by Sam Hawken
Flip changed out of his uniform shirt. He felt sore and sweaty and opted for a shower. With a fresh t-shirt on he felt much better. On the inside a convict only got a shower every other day and time was limited. The COs locked the convicts into their stalls so there was no fear of “dropping the soap.” It got so that Flip looked forward to showering more than anything else, even going outside, because it was his only alone time. On the yard he was with Javier and Enrique and the others. In the cell there was Daniel and his paper harem.
Tying his shoelaces he got an idea and went to the kitchen. His mother looked up. “Felipe, do you want something to drink? I just made fresh iced tea.”
“No, Mamá. I was wondering if I could borrow some money to buy some new shoes. I’ll pay you back when I get my check. If that’s okay.”
His mother looked at his sneakers and nodded. “It’s okay. Bring me my purse.”
Flip did what he was told and she gave him fifty dollars in return. “Thank you, Mamá,” Flip said. “I won’t waste it.”
“You need a ride to the store?” Alfredo asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe. I’ll let you know.”
He went back to his room and sat on the bed. His phone was on the bed-stand, along with the napkin with Graciela’s number on it. He dialed.
At first he thought she wasn’t there, but she answered on the fifth ring. “Hello, it’s Flip,” Flip said. “Graciela?”
“Hola, Flip! You didn’t forget to call me this time.”
“No, I didn’t. I wondered… are you busy right now?”
“Right now? No. You want to go do something?”
“Yes, but I don’t have a car. I wondered if you—”
“I can pick you up,” Graciela interrupted. “What’s your address?”
Flip gave it to her and thought he could hear her writing it down. “If it’s too much trouble, it’s all right if you don’t want to come,” he said.
“Don’t be stupid. It’ll take me half an hour; I have to get ready.”
“You don’t have to dress up.”
“Listen, Flip: I’ll dress up if I want to. I’ll see you in thirty minutes.”
Flip put the phone in his pocket after first saving Graciela’s name and number to the memory. It said something in the instruction booklet about making personalized ring tones for people, but that was too confusing for him and he left the function alone. He went back to the kitchen. “I don’t need a ride,” he told Alfredo. “I have someone picking me up.”
“A friend?” his mother asked.
“Yes. A girl I met the other night. Her name is Graciela.”
“That’s a pretty name,” Alfredo said.
“I hope she’s a good girl,” Flip’s mother said.
“I think she is. She’s from the barrio. She’s studying to do nails,” Flip said. He wanted to make Graciela sound good to his mother, for his mother to say he was doing a right thing. Suddenly it seemed very important.
“It’s good she’s going to school. You should think about that.”
“I told you, I got my carpentry certificate.”
“Oh?” Alfredo said. “I didn’t know about that.”
“It didn’t seem important.”
“I hope I don’t lose you to a better job. Everybody says you’re great.”
“I think we’re okay for now,” Flip said.
“When is this girl coming?” his mother asked.
“Any minute.”
“I want to meet her.”
“Uh, okay.”
Flip sat on the front step and waited for Graciela to arrive. Eventually he saw her approaching in a green Hyundai with a missing hubcap. She parked at the curb and he went down to see her.
She was smiling and looked good in a t-shirt that was not too tight. His mother would be watching for things like that. “Hey,” she said. “Get in.”
“Wait,” Flip said and he felt himself blush. “My mother… my mother wants to meet you first.”
Graciela laughed. “Sure, it’s okay!”
She put her hand in his as they went up the walk. Flip held the door for her. “Mamá,” he called, “she’s here.”
Alfredo and Flip’s mother came from the kitchen. Flip introduced them.
“Hello, señora,” Graciela said. “I’m Flip’s friend. It’s good to meet you.”
His mother looked Graciela up and down as if she was appraising a horse. “You seem like a nice girl,” she said at last. Flip let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding.
“I promise not to keep him out too late,” Graciela said.
“Good, because he has work tomorrow,” Alfredo said. “Have a good time.”
“Where will you have dinner?” Flip’s mother asked.
“We’ll get something while we’re out,” Flip said.
“Be careful!”
“We will,” said Graciela.
They went down to the car and Graciela let him in. Behind the wheel, she carefully put on her seatbelt before turning the key in the ignition. Flip watched her. “What?” she asked.
“Safety first,” Flip said. “My mother always told me.”
“Your mother is smart. She likes me, after all.”
“I need to get some new shoes,” Flip said.
“So where do you want to go?”
“Sunland Park?”
“Sure.”
They drove and Flip noticed how she always used her signals and came to a complete stop at signs and lights. She never sped. The little Hyundai was clean inside and a strawberry air freshener dangled from the rear view mirror. They got on the highway. Traffic was stacking up at rush hour.
Flip wasn’t sure what to say. He thought he should say something about the party, about the way they said good-bye, but there were no good approaches that way. If the radio was on then he could make some comment about the music, but it was turned off. Talking about the traffic seemed stupid.
He caught her look at him out of the corner of her eye. “You nervous?” she asked.
“No, no.”
“Because you seem nervous. You keep rubbing your hands on your pants.”
Flip immediately made fists with his hands. “It’s good to see you again,” he tried.
“If you’re nervous because of what happened the other night—”
“No, that was good,” Flip said.
“It was good,” Graciela said and she took one hand off the wheel to reach over and touch him. Flip thought her fingertips were electric. “And I don’t want you thinking I do that with a lot of guys, because I don’t.”
“I didn’t think that.”
“Okay. Just so you know.”
After a while they left the freeway and got off on a feeder road. The mall came into view with its acres of parking lot filled halfway with cars glittering in the sun. “The mall,” Flip said, and immediately felt like an idiot.
“What kind of shoes do you want?” Graciela asked.
“Oh, just shoes. Some sneakers. Nothing special. Mine are… you know.”
“Don’t be picky!” Graciela remarked and flashed him a smile.
They parked and entered next to Sears. Together they checked the mall directory and found the shoe stores. Flip picked Payless because he did not want to spend all of his mother’s money on shoes. There was food to think about. He wondered how Graciela would feel about fast food and wished he could afford something better.
“Are you going to stay this quiet?” Graciela asked. “Talk to me about your day or something.”
“Why don’t you tell me about your day? Mine’s boring. Moving boxes.”
“Okay, but now you’re going to get all the gossip!”
Graciela told him about the school and the salon where advanced students worked and all the details about the girls she went to classes with. Rosenda and Eva were her closest friends; they’d all entered together. Leticia was the common enemy: ready to graduate, full of herself but, Graciela had to admit, very talented. Flip listened to
all of this while trying on shoes, glad because the longer she talked the fewer opportunities she would have to ask him where he’d been the last four years and the awkward turn the conversation would take then.
He settled on a pair of white and red sneakers that looked more expensive than they were. Flip put his old shoes in the box and wore the new shoes out. After that they wandered along the stores. Graciela linked hands with him.
When the question came he wasn’t ready for it. “What?” he asked.
“I asked if you were in jail.”
“Why would you ask me that?”
“I just have a feeling about it, is all. A lot of José’s friends have been in jail. It doesn’t mean anything.”
Flip looked at her and tried to tell if she was saying what she really felt. He felt the earth opening up beneath his feet. He stopped by a planter and let a mother and her children go by. “Yeah,” he said. “I was.”
He watched her face when he said it, but he saw no disappointment or anger there. She didn’t let go of his hand.
“How long were you in?” Graciela asked finally.
“Four years.”
“That’s a long time. You’re on parole?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s okay. Let’s walk some more.”
“I thought maybe you wouldn’t want to be with me if you knew,” Flip admitted.
“Why did you think that?”
“I don’t know. I just did.”
“I’m a big girl. I know how things work.”
“Don’t you want to know why I went in?”
“Do you want to tell me?”
“Not right now.”
“Then you don’t have to.”
NINE
ROBINSON’S DESK WAS EMPTY. HE WAS DUE in court to testify and would not be back until the afternoon at the earliest. Cristina caught up on paperwork. There was always paperwork. She had just gotten approval to add Felipe Morales as a confidential informant. Now he could be paid for the information he brought in.
She’d checked with Flip’s parole officer and found out most of what she needed to know. He was drug-free and at the time of his test hadn’t had alcohol in twenty-four hours. He had a full-time job working at a grocery store’s delivery hub. He lived with his mother at a stable address. He was scheduled for visits every three weeks from now until the end of time, or close enough.
The phone rang. Cristina answered.
“Detective Salas, it’s Jamie McPeek. Am I calling at a bad time?”
“No, Agent McPeek, I wasn’t doing anything in particular.”
“I was wondering if you had some free time this morning.”
“What do you have in mind?”
“Well, if you’re free, I’d like to take you to Juárez.”
“Juárez?”
“Yes. I thought you might want to see what’s happening from the other side of the fence.”
Cristina checked her watch and then her desk calendar. “Okay,” she said. “I can do that. When do you want to pick me up?”
“Give me an hour to get things squared away here.”
“All right, then.”
“See you soon, Detective.”
Cristina rose from her desk and went to Captain Cokley’s office. She knocked on the open door. “Hey, boss, I’m going to be off the board for a few hours this afternoon. Reynolds and Trevino are here, so they can pick up the slack.”
Cokley wore little granny half-glasses when he read. He peered over them at Cristina. “Where are you headed off to?”
“Special Agent McPeek wants to take me to Juárez.”
“Juárez? What’s in Juárez?”
“I guess it’s part of getting to know you.”
“Will they even let you carry your piece over there?”
“I don’t know.”
Cokley put down the sheaf of papers he was reading and turned to his computer. “Let me look into it, unless you’re out the door right now. I don’t like the idea of you going over there with nothing but harsh language.”
“Maybe McPeek will cover for me.”
“We’ll see.”
It took half an hour for Cokley to come up with an answer. He came by her desk still wearing his granny glasses.
“What do you got?” Cristina asked.
“According to what I found out, you’re not allowed to carry, but I think this is one of those times where it’s better to ask for forgiveness than for permission. You got me?”
“I get you.”
Cokley started to walk away and then stopped. “It’s just that I worry.”
“I’m sure I’ll be all right.”
“Keep an eye out, is what I’m saying.”
“I will.”
McPeek called Cristina at her desk when she was downstairs and Cristina left her desk. She found McPeek idling in a red zone. When she got in the car it was freezing; the air conditioner was turned up full blast. Cristina wished for a sweater.
“I’m glad you could find the time,” McPeek told Cristina. “Too cold?”
“No, it’s fine,” Cristina lied. “Where are we headed?”
“To see our point man in Juárez. He’s my opposite number. Matías Segura with the PFM.”
Driving to Mexico from Central Regional Command was a question of minutes. Less than a mile separated then from the other side of the river. They took the bridge from South Stanton Street, an El Paso thoroughfare that flowed directly into a Juárez street without interruption. At the border checkpoint, McPeek showed her federal ID to the men on duty and spoke Spanish to them. They asked for Cristina’s ID and she gave it to them.
If she expected to be relieved of her service pistol, Cristina was disappointed. After examining the women’s IDs closely, the men waved McPeek’s car through without need for inspection. They were in Juárez.
People said that Segundo Barrio in El Paso was just Juárez continued north of the river, but they were wrong. There was an immediate shift that took place once a person passed over the bridge and it was obvious to anyone who could see. The buildings were closer, the streets narrower and less well maintained. It was not like this everywhere in Juárez, but here it was. They saw an army vehicle within two minutes of crossing over.
Cristina did not visit Ciudad Juárez anymore. There was a time, in high school and in college, when she spent much of her free time in the neighborhoods along the border, especially the marketplaces and the tourist strip called Avenida Juárez. Near where McPeek crossed over there was the bridal district, where Cristina bought her wedding dress.
Things were different now, of course. That was the understatement. The reality was far more frightening. Bullets from Juárez sometimes landed in El Paso. There were thousands of police and military everywhere and at any moment whole neighborhoods could be shut down for police action. Cristina knew no one who crossed, even for a few hours, unless they had family in the city. There were still some hardy leftovers who would go anywhere without regard to the consequences, but the tourist industry in Juárez was functionally dead.
McPeek knew which way to go. They headed downtown where the streets opened up and the traffic thickened. Cristina started counting police vehicles she saw, but stopped at thirty. Once they passed a roadblock where cars were being checked one at a time, packing an entire avenue tight with trapped automobiles.
Cristina found herself bracing for something, then relaxing and then bracing again. She realized it was her unconscious expecting the bullet to come. Everyone knew the stories about pitched gun battles transforming a quiet block into a war zone. It could happen anywhere. She had to unclench her fingers from the armrest.
McPeek glanced down at Cristina’s hand. “Jitters?” she asked.
“Something like that.”
“I get them, too.”
“Tell me we’re almost there.”
“We’re almost there.”
Cristina had no idea where they were now. McPeek had taken them well away from the areas
where tourists went and deep downtown. Cristina noted that she was seeing more and more heavily armed trucks passing and then they passed a sandbagged machine gun emplacement on a street corner manned by uniformed soldiers.
“And we’re here.”
There was no way to tell what the building had looked like before. With its small windows and high sides it would have looked like a fortress anyway, but the concrete car barriers, barbed wire and huge metal roadblocks welded together to make giant jacks transformed the structure utterly. Two pick up trucks with mounted weapons in the bed blocked the way and a half-dozen armed police occupied the traffic stop.
McPeek put down the driver’s side window and readied her ID. Cristina did the same.
TEN
AFTER THEY PASSED THROUGH THE CHECK point they were guided into an underground parking structure. Another policeman armed with a shotgun put a paper ticket under the car’s windshield wiper and waved them on. They parked in a spot marked VISITANTES.
When they got out of the car, Cristina felt exposed though there were nothing but rows and rows of parked vehicles around them. The gun under her arm was heavy and she was certain everyone could see it. She wanted to clamp down on the weapon, but she knew that would only call more attention to it.
“Come on,” McPeek said.
Elevator access to the building above was also secured by an armed policeman. This man wore a simple uniform and a pistol in a holster. McPeek greeted him as if they had met before. Cristina nodded to the man. She wasn’t sure whether to smile.
They went up four floors and came out in a hallway lined with identical doors. McPeek went left, Cristina tagging behind, until they reached a large room full of desks, some empty and some occupied. McPeek waved. “Matías!”
A man rose from his desk and waved back. He met them halfway.
Matías Segura was in his thirties, clean shaven and neat. He wore a charcoal-gray suit and a red tie. Next to him and McPeek, Cristina felt underdressed. She saw that most of the other men in the room were in suits or shirtsleeves and ties. Anyone whose idea of a Mexican policeman came from a movie or a TV show would be totally disoriented by the view.
“Matías, ¿cómo estás?” McPeek asked.