Ground Truth

by Rob Sangster

  He looked at Jack and asked in a completely tranquil voice, “You were checking out my art. Some good shit here, but you should see what I have in El Paso. Crates of it. I’m like a black hole for art. Costs a fortune, but I can’t get enough.” His tone was so self-satisfied that it said he didn’t give a damn whether or not Jack liked his art. “So now you’ve seen the set up I have here. Twice as much space under roof as we had in California, and I’ve cut labor costs seventy percent.” He waved the stump of his cigar. “Sweet deal, no?”

  “Guess so. I couldn’t tell exactly what I was seeing as we walked around, and there were some buildings Manuel wouldn’t take me into.” He watched to see if Montana’s face gave away anything. No change. “And your Plant Manager seemed pretty upset when we ran into him.”

  “Guzman? Manuel took you into Shipping & Receiving?” Montana’s face went dark, and the corners of his mouth turned down. “Anyway . . . that tour is all we can do for you here.”

  “Meaning?”

  “That there’s no point in hanging around. We’re not set up for a research project. Besides, you already have most of our records. Anything else you want, I can get to you in Mexico City on twelve hours notice. Believe me, you have my one hundred percent support for what you’re doing.”

  Montana did his best to make his smile look genuine while, at the same time, giving Jack the bum’s rush.

  “I need more than just records. I have to know about anything that could give Palmer trouble in court. Surprises kill a defense. And I need your responses to each PROFEPA charge. You and I will be spending several hours together.”

  Montana lighted the cigar and blew a coil of smoke across the desk. “I’ve got meetings in Mexico City in the morning, the kind I can’t miss.” He shrugged.

  “Listen,” Jack said, trying to rein in his anger, “I have a job to do. You shouldn’t—”

  “I run this place.” Montana’s eyes narrowed. “No one tells me what I shouldn’t do. But, hey, let’s not have a misunderstanding here.” As if shooting a free throw, he arched an empty beer bottle into a wastebasket. “How about a Tecate? Better than that horse piss you call beer in the States.”

  Jack hesitated. He’d like the smooth honey of single malt on his tongue, but not a beer with Montana. “No thanks.”

  “Suit yourself.” He pulled another Tecate from a built-in refrigerator behind his desk, opened it, and poured half of it down his throat.

  Jack’s bullshit meter was sounding loudly. This guy’s an asshole, but there’s something else going on here. Montana had tried to rush him back to Mexico City. But he knew Jack had been assigned to defend the plant, so what was motivating him?

  “Tom,” he said calmly. “By the way, do you prefer ‘Tom’ or ‘Thomas’?”

  “In Mexico, friends call me Tomás. You can call me Tom.”

  Oh, nice touch. “What you sent me in Mexico City wasn’t enough. Since then, I’ve reviewed the actual PROFEPA charges. Now I know what I need to see, including the equipment. Just point me to a desk and ask your assistant to give me the documents I need. I should be out of here in a couple of days.”

  “Strider, I don’t need you showing up with some bullshit San Francisco attitude . . . but I’ll leave a note telling Ana-Maria Archuletta what to give you in the morning. She’s in charge of our filing, knows where everything is. Just do what you’ve been told, and don’t be snooping around my plant.” He fired the empty Tecate at the wastebasket. It shattered against the wall. He wrenched the cap off another.

  “I’ll be here in the morning, Tom, but since we’re both here right now, let’s take ten minutes to go over some questions.” Once they got going, he’d pin Montana down for a lot more than ten minutes.

  “No way. I’m eating at the Mayor’s house tonight. In fact, I’m out of here right now.” He came to his feet and headed out of the room, flicking off the office light, leaving Jack in the dark.

  He gritted his teeth. Calm down. Ignore his little games. Get the job done.

  In the parking lot, Montana pointed in the direction of the city lights of El Paso. “Don’t confuse that beat-to-hell river over there with your San Francisco Bay. This is a different ballpark. My ballpark. Comprende?”

  “Here’s some breaking news for you, Tom. Palmer Industries isn’t your ballpark. It’s a corporation whose owners live in San Francisco. They sent me to do a job, and that’s exactly what I’m going to do.” He let that sink in. “Comprende?”

  Montana moved closer. “Stick your nose where it doesn’t belong, and you’ll answer to me.” He smiled an empty smile and spread his arms wide, palms up. “Hey, we’re on the same team, amigo.” He climbed into the Hummer and leaned out the window. “This is a tough city, so watch your back. Buena suerte.” He gunned the engine and pulled out of the lot at high speed, leaving a cloud of swirling dust.

  Buena suerte, my ass. We’ll see who needs good luck the most.

  JACK PULLED OFF Paseo Triumfo de la Republica into the drive of the pink and beige Hotel Rialto. Next to the main entrance a sign bolted to the cut stone read, “Five Star ***** Finest Hotel in Juarez.” He noticed that the guest parking lot had a gatehouse and a guard with a very ugly automatic shotgun on a sling. Wonder what the second finest hotel is like? That guard might need a machine gun.

  At the front desk, he said to the clerk, “Good evening. I have a reservation. Name’s Strider.”

  After asking twice for the spelling of his name, the clerk frowned and announced that no such reservation existed.

  “Any good room is fine.”

  “I’m very sorry, señor. The hotel is full, well almost full.”

  “What do you mean, almost?”

  “The only room we have left is the El Presidente Suite, but it’s our most expensive suite. Would you like that one, señor?” The clerk’s smug smile confirmed that his squeeze play worked on Americans more often than not.

  He was being hustled, but getting angry wouldn’t help, and he wasn’t in the mood to search for another hotel.

  “That will be fine. You said you can’t find my reservation, but the company that booked it for me has it, so that’s the rate I’ll pay for the suite. Correct?”

  The clerk’s smug look vanished, replaced by an obsequious smile. Without missing a beat, he said, “Of course, sir.”

  A mosaic path of colored stones in an Aztec pattern led through an impeccable garden and alongside a swimming pool shaped like a dolphin. Midway down, the bellman swept open the door of the El Presidente Suite. On an oval table in the center of the room stood a bottle of Porfidio tequila with a ribbon around its neck: “Compliments from the Management. We are here to serve you.”

  He’d had his fill of Juarez hospitality. Guzman, Montana, now this. What the hell was coming up tomorrow?

  Chapter 20

  July 2

  8:00 a.m.

  JACK STRODE INTO the Admin Building at Palmer Industries at eight a.m. As he neared Montana’s office, a strikingly beautiful woman called to him.

  “Good morning. I am Ana-Maria Archuletta. May I take you to your . . . office?”

  Her smile improved his state of mind considerably, but that lasted only until she showed him to a small cubicle where the sun blazed in through a propped-open window. Just outside, eighteen-wheelers rolled past through waves of exhaust. His nostrils burned.

  “This is where Señor Montana said for me to take you,” Ana-Maria told him in clear, schoolbook English. “I reminded him the air-conditioning is broken but—I’m sorry. If I can help you, please ask.” She left, obviously embarrassed.

  He could insist on a better workspace, even commandeer one, but that would put Ana-Maria in a bind. Montana had sent him a message. He’d find a way to return the favor.

  She’d stacked the metal desk high with neatly-labeled folders
full of files, graphs, schedules and receipts. Now it was up to him to evaluate their credibility. If Montana had laid down a smoke screen, he had to penetrate it.

  Four hours later he leaned back from his laptop and rubbed his eyes. No smoking gun, nothing that proved Palmer Industries had dealt with hazardous waste illegally.

  He stood and looked out the window, idly watching a truck marked Brown & Root Chemical leaving the yard.

  The records Montana had sent to him in Mexico City were useless. The ones in front of him now were organized and seemingly comprehensive, but were they authentic? He’d come to Juarez to find a way to defend Palmer Industries. If these records were valid, they could help him keep the plant open. Even if there were minor violations, he’d convince Arthur it was in his best interests to clean them up.

  But Roberto Alvarez had acted as though he were holding aces. So if these records were bogus, Alvarez probably had a trap ready to discredit the records and the lawyer who put them forward.

  He looked at the situation in another way. The Palmer plant is a big business. To run it, Montana had to keep real books to monitor costs, pay bills, detect theft, whatever. If these records were fake, he had to have a real set, probably locked up somewhere. He’d hide them from his own lawyer because they’d convict him.

  He’d taught his law students that a client who lies to his lawyer is like a hand grenade with the pin out. He thinks he can game the system, including his own lawyer. Once in a while he gets away with it. More often, the lie blows up the case and takes the lawyer with it. Now, here he was with a client who might be lying through his smile.

  Next step? Find out if there was another set of records stashed away somewhere. If so, and they were incriminating, that would be a turning point. He wouldn’t walk away and pretend he’d seen nothing. Instead, he’d dump copies of the relevant parts in Sinclair’s lap so he could deal with his client.

  He remembered Ana-Maria saying, “If I can help you, please ask.” If there were skeletons, Ana-Maria would know in which closet. But why would she reveal anything about Palmer if it could sink the company?

  The stakes were so high that if he had to “use” her, that’s the way it would be. He needed to get her alone.

  Chapter 21

  July 2

  1:00 p.m.

  JACK TWISTED THE cork out of a bottle of white wine and filled two glasses. This was his chance to persuade Ana-Maria to reveal Montana’s secrets. “I wanted to take you to a nice restaurant.”

  She sat in a folding chair next to the desk in his cubicle. After a moment she said, “In a restaurant, many eyes would see us together. Someone would tell someone. Anyway, look at this feast you brought from Café Carmella.” She gestured at the half dozen containers on the desk. “Señor Montana has never even offered me a beer.” She cocked her head. “May I ask you a question?”

  “Of course.”

  “Some people say you are spy for the San Francisco home office, others say maybe for Señor Montana. Which is it, Señor Strider?

  That hit home. He felt exactly like a spy. “I’m a lawyer from San Francisco, and I’m here to help solve a problem for Palmer Industries.”

  She looked pensive. Maybe she believed him. Maybe not.

  “Tell me about San Francisco.”

  “It’s on a peninsula almost surrounded by water, the Pacific Ocean to the west, the Bay to the east.”

  “Juarez is in a desert,” she said, “and the water in the Rio Grande would eat the soles off your shoes. Where I came from, the mountain streams are sweet and full.”

  For a moment, her large dark eyes seemed focused on a distant place. Her shiny brown hair, cut short, showed off her graceful neck.

  “Years ago, the Bay was so polluted the government started enforcing laws against dumping anything toxic into the water. Now the Bay is clean. I read somewhere that some maquilas dump chemicals and other toxic garbage into ponds or even on the ground.”

  “Some of them don’t care what damage they do. My cousin works in a factory where they use much, much water to make blue jeans look worn out. The factory is so hot that one girl used the wash water to soak her headband so she could suck on it. She started throwing up. The floor manager took her away. My cousin never saw her again.”

  “Didn’t the other workers complain?”

  “Most workers are girls who left a husband and children in a village to come to the borderland to earn a living. If they say anything, they get fired. So they are silent.”

  “I understand,” was all he could say. But what he thought about were the rich businessmen and power-hungry legislators that make rules that benefit themselves, indifferent to how they affect millions of ordinary people they will never see. He was disgusted.

  “But you don’t understand,” she replied. “You see only what you see as you drive from your fancy hotel to this plant. You don’t see real life in Juarez. At your home, you’re surrounded by water. In Juarez, we sometimes don’t have enough water to cook our meals or wash our bodies, even to drink. It’s getting worse.”

  “What’s the government doing about that?”

  “The President in Mexico City pays no attention to us. In Chihuahua, the state governor says it would cost ten billion pesos to bring water from beyond the mountains, and they don’t even have enough money to fix the traffic lights. The Mayor claims the problem was made up by American consultants. Others say, ‘The water still comes out of the wells, more salty, but still coming.’ Everybody tells us ‘No problem, don’t worry about it.’”

  “We should worry a lot more about it,” Jack told her. “The number of places around the world that are beginning to run out of water is growing so quickly that I taught my students about it.”

  She nodded, but didn’t speak, so he said, “I’m sorry, but right now I need your help with something that’s happening in this plant. The records on this desk aren’t the real records for the company. I need you to tell me what’s really going on.”

  He was pessimistic as he waited for her response. Montana signs her paycheck, so she’d probably report these questions to him. So what? He wasn’t going to win a popularity contest with Montana anyway.

  She crossed her arms. Her face closed. “I have nothing to say, Señor Strider.” She looked at her wristwatch, then down at the table.

  “Ana-Maria, if PROFEPA closes this plant, all of you will lose your jobs. If you know anything that can help prevent that, you should tell me. I want to help.”

  She eyed him suspiciously. “Then why did Señor Montana tell me not to do anything for you except what he said?”

  “Maybe because he’s doing something he doesn’t want me to know about. If he’s dumping hazardous waste illegally, he’s poisoning the water supply. You need to help me stop that.”

  She looked at him as if trying to read his mind. “Why would you care what happens to people here? You don’t know us.”

  This was his chance to get her on his side. “Then take me into the city. Show me what I should see. Help me understand.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said softly, “but I don’t trust you.”

  “I’ll give you one thousand pesos to drive around with me for a couple of hours. Just drive, nothing else.” It sounded crass, but he didn’t know what else to do. If she thought Montana was guilty of something, she might want to keep it concealed. Or she might want to help the gringo fix the problem. If she thought Montana was clean, she’d walk away.

  She stood. “I’ll tell my best friend Juanita I’m going with you. At five o’clock, I’ll be walking somewhere past the first bus stop down the road to the right. Pick me up there.”

  “I will.”

  “Señor Strider. I promise nothing.”

  Shortly after five, Ana-Maria settled into the Town Car without a word, so he kept driving, waiting for
directions. After a couple of miles, she told him to turn off onto a two-lane road so full of craters it looked as if it had been bombed. When the road led through the city dump, he powered the windows up to reduce the odor and the din from heavy machinery compacting mountains of debris. They rounded a gravel bank, and straight ahead was a sprawling landscape of human habitation that almost looked like a continuation of the dump.

  “Anapra,” Ana-Maria said as if it were a dirty word, gesturing toward makeshift homes scattered on harsh, barren soil. “Years ago, the city ended at the other side of the dump, so poor people coming from the country wound up here. Now forty thousand live in Anapra. The first ones built homes from wood pallets and cardboard boxes. They flattened soft drink and beer cans to make the roof. Where you see concrete blocks and tarpaper, those people have some money. In summer, it’s over one hundred degrees.”

  “Is this where you live?” He immediately wished he hadn’t asked. Instead of showing that he empathized with anyone forced to live in these conditions, his question sounded judgmental.

  “Yes. Many people in Anapra work in the maquilas. This is all they can afford on forty dollars a week.”

  Forty dollars a week? He pictured the Palmer brothers in expensive suits paid for by the sweat of these people.

  “Now it is getting worse. A big drug cartel has moved in. They set up crack houses where they recruit kids to deliver drugs. Some people say Anapra is like a ‘border motel’ because so many drug smugglers hide here before they sneak across the border. No one here is safe, especially not women.

  “They call Juarez the ‘Murder Capital of the Americas.’ Men stinking with tequila kill each other like animals. The narcotraficantes—the cartels, the police, and the army—they are at war with each other. Thousands murdered. If you get in the way, you die. In the past few years, more than three hundred women in Juarez have been murdered. Most of them raped and cut, mostly dumped by the river, some on the side of a road, thrown out of cars like garbage. Women disappear. One day they’re here, then no more.”