by David Levien
There was a hammering at the door. They looked at each other and Behr got up. He put his gun at the small of his back in the waistband of his pants.
“їQuiйn es?” he said.
“Policнa,” came the answer. Behr swung the door open. There was a stout man in his mid-thirties standing there. He chewed tobacco and wore a straw cowboy hat, and he had a. 45 on his hip. His partner waited back in the distance in a dirty patrol car.
“їSн?” Behr asked.
“We speak English,” the cop said, “it ’ s more easy.” Behr nodded.
“I am First Sergeant Guillermo Garcia. They call me ‘ Gigi, ’ or also, Fernando.” He patted his big gut and smiled. “Now tell me what are you here for in the ciudad?”
“For the tequila mostly, it seems.” Behr smiled, blanking the cop with his eyes.
“Tequila is good, huh?” It was clear Fernando wanted more.
“And to see the sights, of course,” Behr added.
“Maybe the girls, too?” Fernando said.
“Maybe. We haven ’ t decided,” Behr said. Now Fernando ’ s face changed.
“Ah, you know prostitution is illegal here? This is an important thing.”
“We didn ’ t know,” Paul said, from the bed.
“Is that a fact?” Behr asked.
“Yes. A big crime,” Fernando said. “But it is possible to get a license. Then you do what you want.”
“Huh. Sounds like we need one,” Behr said, already reaching for his money roll. He kept it in his pocket as he peeled off a hundred-dollar bill wrapped around the outside. He handed the bill to Fernando.
“This is good. Now you have no problem,” Fernando said. “My boss will get his mordida — you know what I say?” Behr did, and it wasn ’ t because of his Spanish, but rather that almost everyone in law enforcement was familiar with the term. It translated to “little bite,” as in everyone up the chain took his. Behr had often wondered at the productivity that would result if all the organization and effort that went into the systemic corruption were applied to a useful enterprise. “Oh yeah, but this license,” Fernando held up the bill “it expire tomorrow. Understand? If you stay, I got to come back.”
Behr just nodded.
“So then, have a good night,” Fernando said, and stepped back. Behr closed the door.
After a moment, Behr turned to Paul. “I was wondering when we ’ d have to deal with that. It ’ ll cost more next time. We ’ re pretty much out of time here.”
Paul absorbed this and hurried to the shower.
Around evening time they went to the cafй, which had become their usual place. They ate and then ordered coffee and waited. After a half hour Victor appeared in the doorway. If he held any ill will over the roughing he ’ d received, it didn ’ t show. Instead he whistled and waved, and Behr and Paul followed him out.
They walked quickly through the streets, cutting down a few back alleys. No one said anything, and they soon came upon a worn, mud-spattered Toyota pickup with a man resting on the hood. The man popped up at their approach. He was lithe and wiry, like a punk singer, an orangutan without the hair.
“This is Ernesto,” Victor said, “ mi primo. ” Ernesto wore silver-framed glasses with blue lenses despite the darkness. The man slid off the truck and landed solidly on his feet. They shook hands with him.
“ Quй tal, ” Behr offered. “You have something to show us?”
Ernesto shrugged.
“You can make your fee without carrying anyone across,” Behr said. The pollero looked at them. Maybe he smelled cop. But he wanted the money.
“You hit on my cousin,” Ernesto said. Behr bristled and met his eyes in time to see that the man thought it was more funny than anything else, but then he added, “You no hit on me or else problems.” Behr glared back at him but said nothing. “I show you a place. Get in.” He gestured to the back of his truck.
“We ’ ll get our car and follow you,” Behr said, not liking it.
“Then no come.” Ernesto got in the truck and started it. Behr and Paul looked at each other and then climbed in.
They rumbled out over crumbling asphalt road that gave way to dirt track, and the air changed from thick and fetid with the smells of the town and outlying factories to cool and fresh. Dark hunches of juniper and sagebrush stood out in the blue of the night. They sat low in the truckbed, backs against the wheel wells, heads down against the wind. Every rut shot through the truck ’ s metal frame and up their spines.
Behr spoke as quietly as he could and yet still be heard over the wind.
“This guy, the cousin,” he began, “watch him. He ’ s a blade man.”
“Yeah?”
“If something goes down, you won ’ t see it coming. Knives are meant to be felt, not seen. If he shows it to you, look for what else is on the way.”
“How did you…?”
“I noticed when we shook hands, a callus at the base of his first finger hard as a rock. You ever meet a chef? They always have a callus there, where the heels of all the knives they use rest. And this guy doesn ’ t seem like a cook to me.”
Paul nodded. There was nothing else to say.
After a few miles of rough travel, they drove off the track onto the open plain and the truck began to jostle and buck hard. Behr and Paul held on to the gunwales and ate dust. A few painful minutes passed and the truck began to slow. It came to a stop and then crept along again for several hundred yards before stopping once more. This time it was for good. Behr and Paul climbed down as Ernesto shut the engine but left the headlights on. Ernesto walked forward to where the lights illuminated a low berm, and Victor got out of the truck.
“What ’ s up?” Paul asked.
“Don ’ t know,” Behr answered.
“You see?” Victor said.
“You see?” Ernesto echoed from his place near the berm. “I show you something very dangerous.” And then he began kicking at the ground. He went on for a few moments, going deeper into the soft dirt, and then stopped and stepped back.
Behr and Paul looked at each other and walked forward. They saw it there, covered in brown earth, a human rib cage. Behr pushed at a nearby pile with his foot and uncovered a lower jawbone complete with teeth.
“Ah, shit,” he said.
“What is this?” Paul wondered.
Behr thought back to what he ’ d seen at Eagle Creek Park and knew. “The remains of a teenage boy.”
“ Sн, ” Ernesto said. He seemed vaguely proud to have shown them.
Paul moved forward and began kicking hard at the ground. Behr joined him. They uncovered femur bones, arms, clavicles, and skulls, evidence of perhaps half a dozen bodies. The remains weren ’ t fresh, but still an odor became present — that of decomposition.
“This is where they dump them,” Behr said.
Ernesto nodded. “I don ’ t go more far,” he said. “Or we all be killed.”
Paul realized he was in an unholy burial ground and doubled over, his hands on his thighs. He fell to his knees and began raking through the debris with his hands, looking for what, he was not sure, only something that would tell him what he needed to know. His breathing became ragged and shallow. He fought against a rising nausea and finally ceased with the digging.
Behr stopped his digging, too. There was very little sound above their breathing. “Why did you bring us here?” Behr asked.
“He hope you be satisfy,” Victor piped in. “And you pay him.”
“We ’ re not satisfied,” Behr said. “Where are they kept before?”
Ernesto just shook his head.
“You think I ’ m going to pay you for a graveyard?” Behr asked.
“This is where they end,” Ernesto said. “I no can take you where they are before.”
“Then you ’ re not getting any money,” Behr said with firmness.
“You see this place. I know from my cousin you no customers. I know if I take you there, you make trouble. Then trouble find me. So you gon
’ pay me now and then go away.” Ernesto smiled, the rhythmic clicking of a butterfly knife opening in his hand.
“For this? No,” Behr said, allowing himself to face Ernesto full-on but quartering away from Victor so his right side was shielded. “We want more. We need answers.”
Ernesto nodded at Victor, who was standing at the edge of the pool of the truck ’ s headlights. Behr ’ s assumptions proved correct as Victor raised both arms and in his trembling hands was a Ruger. 357.
Paul saw it and slowly stood. Perhaps he had come all this way to die among what might be the bones of his son.
Behr eased his hand into his pocket and gripped his own gun.
“Don ’ t fuck around, Victor. їComprende? ” Behr said evenly. “Put that thing up before this goes to shit.”
“You no pay him. You hit me. No good,” Victor said.
“You ’ re not shooting anyone. And I’ m not shooting you.” Behr slowly took out his gun and kept it pointed low, but in Victor ’ s general direction. “We ’ ll pay, and we ’ ll pay plenty if you take us to where the boys are kept when they ’ re alive.”
“Maybe we kill you and take all your money?” Ernesto suggested. “Safer for me than to take you there.”
“You do that, you ’ ll have the FBI up your ass,” Behr said with conviction.
“Bullshit, FBI.” Ernesto tried to sound brave and convinced.
“Bullshit if you look in my wallet and don ’ t find a badge there,” Behr said firmly.
Ernesto showed no inclination to check badges or anything else. Instead he yelled harshly at Victor in rapid Spanish. The words policнa and federales popped out from the speech. Victor struggled to keep the gun up and under control. It was an uncomfortable stalemate, one Paul anticipated Behr breaking with gunfire at any moment, and it motivated him to speak.
“Do you have kids?” Paul asked the men. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Victor look to Ernesto, giving him away.
“ Sн, my son, Keke, is two years,” Ernesto said, his voice losing its sharp edges.
“I believe my son, Jamie, could be one of them.” Paul gestured to the bones at their feet. “He ’ d be fourteen.” His words hung like dust in the desert air. “I need to find out what happened to him. To see where he was, how he may have ended up here. That ’ s all I want now.” He swallowed. “I hope nothing bad ever happens to Keke. You can make a lot of money for him right now. It can be easy.” They watched Ernesto chew it over.
“I want two thousand. It ’ s more danger than to bring people across.” He finally spoke.
“Forget two thousand,” Behr began.
“Two thousand,” Paul agreed. Ernesto nodded to Victor to lower the gun. Victor seemed relieved to do it. Paul went right to his pocket for the money. There wouldn ’ t be much left after he paid.
THIRTY-FIVE
When the darkness comes, so do the noises. The sounds of cars and trucks arriving, of men laughing, the thumping of doors open and shut, the dogs barking, and sometimes music, other times a lone squeal. The night is the time of dreams for the world, but not for him. For him, the night is a time for work. The cinder-block shavings come slowly together in a pile by his knees, which he blows away from time to time. Once, a long time ago, a meal had gone back without a spoon and it had not been noticed and now the spoon handle heats from friction, its point sharp and mean. He ’ s bent the rounded part of the spoon back toward itself, and after holding it for so many hours it fits smoothly into his palm. The point and edges of the weapon have long been sharp enough. He knows this by his blood, which he ’ s drawn from his own hand. He stops at a sound: footsteps in the hall. He tucks his weapon behind him. Then the footsteps continue on and he returns to his work…
THIRTY-SIX
Their headlights washed over what looked like a lunar landscape. The stark desert dirt, dried to chalky powder by the day ’ s sun, puffed up from the ground and filled the air inside the car. They had driven back to town, riding uncomfortable and alert in Ernesto ’ s truckbed. They had picked up Behr ’ s car and then followed Ernesto out into the night. They drove for a long time into the desert, beyond roads, paved or otherwise, in a direction they calculated as south and west of where they had been before. They passed giant saguaro cacti, standing silent like ominous sentinels, and caught sight of a fleeing jackrabbit, painted white by their headlamps. Finally the pickup ahead of them slowed and doused its lights. Frank did the same and followed as they rolled slowly, finding their way in the darkness for a half-mile. Their eyes adjusted to the night, and eventually they came to a stop in what they saw was a swale in the desert floor. A tall rise of sandstone and rock a few hundred yards distant blocked any view farther on. All four men climbed out of the vehicles. None seemed eager to speak.
“So…” Paul ventured.
“Over that hill.” Ernesto pointed toward the rise. “ El rancho de los caballitos. ”
Something about the phrase was familiar to Behr. “Over the hill? That ’ s it, then?” he asked. “Take us there.”
“Hey, pendejo, you just visiting here, but we have to live,” Ernesto said, and then spat. He got in the truck.
Victor hesitated, seeming unwilling to part from them.
“I sorry,” he said, looking down at his feet uncomfortably, “about the gun. I didn ’ t know for what you were here. I didn ’ t know about your son. I just think — ”
Ernesto rolled down his window. “ Cierra la boca. ” He spoke with disgust. “ Hijo de puta.”
Victor fell silent.
“It ’ s okay,” Paul said. “Don ’ t worry about it.”
Victor began moving toward the passenger side with resignation and then stopped. “If you try to go there, don ’ t go without the word.”
“What word?” Behr asked.
Victor thought for a moment. “Password. If you go without the password, they shoot you at the gate.”
“What is it?” Behr asked.
“ Cбllate, burro, ” Ernesto called, causing Victor to flinch.
“ No sй. ” Victor sighed deeply and slumped into Ernesto ’ s truck.
The Toyota pulled out, kicking up considerable dust, and drove back from where they had come. When the dust and the night silence had settled once again, Behr edged their car up just beyond where Ernesto had ventured. They went the rest of the way on foot. They climbed the rise, perhaps seventy vertical feet at a steep pitch, their feet sliding in the soft sand as it gave way in miniature avalanches at their every step.
“You think there ’ s anything over this hill?” Paul asked, grabbing at roots and rocks to help pull himself up.
“Either way we ’ ve seen the last of those guys and that two grand,” Behr responded.
“It didn ’ t seem like the time to haggle.”
“You ’ re probably right about that.”
They scrambled up the last of the hill, taking care not to profile themselves against the ridgeline. They flattened on their bellies amid the sagebrush and saw the place for the first time in what remained of the darkness. Down in the bowl beneath them a quarter mile in the distance was a series of low buildings, some constructed entirely of cinder block, others of fiberglass but propped up on cinder-block foundations that rose a few feet out of the desert floor. Floodlights mounted on ten-foot-high poles cast stark light on the compound.
The structures appeared sturdy enough, but the place seemed temporary, like an army encampment. The only nod to permanence was a dark, moatlike band of vegetation that had been deliberately planted and wrapped around the far edges of the buildings. A hurricane fence topped with coiled razor wire wrapped around that. A single dirt road led in from the darkness, and a tired-looking man leaned against a sturdy gate. A quarter mile beyond the cluster of buildings was a large propane tank and a small shed from which they could hear the low clatter of a generator. Occasionally, quiet bursts of Spanish escaped one or another of the buildings and reached them on the hill.
Behr produced a pair of field g
lasses from his jacket and scoped the place in detail. “Off the grid,” he said. He turned the binoculars on the man leaning against the gate. “That big boy ’ s on guard duty. He ’ s got a sidearm strapped to his hip.” Behr pointed out that the band of undergrowth around the buildings was horse crippler cactus, planted close together, deterring anyone from crossing it to get to the buildings or vice versa.
There was a row of four cars parked to one side. A dust-covered Bronco, a shiny Nissan Armada SUV, an aging Ford sedan, and a Japanese car, perhaps a Honda Civic. Another few cars protruded from around a building, but they could make out neither model nor license plate. Paul watched as Behr pulled out a notebook, removed a pen cap with his teeth, and wrote down the license plate numbers of the other vehicles.
Paul hoped Behr ’ s professional eye was picking the place apart for weaknesses, because he didn ’ t spot any gaps in the place ’ s defenses.
At the main building, a door opened and a rotund man emerged walking two large-barreled dogs that strained against their chain leashes.
“Rottweilers?” Paul asked, squinting into the distance.
“Worse,” Behr said, recognizing the breed. “Presa Canarios. Portuguese fighting dogs.” After a time the dogs squatted by the cactus patch until they ’ d done their business, then the man took them inside. They did not reemerge.
Behr passed the binoculars and Paul took a long look. At the sound of another door opening, Paul whip-panned to the largest of the structures in time to see a pair of men exiting. The men, Caucasian, apparently Americans, in their late forties and dressed in casual clothes, wove slightly, as if pleasantly drunk. They did not speak before they got into the Armada and drove out. The guard swung the gate open and raised a hand in farewell as the SUV exited. The guard resecured the gate as the Armada drove off into the night, and all was quiet again, until another pair of men, smaller in stature than the gate guard and the dog walker, appeared from inside the main structure as well. Between them was a tallish but slight boy dressed in a tracksuit, perhaps sixteen years old, with dark hair and features. They led the boy, who showed no signs of resistance, toward a long, trailer-style building. They paused. One of the men lit a cigarette and he and the boy waited while the other one pissed into the cactus. When he was done, they crossed the interior of the compound and then disappeared one by one into the long trailer. A snatch of Latin music leaked out the door when they entered. Over the next three-quarters of an hour, several lone men left. Then all became still and quiet. After a long time looking, Paul lowered the glasses.