“I told you I need to leave today,” Luz says. She struggles to keep her voice under control.
Freddy raises his hands in a gesture of helplessness. “I know, I know, but it’s late, señorita, and my man isn’t on duty until tomorrow.”
“I want to cross tonight. I want to cross right now.”
“I’m sorry, but that’s impossible. Everything will be fine though. I promise you’ll be safe and comfortable. Kevin will take you to a nice hotel, and —”
“No,” Luz interrupts. “I want to leave tonight, and I’m not getting into a car with him.”
“What do you mean?” Freddy says.
“I want another driver.”
“Another driver? But Kevin is the best. He’s already taken five people across today.”
Goyo returns with a can of Modelo. Malone opens it and has a sip.
“Look at him,” Luz says. “Drinking like this is nothing. And he doesn’t even speak Spanish.”
“Sure, I do,” Malone says in Spanish. “A little. Do you speak English?”
“Fuck you,” Luz replies in English. “How’s that?”
Freddy steps between them. “Listen,” he says.
“You listen,” Luz says. “I’m paying you a lot of money—more than I should be—for this special deal or whatever it is, and I want someone sober, I want someone smart, and I want to cross tonight.”
Malone turns to Freddy with a shrug. “Customer’s always right,” he says. He takes another swig of beer and walks to his car, leans against the trunk, and tilts his head back to look up at the sky.
“Chingada madre!” Freddy shouts. He advances on Luz with clenched fists and bulging veins. Luz’s breath catches in her throat. She draws the Colt and stops him in his tracks. He mutters to himself, tugs his goatee, then points at the gate.
“Get the fuck out of here,” he says.
“Fine,” Luz says. “Give me my money back.”
Freddy reaches into his pocket for the stack of bills he took from her earlier. He pulls off five hundreds—“For my trouble,” he says—and throws the rest at her feet.
“And you better make your peace with God,” he continues. “Because whoever you took that money from is gonna get you real quick.”
Luz picks up the cash and shoves it into the backpack. She heads for the gate but slows as she reaches it. The dark, empty street outside frightens her. Freddy’s right: She’s dead if she leaves here. Rolando is waiting in every doorway, all the alleys, and she has nowhere else to go, nobody else to turn to. Though it wrenches her pride all the way to its roots, she wheels to face Freddy again.
“Okay,” she says.
“Okay what?” Freddy replies. He’s going to make her say it.
She nods at Malone. “He can drive.”
“Why, thank you, señorita,” Freddy says with a sneer. “Thank you very much.”
“But we leave for Tecate now,” she says. “I’m not spending another night in this city.”
Malone smiles and lifts his beer in a mock toast, and Luz tightens her grip on the gun inside the backpack. So he thinks this is funny, does he? Well, that’s okay. She’s got more than enough bullets left to make a joker like him cry.
As he pulls away from the body shop, Malone sticks his arm out the window of the Beamer and flips Freddy off. It’s thirty miles to Tecate on the toll road. He and the girl will be there in less than an hour. He’ll check her into a hotel, go out for a few beers, drive her across the border in the morning and dump her where she wants, and then he’s done. His money will be waiting for him at one of the drop houses in San Ysidro.
He sneaks a look at his passenger. She’s staring out the windshield, her backpack clutched to her chest. There’s money in it, Freddy told him, and he saw the gun himself. Definitely not your typical pollo. She speaks English for one, and you can tell someone has put her on a pedestal, spoiled her a little. Most of the people he hauls are so meek they won’t even look him in the eye. This girl has an attitude. That’s what happens when you’re as nice-looking as she is. Even dressed down, she’s a natural beauty. Long black hair, dark eyes, smooth brown skin. The kind of woman men make all kinds of mistakes for.
“The air-conditioning’s busted,” he says, “but you can roll down the window.”
No response, not a twitch.
“Roll down your window if you want,” he says again, louder, thinking she didn’t hear him.
“I’m fine,” she snaps.
Good deal. If he doesn’t even have to talk to her, this job’ll be cake. He turns on the radio and fiddles with the knob until he picks up a classic rock station out of San Diego that’s playing a Neil Young song he’s never heard before. He passes a little pickup chugging along with a load of old refrigerators, and then a big black SUV with tinted windows and chrome wheels blows by both of them. A narco, most likely. They’re the only ones who can afford vehicles like that around here.
He’s almost at the entrance to the toll road when flashing lights appear in the rearview mirror. It’s where he’d wait, too, if he was a cop looking to shake down tourists with a bit of money in their pockets. He searches for a place to pull over as the fuckers give their siren a workout.
Luz glances over her shoulder at the police car, and all the haughtiness drains out of her. She turns to Malone with panic in her eyes and says, “Don’t stop.”
“Are you kidding?” he says.
“They’re going to kill us.”
“What are you talking about? You know how it goes. They’ll tell me I ran a stop sign, I’ll give them twenty bucks, and we’ll be on our way.”
“Please,” Luz says.
Malone switches off the radio. The girl is scared, and that scares him.
“Look,” he says. “I have to stop, but it’ll be okay. Stay cool and, whatever you do, don’t let them see that pistola you’re carrying.”
Luz starts to say something else, but then sits back and chews her lower lip.
Malone eases to the shoulder in front of a Home Depot. The cruiser rolls up behind them, and the Beamer is suddenly filled with white light. Luz sets the backpack on the floor at her feet.
“Tranquila,” Malone says. He watches in the side mirror as a shadow slides out of the cruiser and comes toward the BMW. It’s impossible in the glare to make out any details, so he sits and sweats, waiting to see who appears at the window.
“Buenas noches.”
It’s a cop, a regular old cop.
“Buenas noches,” Malone says.
The officer asks in English for his license, and Malone removes the card from his wallet and hands it to him.
“Where you going so fast?” the cop says. His partner has moved up to stand on the passenger side of the car.
“We’re meeting friends for dinner in Tecate,” Malone says.
The cop nods at Luz.
“Who’s she?”
“My girlfriend,” Malone says.
“Buenas noches, señorita,” the cop says to Luz.
“Buenas noches,” she replies.
“You like Mexican girls?” the cop says to Malone.
“I like this one,” Malone says.
The cop smiles. He’s missing a tooth. He adjusts his hat and puts his hand on his gun.
“You were speeding,” he says. “Follow us to the station to pay your fine.”
“Oh, man,” Malone says. “Is there some way to take care of this here? We don’t want to be late for dinner.”
An eighteen-wheeler rockets past, stirring up dirt and trash and shaking the BMW. The cop stands up straight and presses himself against the door. Two more trucks pass in quick succession.
When the road clears, the cop bends to look in the window again. “Forty dollars,” he says.
Malone can tell the man is eager to move on. He slips two twenties from his wallet and hands them over. The cop folds them carefully and tucks them into his ticket book. He glances once more at Malone’s license before returning it.
&nbs
p; “Slow down, Mr. Malone,” he says.
“I will,” Malone says. “Sorry to trouble you.”
The cop then nods at Luz and says something to her in Spanish that Malone doesn’t catch, something that tightens her jaw. This makes the cop smile. He motions for his partner to return to the cruiser, and Malone waits until they get in and turn off the spotlight before starting the Beamer.
“Do you know how many times I’ve been through that?” he says to Luz. “I’m surprised I didn’t recognize the guy.”
Luz doesn’t respond, is back to staring blankly out the windshield.
Malone doesn’t feel completely in the clear until they hit the toll road and are beyond the jurisdiction of the city cops. He sits back in his seat then and releases his death grip on the steering wheel. A sliver of moon is rising over the scrub-covered hills, and the warm air smells of sage. He reaches for the radio but decides against it, enjoying the silence. The sky is full of stars.
Luz finally stirs, rolls down her window. Malone notices a tattoo on the back of her neck, up under her ponytail. Angel Baby.
“What’d that fucker say to you back there?” he asks her.
“He wanted to know how much for me to suck his cock,” Luz replies.
“Awww, man, that’s terrible,” Malone says.
Luz shrugs and sticks her hand out the window to feel the air rushing past. Malone is sad looking at her, sad thinking about her life. He should have brought a bottle along. You’ve got to be ready for moments like these, ready to drown your ruined heart as soon as it starts beating again.
8
BALDY AND THE OTHER GUARD WALK JERÓNIMO TO THE MAIN GATE of the prison. Neither will answer any questions. They allowed him to put on jeans and a shirt, but then hurried him out of his cell before he could grab anything else. As he was being escorted off the tier, he hollered to Ronald McDonald to watch his stuff, said he’d be back soon, hoped it was true.
Waiting at the gate are two big dudes, one with a shaved head, the other with short dark hair. He’s seen them before: Ozzy and Esteban, El Príncipe’s bodyguards. Baldy opens the gate and says “Go,” and Jerónimo steps into the street. He’s dreamed of the day he’d leave La Mesa, but the relief he should feel is tainted by the strangeness of the situation. He knows trouble when he sees it.
Ozzy orders him into a black Escalade parked at the curb. Jerónimo climbs in and settles uneasily in the passenger seat. Ozzy gets behind the wheel, and Esteban sits in back.
A banana-shaped air freshener dangles from the rearview mirror, and the Escalade is filled with its sickening chemical scent. When Ozzy turns the key, a corrido erupts out of the truck’s speakers at full volume. He reaches for the CD player and shuts it off.
“What’s up?” Jerónimo asks.
“El Príncipe wants to talk to you,” Ozzy replies.
Jerónimo nods. Trouble, like he thought. He puts a hand on the dash when Ozzy shifts into gear and pulls out into the street. He’s always been a nervous passenger, can’t relax with someone else driving. Ozzy sighs and rubs his temples with his thumb and middle finger, and this makes Jerónimo even more uneasy, muscle like him showing strain.
They cut through the center of town, and every corner holds an ugly memory for Jerónimo. There’s where he sliced off a man’s ear, and there’s where another man fell to his knees and offered his twelve-year-old daughter as payment for a debt. Jerónimo was damaged before he got here, but this place made him worse. There’s a ruthlessness here he’s encountered nowhere else, as if all that glitter right across the border has driven everyone crazy.
An old man riding a bicycle wobbles into the street in front of the Escalade. Ozzy swerves but still clips him with the mirror, knocking him to the pavement.
“Fuck,” Ozzy grunts.
He stops at the corner and stares into the rearview.
“He’s dead,” Esteban says, twisting to look out the back window.
“The fuck he is,” Ozzy says.
“I’m telling you, he’s dead,” Esteban says. “Drive on.”
Jerónimo watches in the side mirror as the old man raises his head, then slowly sits up. Blood is running down his face from a cut on his forehead.
“Okay, maybe he’s not dead,” Esteban says.
“That’s one tough old bastard,” Ozzy says.
“Probably got nothing but rocks in his head,” Esteban says. “Let’s go.”
They drive up a hill toward El Príncipe’s house. It’s a fancy neighborhood with paved roads and gutters, private security, and plenty of streetlights. The houses are all big, all new. Stucco mansions surrounded by high walls. Jerónimo has been here twice before: once when he started working for El Príncipe, and once when he quit. Both times he wondered on whose backs all this was built.
The Escalade turns into the driveway of the house. A man steps out of the shadows and opens the gate, and the truck pulls forward into a parking area. Two other men are standing on the porch, guns in hand, and every light in the house is on. It blazes like a palace awaiting the arrival of guests. Ozzy gets out, then Esteban, and Jerónimo follows their lead. He’s one of them after all, one of El Príncipe’s men.
They walk up the steps to the front door of the house, past the guard stationed there, and go inside. A man is on his hands and knees in the hall, scrubbing the floor with a brush that he rinses in a bucket of soapy pink water. There are dark stains on the wall behind him. He sits back as they approach and wipes his mouth with his hand. Ozzy reaches over him to tap on a door.
“Come in,” El Príncipe calls from the other side.
Ozzy opens the door and motions for Jerónimo to enter.
El Príncipe is sitting at his desk in his office, the same office where he welcomed Jerónimo to the crew, and the same office where he pulled a gun on Jerónimo when Jerónimo told him he wanted out.
“Apache,” he says. “Good to see you.”
When Jerónimo was born, he looked so much like a little Indian, with his dark skin, slanted eyes, and high cheekbones, that his dad insisted on naming him after the legendary Apache leader. He said he was honoring his great-great-grandfather, an Apache warrior who fled from Arizona to Mexico in the late 1800s, when the Apaches in the U.S. were being shipped off to reservations or hunted down like dogs. Mexico was paying a bounty for Indian scalps too, but great-great-grandfather managed to find refuge in the Sierra Madre and married a woman there.
That was the story Papá told when he had a few beers in him, anyway. Jerónimo liked the yarn because it gave him a history and explained the restlessness that sometimes gripped his soul. The kids called him the Apache growing up, and he kept the nickname as he got older. The fierceness it hinted at was useful in the world he lived in, one more thing to make someone think twice before crossing him.
Ozzy shuts the door and stands in front of it. Rolando tells El Apache to sit in the chair on the other side of the desk. The Indian has his prison face on, a mask that shows nothing, but Rolando knows he must be confused. One minute he’s behind bars, the next he’s being offered a drink by the Prince himself.
“Beer? Tequila?” Rolando says. “I got brandy too.”
“No, jefe,” El Apache says. “Thanks anyway.”
He’s always been respectful, always known his place. Got none of that cholo cockiness that assholes from L.A. usually have. Rolando liked him from the beginning, when he showed up fresh out of Juárez, looking for a job. He was older than most of the locos who came to him wanting work, but he proved to be a good man, one who could follow orders, one who got things done. In fact, he might even have been somebody if he hadn’t decided he’d rather drive a cab, though that took balls, too, to come in and ask to be cut loose. Which is why Rolando thought of him first thing for this job.
They sit in silence, listening to the clock tick, and Rolando guesses the Indian would wait all day for him to speak. They’re stubborn that way. He finally stretches in his chair and laces his fingers behind his head.
“How are things in La Mesa?” he asks.
El Apache shrugs. “It’s La Mesa,” he says. “But thanks for the money you send, and the money you give my family.”
“You earned it,” Rolando says. “You didn’t disappoint me like so many others have.”
El Apache shrugs again, unreadable.
“How much time is left on your sentence?” Rolando says.
“Two years, if everything goes like it should,” El Apache says.
“But, wait, here you are now,” Rolando says with a smile.
El Apache smiles too, but doesn’t respond.
Rolando taps his fingers on the arm of his chair.
“You were born in the U.S.?” he says.
“El Paso,” El Apache says.
“But then you lived in L.A.”
“Yeah, I grew up there.”
“And you speak English?”
“Read and write it, too.”
There’s a commotion out in the hall, shouting. Rolando reaches into the desk drawer for his Beretta. Ozzy’s gun is already in his hand. The big man opens the door a crack. The painter who’s supposed to cover the bloodstains on the wall has arrived, and he’s arguing with the guy scrubbing the floor.
“Shut up and get back to work,” Ozzy says. He closes the door and tucks his pistol into his waistband. Rolando leaves the Beretta out, on top of the desk.
“I have a mission for you,” he says to El Apache.
El Apache’s eyes narrow. “A mission?”
“It’s the last thing I’ll ever ask you to do for me,” Rolando says. “How does that sound?”
“Depends on what it is,” El Apache says.
Rolando slides three photos of Luz across the desk. “This morning my wife killed two of my people and ran off with some money,” he says. “I want you to find her and bring her back.”
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