by David Levien
The station didn ’ t last much longer before it lost reception. Paul switched off the radio and they rode in silence, looking out the windows. Cutting was fast work, and before long the fields they passed held only stubble. They continued on over featureless plain under an empty sky.
Behr nearly detoured past Linda ’ s out of habit as he did anytime he drove south. It was an automatic response whenever he was near Vallonia. There had long been an ache inside him, a throbbing sense of emptiness in the place she used to fill, like the phantom pain people claimed after they ’ d lost a limb to amputation. It was a feeling he took for granted for many years, and he had developed an almost perverse familiarity with it. But as they blazed past the exit he would ’ ve taken to get to her, the ache was only a brief, reflexive thought that didn ’ t occupy nearly the amount of space as his thoughts of Susan. As they drove on, though, she, too, was pulled from his mind, replaced by speculation on what they would find and face in Ciudad del Sol and of what he ’ d packed in the trunk under a piece of carpet in the large spare tire well.
The sun was high in the sky and sliced through the windshield like an acetylene torch when they crossed into Missouri, and almost by force of momentum they started talking.
“What went down between you and Captain Pomeroy?” Paul asked.
Behr drove for another mile or so looking for a comfortable way to rest his injured arm while he considered how best to answer.
“When you ’ re a cop,” he began, easing the car around a road-killed possum drying in the sun, “the city you work in becomes your city. It ’ s your concern. You give yourself to it. Accidents. Emergencies. Fires. Riots. Shootings. Whatever. If it happens, you show up, whether you ’ re on duty or not, even after you retire. And you expect something back for that. Something small. You expect to belong to it as much as it belongs to you.” Behr told Paul about the relationship between his partner and Pomeroy, the shooting, the grudge. “The way he ran me,” Behr finished, “Pomeroy took that belonging away from me.”
They filled up in Sikeston and Behr stayed behind the wheel. They approached the next topic like swimmers entering an extremely cold mountain lake.
“He was full of contradictions, Jamie was,” Paul said. “Shy, but also self-possessed. It would take him a minute when he walked into a new situation, the first day of school, or a kid ’ s birthday party, or whatever. He ’ d just take it in quietly, start figuring out his place there. Before long he ’ d start picking up volume and speed. Then he ’ d become himself again, like he was at home, running around, laughing, and talking…” He taperedoff, not used to the subject despite it all. As much as they discussed the details of the case, Paul had never ventured to discuss personal memories with Behr. But the man ’ s simple recollections pushed him to his own.
“Tim was laughing all the time. He was a big boy.”
“Not a surprise.”
“A bruiser. A lineman in a diaper even when he was a baby. The world seemed to bounce off him. He broke everything in the house at least once.” Behr smiled and grimaced as the humor still carried an edge of pain.
“How come you didn ’ t have more?” Paul asked.
“Couldn ’ t. Linda, my ex-wife, had complications with Tim. You?”
“Should ’ ve. Thought we would. But as the years went by with Jamie we just seemed…complete.”
They had waded in ankle-deep, the water ’ s temperature seizing their breath and discouraging them from going further. But they braced and continued.
“I know…” Paul began, and then adjusted his words. “I mean I try and tell myself…that every minute with him was a gift to be appreciated. I keep waiting for the sense of failure to lift so I can do it that way.”
It was a partial question and Behr ’ s answer was wordless, a shift of body, a sound related to a sigh from which only an unfortunate few could draw meaning. Silence reigned for another sixty miles. The dark greens of the blooming deciduous trees gave way to a more faded landscape of pale yellow and sage.
“I wish I would ’ ve just been happier every day, with my wife and son, back when I had everything,” Behr said as they passed by a sign advertising the turnoff to Jesse James ’ s birthplace several miles ahead. “I found myself always looking forward to another time, though, to a vacation or a promotion or the summer, when things were gonna be perfect. I didn ’ t realize it was already those times every morning or at the end of the day, depending on the shift I worked. And during the Little League games…the shit he ’ d come home from school having learned — ”
“From his friends, not in class — ”
“Exactly.” Both men ’ s smiles slid away.
Paul ’ s head nodded slowly, as if the inside of the car was a space capsule at zero gravity. “Luck always seems like it belongs to someone else,” he said. He thought of the breakfast before they ’ d left. Carol had cooked the bacon and eggs just right and the coffee had been the proper strength. Though there had been little talk, it had been abidingly pleasant between the three of them, as it might ’ ve been if he and Behr were setting off for a day of fishing and not into the unknown. He ’ d once heard an idea that at the end, one didn ’ t remember life as a whole but as just a string of moments. If that was the case, then that morning ’ s breakfast was one of them.
“All we have are moments,” Paul said aloud, as if Behr were privy to his thoughts.
“Yeah,” Behr agreed, sounding complete in his understanding.
They drove through the night, a blanket of blackness pierced only by the headlights of big rigs and the bright gas station signs along the highway, as Arkansas and Texas passed beneath their wheels. They pulled off the interstate to buy chips and sodas and to switch drivers, but didn ’ t stop for the night. The distance was twelve hundred miles and they ’ d figured on it taking twenty-five or twenty-six hours. They made it in closer to twenty-two. They were south of Austin when the night had run out. Morning had come and the landscape had gone from high steppe to desert by the time they reached Laredo and the border. They bought ten gallons of drinking water and finally reclined their seats for a few hours ’ sleep before they headed south and west into a notch of land that was sand, scrub, and chaparral, where they finally joined a line of cars waiting to cross over the river bridge.
Ciudad del Sol. A sickening sense of dread covered Paul along with a thin coating of dust as they rolled in from the U.S. side with barely a glance from the Mexican border guards. Paul caught Behr ’ s eyes absorbing the details of the checkpoint and followed suit, scoping the American guards on the return side who, even now, took only slightly more care than their Mexican counterparts. Traffic had snarled among tired coils of rusted wire and chain link that halfheartedly secured the area. He wasn ’ t sure if there was any significance to it, or which details he was supposed to remember, but he attempted to catalog it all nonetheless.
“We ’ re just tourists. On vacation,” Behr said. “If they search the car, we ’ re thinking about doing a little wing-shooting and target plinking.” Paul understood then that there were guns in the trunk.
There was a knock on the passenger window. They turned. A slender man in his midtwenties was there, having made his way along the rows of stopped cars. He held a bag of dirty oranges.
“We don ’ t want any. No, gracias, ” Paul said putting down the window halfway.
“No queremos,” Behr added from the driver ’ s seat.
The man threw the oranges to the ground. “Ah, you speak Spanish. Good, eh. What you want? I ’ m Victor. I be your travel agent here,” the young man said in decent English. Behr and Paul considered him, then traffic cleared ahead of them and they drove on. Paul put up the window against the swirling dust.
The border behind them, they passed through what resembled a demilitarized zone of broken bottles, smoldering garbage, and burned-out vehicles. They drove past young people who pushed old bicycles heavily laden with cargo. They made a loop around the outskirts of the town, which was ringe
d by muddy fields attempting to pass for farmland. Groups of braceros lay in the shade of ancient stake-bed trucks taking lunch that seemed to include little food, merely rest. On the east side of the town they passed the maquiladoras, long, low cinder-block factories dotted by tiny broken windows that could not admit much light or air for the young women who worked there assembling goods for slave wages.
They reached the city center, as it was, a bit tidier than the outskirts, and parked the car. They began walking among Mexicans and other Americans — fraternity boys wearing southwestern college T-shirts starting off on tequila benders; older middle-management types, pale and pasty under their polo shirts and khakis; young bohemian travelers on their way farther south; and aging married couples, huddling together in groups, who might have been better advised to try a cruise. They passed booths selling cheap merchandise that filled both sides of the streets, narrowing them, forcing pedestrians together in choking foot traffic made dangerous by the dusty vehicles that occasionally rumbled by with bleating horns. Shoddy guitars hung in dense rows outside music stores. Sombreros, plastic sunglasses, bottles of mescal, suntan lotion, woven blankets, and T-shirts of every color lined the way. There were what appeared to be small zebras, actually little donkeys painted black and white, hitched to carts. Pictures with the animals cost a dollar, rides in the carts cost two. Nobody seemed to be buying.
They came upon a plaza, boxed in by a large, run-down church on one end and a neglected government building on the other. Sun-bleached dogs ran around a dry fountain. Old men congregated on benches and stout women pulled children around by the hand, many carrying infants in their free arm. Standing under a large tree smoking were young men in thin leather jackets and worn-out sneakers. Paul had no idea what they ’ d do next.
“Hungry?” Behr asked. Paul shrugged and they left the plaza for a side street, where they found a small, tin-roofed building that was both a grocery store and some type of restaurant.
They were eating stringy chicken and yellow rice doused in a flaming-hot sauce they hoped would kill the bacteria when Victor walked in and approached them.
“ Hola once and again,” he said, and sat down at their table. Paul looked to Behr, who didn ’ t object. “You are on vacation?” Victor asked.
“Yeah, sure,” Behr answered.
“Buy me beer,” Victor said. Behr nodded and Victor shouted to the woman who had brought them the food. She arrived with a can of Tecate a moment later. Victor took a sip and smiled, putting pointy elbows on the table. He was tall and thin, with a downy black mustache and improbable blue eyes.
“So what you want? A tour? A party? A fishing charter? I get it all for you.” Behr shrugged, noncommittal, at the offers. “Maybe you want women? Pretty girls…”
Paul saw Behr perk up at this and attempted to look interested as well.
“ Sн, sн, seсor, lo que quieras. I take you to a good place.”
Behr pushed his plate away. “Sounds good,” he said.
As they left the restaurant, Behr said, “We ’ re kind of choosy. We ’ re looking for a special place, just so you know. Don ’ t take us to the usual.”
“ Sн, sн, you choose,” Victor assured them. It was unclear whether he ’ d understood.
The day grew impressively hot in the afternoon, the air suffocating. Everything and everyone moved about at a choked, languid pace. The first brothel was a low mud building connected to a trailer that was up on blocks. There was a canopy creating shade tied to the structure and a half dozen women sat around on plastic chairs beneath it. They wore polyester tube tops and loose skirts. They drank Coke out of sweating bottles and didn ’ t move or bother putting on a presentation as Behr and Paul walked up behind Victor. Victor greeted several of them and then a slight, dark woman with forbidding eyes emerged from the trailer. Victor addressed her as Marta, then must ’ ve spoken of them, as she looked them over with a piercing gaze.
She walked toward them boldly despite her not being over five feet tall.
“ Como estбn,” she began. “You want pretty girls?”
Behr and Paul each shrugged a vague yes, and she took Paul by the hand and dragged him closer to the women. A few of them smiled at his obvious discomfort. As a group they came off as medium plain. Some were taller than others, some meatier, others prettier, but particular characteristics seemed to blend together.
“We have fun,” invited one of the younger girls, who possessed bright white teeth and shining black hair. She had chosen not to dye it blond as had several of her compatriots and so was one of the more attractive members of the group.
Marta looked to Behr and Paul for their decision, and when none came, she turned to Victor.
“You like these girls?” Victor asked.
“No,” Behr said. “Are there any others?”
“Others maybe later tonight. But they are like these,” he answered.
“We want something different. Younger. Different,” Behr said.
Victor and Marta spoke karate-chop Spanish at a speed they were unable to follow. Marta glared at them some more and muttered, “їQue quieren, el rancho de los caballitos?”
“ Ya basta, Marta,” Victor said, and then Marta and Victor spoke too quietly for them to hear.
Victor turned to them. “She thinks maybe you ’ re policнa. I tell her no.”
Behr turned to Marta. “No,” he said. “ No queremos. ” He broke a hundred-dollar bill off his bankroll and gave it to her. She took it as if he ’ d offered her a toothpick. The rest of the women seemed amused if anything at the rejection.
“ No importa,” she mumbled before drifting inside.
“Come on,” Victor said, pulling them away by their arms. “There are many places.”
Behr stopped. “Victor, we don ’ t want this. Find us something more interesting. їComprende? ”
Victor did his best to understand. “Mбs interesante. Sн. Claro.”
They spent the next several hours visiting whorehouse after piss-smelling whorehouse until they all became a blur. Some were in the middle of the town in cramped apartment buildings; others were farther out in mud farmhouses. They expended upward of a thousand dollars on madams and steerers, attempting to buy goodwill and loose conversation, and almost that much getting rid of the steerers who wanted to follow them around to the next place. After a while they couldn ’ t tell if the customers, mostly Americans, some of whom they saw at more than one place, were getting older or the girls working in the houses, parading in front of them, were actually getting younger at each stop. Perhaps it was the sheer number of available young women that overwhelmed them. Behr and Paul played the part of somewhat wealthy Americans, sexual tourists, looking for a certain kind of debauched experience. At several of the places they had drinks and perused the hookers, then declined and talked to some of the girls and the madams in cryptic terms about what they were really looking for.
At dusk they stumbled on a live sex show. They stood in the back of a room that was mostly empty except for a few standing patrons. The room had a heavy, fetid smell of chickens and blood that brought Behr back to his boyhood on the farm.
“They hold cockfights here?” he asked Victor, who seemed impressed with the question and answered yes.
A rail-thin man entered and strutted about the stage to a poor, crackling recording of traditional Mexican music. Then a woman no older than twenty walked onto the stage in a sheer red coverup, which she dropped without fanfare. Her body was mocha-colored and supple but bore purple keloid scars on one side of her abdomen. Her hair was wavy and fell past her shoulders, where it obscured some amateurish tattoos. She lay down on a bed and the thin man mounted her without much preamble.
An unseen emcee prattled on loudly in Spanish over the speaker system to the delight of the three or four other men in the audience.
The couple went on for a good while, changing positions several times. Behr and Paul exchanged a glance and headed for the door. Victor had one eye still on the show ev
en as he followed them out.
Outside, the arrival of night had taken some of the weight out of the air, or maybe just being away from the performance enabled them to breathe easier.
“You no like the show?” Victor asked, his faith in his clients seeming to waver for the first time.
“Not much,” Behr answered.
“It was fine,” Paul said, as if Victor was the impresario behind what they ’ d seen and he didn ’ t want to offend.
“We ’ re gonna go eat dinner,” Behr said, walking away.
“I come,” Victor offered. “There are other places — ”
“No,” Behr said. He gave Victor one hundred and fifty dollars. “See you later.” The tawdry day had worked on his nerves and had built a well of sickened frustration in him. He needed a break.
They left Victor standing behind them looking bereft despite his smile.
Behr and Paul found a grim motel that had a room with two double beds and a mildewed bathroom, where they washed the day ’ s grit off their faces and necks. Behr ’ s arm had recovered to the point where he no longer needed to ice it and just kept it wrapped in an Ace bandage, which was a good thing as the motel had no ice machine. They were tired, but sleep was out of the question. The hotel clerk pointed them to a restaurant down the street. They ’ d traded perhaps fifty words all day. There was nothing to say.
They sat and ate carne asada with rice and beans off large ceramic plates. They washed it down with half-cold beer and waved at fat and greedy flies with their free hand.
“I had to come here, man,” Paul said, apology in his voice.
“I know,” Behr responded.
“It was a waste of time. Of everything.”
“No,” Behr said without much behind it.
“I ’ m not even his father anymore.”
“It doesn ’ t end just because your son is gone.” Behr pushed his plate away.
“We can leave — ”
“We ’ ll leave when we ’ re done.”
It was then that they saw Victor across the restaurant coming in the door. Paul threw some bills on the table and they got up. He followed Behr ’ s lead, which was to walk past Victor right out the door. The persistent young man followed them, even as they walked out of the pool of light produced by the restaurant and on into the darkness of the rest of the street.