, in gold letters: ‘Cigarettes’.
“No,” said Estaban. “I’m looking for my mother.”
“Si.” The prisoner pushed the box back into his hands. “Tu madre.”
Esteban opened the box. In it were the earrings MaMaLu had been wearing, a hair clip and a newspaper cutting. Esteban was about to shut it when he caught a glimpse of the headline. He spread out the crinkled paper and moved closer to the lantern so he could read.
‘LOCAL NANNY ACCUSED OF STEALING FAMILY HEIRLOOM.’
Esteban scanned the words below. They were filled with heinous, horrible lies about how MaMaLu had stolen Skye’s necklace and how it had been found in her quarters. In a statement issued to the police, when the necklace was returned to him, Warren Sedgewick had expressed his shock and disbelief:
“Maria Luisa Alvarez was a trusted employee and a friend of my wife’s. This necklace belonged to Adriana and means a great deal to my daughter. I find it hard to believe that Skye’s nanny would be capable of committing such a crime against our family.�
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It all fell into place for Esteban. The night he had seen Victor leaving their room, was the night Victor had planted the necklace. The cops who had swooped in to take MaMaLu away were all in on it. Esteban had been naive then, but now he understood how it worked.
Nothing . . . permanent, Warren had said to Victor.
Victor had framed MaMaLu for a crime she didn’t commit, and Warren had made sure she stayed locked up with his fake statement. Esteban felt like an idiot, running to Casa Paloma, expecting Warren to help. Victor had followed orders, but it was Warren Sedgewick who’d issued them.
He was to blame for this. Him and the man they called El Charro. They had done this to protect themselves, because MaMaLu had seen them, she could connect them and all the other members of the cartel that had gathered at Casa Paloma that afternoon.
Look after it, Warren had said, because he didn’t want to get his hands dirty; he never wanted to get his hands dirty. He’d left in a hurry, in case it caught up to him, in case MaMaLu talked, in case El Charro changed his mind about letting him leave the country.
The two of them had left MaMaLu to rot in jail.
“Where is she?” Esteban turned to the guard. “Where is my mother?”
“Concha.” The guard who had been looking up files in the office stood at the entrance and held out a piece of paper.
Concha walked over to her and scanned it. “Sorry.” She looked at Esteban. “Maria Luisa Alvarez is dead.”
It was so ludicrous, Esteban laughed. “What? Are you mad? I heard her singing just the other day.”
He started looking for her, flinging aside makeshift curtains and cardboard partitions. “MaMaLu!” He walked from dorm to dorm, leaving a trail of startled, wailing babies. “Sing, MaMaLu. Sing for your Estebandido, so I can find you.”
Concha and the other guard pulled him into the courtyard. “Stop! Your mother contracted tuberculosis and died from complications related to it.” They held up the paper for him. “We notified her next of kin, her brother Fernando, but no one came. She was buried with the other unclaimed prisoners. This is her prisoner and plot number.”
Esteban wanted to shut their mouths. Every word they said made it worse. He wanted to shut his eyes and his ears. He wanted to go back, take Juan Pablo’s gun, and point it to his own head.
“No.”
“No.”
“No.”
He kept repeating.
He hated the way the women were staring at him from their dorms—some with pity, some with irritation at being disturbed, but most with blank, empty stares. They had seen it countless times. Prisoners had to buy their beds, their clothes, their privileges. If you couldn’t pay for the doctor, no one came to see you. And here, cramped in tight spaces, they’d seen it all: AIDS, flu, measles, tuberculosis. It was a breeding ground for all kinds of bugs and diseases, which, if left untreated, turned fatal.
Concha picked up the box Esteban had dropped and gave it to him. The tiny, rusted tin was all that was left of his mother. MaMaLu didn’t smoke, but it was probably the only thing she’d managed to scrounge up in this hell hole. He wondered how someone that took up so much space in his heart could be reduced to a scrap of red and green metal that smelled like tobacco.
“Mi madre está muerta,” he said softly, as he weighed it in his palm.
“My mother is dead!” he shouted, announcing it to the whole prison. His voice bounced off the bleak, gray walls that surrounded the compound.
No one cared. No one had told him. No one had asked what kind of funeral she’d like. Did they know to put flowers in her hair? Did they know her favorite color? Esteban hoped they had buried her in an orange dress, the color of tangerines. MaMaLu was just like that—full of zest and gold and sunshine and bite.
He held up her earrings. She always wore the same pair: two doves joined at the beak to form a silver circle. Esteban wanted nothing more than to hear the jangle of the small turquoise stones that hung from the hoops as she chased after him. He needed that because he’d been bad. Really, really bad.
Get your broom, MaMaLu. I promise I won’t run today. I’m sorry I didn’t make it to you in time. I tried. I tried so hard. I did bad things. I killed a man. You have to come after me, MaMaLu. Come after me because only you can save me. Only you can make it better.
But MaMaLu’s earrings hung limply in Esteban’s hands. She was not coming to save him or chastise him or love him or sing to him.
Esteban waited for the tears. He didn’t care if the guards manning the towers, or the women, or the children saw him. He wanted to release the sea of grief that was welling up in him, but the tears would not come. All Esteban felt was rage. He wanted to ram his fists into the tall, concrete walls, until big, gray boulders toppled over and buried everything. All of the helplessness and injustices and betrayal turned his heart into cold, hard stone. Esteban did not cry when it sank to the bottom of his soul like an abandoned anchor; he did not cry as he followed Concha through the tunnel, back to Cantina Man’s car.
“Did you see your mother?” he asked.
“My mother is dead.” Esteban’s voice was as hard and corroded as the metallic cigarette box he was holding.
“I’m sorry.” Cantina Man paused. “You have family?”
Esteban thought of the father who had abandoned him. He thought of an empty bottle of tequila, rolling from his uncle’s hand. He thought of the friend who’d left him in a cloud of dust. He thought of trampled paper animals, and three hundred and fifty pesos, and Juan Pablo, and Camila, and tangerine peels decaying in the dirt.
“I have no one,” he said.
Cantina Man was quiet for a while. “You saved my life today. I will take care of you. From now on, you are not Esteban. You are Damian—the tamer, the slayer.”
Dah-me-yahn. Esteban liked the way it sounded—like someone who didn’t give a damn. All he cared about now was bringing Warren Sedgewick and El Charro to justice, the kind of justice they wouldn’t be able to buy their way out of, the kind of justice MaMaLu had been denied.
Damian was going to make them pay for what they had done to his mother.
Cantina Man’s driver gave Concha a whack of bills. The other guards watched, eager for a cut.
“Where to, El Charro?” asked the driver, when he got back in the car.
El Charro.
The name jump-started Damian’s stone cold heart. He looked from the driver to Cantina Man and back again, as a sick, twisted realization hit him.
Cantina Man was El Fucking Charro.
Damian had saved the life of the man responsible for his mother’s death—one of the two men he had just sworn to take vengeance against.
“Home, Hector,” said El Charro. “We are taking Damian home.”
‘HOME’ TURNED OUT TO BE the city of Caboras, a three-hour drive from Paza del Mar. Although El Charro had many bases, he lived behind gated walls on the misty hills surrounding Caboras, and even though Damian had saved his life, he wasn’t about to invite the boy into his own home. El Charro didn’t get to the top by being sentimental.
“Keep your mouth shut and stay low until I call for you,” he said, when they were parked outside a pink three-storey building in a middle class neighborhood of the city. It looked innocuous enough, but it was one of the safe houses that the cartel ran in the city.
Damian understood. It wouldn’t do to advertise the fact that a twelve-year-old had saved El Charro. Reputations had to be maintained, machismo kept intact, and Damian was happy to play along, to wait until the perfect opportunity presented itself.
Hector, the driver, let him into a second floor apartment. The smell of marijuana was heavy in the air. A dozen young men lounged on sofas, watching TV.
“Your new compadre, everyone.” Hector introduced him to the group.
They seemed more interested in what they were watching. New recruits were on the lowest rung of the organization—disposable and barely worthy of acknowledgment.
Hector gave
Damian a quick tour and settled him into a bedroom, where three others were already sleeping on mattresses, lined up in a row.
“Get some rest. Training starts tomorrow,” he said, before leaving.
Damian lay in the dark and listened to the drone of the television. He slid MaMaLu’s box under his pillow and caressed the worn edges. It wasn’t rest that Damian craved. It was something much, much darker. Damian was going to train hard. He was going to learn everything El Charro could teach him, and then he was going to use that very knowledge to destroy him.
It wasn’t long before El Charro summoned Damian. News of the attempt on his life had sparked rumors and El Charro was itching to send a message to his enemies.
“You are going to accompany this boy to church,” said El Charro, as they drove through the urban sprawl of concrete and glass that was Caboras.
Damian looked at the boy sitting between him and El Charro. He looked about nine or ten and he was staring ahead vacantly. His hands were wrapped tightly around a canvas bag, like he was carrying a fragile baby.
“You know what to do.” El Charro turned to him when they stopped outside a church. They had driven about four hours to get there.
The boy looked out the window, at the tall spires that framed the entrance and nodded.
“Damian, you wait for him by the door,” said El Charro.
Damian got out and followed the boy up the wide, rounded steps to the church. It was only when he was at the entrance that he noticed the trail of blood dripping from the canvas bag the boy was holding. He stopped at the door, like he’d been instructed.
People were gathered inside for a funeral. There was a framed photograph of a middle-aged man in the front, propped up beside the coffin.
‘In Loving Memory of Alfredo Ruben Zamora’, it said.
His widow and children were sniffling in the front row. A priest was speaking to the congregation. They all paused when the boy walked in. He opened the canvas bag and sent something rolling down the aisle.
It was a few seconds before the screaming started, a few seconds before Damian realized that it was the severed head of the man they were holding the funeral for.