The Border: A Novel

by Don Winslow

  “What if a cop answers the door?” Nico asked.

  “Then you swallow,” Davido said.

  “What if the balloons break in my stomach?”

  “You don’t have to worry about that,” Davido said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because you’ll be dead,” Davido said. “But you’ll be so high going out you won’t know it’s happening.”

  Maybe not, but Nico hopes they buy good balloons and not the cheap ones they sell at the ninety-nine-cent store. He really didn’t want to do this—not only because he might have drugs explode in his body and kill him, but also because this is serious shit. It’s one thing to boost a few cellies, another to be a lookout for a drug deal, another whole thing to actually deal the drugs.

  And not just weed, the heavy stuff, heroin.

  The women’s NA meetings that Jacqui attends in Nyack are at the Senior Center, just a block away from the Nyack Plaza building where she scores.

  It makes the decision convenient.

  Clean and sober or down and dirty, within a few feet of each other.

  Like a moral mall.

  The food court.

  Do I go for the Mrs. Fields Cookies or the salad bar? Jacqui asks herself. The junk food or the stuff that’s good for you? The junk or . . .

  What?

  What’s out there if you’re not high?

  Jacqui struggles with the decision every night. Shit, every day . . . shit, all the time. To get to the Senior Center she has to walk past Nyack Plaza and sometimes her feet just won’t take her there. Sometimes she freezes on the sidewalk outside the Plaza, like she’s paralyzed—she can’t go in and she can’t move past. She just stands there, feeling like an idiot, like a fool, like some weak, powerless thing, less than an animal.

  Some nights the Plaza wins, other nights the Senior Center.

  Sometimes it depends on whether she has money or not. If she doesn’t, the decision is easier; there’s no point in going into the Plaza if she can’t score anyway so she walks into the meeting hoping it’s enough, praying it’s enough to at least temporarily fill her veins, get her through the night and into the next morning when it starts again.

  There are times when she has some money and the Plaza loses—she pauses there, she stands and circles, and then walks to the meeting.

  Other times the Plaza wins, she can’t make it past and she goes in and scores and she might stay high for days before she forces her feet into a meeting again and sits herself down on one of those metal folding chairs and has a cup of shitty coffee and says that she had a “relapse.”

  Another relapse.

  They always say the same thing—“Keep coming back.”

  It works if you work it.

  They talk about shedding guilt, making amends.

  Guilt? Jacqui thinks.

  I killed my boyfriend with an overdose.

  I shot a guy.

  How do you make amends to dead people?

  Some of them suggest methadone—they offer it at Nyack Hospital—but Jacqui doesn’t have the health insurance to get into the program and anyway doesn’t see the point of substituting one drug for another.

  But little by little, almost like the erosion of water on rock, the meetings start to win. She fixes less and less, when she does it’s in smaller doses, she skin-pops, she snorts. The people at the meeting wouldn’t understand, they’re all-or-nothing-at-all Puritans, but she thinks it’s progress. The sores on her face start to heal, she gains a little weight, she looks just decent enough that she can get hours at KFC and they’re so desperate for workers they forgive her sporadic availability.

  She pays rent for floor space at Renee’s.

  It doesn’t help that Renee is high all the time and hooking to get the money, but it’s good when Jacqui wants to fix so she has company. But she’s trying to save up enough money to get a room of her own somewhere and figures that this is about all she’ll ever have in common with Virginia Woolf.

  So she’s clean and sober, but not a fanatic about it.

  She’s a fanatic about the gun, though.

  Jacqui rarely lets it go, even when she’s high.

  The heroin and the gun aren’t unrelated. Heroin, like any opioid, is a response to pain. Jacqui has some painful memories. Traumatic memories. When she’s shooting up, the memories fade. But when she’s not, they come roaring back.

  Sometimes they are memories, movies from the past.

  Other times they come as flashbacks, they’re in the present, in real time, happening right now.

  Her stepfather, Barry, coming into her room and fucking her when she was a girl. This will be our secret (D), our little secret (G), I’ll make you feel so good (Em).

  Travis dying, overdosing, in her arms.

  The guy fucking her, raping her in the car—the gun going off.

  These things aren’t happening in the past, they’re happening right now unless she fixes, gets high, gets off, gets away, that’s Jacqui’s horrible choice—get high and forget, stay clean and remember.

  Relive this shit over and over again.

  So she tries to stay clean and she clings to the gun.

  The gun that protects her from new memories.

  Well, sort of protects her. In some of the long nights, in the single-digit hours, she has turned the gun on herself. When the flashbacks are at their worst, when Barry is on top of her whispering in her ear, the fat guy on top of her grunting, Travis dying with his head in her lap, she’s put the pistol barrel in her own mouth (like a dick? she speculates) and tried to pull the trigger.

  Just to make it stop.

  Make the flashbacks stop.

  Make the need for the drugs stop.

  She hears Barry say Do it, whore, hears her rapist say Do it, bitch, hears Travis say, Do it, baby, come to me, I miss you, hears herself say “Do it, do it, do it, just do it.”

  But she can’t.

  Her hand shakes and she’s afraid she’ll accidentally pull the trigger while taking the barrel out of her mouth. It would be just like me, she thinks, to fuck up and kill myself while I’m trying not to. Then she sits with her memories, her flashbacks, until the pale winter sun comes through the dirty window.

  Save one addict.

  What Bobby Cirello is trying to do.

  When he left NYC he got in his car, not even knowing where he was driving. He just drove north and pulled off in the Catskills, rented himself a cabin near Shandaken and holed up there like some kind of outlaw on the run.

  Phoned in a leave of absence that no one, not even Mullen, challenged because all of One Police was pretty happy to have Bobby Cirello somewhere else.

  So he sat.

  All through the holidays, through the bitter-cold winter.

  Went out and chopped wood for the fireplace, read some paperbacks the last tenant had left behind. Once a week or so drove to the Phoenicia Market for groceries. Otherwise lived like a hermit, like Thoreau, like the freaking Unabomber, he thought, although he shaved every day even though there was no one to care except himself.

  Trying to figure out what to do now, what to do next.

  Didn’t come up with any answers as he watched the snow fall outside the window.

  Then the snow stopped falling, started melting on the ground, and the dirt driveway up to the cabin got muddy and still Cirello didn’t have a clue how to save himself, redeem himself, somehow at least try to make things right.

  Then one morning he got up, made coffee and a couple of fried eggs and was packing his things before he even knew why or where he was going. Got back into his car and drove to Kingston, where he had caught a glimpse of the junkie Jacqui. He found the Kingston PD house and showed his badge.

  They knew him. Well, knew of him.

  “You’re the cop that made the Get Money Boys bust,” the desk sergeant said. “We’re appreciative.”

  Five minutes later Cirello was sitting down with a detective.

  “I’m looking for a Jacqui Davis,”
Cirello said. “She’s a heroin addict. I saw her here a few months ago, before Christmas.”

  The detective pulled her up on the system. “Yeah, we know her. We have a warrant on her.”

  “Possession?”

  “Attempted murder,” the detective said. “She’s a person of interest in a shooting. The vic said she got into his car at a red light, made him drive to an outlying area and tried to rob him. He fought her off and she shot him.”

  “You buy that?”

  “Total bullshit,” the detective said. “Your girl was hooking, we’ve known her for months, the guy was a john. This was strictly BGB.”

  Blow job Gone Bad.

  “The vic is a creep,” the detective said. “Still and all, we have to clear the case. The girl split town, we haven’t seen her on the streets since the incident.”

  “Any clue where she went?”

  “In the wind,” the detective said. “And we don’t have the budget to go chasing her. Just have to hope she gets popped somewhere and they pull the warrant. Do us a solid? If you find her, give us a shout?”

  “You got it.”

  Dead end, Cirello thought.

  He knew he should have left it there, given up, she was just another junkie among thousands.

  But he didn’t stop.

  Couldn’t even say why.

  Cirello went all detective on it.

  Drove back down the 87 working it out. Junkies, he knows, go where junk is. Like metal shavings to a magnet. So if Jacqui split Kingston, she probably headed south, toward the city. Maybe she’s back in New York, maybe back on the island. Maybe she didn’t make it that far. New Paltz has a drug scene (shit, what town doesn’t?), so does Nyack.

  He hit New Paltz PD.

  They hadn’t seen her, but they showed him where the drug drag was, and he cruised for two days. Stayed at the EconoLodge and caught naps. That is, when the feds weren’t calling. Some suit from the special counsel’s office kept banging his number, leaving messages for Cirello to call him.

  Cirello ignored it.

  Fuck them.

  Fuck all of them—the special counsel, Keller, O’Brien, all of them. They could play their game without him.

  He got the nod from New Paltz PD and went into Southside Terrace himself. Found an obvious addict in one of the apartment hallways and showed her his shield. No junkie is going to see the difference between an NYPD badge and a New Paltz badge or care. All they care about is not getting busted. “You seen this girl?”

  “No.”

  “Look again, for real,” Cirello said. “Or I can ask you again at the station.”

  The woman took a better look. “Never seen her before.”

  Cirello drove down to Nyack and went through the same drill. Checked in with the locals, got some information, and then went on the prowl. The biggest dope mart, Nyack Plaza, had been cleaned out with the Darius Darnell bust and the local addicts were hurting and on the prowl.

  So Cirello kept looking.

  Just drove around town until he saw a knot of people hanging out in a parking lot. They scattered like quail when he walked up on them but he caught up with the slowest, a woman named Renee.

  “Don’t know her,” Renee said when Cirello showed her Jacqui’s photo.

  Cirello could tell she was lying.

  “Here are your choices,” Cirello said. “You lie to me again, you detox in a jail cell. Tell me the truth, your wake-up’s on me.”

  “Maybe I’ve seen her.”

  “She here in Nyack?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Don’t make me pull this out of you,” Cirello said. “Where is she?”

  “She got her own place,” Renee said. “I mean, she was staying with me—”

  “Jesus Christ.”

  “—but she got her own place.”

  “Where?” Cirello asked.

  “You want, like, an address?”

  “Okay.”

  “I don’t know it.”

  Junkies.

  But she gave him the corners and a description of the house.

  Cirello gave her twenty bucks.

  Nature abhors a vacuum.

  Which is what the arrests of the Get Money Boys in Kingston and Nyack created—a big sucking hole in the heroin business.

  No vacuum in the drug world stays empty for long.

  Too much money there.

  So someone will rush to fill it.

  Race to fill it.

  Calle 18 got off the line first.

  “Pack your shit,” Davido told Nico. “You’re going out of town.”

  “Where?” Nico asked.

  “Nyack.”

  “Where is that?”

  “I don’t know,” Davido said. “North somewhere. You and Benedicto and Flaco.”

  He explained that since the mayates got popped during the big busts, there’s an opportunity in this town and the shot callers are going to take advantage of it. They’ll set up at a motel and put it out on the street that you can call a certain number and get delivery.

  “What do I tell my aunt and uncle?” Nico asked.

  “Don’t tell them nothing, just disappear,” Davido said. “They’ll probably be relieved.”

  They probably will, Nico thought.

  I’ve just been trouble to them.

  “Can I bring my bicycle?” he asked.

  “How the fuck else are you going to make deliveries?” Davido asked. “Uber?”

  “I have my hearing in a couple of weeks,” Nico said.

  “Nico, listen to me,” Davido said. “You know what’s going to happen at that hearing? The judge is going to have you cuffed and deported. But, ’manito, they can’t deport you if they can’t find you.”

  Nico went home, threw a few things in a garbage bag and left before his aunt or uncle got home. Met Benny and Flaco and they took the subway to Grand Central, then a train to Tarrytown, then an Uber over the river to Nyack.

  So now he hangs out in the Super 8, playing video games with Benedicto and Flaco. It’s a fun life—they got money, they got weed, they got no one telling them what to do except make deliveries when the phone rings. And Nyack’s got McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s and KFC. Benny and Flaco are always bitchin’ about how they miss Guatemalan food, but not Nico. He don’t miss rice and beans and beans and rice as long as he can hit the Quarter Pounders.

  Now he bangs the control buttons and waits for the phone to ring.

  Gun in hand, Jacqui waits for her stepfather to come through the door.

  This will be our secret (D), our little secret (G), I’ll make you feel so good (Em).

  She edges away, her back to the wall, points the gun at the door.

  Of her room.

  Her own room.

  Jacqui’s been doing well, pulling hours, paying rent for a room in a house on High Avenue, which she thinks is actually kind of funny/ironic in her more cogent moments. She’s clean and sober more often than not these days, and since the Plaza closed it’s easier to walk past to the meetings.

  And she likes her room. On the third floor, it has a window that overlooks Gedney Street and a little park. There’s a nice bakery up the street and she’s talked to them about getting a few hours and maybe learning to bake.

  The flashbacks, though, are killing her.

  The equations are cruelly simple.

  Dope = no flashbacks.

  No dope = flashbacks.

  So now she’s clean and fucked up as hell. Barry’s right outside the door, she can hear his footsteps, hear him breathing. He’s going to come in, hold her down, pin her down, show her how much he cares for her.

  This will be our secret (D), our little secret (G), I’ll make you feel so good (Em). She’s shaking, sweating. Like she’s jonesing. So what’s the fucking difference?

  The heroin sings to her.

  This will be our secret (D), our little secret (G), I’ll make you feel so good (Em).

  Gun still in hand, she calls the number.
<
br />   Rollins got the location on Cirello.

  His Visa card showed him at the Quality Inn in Nanuet, New York, just west of Nyack. Yesterday he was in New Paltz but left before they could get someone up there. They got someone up to Nanuet. If we can find Cirello, Rollins thought, so can the special counsel. So a two-man team watched the motel from across the road and followed Cirello when he left.

  Now they’re on him.

  Looking for the moment.

  Cirello has to go.

  It can be put out later that he was a dirty cop.

  Cirello pulls over on High Street.

  The description of the building matches.

  He gets out of his car, finds the back door of the building and heads up the stairs.

  Jacqui hears the knock on the door.

  Points the pistol.

  Thinks she can shoot through the wood before Barry comes in.

  Her finger tightens on the trigger.

  They get on the phone.

  Rollins gives the nod.

  Nico pedals furiously.

  It’s fun, zipping down the streets, even with a bag of heroin stuffed in his mouth like he’s a chipmunk.

  “Jacqui?” Cirello says. “It’s Detective Cirello. You remember me?”

  It brings her back to real time. “Yes.”

  “Can I come in? We need to talk.”

  Jacqui gets up, slips the pistol under her shirt and opens the door.

  “Can I come in?” Cirello asks.

  She lets him in. The only piece of furniture is the bed, so he sits down on that. She sits next to him.

  “Jacqui,” Cirello says, “do you know they’re looking for you in Kingston?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did you shoot that guy?”

  She nods.

  “Tell me what happened.”

  Jacqui tells him.

  “I want to take you back to Kingston,” Cirello says. “You turn yourself in.”

  “No.”

  “Listen to me now,” Cirello says. “You turn yourself in. They’re going to ask you questions and you tell them exactly what you told me. They’re going to ask you—because I’m going to tell them to—if you were afraid for your life, and you’re going to tell them yes.”