Dejo looked confused.
“Juan Two Saints,” called Jefe, as if he were announcing his presentation. “What do you think?”
Juan shrugged.
“You buy this business about cartel papers buried in the wall?”
“No,” said Juan.
“Me neither,” said Jefe. “I think they were after another kind of paper. The green kind.”
“Why there?” Dejo asked.
“Good question,” said Jefe. There was a slight inflection in his voice, and it said that Jefe might already have a very good idea as to why that house had been torn apart.
“What do we know about the owner of the house?” said Juan. Even as the words came out of his mouth, he didn’t know why he’d said them. Jefe looked surprised. Not at the question, but at the pointed way Juan had spoken. Juan swore he saw a slight glint appear in the big man’s eye.
“Nothing,” Jefe said. And it was gone. “Some company owns it. Probably a little spot for the boss to bring his hugger. You know what a hugger is?”
Juan did. “What?” said Dejo. Jefe never looked at him.
“A hugger is some little chicky mama you keep on the side so your old lady doesn’t find out about her. That country house would be a good place to bring your little chicky mama. Wouldn’t you say?”
Dejo said yes, but Jefe wasn’t talking to him.
“How long you been married now, Juan Two Saints?”
“Five years,” Juan said. Jefe never asked about his family, and he didn’t like him doing it now.
“Five years,” repeated Jefe. “Maybe we ought to find you a little chicky mama?”
***
Strauss was on the phone as he approached the truck. He stopped outside to finish his conversation in private. He hung up and dialed again. This time he got behind the wheel.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Tell you what, Mister Mendes?”
“That you’re a cop.”
“It’s not really your business.”
“I’ve put my life in your hands. I’d say it is my business.”
“You’ve put the lives of other people in my hands, Mister Mendes, and I’ve seen to it that your desires were carried out. Your life is another matter.”
“You haven’t fulfilled that promise yet,” said Eduardo.
“Yet,” said Strauss, purposefully.
“I’d like to know what you’re doing about it. If anything.”
“You seem intent on provoking me, Mister Mendes,” Strauss observed dully.
“I’m intent on having my enemies broken. I’m intent on having those two corrupt pig copsno offensereleased from jail and brought to me and killed.”
“Brought to you. You want to watch now?”
“I want to see that it’s finally done right.”
“I can arrange for you to do it yourself if you prefer.”
“Thank you, but I’m not interested in having blood on my hands. I’m just starting to feel clean again.”
“Don’t get used to it.”
“Who did you call?”
“In regard to what?”
“Having them released.”
“Why would you want that, Mister Mendes?”
“So I can have them killed,” said Eduardo.
“And you need to have them out of jail in order to do that?” asked Strauss.
As he said it, a set of headlights came into view and grew large and dominating. Eduardo squinted. Strauss got out and walked towards them. Eduardo followed. He saw fleeting globes of light. Behind them was a white BMW with a crooked grill. It gave the car a demented, buck-toothed happy face.
A man popped out of the passenger seat, pulling a loose silk shirt over his shoulders. He didn’t button it. He was very lean and muscular and had a tattoo of a snake that wrapped around his body so the head and tail appeared on opposite sides of his torso. He wore sunglasses and smiled.
“Hello, Eduardo. I can’t believe you came,” said Ordo Beltran.
The driver’s door opened, and a thick man in a gray track suit stepped into the street. He was known in Mexico as the Russian. His hair was chopped short, and his eyes were slightly too close to one another. The Russian cased Strauss with his eyes. Turning toward Eduardo, the Russian’s eyes filled with surprise and recognition. He nodded to Eduardo respectfully.
Ordo spoke first.
“What do you say, Eduardo? Let’s go for a ride. We can make this easy.”
“Would you like to have a cup of coffee?” asked Strauss.
Ordo looked at him for the first time, and his surprise was evident. The thick man with him whispered in his ear.
“I am impressed,” he said to Eduardo. “But don’t think he can save you.”
“I didn’t come here to save anyone,” said Strauss. “I came here to have coffee. You can have some with me if you like.”
“This is a bar. I drink whiskey in bars.”
Strauss’s phone rang. Eduardo watched in shock as he drew the phone from his pocket, opened it, and began speaking. Ordo laughed.
“See, Eduardo? You are not even his priority.” He made a motion to the Russian that was no more than a flip of his hand, but it was made in Eduardo’s direction. Its intent was obvious.
“Si,” said Strauss into the phone. Then he handed it to Ordo. “It is for you.”
Ordo paused, then showed his teeth in a large smile. He took the phone. He listened. He nodded. Then he stopped smiling.
A black Range Rover pulled onto the small side street and came to a stop beside them. Strauss didn’t even glance at it.
“What is this?” Eduardo asked.
“You have an appointment,” said Strauss. He held open the door to the truck.
Eduardo had his back to the wall. To his left was a dark city at night that he didn’t know. To his right was the short hulking Russian. He knew what the Russian was capable of.
“Where am I going?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” said Strauss.
“Do I have to go?” Eduardo asked.
“You could stay here,” suggested Strauss.
Eduardo looked around himself again. Ordo Beltran wasn’t smiling anymore. The Russian never smiled. He could smell the truck. It was rich, clean leather. He slowly slid himself into the seat as if sitting would be painful. He and Strauss looked at one another for a moment. He looked to Strauss for any sort of reassurance. Strauss closed the door and the truck pulled away quickly.
The three men were left standing in the street as if the Range Rover had never been there.
***
“Let me ask you something, Juan Two Saints,” growled Jefe. He spoke slowly, deliberately. “What would you do? If you were me?”
“I would let them go. I would tell them to go home and never come back to Mexico.”
Dejo made a noise. It was loud and sounded disagreeable. Jefe just chuckled.
“No, that’s what Juan Two Saints would do. What would I do?”
“I would just go into that cell and pound on them until they talked,” said Dejo, as if the answer were obvious.
“Yeah?” asked Jefe casually. “What do you think that would get you?”
“Whatever you want,” said Dejo, not understanding how everyone else couldn’t grasp this.
“Pound on them until they talk,” repeated Jefe wistfully, as if he were rolling the idea through his mind. “What do you think about that, Juan Two Saints?”
“I don’t like it.”
Jefe raised an entertained eyebrow.
“No? Why not?”
“Your average man doesn’t like pain,” said Juan.
As soon as he said it, he watched Jefe’s eyes travel down his body to his bandaged hands and back again. Juan folded his arms.
“Your average man?” asked Jefe.
“He has no tolerance. Not for direct pain, and not for sustained blows. Or physical damage.”
“What’s that mean to you?” asked Jefe.
/> “It means if you hit him long enough, he’ll tell you he killed John F. Kennedy. That doesn’t make it true.”
“Who is John F. Kennedy?” asked Dejo, but they ignored him.
“So tell me, Juan Two Saints, in your expert opinion, what does work?”
He thought about whether he should answer. He thought about walking out into the street and never turning back. He thought about Jefe laughing at him.
“You don’t need to break a man physically. You need to break him mentally. Break his will.”
“Break his will,” said Jefe. “How would you do that?”
“Put the fear of God into him,” said Juan.
Jefe sat with his hands folded on his belly. He spun his thumbs in little circles. He turned the idea over in his mind. Dejo looked confused.
“This is Mexico,” said Jefe. “What if God isn’t around?”
“Then put the fear of you in him,” said Juan, who regretted it immediately.
“Which one would you start with?”
“The little one,” said Dejo, struggling to get back into the conversation.
“Yeah?” said Jefe. “How come?”
“Did you see how he was sweating? How he folded up when I broke his nose? Walk in there, whack him around a little, he’ll give up his whole family if you promise to stop.”
“Is that what you would do, Juan Two Saints?”
Juan knew the conversation had gone too far. It had gone miles too far.
“No,” he answered, in spite of himself. “I would let them go home.”
“But we’re not talking about you. We’re talking about me. What would you do if you were me?”
“If I were you,” said Juan Two Saints, “I would work on the one with the tattoo. He’s the strong one. Let the little man watch. The little man is afraid. Let him know he is next. Make sure he watches his friend suffer. Let him think about it. After a while, separate them. Sit the little man down, put him in a quiet room with a glass of water. Let him wash his hands. Convince him that he has no options. After that, he’ll belong to you.”
“That’s what you would do?” asked Jefe.
“If I were you.”
“If you were me,” said Jefe.
Jefe made a face, and Juan supposed it could have been called a smile. He had never seen so many of Jefe’s brown teeth at once.
Chapter Nine
Virgil – Monterrey, MX
Virgil had realized long ago that every man in custody would test his handcuffs to see if his freedom was really gone. The bars would shake, the metal would clang on metal. When they chained him to the bar in his cell, after they left the room, he did it too.
They locked Curtis into the cell behind him. Virgil had to twist back to see him. Curtis sank to the floor. His handcuff didn’t make a sound.
They were together, at least, though in different cells and cuffed to the rails with metal bars and a ten foot ocean of cement floor between them.
Virgil gave Curtis one more glance. He could see the blood all over his shirt. His head was down, and his eyes were closed. His shoulders had collapsed. He barely looked like he was breathing. Virgil thanked God he wasn’t crying.
The jail was a long room with two large cages, placed side by side, separated by one row of bars. If they hadn’t been locked to the bars, they could have sat next to one another and spoken in whispers. Instead, Curtis was on the other side of the room by himself, and Virgil was in his cage with three snoring drunks to keep him company.
Virgil sat on a metal bench. A drunk in a tan coat had curled up on the second bench in Virgil’s cell, facing the wall. Two vagrants huddled next to the toilet, one leaning on the other. He could smell them from here. There was a sink next to the toilet. A gray bar of soap had melted into the flat surface over the faucet. Virgil shook his cuff once more. No one moved. The toilet wouldn’t do him much good.
“Hey,” he called out in a hoarse whisper. He looked at his cellmates. One of the vagrants poked his head up and sniffed, then settled back into the other’s shoulder. The tan coat didn’t move. Another drunk, thought Virgil, snoring away into oblivion. He was afraid to sleep.
“What?” said Curtis.
“What can you hear on the other side of that door?”
It was seven feet down a dark hall. It led to the booking area, which fed into the room where they had been questioned. The door was closest to Curtis.
“I can’t hear anything,” he said.
“Try,” said Virgil.
He did. For a moment, it was quiet. Then, Virgil heard the soft snoring of a drunken vagrant.
“I don’t hear anything,” said Curtis.
“Then they can’t hear us,” said Virgil in a normal speaking voice. “How is your nose?”
“Broken.”
“I broke my nose when I was a kid.”
Curtis didn’t answer.
“Is anything wrong with you other than your nose?”
“No,” said Curtis, in a voice that sounded like everything was wrong with him. His voice was weak and nasally.
“Have you tried to fix it?”
“I’m not a doctor.”
“You don’t need to be. It’s going to hurt more to fix than it did to break. But you need to.”
“Why?”
“Because you need to be ready for whatever they’re going to do to us.”
After Virgil said that, he heard nothing but snoring for a long time.
“What do you think they’re going to do?” Curtis asked finally.
“I don’t know.”
“Are they going to hand us over to Mendes?”
“I don’t know. But it won’t be good.”
“We only broke into a house.”
“They moved us around for a day until they found a police station that would take us. Know how many times I’ve done that? Never. That’s not normal in Mexico. That’s not normal anywhere. And look where they finally took us. What do you see?”
“One of the dirtiest cells in this country,” said Curtis.
“One of the oldest. Look who works here. Old guys. If you’re an old cop in Mexico, it’s because you learned a long time ago how to mind your business. Wait for your retirement. Did you see what they don’t have here?”
Curtis didn’t answer, but Virgil barely noticed. He was almost talking to himself.
“Cameras. Not a damn one in the entire station. No one’s looking in this place. No one is going to remember anything either. Or ask any questions. Jefe brought us to this place for a reason, and that reason is he can do anything that he wants to us here.”
Virgil twisted around in his cell to look at Curtis. Curtis was in a daze. Dried brown blood formed a goatee around his mouth.
“Fix that nose,” said Virgil. “You might need it.”
***
The man driving the Range Rover had a tattoo on his elbow of a spider web. Eduardo had expected a thug with scars and bad skin, a cartoon evil man with no front teeth and a sinister laugh. This man was anything but that. He was neat and young and wore glasses. He was muscular and clean cut except for the tattoo.
Eduardo sat in his seat and stared at the traffic. They were headed out of the city, and by the time he realized that he should have been tracking the road signs, it was too late. Suddenly, the driver veered right for the exit, a horn blaring behind them. Eduardo saw nothing but a blur of colors and letters, all moving too fast to make any sense.
“Where are we going?” he finally asked.
The driver looked at his phone. He had turned down the brightness of the display so it emitted very little light.
“You have an appointment, sir,” said the driver. He said it firmly and politely.
Eduardo could see the driver clearly. His clothes were nice without any flash. He had no jewelry, but wore a gun on his right hip. It was black and plain and as unflashy as the rest of him.
There were fewer cars on the roads now, and Eduardo could hear gravel colliding with the front o
f the truck. The gravel gave way to dust, and soon Eduardo realized there was only dirt beneath the tires. They entered a green corridor of trees. Then civilization in the form of a well kept home burst in front of them. The door was open and bright warm light poured through it.
The truck pulled onto the drive and stopped beside a black Porsche. The moon shone brightly off its hood and roof. The driver manipulated the phone again. Eduardo watched as the driver scanned the area around the house. The phone beeped once.
Eduardo studied the sports car. The windows were tinted so he had to peer through them and squint. The interior was black as well, and he thought he was seeing things. At first, the small Porsche didn’t appear to have a steering wheel, but then he found it on the right side of the car.
“Did he buy this car in England?” Eduardo asked.
“Right this way, sir,” said the driver. He motioned toward the open door of the house. It wasn’t just open, Eduardo realized. It was broken. Broken wood surrounded the lock and the door appeared to be off its hinges, so it would never close. He understood now where he was.
Eduardo breathed deeply through his nose.
Strauss – Monterrey, MX
This was no place for winners. A red light lit the room. La Hermosa Posado had been the spot once, long in the past. The same customers came in, but their fortunes had drifted dramatically. They wore the same clothes, told the same stories, but drank cheaper booze. They were a collection of gray and graying, brown and dusty, and eyes that had long stopped fighting. With his silk shirt completely unbuttoned, Ordo Beltran stood out from the rest.
“I told the bartender to put it on your tab,” he said to Strauss.
It could not be more clear who Ordo Beltran was. Strauss looked down the bar and saw a man placing cheap beers on the counter. That man would know, and he wasn’t about to argue. He knew a couple beers weren’t worth it.
“Tell me who was on the phone,” said Ordo.
“It was a friend of Eduardo’s. I presume they asked that you leave Eduardo in peace to continue his business. You can kill him when he returns,” said Strauss matter-of-factly. He didn’t know whether it was the content or the tone, but he saw the Russian turn an eye in his direction.
“What can I get for you?” said a voice Strauss knew. He saw Guillermo’s eyes widen in recognition. He saw the hand reach across the bar. He felt the grip. Once, Guillermo’s arm had been a heap of raw muscle, fueled by youth and science. In the years since, that same body had deflated, and skin now hung loose from his bones. His eyes were weary. The smile, however, was still warm.
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