by Sam Hawken
Only a few men were there at this hour in the middle of the week. Kelly took a stool at a dark-varnished oak bar that stretched all the way to the back. A TV showed fútbol, but the screen was over Kelly’s head so he couldn’t watch even if he wanted to.
The Kentucky was almost a hundred years old, but it was in good shape because customers and money kept coming in. They said Bob Dylan drank there and Marilyn Monroe, too. The bar fixtures were as old as the place: big, serious-looking wood and glass and age-foggy mirrors. The bartender was an old man wearing an apron. He gave Kelly a Tecate in the bottle with a little bowl of lime slices.
“¿Dónde está Estéban?” Kelly asked the bartender.
“¿Quién sabe?” the bartender replied.
Kelly had beer and lime and waited. If it were later in the year, he’d see what tickets to the bullfights were available and lay out for cheap seats he could hustle to drunken turistas who didn’t know they could just walk in and get better views for less money.
Estéban didn’t show for over an hour and two beers later. He passed Kelly without seeing him but when Kelly called his name, Estéban turned around like he wasn’t surprised at all. “Hey, carnal. ¿Que onda?” Estéban asked. “Where you been, man?”
Estéban took the stool next to Kelly. He was lighter than Kelly and shorter, but his skin was blasted deep brown by genes and time in prison work crews on the American side. He wore sunglasses, but took them off inside. Kelly kept his on.
“I been around,” Kelly said. “Lookin’ for you.”
“Hey, I ain’t hard to find. What happened to your face? You been at el boxeo again? When you going to learn, man?”
“I guess never,” Kelly said. “What you drinking?”
“Gonna spend big today, huh? I’ll have a cerveza if you’re buyin’.”
Kelly ordered a Tecate for Estéban and another for himself. The bartender brought fresh limes.
“It’s that puto Ortíz,” Estéban complained to Kelly. “People he knows… you don’t want to be no part of that world.”
“I just want to lace up my gloves,” Kelly said. He wished Estéban would stop talking about it. “I don’t want to fuck the guy.”
“Everybody he fucks, you fuck,” Estéban returned.
“That doesn’t make any goddamned sense.”
“To you, maybe not.”
They drank. Finally Kelly asked, “You got someone else carrying for you?”
Estéban put his hand over his heart. “What you thinking, man? I been on vacation for a few days, you think I forgot all about you? I ain’t some asshole; I know about loyalty.”
“Well, I took that fight because I couldn’t find you. Rent don’t pay itself,” Kelly said.
“I was down in Mazatlán for a while to see my cousin get hitched. Me and Paloma both. You offending me, man.”
Kelly finished his beer. “I don’t want to argue; I want to get some work.”
“What, like Ortíz gets you work?”
“Shut up about him.”
“Hey, all right,” Estéban said. He clapped Kelly on the shoulder. “Listen: I’m back in town and I gots plenty of stuff for you. In fact, I was goin’ to call you today and see if you wanted to carry some shit for me.”
“What kind of shit?”
“The usual kind of shit. Don’t bust my balls, okay?”
Kelly signaled the bartender for another beer. He put some money on the rail and the old man made it disappear. A fresh bottle of Tecate came, still sweating water from the cooler. “Okay,” he told Estéban. “Tell me when and where.”
FOUR
MORE THAN CHEAP FACTORY GOODS crossed the border from Ciudad Juárez into the States. Too many trucks and too many people meant too many places for dope to hide. The cops tried their best to catch the crooks, but it was a losing battle. More than that: it was a rout. Now the hardcore traficantes, the ones that came up in places like Mexico City, were even taking their fights and their weapons into Arizona, New Mexico and Texas.
Estéban’s product was weed, but he handled a little gumersinda from time to time. He knew Kelly was off the hard stuff, so when raw heroin came through he had one of his brown runners take care of it. Estéban showed respect for Kelly that way, and that was why they kept on together. That and because of Paloma.
Kelly carried a Reyes gym bag with boxing gear on top and a kilo of weed underneath. A setup like that could never make it past the border guards with their dogs and checklist of suspicious parcels, but for a gringo walking around here it was nothing a cop would glance at twice. Maybe not even once when Kelly had been through the grinder like the night before.
He came north, this time by bus, and then walked the rest of the way to a neighborhood so close to the border that he saw the lights of El Paso clearly. Every night was party night on these blocks, with white-boy tourist trash circling around the strip clubs and legal brothels getting drunker and drunker until they staggered back across the downtown bridge with their wallets and their pockets picked clean.
People knew Kelly here; at least enough to let him pass without trying to sell him fake Cuban cigars, flowers, Mexican fly and everything else under the sun. While the rest of Ciudad Juárez settled down for dinner and bed, these blocks hopped. This was where the city came close to being like all the other turista carnivals along the border, and why Kelly only came here when he was being paid.
The place was La Posada del Indio, the Inn of the Indian in English. A large animated neon cartoon Indian, complete with feather headdress of the kind never seen south of the border, marked the door. Inside it was no inn and was barely a saloon: tiny stage for a single dancing girl, a compact bar with two men doubling as bartenders and pimps, plus a dozen tables around which girls constantly circulated.
Kelly bought an overpriced cerveza from the bar. He didn’t attract a swarm of girls, either because of his looks or because they knew the score; La Posada del Indio was a good place to get business done, and the men who came for money instead of pussy had a certain air about them.
“¿Usted está buscando el hombre gordo?” the bartender asked Kelly.
“How did you know?” Kelly asked.
“He was waiting. You’re here.”
Kelly shrugged, but now Estéban would have to come up with a new place for a drop; they knew Kelly too well here. “So where is he?”
“He was waiting a long time. He got a girl.”
Kelly looked around the place for a fat man. Because it was midweek, most of the faces here were Mexican brown and bodies working-lean under the florid lights. Coming closer to the weekend the complexion would shift and the men would get doughier. There would be more cash changing hands, too.
“You want to get your dick sucked?” the bartender asked. “There is a girl, she’s new. She won’t mind your face.”
“No, thanks,” Kelly said. He unconsciously touched the tape on his nose. Even now, after a handful of aspirin, his face throbbed with his heartbeat. “What room did the fat man get?”
The bartender told him. Kelly finished his beer and went out the front door. A narrow alley brought him to the next street where a ramshackle apartment building with rusty iron balustrades sulked in darkness. Women and girls moved up and down concrete steps, leading men in and sending them away.
Kelly ignored the women and they did the same for him. In the bar they were selling, but back here it was business. He went to the third floor and rapped on the last door. He heard nothing from inside until a short, dumpy prostitute opened the door and then the sound of a television game show reached Kelly’s ears.
The woman was topless, dark skinned and had a heavy-featured, almost Indian look. She didn’t smile at Kelly. “What do you want?” she asked.
“He’s lookin’ for me, honey.”
Kelly saw the fat man on a little bed in the room. Light from the television made him seem pasty and blue. He reclined with his pants down around his knees and his cock was somewhere under a heavy pudding of fat.<
br />
He covered himself up when Kelly came in. The man wore a Texas State shirt half buttoned with a sweaty white tee underneath. Everything about him was large and fatty, including his hands. The woman put her blouse on.
“You want me to come back when you’re done?” Kelly asked the fat man.
“Nah.”
The fat man paid the woman off. They squabbled about the price because he hadn’t popped his nut. Kelly stood in the corner of the little room and stared into the bathroom; too small for a tub, it had a standing shower infested with roaches. A thick, brown carpet of shiny palmetto bugs gathered in the center around the drain. Kelly wondered whether they would scatter if he turned on the light over the sink and if they did, where they might go.
“You only going to pay me half?” Kelly asked the fat man.
“You got the full kilo?”
“Sure.”
“Then I got no complaints. Let’s see it.”
They left the television on and didn’t switch on a lamp. In the flicker of the tube, Kelly brought out the motivosa tightly wrapped in four flat packets of plastic film. He put the packets on the bed. The fat man took a roll of hundreds out of his pocket and counted out twenty. Then he took off his Texas State shirt.
“Want me to call the girl back?” Kelly asked.
“Funny,” the fat man said. He removed his T-shirt. His body wasn’t hairy, but it looked like it was melting; great folds of pallid flesh drooped from his frame. He had breasts bigger than a stripper.
Kelly took the two grand and recounted it. He put it in his breast pocket, zipped up his bag and prepared to leave. This was the awkward part; some buyers liked to chat, others were all about getting the hell out of there. Kelly preferred the latter. “You’re not gonna put it in a belt, are you?” he asked. “They watch for that.”
“Nah,” the fat man said. He palmed one packet of weed in one hand and lifted a roll with the other. Kelly imagined a musty smell. “Got my own safety deposit box.”
The fat man stowed the weed and put his shirts back on. Kelly couldn’t tell the difference.
“It’s a pleasure,” Kelly said at last. “I’m gonna go.”
“See you next time,” the fat man said. “I’m Frank.”
“Good luck, Frank,” Kelly said and he left.
His chances of seeing Frank again were slim. Every white guy with a dream of making a quick buck on a hop across the border had to try running a little motivosa, and the odds were good, but when the first batch sold and it was time for another run, nerves got the better of them. Would they make it? Could they make it? What if they didn’t make it? And that was that; the head game was harder than the deal.
Smart buyers and sellers used cutouts to divide the risk. The ones that came over themselves, like Frank, were amateurs. But so long as the money was good, there were no complaints from Estéban.
Kelly took a taxi home because it was late and he had money in his pocket. The ride was only five bucks.
In this neighborhood people went to bed early and got up before sunrise. All-night parties were for gringos and losers; around here people worked for a living, and they worked hard. To stay out of the city’s temporary suburbs of particleboard, cinder blocks and plastic everyone in a family had to work hard. It was the way.
He put the outside light on, just a bare yellow bulb without a fancy cover, and went inside to wait. He had beer in the little fridge and drank until his legs felt heavy and relaxed.
Paloma knocked after midnight. Kelly let her in.
Maybe she wasn’t beautiful, but she was everything Kelly liked. She had wide hips and a full body that stupid men up north would call chunky. Kelly liked her short hair and her tan skin. He liked the way she smelled.
“Hi,” Kelly said.
“Dinero,” Paloma replied.
Kelly gave her the money. “You owe me extra for cab ride.”
“Pay your own cab fare,” Paloma said. She counted out the cash. She wore snug jeans and kept a wallet in her back pocket like a man. The two thousand went up front. She paid Kelly from the wallet.
Kelly found extra for the cab, after all. “Thanks,” he said. “I don’t like the buses at night.”
“Cabs are a rip-off,” Paloma said. “You got any more of that beer?”
“Help yourself.”
Kelly sat on one end of a ratty convertible couch. Paloma sat on the other. They drank and looked at each other for a while. Kelly felt her eyes on his bruises.
“You look like shit, Kelly.”
“I got to make a living. You and Estéban were out of town.”
Paloma nodded. She drank beer like her brother: hard from the bottle and no flinching. Kelly hadn’t ever seen her smoke a joint or touch a needle. These were also things he liked about her. “Our cousin Ines got married.”
“That’s what Estéban said. How was it?”
“Better than your weekend.”
Kelly laughed. Paloma smiled. She had dimples and white, white teeth.
They sat a while and Paloma told him about the wedding. Mazatlán was on the Pacific coast and was beautiful all year round. Kelly saw cliff-divers there once and ate so much fresh fruit over a weeklong visit that he felt like a health nut gone wild. Compared to Ciudad Juárez it was tiny, but the air was cleaner and the streets less crowded. Kelly might have lived there, but Mazatlán was a retreat, not a place to make a home. He didn’t really understand why Juárez was one and Mazatlán the other, and not the other way around.
Paloma talked about vows taken in the shade of a white tent on the beach with a view of the old lighthouse. Dancing and drinking and eating followed. And family arguments and embarrassing drunkenness. “I would have invited you,” Paloma told Kelly. “But Estéban said you wouldn’t come.”
“Not my thing,” Kelly lied.
“Next time,” Paloma said.
“Sure.”
The beer didn’t last and neither did the wedding stories. Paloma got up to turn off the light and came to Kelly on the couch. He lifted her blouse in the dark. Paloma had small breasts and when Kelly put his mouth on them he felt the little steel barbells in her nipples on his tongue. She had other piercings elsewhere — in her tongue and at her navel. The stitched wool of a green scapular around her neck fell against him when they kissed.
Kelly was sore, but Paloma was careful. She did the work, put him inside her and set the pace. Kelly loved the sound of her breath in his ear when it quickened, and her hair in his face. He put his hands on her hips; let his fingers sink into her flesh. The smell of her was stronger than the fresh scent of beer.
“I’m close,” Kelly said.
Paloma lifted herself off Kelly and knelt between his legs. Her grip on his was tight, insistent and her mouth was searing. He felt her tongue stud on him. When he came, she swallowed. Afterward they lay together on the couch. Drying perspiration kept them cool.
For the first time that night, Paloma touched Kelly’s face, but delicately. “When are you going to stop fighting?” she asked him.
“Whenever they stop paying me.”
“I don’t like it when you get your nose broken. How are you supposed to eat my pussy?”
Kelly smiled in the dark. “Who says I was going to?”
Paloma hit him on the shoulder, but not hard. “You better, cabrón!”
“I know. I’ll go down for an hour when I’m better.”
“If you got to do it more than ten minutes, you’re not doing it right,” Paloma said, and laughed. “Maybe that’s the problem.”
“Oh, fuck you.”
He was tired and the alcohol was working on him. His mind drifted and he fell asleep. When he woke up, the sun showed through the windows and he was alone. A quilt from the closet was draped over him from the waist down.
Kelly showered and had beer and eggs for breakfast. Paloma didn’t leave a note, but she never did. Later he would call her, or maybe he would catch a bus and surprise her for comida corrida in the afternoon. Mexi
cans ate late and so did Kelly. In the meantime he walked. He had money in his pocket and nowhere to be.
At the end of the long row of apartment buildings a telephone pole was painted pink halfway up its length. Black crosses of electrical tape were fixed to it and below them a forest of multicolored flyers stirred whenever the wind blew.
Kelly saw a woman at the pole tacking up a new flyer. She was gone by the time he reached her and he stopped to see what she left behind. A photocopied picture of a teenage girl on green paper smiled out at him. Her name was Rosalina Amelia Ernestina Flores. She seemed too young to work, but that was the Norteamericano in Kelly thinking; in Mexico there was hardly such a thing as too young to work. Rosalina made turn signals in a maquiladora for a German car company. She had been missing for two weeks.
¡Justicia para Rosalina! the flyer said.
Other flyers overlapped Rosalina’s, other girls and other faces. Flyers were two or three deep. All pleaded for justicia: justice for Rosalina; justice for Yessenia; justice for Jovita. There were so many that the city had a name for them: las muertas de Juárez, the dead women of Juárez, because they were all certainly gone and gone forever.
“Excúseme, señor. ¿Usted ha visto a mi hija?”
Kelly turned away from Rosalina and her sisters. He saw the woman again. She had a fistful of photocopies on green paper. She looked old in the misleading way the working poor of Juárez often did; she was probably not forty.
“¿Usted ha visto a mi hija?” the woman asked again.
“No la he visto. Lo siento.”
The woman nodded as if she expected nothing different. She walked down the block and stopped at another telephone pole. A flyer there would be torn down by the end of the day, but she had to know that and Kelly didn’t feel right saying so. Only the notices on the pink-painted pole were untouchable.
FIVE
MUJERES SIN VOCES HAD A SMALL office on the second floor of a ramshackle building housing a pharmacy, a chiropractor and a smoke shop. Bright pastel-colored paint chipped and peeled from plain concrete walls. Signage was blasted white by endless days of sun. Somewhere along the line the foundation settled unevenly, so the whole structure leaned.