by Sam Hawken
Walking abreast Cristina only came up to Robinson’s shoulder. They crossed the street and came up the sidewalk on the boys’ side. Cristina had her badge on a chain around her neck. She pulled it out of her shirt, let it dangle onto her chest.
They were inside ten yards when the first boy noticed them. He didn’t have to look a second time; he pushed the kid with the basketball hard on the shoulder and then ran. The basketball fell out into the street.
Cristina and Robinson rushed forward. They yelled “Police!” at the same time. Three of the boys put their hands up without taking a step.
Basketball made a move between cars to get his ball back. Robinson snared him by the back of his jersey and brought him around so hard the boy fell to the sidewalk. Cristina sprinted past the others, picking up speed after the runaway.
The boy made it to the corner and nearly tripped off the curb. Cristina closed the distance between them, spun hard on the balls of her feet at the end of the sidewalk and came up from behind.
He broke for the far side of the street but Cristina stepped on his heel. The runner’s shoe went flying and he fell over, skinned his palms on the asphalt, lost his cap. Cristina caught him by the wrist and the elbow and levered him onto his feet. “What are you, an idiot?” Cristina asked. “You don’t run from the cops.”
“Damn, man, what did I do?”
“I’ll tell you in a minute.”
“Can I get my shoe?”
She marched him back to the others. Robinson had them sitting on the sidewalk with their hands on the backs of their heads and their legs crossed in front of them. He held the basketball. Cristina sat the runner down.
“How old are you?” she asked the first kid in line.
“Eighteen?”
“How about you?” she asked the next.
“Seventeen.”
Cristina went down the line. One was underage and two were nineteen. She saw the basketball player’s jersey had a 21 on it.
Cristina had a Mini Maglite in her back pocket. She twisted it on and played the beam over the boys on the ground. Robinson stepped up. “Let me see your arms. Front and back,” he said.
“You,” Cristina said to Basketball. “Let’s see your arms. Lift up your shirts. What kind of ink do you have?”
“Cris, take a look at this,” Robinson said. He had a nineteen-year-old by the wrist and shone his own light on the kid’s hand.
Cristina looked. Inked between thumb and forefinger were the letters BA. “You’re going to jail,” she told the kid.
“For what?”
“For being obvious. You, too, 21,” she said to the basketball player.
“What about us?” said one of the underagers.
“Go home.”
Robinson stood over his kid and Cristina kept a hand on hers. They called for patrol to come pick up.
“I still don’t understand what’s going on,” the basketball player said.
“You’re gathering in a public place and displaying gang markers, stupid,” Cristina said. “That’s jail time and a fine. Didn’t you hear? Segundo Barrio doesn’t like your kind around anymore.”
“Lady, I’m not in no gang.”
“Your shirt tells me different. Now shut up.”
In ten minutes there was a car on the scene and the kids were cuffed and stuffed into the back seat. Cristina saw them talk to each other for the first time, getting stories straight. By the time they were back at the house, they would be well-rehearsed.
The patrolman was named Alvarez. He took notes, got names. “You let the other ones walk?” he said.
“Didn’t seem to be much point in keeping them,” Robinson said.
“Your call.”
They finished with Alvarez and waited until he drove off with their boys before heading back to their car. Cristina punched Robinson in the arm. “Two down,” she said.
“It’s getting harder to find them. Pretty soon they’re not going to need us anymore.”
“They’re still plenty around. You just have to listen to your partner when she says she sees something she doesn’t like.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“What’s the problem now?”
“I need to find a bathroom.”
“Old man.”
FOUR
BACK AT THE HOUSE THEY WROTE UP THE arrest sheets. They had Alvarez’s booking forms in front of them, with pictures of the two kids staring into the camera. “Get this,” Cristina said, “our 21 has priors for assault and misdemeanor possession. And then he goes around parading his number where he knows we’re looking.”
“Nobody said Aztecas were smart,” Robinson said.
“Got that right.”
Cristina saw Cokley first, emerging from his office at the far end of the room, cruising past empty desks to land right on the spot. He looked over Robinson’s shoulder, then Cristina’s. His face was sour. “I got two members of the gang unit sitting on a bunch of kids any patrol car could have rousted?” he asked. “Is that it?”
“It’s my fault,” Cristina said. “I spotted them, I thought we should bust them.”
“Well, I didn’t think it was Bob because he knows better.”
“Thanks, boss,” Robinson said.
“Not so fast. You’re supposed to keep each other from fucking up.”
“It’s not so bad. We got two.”
“Two. And you have how many cases pending?”
Cristina had nothing to say to that and Robinson was quiet. She turned back to the arrest sheet, tapped out the last two fields and clicked SUBMIT. The printout of Alvarez’s booking form went into her out box. Cokley was still looking at her, but she didn’t glance up.
Cokley sighed. “Next time just call a car and let them handle it,” he said. “Okay?”
“Okay, boss,” Robinson said.
“Now go home.”
The captain went. Robinson and Cristina looked at each other from across their desks. “I’m sorry,” Cristina said.
“Forget about it. It’s done.”
Cristina put on her jacket and gathered up her things. “I’m running late. My sitter’s going to want to know what’s up.”
“I’m looking at cold dinner,” Robinson said.
They rapped knuckles before they headed for the door. “Tomorrow,” Cristina said.
“Tomorrow is another day.”
In the parking lot they went separate ways. The temperature was down in the low fifties now. Cristina was glad when her car’s heater warmed up and took the chill off. Winter was struggling with spring and they were still in a desert.
Robinson drove north, away from the border, to get home. Cristina turned south, back into Segundo Barrio. At this hour she was twenty minutes away in a little place on South Campbell Street across from a vacant lot. She found a place along the curb and walked a hundred yards to the house. The porch light was on and there was a yellow glow through drawn blinds in the front window.
Ashlee unlocked the door before Cristina could turn her key. The girl was twenty-one and she’d been waiting in the living room. Lamplight picked up strands of blonde hair and gave her a halo. “Hi, Ms. Salas,” she said.
“Hi, Ashlee, sorry I’m late.”
“It’s okay. Freddie’s doing his thing.”
The house was small and the living room was small, but there was room enough for a couch, a TV and a compact desk. Freddie sat with his back to the door staring into a computer screen. The television was on and low. Freddie’s computer game made little noise.
“Let me get my checkbook,” Cristina said.
“You don’t need to pay me tonight. Just wait until Friday.”
“Oh? Okay. If that’s all right.”
“Sure.”
Ashlee collected her things while Cristina waited. They said their good-byes at the door. Cristina closed and locked it behind the girl. She took off her jacket and hung it on a rack. “Hey, Freddie,” she called.
Freddie didn’t move. He was lit
tle for ten years old and the swivel chair he sat in was too big for him. Cristina came closer so she could see what he saw: little colored men made of virtual plastic bricks in a world made of more bricks. He was building something – a car, maybe – and the only sound he made was the click of the mouse.
Cristina kissed Freddie on the top of his head. “Hey, peanut. Mom’s home.”
“Hi, Mom,” Freddie said without looking away from the screen.
“Did you eat your dinner?”
Nothing. Just clicking.
“Freddie,” Cristina said more firmly, “did you eat your dinner?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. You’ve got twenty more minutes and then it’s time for bed. Hear me? Twenty minutes.”
“Twenty minutes.”
She went to the back bedroom where she slept. The bed was unmade and there were dirty clothes on the floor. She kicked those aside and sat down. On the second shelf of the nightstand was a metal box. Cristina wore the key on a cord around her neck.
The key went to the lock box and her pistol went inside. When she had the weapon secured, she went to the kitchen. Ashlee had set aside a plate of macaroni and cheese, corn and chicken tenders. A minute in the microwave and it was fit to eat. Cristina ate at the kitchen table, staring at nothing, until twenty minutes were up.
The dish went in the sink to be rinsed later. In the living room, Freddie was still playing his game. If she left him alone he would play it for hours, nonstop, with barely a break to visit the bathroom, until he could not keep his eyes open any longer. Interrupting him took work because the first try never took.
“Time for bed. Save your game.”
“I’m doing something.”
“It’s bedtime. Save it and come on.”
Freddie turned from the game reluctantly and left the desk. He allowed Cristina to escort him to his bedroom and help him get his clothes off. His pajamas he could put on without assistance.
“We need to brush your teeth,” Cristina said.
“No toothpaste.”
“Yes, toothpaste. I won’t use very much.”
She brought the Winnie the Pooh electric toothbrush into his room and brushed his teeth for him while he was in bed, taking special care to get the ones in the back. He had decay there before that took a hospital visit and dentistry under anesthetic to address. Cristina did not want to go through that again.
“Okay,” she said when she came back. “Time for the lights to go out.”
“Will you stay with me until I sleep?”
“Sure.”
Cristina turned off the bedside lamp and the room went dark. She sat on the edge of his bed with her hand resting on top of the covers, feeling his little hip through the material, as he turned on his side to sleep. She did not have to wait long before she heard his breathing turn deep and regular and then she rose as carefully as she could. When she closed his door, she left it part of the way open so she could hear him in the night.
The dish was still waiting in the kitchen and she washed it off before putting it in the dishwasher. There was beer in the refrigerator. She took one to the television with her, switched the channel to something mindless and put her feet up.
She was more tired than she realized and the beer let her relax into it. The show changed to something else and she barely noticed, just letting the pictures and the sound wash over her in a continuous wave of babble. If she thought of anything, she thought of the two junior gang-bangers they had busted. That street was only four blocks away.
Cristina did not live in the Second Ward, El Segundo Barrio, just because she worked there. This house had been her parents’ and when they moved to San Antonio it had become hers. Freddie’s room was once her room, with the same bed and the same furniture. She changed the mattress, but she slept where her parents had slept.
There were newer, nicer places to live even in Segundo Barrio. The developers moved in five years before and put up condos, but most of the place remained the same. Moving didn’t occur to her, and because she saw the changes on the street, she felt safer here than before. Today was an aberration; now the gangs were underground.
She let the clock mark the time until it was almost midnight and then she turned off the television and put the beer bottle in a recycling bin in the kitchen. She turned off all the lights, went to her bedroom in the dark to undress. Freddie had not stirred.
The alarm was set for six in the morning. Cristina crawled under the sheets and fell asleep before she realized it was happening.
FIVE
HIS PHONE WAS RINGING AND MATÍAS SEGURA struggled up from sleep. He saw from the bedside clock it was three in the morning. He had been asleep five hours.
“¿Bueno?” he answered.
“Matías? It’s Felix.”
“Felix, it’s the middle of the night.”
“I’m sorry, but we need you right now.”
Matías sat up in the bed. Elvira was still asleep by some chance, but she stirred when he moved. He spoke on the phone in whispers. “What’s the problem?”
“Shooting. Six bodies.”
“Is there no one else?”
“You know better than to ask that.”
He left the bed and went to the bathroom. After he closed the door he turned on the light. It was blinding. “Where?” Felix told him. “Give me thirty minutes. No, forty-five.”
“We’ll be waiting.”
Matías washed his face and felt the bristles on his cheeks. In the mirror the skin under his eyes were heavy from lack of sleep. He brushed his hair to bring it under control and scrubbed his teeth. Then he shut off the light and crept back into the bedroom.
Elvira still did not wake as Matías put on his clothes. His gun was on the bed-stand. Again careful not to make a sound, he crept from the room and shut the door behind him.
He made a cup of coffee in a travel mug and took it with him out of the apartment. Down on the street it was deserted. When he got on the road he was only one of a few cars. Mostly there were trucks at this hour, trundling through the abandoned streets of Ciudad Juárez on their way north to the border.
The drive was not long and he got there ahead of his forty-five minute deadline. First he saw the blue and red lights flashing, then the spectacular white of portable floodlights, as if a star were giving birth. There were municipal and federal police vehicles present. An officer armed with an M4 carbine stopped him fifty meters away. Matías showed him his identification and drove on.
Matías looked around the neighborhood. There were no streetlights and it was inky black beyond the crime scene. He saw an auto shop across the street from a gaily painted brick building depicting a rising sun. There was a scrap yard a few meters beyond that and not a structure above a single story.
Felix Rivera met him at the perimeter. The man also looked tired, hunched down in his black jacket marked POLICÍA FEDERAL. He wore a .45 openly on his hip while other cops around him carried automatic weapons. Matías was even more underdressed, without body armor and his gun tucked away underneath his arm. “Welcome,” Felix said.
The bodies were scattered in front of the sun-painted building as if tossed by a powerful storm. Blood streaked and pooled on the dirty asphalt and two of the corpses were soaked in it. There were weapons, too. A pair of dead men still had a hold on their pistols.
A shower of spent shell casings spread out across the street, but were thickest close to Matías’ feet. Looking more closely at the building, he could see the façade was pockmarked in a dozen or more places. The steel door to the building was perforated.
“It’s an after-hours club,” Felix explained. “Salvadorans come here. There’s drink, drugs, women… everything you need.”
Matías stepped out into the ring of light, careful not to slip on the discarded brass. He approached the closest body, a thickchested man with tattoos up and down both bare arms. A bullet had passed through his forearm. Another three crossed his stomach and chest.
K
neeling close, Matías examined the tattoos. A naked woman. A gun. Another gun. A fan of playing cards. “Any of the bodies have gang ink?”
“Two. There and there.”
“MS?”
“Sí.”
“What about the rest?”
“We’ll have to wait until the coroner examines them.”
“Or maybe they were just unlucky.”
“Maybe.”
“Where is everyone?”
“We’re keeping them inside. Most were already gone by the time the locals made it to the scene. We have a few girls and employees, some drunks too messed up to run.”
Matías stood up. “Did anyone see the shooters?”
“One woman saw them roll up. A pick-up truck with four men in the back. They opened fire.”
“Did they say anything?”
“Not that she told us.”
“I want to talk to the witnesses.”
“Let’s step inside.”
The club was meant to be dark, so it was a revelation with its overhead lights on. What seemed murkily inviting during business hours was stripped to the bare, black walls. All the spots on the pool table where the felt had worn through were exposed. The floor was filthy, as if it had not been swept in a year. On one wall was an undersized bar, chipped and scratched.
They had managed to round up an even dozen and they were corralled at the back of the bar in battered, used-up booths with torn vinyl upholstery. Stained foam stuffing bulged out here and there.
“Which one saw the shooters?” Matías asked.
“That one.”
Matías found a fat woman in tight clothes sitting alone under the guard of two armed policemen. She had fake-blonde hair that would also look better under dark lighting. Her face was not pretty.
He slid into the booth across from her, put his notebook on the table. “My name is Matías Segura,” he told the woman. “What’s your name?”
“Elena,” the woman said. “You are another policeman?”
“I am.”
“I already told that one what I know,” she said and pointed at Felix.
“I’d like you to tell me again.”
“Why?”
“Because sometimes when we tell a story more than once, we remember more each time we tell it.”