“Jesús. Of course I do. You OK?”
“A little nervous. Tu sabes, been awhile.”
“I didn’t mean that.”
“What? What you think, I . . .”
“Jesús . . .”
“I want to see you. Lay low for a few days in your house. Till things settle down.”
Do they know about her? Are they staking her out?
There was a long silence. Then:
“First I need you to promise me something.”
“What.”
“That you won’t be bad anymore. It makes me so unhappy.”
“I want to tell you about . . .”
“Don’t tell me anything over the phone.”
“Don’t leave me alone. Please. This still your address?”
He read it to her. She said yes. Jesús felt like a kid again, hiding in the hollow tree with his sister, trying his best to figure out a story that would make her happy. But now she didn’t want to listen to him. How could he make her laugh if she didn’t give him a chance?
“Don’t disappoint me again, Jesús. OK?”
He hung up, irritated. He gulped down the rest of his beer and went outside. The wind hit him in the face and blew dirt across his lips. He went to a park nearby and sat on a bench to write in his diary. He wrote: “The Unamed say I am the Angel of Jugment, I go to heven when I done wat I got to do.” He’d do it, even if he had to tiptoe behind God’s back.
Maybe he should try hitching at the truck stop, jump on the first truck leaving for Albuquerque. He’d shock her by showing up on her doorstep.
She’d always been his weak spot. It was high time he took care of it.
A police car drove by on one of the streets bordering the park. He tried not to look at it, to just keep writing.
He called María Luisa again from the truck stop.
“So you think I have something to do with . . .”
“Jesús, it’s time to put an end to it.”
Jesús closed his eyes and lowered his head. He felt as though he could almost touch her, as if she were right there beside him.
“Think about it. I could arrange it. I could make sure they respect your rights.”
“I don’t want them to kill me,” Jesús said. His voice rose and fell following the rhythm of his breathing and heaving chest. “I hate jail, but I prefer it to being dead.”
“Just calm down.”
“I need to see you.”
“You’ll see me soon. Just think it over. And call me when you’ve made up your mind.”
“It’s so hard.”
“I know.”
María Luisa’s voice had a soothing effect.
He longed for some kind of release, to be relieved of this burden in his chest that was suffocating him, weighing him down. He’d kept everything inside for so long, the despair, the agony.
“I’ll call later.”
“Do it soon.”
Jesús put down the receiver.
5
Albuquerque, New Mexico, 1999
Sergeant Fernandez rang the doorbell and waited with his hands in his pockets. Thunder rumbled in the distance: rain was coming, and soon the streets of Albuquerque would be filled with puddles. The children playing in the ruins of the demolished movie theater on the corner lot would be forced to go indoors. The neighborhood was quiet, modest, punctuated by occasional sounds of shouting, Spanish phrases floating out through open windows. The shelves of local shops were stocked with Latino products—he had picked up some tamarind candies in one of them; homes were painted in assorted shades of yellowish-brown with imitation adobe walls made of stucco; the yards were chock-full of toys. Recent immigrants lived next to families who had been there for a few decades now, or descendants of people who had lived there long before the US flag had ever flown over the territory.
It was taking awhile. Fernandez wasn’t alarmed, though: he knew they were expecting him, and obviously it was intimidating to be called on by a police officer. He knew the wife didn’t have her papers. Best to keep the visit friendly.
The woman finally opened the door and invited him into the living room. A series of landscape paintings with volcanoes decorated the walls. He took a seat on the couch, which was covered in a plastic sheath. She asked in English if she could get him anything, and he said a glass of water would be nice. He watched her walk into the kitchen and out of his field of vision. María Luisa didn’t look much like the one in the photos he’d seen, or the image he’d constructed of her from their phone conversations. Brown skin, check; long black hair, check; but there was no trace of the beauty that had unsettled her brother. Her glance was evasive, and her cheeks were mottled with dark spots.
María Luisa came back and took a seat in a green armchair opposite the couch. It was a new chair and didn’t go with the rest of the furniture. Fernandez asked about her children. They must be at a neighbor’s house until he leaves.
“I’m listening,” she said.
The brassy tone in her voice made Fernandez think some men would find it easy to follow her lead. He imagined her in the restaurant where she worked weekends, and it struck him that she was the type of immigrant for whom coming here had been a bad decision. She could have gone far in Mexico, maybe studied to become a dentist or a veterinarian. She had probably thought that crossing the border would open up the world to her, but here she was just one more digit in a disposable labor force. She made more money, sure, but at the cost of living without dreams.
Anyway, who was he to invent other people’s futures? He should be focusing on the here and now.
“I guess you know why I’m here,” he said. “We have reason to believe your brother is closely tied to a series of crimes. We would like your help detaining him so we can talk to him, figure some things out.”
The woman stared at the floor.
“We know you have some influence with him,” the sergeant continued. “We’re closing in on him, and it could all end real bad. You got it in your hands to save him. In exchange, we would legalize your situation.”
She kept quiet.
“Has he been in touch over the years?”
“Yes.” Thunder growled again in the distance. “He calls me sometimes but doesn’t say nothing; when I talk, he hangs up. At first I didn’t know it was him. But I got some notebooks in the mail a few months ago, and I know they’re his even though he didn’t sign them. So the next hang-up call, I figured it out.”
“Can I see the notebooks?”
She went into another room and rummaged around. She came back carrying six notebooks, which she placed on the coffee table. Fernandez opened one and flipped through it, reading a few random sentences:
“Avenging angel has power to impoze justiss onearth . . . She don’t disirve me but here the thunder of my voise . . . Juárez, Mexicali, Caléxico, Reinosa, El Paso, it all is mine, allmine.”
“If you don’t mind, I’d like to keep these.”
She nodded. I’m proceeding correctly, Fernandez thought to himself, reviewing his own performance. The phone calls to gain her trust, the visit, everything was designed to make María Luisa understand that he wasn’t against her but on her side, they were friends and could work together. He should avoid using the abstract term the police because that always frightens people. He had to turn it into a personal problem, make her feel that other people might be out to hurt her brother but he had his welfare in mind.
Before leaving, Fernandez told María Luisa to consider his offer seriously and to keep him posted if she received another call. She nodded. He gave her his cell phone number and took off.
Fernandez spent the next few days in business-as-usual mode, normal office hours, keeping up with the news. He observed the Railroad Killer phenomenon, how it was sweeping the popular imagination: there wasn’t a single city or town along the Mexican border without a sighting or eyewitness account, or a possible suspect being held in custody. In Juárez alone, they identified eight cases of women who had
been found murdered near the train tracks that could have been the work of the Railroad Killer. Fernandez knew in his gut these murder cases had no connection with his investigation: all Railroad Killer murders had taken place in homes and in the United States. The horror in Juárez was someone else’s doing.
Small comfort, though. The sergeant spent late nights in his apartment eating pizza and drinking beer, reading police procedurals, drained by having to live in this constant state of uncertainty.
He called María Luisa and asked if she had any news. Nothing. He eyed photographs of happier days with Debbie and regretted having been so weak. He threw the photos away a few times, only to go back and salvage them from the trash.
One day she had showed up at his place to let him know she was leaving for Canada. He invited her in to the chaos and clutter that was his tiny living space—an old Domino’s pizza box balanced on the table next to an ashtray made of green glass and his coffee-stained dossier on the Railroad Killer. She perched on the couch. He offered her a beer, but all she wanted was a glass of water, thanks. He put a Johnny Cash CD on the stereo and sat down beside her.
“So you meant it,” he said.
“My cousin is there, and she really thinks I’ll find something for me, there are opportunities.”
Her lips were painted red, there was a sparkle of hope in her eyes, and her cheeks were glowing: the sergeant realized she hadn’t really come to say goodbye. Everything hinged on how he responded. If he told her not to go. If he urged her to move in with him. He could be a shelter for her loneliness, some company. No need to make any kind of lifelong commitment. They could just give it a try, see what happened.
Fernandez picked up the ashtray. He hadn’t smoked a cigarette in a long time, he only kept it there for visits from Debbie, who, try as she might, had never been able to kick her menthol Lucky Strike habit. The aroma of her cigarettes and the powdery sweetness of her perfume would mingle and linger in the air long after she’d gone.
He told her he understood her decision and knew how hard it was to live far away from one’s family and customs. He told her about his childhood in Mexico, how his parents let him roam freely and he would spend whole days outside or in friends’ houses in the neighborhood. How back then kids used to play outdoors, in the street. He used his hands when he talked, and the ashtray tipped from one to the other. Sometimes he regretted getting divorced, but he hadn’t been given much of a choice in the matter. His kids had distanced themselves; their way of life seemed foreign to him and he didn’t know who they were anymore.
“They’ll come back,” Debbie said. “Just give them a little time.”
Fernandez put the ashtray down on the table and looked closely at the photo of Johnny Cash on the cover of the CD. Now there was a man to go on a bender, he thought.
Debbie stood up and said she had to be on her way. He asked if he could walk her to her car.
“Don’t bother.” They said their goodbyes, and she gave him a peck on the cheek on her way out the door.
For a few seconds, Fernandez thought he might still have time. He could run after her the way they do in the movies, tell her how much he needed her by his side.
He heard her car motor cough and turn over.
He spent the weekend fishing in a small Gulf town where he used to hang out with a group of rowdy, hard-drinking friends back in the day. He liked the fresh catfish and market shellfish, that chunky shrimp gumbo that gave him such oomph. Any fish he caught was thrown back into the sea: he was merciful to them so he didn’t have to be soft with the hardened criminals.
The whole port area had been remodeled to attract tourists, and brand-new neon signs flashed over chain restaurants. Shops selling key chains and stuffed turtle dolls moonlighted as tattoo parlors. He missed the greasy spoons of his youth, where a person could eat and drink at a shabby wooden table and feel a slight menace in the air.
It was noon when his cell phone rang. He was seated at an outdoor table in one of those newfangled chain restaurants, basking in the sunlight. It was María Luisa, her brother was willing to turn himself in.
“But he will only surrender to you. He wants me to be there too. And you can’t send him to prison.”
“Imposible,” Fernandez said, excited and exultant. “If we arrest him, he’ll have to go to jail.”
“But not for all of his life.”
The sergeant thanked her and told her he’d be back in touch with the details, that she should keep the communication open with her brother. She agreed and hung up.
Fernandez headed back to Landslide immediately. He called his superiors from the road and alerted the FBI agent who was coordinating from Texas. He updated them all, and they expressed incredulity: What, you mean that’s it? After a wild manhunt, the monster is just going to turn himself in? What were his motives?
“Maybe he knows he’s surrounded now, he can’t do anything or go anywhere,” Fernandez speculated.
He pulled his car over to the side of the road. The desert landscape opened up before him; the sun, triumphant in a cloudless azure sky, beat down with violence on the brownish-purple plateaus in the distance, the thirsty, rock-strewn earth and dusty cacti. Two vultures hovered over a tree.
He took a breath and smiled. Then he got back on the road. He was happy.
6
Landslide, 2009
It was getting light out by the time I left. The street lamps were still on, though, and their radiance seemed strange and out of place in the dawn light.
Back in the studio, I cleaned the makeup off my face and made some coffee. As I walked by my laptop, my screensaver greeted me with a picture of Fabián cuddling me. Seeing his tango CDs, his books on my shelves, I asked myself what I should do with it all.
I fell asleep for a few hours. I dreamed that I was being chased around the neighborhood by the living dead, and the houses morphed into an endless city that covered the entire planet. The zombies never actually caught me, but they wouldn’t leave me alone either. I hid out in an abandoned mansion and started aging in fast-forward, and when I looked out the window there they were, still waiting for me.
These were strange days, when time seemed to dissolve, to go haywire. Sometimes I would sleep all afternoon and stay awake all night. I tried to draw, but I couldn’t. I wanted to write, but nothing came. I tried to read, I couldn’t concentrate. Books I’d only skimmed piled up around the studio.
I talked to my mom, brought her up to date. She consoled me but also made sure to point out that it had been my own fault. Let it be a lesson. I asked her to change the subject: now wasn’t the time for reproaches. “Whatever you say, hija,” she said. “I have my problems too, you know. Your dad just bought two tickets for Santa Cruz, we’re supposed to be leaving next month. It made me so mad because he didn’t even consult me first. Now what am I supposed to do?” She didn’t like the idea of having one-way tickets to Bolivia. No, she wouldn’t go. But how was she going to leave him on his own? “Dios mío, that man is more stubborn than a mule.” We hung up, each of us in her own world.
Fabián called me just once, to let me know I could go pick up my things. The following week he was leaving for Santo Domingo. I was surprised; I never actually thought he’d drum up the courage to leave. And although I’d promised myself that I would never see him again, I gave in yet again.
When I got there, he was packing his stuff into crates. The rooms were empty. He barely paused to greet me. It crossed my mind that he was still in love with Mayra, meaning I’d never really had a fighting chance.
I asked how he was doing.
“As well as can be expected, I suppose, given the circumstances.”
He offered me a glass of water; he was sipping a bottle of Pacífico. We walked out into the yard.
I was tense and awash in memories of so many “mornings after” spent there in Fabián’s house. Like when he tried to teach me how to tango, and I kept stepping on his toes and laughing, and he’d say “Bolita, you have
two left feet!”
“Good luck,” I said and hugged him. “Don’t do anything crazy. It’ll do you good to rest awhile.”
“I’m not sure that I’ll be getting much rest,” he said, touching his forehead.
“Oh, well. I guess you’ll be spending time with Mayra. I figured as much. Just didn’t want to admit it.”
“Yes, and no. I hate Mayra. I can’t stand being around her. But what else can I do?”
I looked at him.
“I’m going to find my daughter. I told you that one day you’d understand me. You might not think my secret justifies my behavior, but you’d understand.”
“Did you just say ‘my daughter’?”
“Mayra had wanted to have a baby. I didn’t. All I wanted to do was crawl out of the writer’s block I’d fallen into after my first book. It would have been unthinkable with a child.”
He coughed. There was a kind of twinkle in his eye that I’d never seen before, some sort of strength, or maybe it was determination.
“I don’t follow you. What . . .”
“I told her I didn’t want to have children, that the subject was moot. But we had a knock-down-drag-out over it. We were still brooding ten days later when she told me she was pregnant. That it had been a fluke. Of course I didn’t believe her. She was happy; she said she thought this was going to bring us closer as a couple, but I was convinced it had been a big trick to keep me tied to her.”
I was tongue-tied, floored; all I could do was stare over at the house where so much of what we had lived together had taken place, look up at the windows on the second floor.
“I dreamed one night I was prattling to a baby who suddenly turned green and then burst into a thousand pieces that scattered all through the house. I was terrified. I told her she couldn’t have the baby. That if she went through with it, she was on her own. I wouldn’t be there; I wanted no part of it. Not even my name. I would never acknowledge that I was the father, so she had better keep that information to herself.”
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