by Chuck Dixon
He had been home nearly ten years after getting out of the Army, but all the wiring was still there. He got the same tingle up his spine off this stop as he had gotten approaching intersections or crossing bridges back in Iraq. That hard-learned situational awareness was sending all the signals, the board in his mind lit up red straight across.
He moved to an angle to the driver side bumper. It gave him a view of the van’s dark interior, as well as the driver and passenger. Mexicans, by his eye. And not pickers. Wrong time of year for it. And the shaved back-and-sides fauxhawks gave them away as players.
“License and registration.”
“Yes, sir. Right here, sir.” The beefy one behind the wheel offered the papers. Brando lowered his Ray-Bans to inspect them.
“Which one of you is Armand Engstrom?”
“I am,” the driver said. His smile stretched wider but never reached his eyes. The younger guy in the suicide seat watched with sleepy eyes and lips parted. A dummy playing dumber.
“Were you aware that you’re missing a rear taillight? And I see now that your windshield is cracked.”
“We were just on our way to have it repaired, sir.”
“Did you have an accident, Mr. Engstrom?”
The driver looked at the passenger, who gave a shrug, eyes alert now and squinting.
“My cousin left it in gear and it rolled into a…a…what do you call it?”
“I wouldn’t know, Mr. Engstrom. What do you call it?”
“Una zanja,” the passenger offered.
“¡Sí! Yes! A ditch. The van rolled into a ditch!”
“There were no other vehicles involved? Any property damage?”
Both men shook their heads.
“Are either or both of you foreign nationals?” Brando asked, remaining where he was by the bumper.
“You are not allowed to ask us that,” the driver said. His surprise was turning to offense.
“I can ask you anything I like, Mr. Engstrom, and I suggest you answer truthfully.”
“But in Maryland…”
“You and your cousin aren’t in Maryland, Mr. Engstrom. This is Alabama, and I am within my rights to ask you about your citizenship. Are either or both of you foreign nationals?”
The men in the van offered assurances that they were natives of the Eastern Shore. They were both nodding like bobbleheads. Brando’s hand found its way to the butt of his service piece all on its own.
“I’m gonna have to ask both of you gentlemen to place your hands on the dashboard,” Brando said. His thumb undid the snap securing his Colt in place.
The driver’s smile stretched wider, showing his molars. Sweat beaded on his face. The passenger’s mopey expression deepened to a scowl, and his hand moved out of sight.
“Hands on the dash,” Brando directed, each word a sentence on its own. The 1911 in his gloved fist and trained at the van’s occupants through the windshield provided the final punctuation.
A Haley Police Department Tahoe glided to a place behind Brando’s cruiser, lights going.
Two hours later, Mr. Engstrom and his cousin were booked for criminal possession of unregistered firearms, driving with a fraudulent license, and receiving stolen goods. Once they were printed and their pictures had been taken, a whole plethora of federal warrants sprang from the Pandora’s box of the DOJ’s criminal reference system. ICE was called, and Herman Guillermo Ruiz and Jose Angel “Buey” Ruiz were packed off to the field office in Hoover to face further charges, imprisonment, and deportation.
30
As preposterous as it sounded, the official story was that the two men in the showers killed one another in a fight.
The witnesses on the scene supported that version. A lover’s spat turned deadly. The camp administrators did not have sufficient interest or curiosity to look into the matter further. The dead prisoners were degenerate criminals who took one another’s lives. End of story. End of report.
Still, some show of authority was called for to address this break in order. The prisoners were rousted from their huts before the evening meal. They stood in rows along either side of the main lane. The camp’s commander, with The Prick by his side, spoke to them through a bullhorn. The commander, an officious little man in a sharply creased military uniform, was rarely seen outside the admin building. He was pale, and had a pencil-thin mustache and rimless glasses like a Nazi from a movie. A too-large cap encrusted with gold braid completed the image. His voice matched his image: reedy and halting.
He explained to the population that every death is regrettable, even that of the least among us. And he wasn’t about to tolerate any breakdown in the routine established here. The guard would be doubled for the foreseeable future, and a guard would be posted inside the showers as well as outside from now on. If they insisted on acting like animals, they would be treated as animals. Infractions would be dealt with swiftly and harshly, blah, blah, and on and on and on until the little man ran out of threats and bullshit. He handed the bullhorn off to the Prick, who called out the numbers of the first huts to go to supper.
Levon met Ball Boy coming out of the dining hall as he was going in.
“We talk soon, yes?” Ball Boy said in his gutter French.
Levon nodded and brushed past for that evening’s offering of lamb and some kind of greens.
Snow flurries were drifting over the football pitch the next day. It didn’t slow the play; both sides charged up and down the lumpy field in pursuit of the yellow and blue ball.
“I need that phone,” Levon said. He stood with Ball Boy at the corner of the field farthest from the quartet of guards huddled to watch the play.
“You need earn phone,” Ball Boy said. A yellow cigarette waggled in his lips as he spoke.
“I did what you asked.”
“That was for blanket. Coat. You are paid.”
“It’s not enough.”
“I speak to chef. I ask maybe something else for you? Cigarette? The drugs? To fuck? Have boy pretty like woman. Same thing.”
“All I want is a phone.”
“Is expensive, phone. You need earn phone.”
“Tell me how and I’ll earn it.”
Ball Boy blew a stream of smoke at the ground, then turned his head to look at the Chechen sitting bundled up on his lawn chair. The muscle poured a mug of sweet coffee for the boss man. The big man had a swatch of white bandage taped across his face, over a steel splint to hold his nose in place.
“I bring you something you like. Later.”
Levon nodded before walking away.
Later that day, he found a Danish porn magazine on his bunk. A blonde with an idiot leer pressed her breasts together on the cover. When he picked it up to toss it to the floor, a folded slip of paper fell out. He retrieved it and opened it.
Mehmet Sadıkoğlu
2
31
Honesto Camarillo was tired of the business of drugs and whores.
This had nothing to do with pangs of conscience. It was just that narcos and putas brought risks with them. Risks from the law, and from the competition. And, by their very nature, these two illicit ventures could make a man crazy. It was tempting to wallow in the world of sin that surrounded both.
He longed to build something lasting. Something clean. Something legitimate. For him, this took the form of multiple businesses under the umbrella of Dixie-Pro Industries Ltd. Dixie-Pro was incorporated in Wyoming, with its world headquarters in Birmingham, Alabama. He had a logo, business cards, and an ad in the Yellow Pages. You couldn’t have those with drugs and whores.
From the window of his world headquarters—a trailer equipped with a desk, a sofa, filing cabinets, a mini-fridge, and an assignment board—Honesto could survey his empire. It was comprised of four unmarked vans, a panel truck, and two tow trucks parked in front of a garage building. It was all enclosed in a chain link fence, with vinyl slats interwoven to hide it from the view of the street and the VFW hall next door.
Dixi
e-Pro was, according to Google Maps, a thriving business offering roadside repair, towing, plumbing, electrical work, and roofing. D-P had twenty-two locations in the Birmingham suburbs and surrounding counties. Virtually, that is. Honesto registered these locations with Google, whose verification process was iffy at best. In truth, the trailer, garage, and small fleet of vehicles were the only assets the company had, and the lot behind the VFW was their only location. The other offices were either phony addresses, or the addresses of legitimate businesses like nail salons and pizzerias that had agreed to allow their locales to be used in exchange for a few bucks or some favors.
Calls and texts to those disparate locations were all routed to the row of cellphones he kept on his desk. If you were stranded in the breakdown lane on 65 near Homewood and it was raining cats and dogs, your phone would assure you that there was a Dixie-Pro Towing service just five minutes away. Your commode backs up and company’s coming for dinner at your house in Sandusky? Well, Dixie-Pro Plumbing’s just a hop, skip, and a jump from your house. In reality, help might be an hour or more away, but most callers sat tight with their first choice. It’s Google Maps. It has to be right, right?
And, of course, the “pro” in Dixie-Pro was a bit of an exaggeration. Honesto’s employees were Juans of all trades but jefes of none. One call, they were an electrician, and the next, a car mechanic. The only consistency was the payment method: cash only. Dixie-Pro wanted no part of credit card companies or banks. You pay dinero or nothing. Yankee Dollar, Homer. Pay up, or sit in the rain on the roadside. Pony up, or live with a lake of shit in your baño. Don’t like the service? Yelp all you want. Dixie-Pro was virtually, if not literally, all over the map, and there was always another sucker.
This was better than whores and dope, and it was legal, if not strictly ethical. And it had the advantage of being high tech, something with a future. Honesto already had plans to expand into Tennessee and Georgia. A hundred Dixie-Pros. A thousand. There was no end to it, like Starbucks or McDonalds.
But for now, it was still a dream in its infancy. For now, he still had to deal with the less tasteful trades. And also, he had this headache from his pendejo nephews. Picked up by the police. Their asses shipped back to Chinobampo. To top it off, they lost the girl they were running. Honesto had paid good money for that niña, money she had only begun to earn back for him.
Sure, it was a loss he could absorb over time, but there was a principle here. He could not have a chica he had paid for go running into the hills. The others would hear somehow and go running too. And, until Dixie-Pro was up and running with more locations, he was still in the whore business. He could not afford a diaspora of putas taking off for home, or perhaps other markets.
But he lacked the manpower to hunt the little one down. His men were all busy tending to their own jobs for the plaza. Running girls, running dope. Those that weren’t pimping and pushing were pretending to be plumbers and garage door repairmen.
He sipped coffee and smoked and thought about this problem between calls for service. He stood at the window and watched a couple of his men climb into vans and another into a tow truck and pull out of the lot. Rolling cash machines was what they were. He would have a fleet one day. His thoughts moved to daydreaming about the time when he would have a secretary to take the calls. She would have long blonde hair down to her ass and tits out to here, and sometimes, when it was not so busy—
The door banged open and one of the drivers came in. A Honduran named Matías, or maybe Martín. Mateo?
“What is it? Your van is okay?” Honesto growled. Repairs for his piece-of-shit vehicles were his biggest headache in this venture.
“No, jefe. The van is fine. Primo. I only ask for a favor,” Matías, Martín, or Mateo said. He clutched a piece of white paper in his hand.
Honesto twirled a hand in impatience. He wanted to get back to the secretary who, in his mind, had just dropped to her knees behind his desk.
“My son. His dog has run away. I only ask if I can put a notice up on your board. Maybe one of the drivers see the dog?”
“Yes, yes. Go ahead.”
“Muchas gracias, jefe! Muchas gracias!” The man borrowed a pin from the tray under the assignment board and put up the notice, a photo of a little beagle held in the arms of a junior image of Matías, Martín, or Mateo wearing an idiot grin.
“De nada! Now get out!” The Honduran did so, the door banging shut in his wake.
His mood was ruined. The vision of himself and the blonde—he’d named her Cathy—was not coming back into the clear focus he’d achieved before. He stepped to the board to examine the new notice.
The dog’s name was Bucky. There was a description in bad Spanish and worse English. Along the bottom, the paper was sliced into fringes. On each was a handwritten phone number. Honesto’s fingers played with the fringes, ruffling them.
A smile creased his face.
32
Amalia Maria Guzman had walked a mile from the factory gate, with two more miles to go until she was home. She wondered how much longer she could do this.
It did not matter. It had to be done, and there was no one else but her to do it. Ten hours or more of sewing sneaker tops on the machines at the maquiladora and three hours walking each day. She left in the dark, and returned home in the dark. She walked with a group of other women from the Koo-Ding plant, their number becoming smaller and smaller as they turned into side streets where their homes were located. Closer to the plant, they met women walking the opposite way on the other side of the street. On their way to the overnight shift. All wore the sky-blue work smocks provided by the plant.
Amalia envied those women, who got to work in the cool of the evening, the dark hours passing by unseen outside the windowless factory floor. The nights were so long at home. She had a list of chores before she could sleep. Her mother made meals and kept the kitchen, and that was a godsend, but the children always needed something done. Help with schoolwork. A story to be read. And Carlos often needed her for one thing or another. He was growing weaker over time. The doctors said it was cancer, but Carlos would not tell her what kind. It was better for her not to worry, and after all, what did it matter? They had no money for treatment.
Finally, the last of the women walking her way had left the main road, and Amalia walked alone. The narrow lanes filled with noisy motorbikes and tuk-tuk taxis gave way to an eastbound roadway lined on either side with single-story buildings with metal roofs. Here only the occasional farm truck passed. The scenery was drab. The colorful signs and storefronts of Jalapa were replaced by unfinished structures of concrete block. It was in one of these sprawling apartments that she lived with her husband and children.
A Jeep with its top down caught her in its headlights and slowed to travel alongside her. She hurried her walk. Young men, bare arms black with tattoos, whistled and called to her, but she would not turn her face to them. They apparently decided she was too old and too used for further attention. Engine whining, they tore away, leaving her choking in a plume of dust. She walked on along the edge of the dark roadway, alone with her thoughts once more.
She imagined the day Carlos would be taken from her and felt relief. She would pray then for forgiveness. Such a terrible thing to think. Such a selfish thing to wish for. But her mind would wander from the prayers to thoughts of how she could move back to where her mother and sisters lived up in the mountains. The children would be away from the city, with its noise and temptations and dangers. They could live a cleaner life in the mountains.
It was a fantasy. One brand of poverty traded for another.
The hard-baked lane that led to her home came up on her right. She turned off to walk under the ciebas, their branches creaking in the night wind that stirred at the foot of the surrounding mountains. The sad rows of apartments sat beyond, their exteriors once bright pinks and blues, now faded and peeling, crisscrossed with spray-painted names.
A car sat athwart the road. It was a Norte Americano car,
broad and long and shiny with chrome. The engine purred. Muted sounds came from within. A radio was playing. She turned her eyes away as she made to walk past it. She heard the clunk of a lock, and the door opening to let the sound from within out. A football game, a shrieking announcer, vuvuzelas honking and the surf-like roar of a crowd. A light from inside the car threw her shadow long across the sandy lot, pointing like a compass needle at the two-room apartamento pequeño where her family lived.
A shadow joined hers, then another. She closed her eyes to pray once more.
They spoke outside under the pole lamp, moths making dancing shadows that dappled the ground.
Two young men were in tight white tank tops and baggy army pants. Their bodies were covered in black ink, even up their throats and on their shaved scalps. A third man remained in the back seat of the car. Amalia could not see his face in the shadows, only the glow of his cigar.
“Your daughter has run away,” one of the young men said. A gold cross with a brass bullet attached to it dangled on a chain around his neck. He had a lit hand-rolled cigarette in his mouth. The smoke smelled sickly-sweet.
Amalia could not understand at first. She looked, blinking, from one to the other.
“She has run away from her jefe. She is hiding from him.”
“Where? Where is this?”
“In Alabama.”
The word meant nothing to Amalia. Was this a place?
“Los Estados Unidos. It is a place in the USA.” It was the other young man, a skeletal figure with sad eyes.
“We gave you money for her.” This from the boy wearing the bullet cross.
Panic rose in Amalia. The mention of money, the price paid for her daughter, made her touch her own cross. Her fingers went to the tiny pewter crucifix she wore pinned to her smock.