The Rules of Wolfe, page 16
Tell them but don’t ask.
The thought comes to him like a whisper and he smiles at his mental image of a lightbulb shining above his head.
If you don’t ask for help, he thinks, they can’t turn you down. Give them the information and nothing more. Don’t even give it to them directly. Relay it to them. They’ll know what to do with it if they want to. And if they choose to do nothing, so what? They can’t say they refused you. None of them can. Because you’re not asking for a damn thing. They’re anyway a backup at best. Odds are you won’t need them. Won’t even have cause to turn the thing on.
What’s wrong? she says. He takes the three phones from the tote and hands her the bag and puts the Sinas phone and one of the prepaids in his pack. She slings the bag onto her shoulder, ready to go. It holds a few clothes, the first-aid supplies, packs of cigarettes, and the Glock. The switchblade’s in her pocket with her Mexican cash.
For a moment he can’t remember the number he wants to call, a number he has called many times before but not in the past six months. Then it comes to him and he quickly presses the buttons.
She watches him intently.
He’s ready to hear surprise at the sound of his voice, is set to deflect questions and say he must keep the call very short and then quickly give her the information. But the phone is answered by a default recording that informs him no one is available to take his call and to please leave a message, and he smiles at his good luck.
“Hey, Little Momma, it’s Edward.” He’s the only one who calls Catalina by that name or would ever dare to, and she has never objected. Continuing in English, he tells her he’s sorry he hasn’t time to explain but he has to hurry. He will be crossing the border into Arizona sometime tonight. He asks her to tell Rudy and Frank that he has a Buddha and tells her the make of cell phone he has. He says that if Rudy and Frank don’t know what a Buddha is, to ask Aunt Laurel. “Tell them I said they can do whatever they want to with the information. Be sure to tell them that, Little Momma.” He pauses, then ends the call with, “I hope you’re well.”
Who was that? Miranda says. Did you call somebody to help us?
Help? You think we need help? I’d say we’re doing pretty good on our own. A few minutes ago we were close enough to spit on the bastards and they didn’t spot us.
Did you ask for help?
Sort of. But don’t count on getting it.
Why not? Who was it?
Somebody on the other gulf.
She shakes her head. Nobody that far away can help.
I don’t think so, either. But like I said, we’re doing okay on our own.
He opens the door and drops the used phone next to the curb, then starts up the truck and backs up, crushing the phone under the tire. He shuts off the motor and leaves the key in the ignition. They get out and he puts on his backpack and touches the pistol under his shirt. And they head up the street.
22
Eddie and Miranda
Twilight. Streetlights coming on. Bats swooping over a weedy vacant lot. The air smells of dust and fried peppers.
The hotel stands midway down the street. A small whitewashed structure of two stories fronted by a scrubby yard and a lighted sign that reads “El Pájaro.” It is flanked by a small grocery on one side and on the other by a cantina from whose open door issues radio music. The jumpy polka strains of a conjunto band.
Cool and alert, Edward, cool and alert, Eddie tells himself as he leads Miranda up the walkway toward the front porch, where three men are sitting in the weak glow of an amber bulb above the door. He pauses at the bottom step and sees now that they are two men and a boy, one of the men tall and mustached and wearing a light white coat despite the heat, the other clean-shaved and crew-cut, in worn denim pants and work shirt. The boy is about fourteen, also in work clothes. Eddie introduces himself and Miranda as Pedro and Rima Mendoza and says they are from Santa Rosalba, a village a little west of Hermosillo. He says Ernesto has sent them to see Mister Canales, who can arrange for them to cross into the north tonight.
The tall one rises from his chair and comes to the top of the steps. “Yo soy Canales,” he says. You have been told the cost of the service?
Eddie says he has, but he can pay only in American money and hopes that’s acceptable.
Canales smiles. How did you come by so much in American money?
From our brother, Eddie says. He has been in the north for two years and has sent us money almost every month. We can’t wait to join him.
Of course, Canales says. Family is of first importance. And where is this brother?
Las Vegas. He says we can get work there.
Ah, Las Vegas, Canales says, and grins and pretends to shake dice in his fist and roll them. A very exciting place, I am told. Tell me, young man, do you speak English?
No sir, but my brother does. We will learn from him.
Never let them know how much you know. Basic rule.
Without the least alteration in his tone or affable aspect, Canales says, “I would dearly love to fuck your sister in the ass and then make her suck my cock.”
But Eddie is on high alert and isn’t caught off guard by this old trick for testing someone’s knowledge of a language by insulting him under the mask of a smile. Charlie Fortune had taught him about the tactic. He affects a puzzled look. “Cómo, señor?”
Forgive me, Canales says. I was showing off my own English. I simply said that with such determination, you will go far. He gestures at the other man. Give the money to Beto.
Eddie takes the thirteen hundred dollars from his pocket and hands it to the Beto guy, who gets up and goes into the lighted foyer and closes the door behind him. Eddie assumes he’s counting it. Maybe checking somehow to make sure it’s not counterfeit. Oh man, he thinks, what if it is?
I see you are traveling light, Canales says. Very smart. But be sure you have food and water to last you until tomorrow. You can buy what you need at the little store over there.
Beto comes back out and says, “Todo bien,” and gives the money to Canales.
p
Eddie and Miranda go to the store and buy bottles of water, small packs of raisins, and beef jerky. When they get back to the apartment house only Beto is still on the porch. He ushers them inside and down the dim first-floor hallway to a rear apartment and into a small living room where eight other migrants are already waiting, seated on various pieces of dingy furniture, clutching their backpacks, totes, plastic bags. The boy is there too, but not Canales, whom they will not see again. Beto sits down next to a window overlooking the driveway.
Though its windows are open, the room is hot and smells of body odors. All but one of the migrants are men and most of them return Eddie’s nod of greeting. He recognizes the four he saw Ernesto solicit at the bus station. The men all stare at Miranda but are too shy to meet her eyes, except for the guy in the Panama hat, and she looks away from him. The other member of the group is a woman traveling with one of the men.
While they wait for their transport they listen to the cantina music coming through the windows. Miranda lights a cigarette and uses a cardboard coffee cup as an ashtray. No one else lights up but nobody seems to mind her smoking. The migrants chat quietly and Eddie soon comes to know that the couple are married and named Martínez. They are bound for Phoenix, where the woman’s brother has been working at a plant nursery for almost a year. A man named Sando and his teenage nephew are from a village in Nayarit and going to a big farm near Albuquerque to work alongside the brother of the man and father of the boy. Three of the men Eddie saw recruited by Ernesto are relatives named Fonseca, two lean brothers and a short fat cousin, who are headed to Denver for jobs in a packinghouse. One of the brothers inquires politely about Eddie’s plans, and they are all impressed to learn that Pedro and Rima Mendoza are going to Las Vegas, that glittering symbol of American fortune, to work with a brother at a grand hotel, Rima in the kitchen, Pedro with the grounds crew.
The man in the Panama looks bored by the talk. He is of compact build and has a constant squint. When the elder Sando asks him his name, he says Benito Juárez. Sando misses the sarcasm and says, Truly? Like the great hero? The man laughs without humor, and Sando looks in confusion at the Fonsecas, who look away. The Panama guy tugs his hat brim lower and leans back against the wall with his arms and ankles crossed. Eddie pegs him for some smalltimer on the run.
p
The windows are dark when the group hears a vehicle come up the driveway. Beto says, “Síguenme,” and they quickly take up their things and trail from the room after him.
They exit the building by its back door, next to the end of the driveway, where an idling Chevy Suburban equipped with oversize rough-country tires and three bench seats awaits them. The driver is wearing a reversed baseball cap and smoking a cigarette.
Eddie holds Miranda back as Beto herds the others into the second and third rows of seats. The Panama guy gets in ahead of Martínez and his wife, and Eddie smiles when Martínez catches on to the man’s ploy and draws her back and gets in ahead of her, putting himself between her and the Panama. As Eddie had anticipated, the others and their baggage fill up the second and third seats, and Beto takes him and Miranda around to the double rear doors and they get in and sit facing each other on the floor behind the third seat, the backpack and tote between them. It’s where Eddie prefers to be. At the rear exit. Just in case.
Beto slams the back doors shut and then goes around and gets in the shotgun seat, the boy seated between him and the driver, and says, “Vámonos.”
23
Catalina
For years now, it has been the maids’ practice for one or the other of them to stand outside the bathroom door whenever Doña Catalina takes a bath and listen carefully for any sound of distress, to be ready to rush in and give assistance should she need it. Though they believe this ritual to be a secret from her, Catalina has in fact been aware of it since its inception, her hearing and intuitive perception of someone’s near presence still more acute than the maids can imagine. Yet she has never let them know of her awareness. Because if some accident should befall her—a knock on the head from a fall or a faint, an inadvertent slip in the shower or submergence in the tub, any of the not uncommon bathroom mishaps the aged are subject to—far better the ignominy of being rescued by her maids than to die because she was too proud to let them keep furtive vigilance over her. The simple fact of the matter is that she has no desire for life to end, never mind that she has had a greater share of it than the measureless majority of those who have ever lived. She recently read a persuasive argument that pride, long established as the deadliest of the seven great sins, has been supplanted by greed. She had to admit it was so in her case, though at times she’s no longer sure there is very much distinction between the two. She has often heard it said that the worst thing in life is to grow old and have to depend on others. Long ago she would have agreed. Now she knows how much worse it must be to grow old and have no one to depend on.
Once she’s out of the tub she begins singing softly, as is her habit, so that whichever maid has an ear to the door will know she has survived one more bath without bad luck. She emerges in her robe to a deserted hallway and goes to the kitchen, where both maids sit at the little table, having coffee and cinnamon rolls. A kettle of water for her evening tea is simmering atop the stove. A saucer holds a small pot of honey and a slice of lemon, and in her favorite mug is a ready tea ball, its little chain dangling over the rim. Rosario gets up and pours hot water into the mug, and while the tea steeps they all bemoan this summer’s heat, which seems to them to be worse than usual. The older maid, Lidia, says she has prayed to the Holy Mother to please let it rain tonight, though the weather report says there is only a small chance of it.
Catalina takes the tea into her bedroom and sets it next to her phone on the table beside her reading chair. And sees the red gleam of the little phone’s message light.
24
Rudy and Frank
It’s been a long Sunday.
Félix García and two of his guys, Tacho and Roberto, had been waiting for us last night when the Beechcraft set down at a private field a few miles north of El Paso. He greeted us as Rudolf and Francis, the way Aunt Cat calls us. We got into a black Grand Cherokee with Félix at the wheel, and with the other two following us in a gray Ram pickup we drove up I-10 to Las Cruces and stopped for supper at a Mex place Félix is partial to.
Félix is our cousin and our elder by twenty years, an underboss of an organization that controls most of the wetback traffic between El Paso and Ojinaga. We’d met him only once before, about three years ago, when he made a rare trip to Brownsville for a special meeting with Charlie Fortune and some other people and a brief visit with Aunt Cat. His grandmother, Angelica Wolfe Garcia, was Aunt Cat’s sister-in-law and Frank and my great-grandaunt. Ever since she married into the García clan and went to live in El Paso, the Garcías and Wolfes have often been of help to each other professionally.
Aunt Cat had informed Félix about Eddie’s situation. Over a supper of roast kid and rice and bottles of Bohemia, he said Eddie had to be pretty stupid to get crosswise with the Sinas.
“He’s not stupid,” Frank said. “Rash at times. He’s a kid.”
“Whatever,” Félix said. “You know how big the Sinas are?”
“We read a newspaper now and then,” I said.
Félix didn’t think the kid had a chance in hell of making it to the border. Even if by some “wild-ass miracle” he did, the odds were one in a million he’d get any farther, since the Sinas have people all along the line between Nogales and California. And even if by some even greater miracle he did make it over the line, he’d still have to cross the worst part of the Sonoran Desert—la tierra del diablo, the locals call it. The sad fact, Felix said, was that the Sinas had probably already nailed him and there was no way we’d ever know for sure.
I’d been thinking the same thing and it saddened me in a mode I wasn’t used to. I could tell the thought had crossed Frank’s mind too.
“No disrespect to Doña Catalina,” Félix said, “but she’s got you on a fool’s mission. Me too. Anybody but her asked me to do this, I’da laughed in their face.”
He told us he’s familiar with Nogales and knows a place there called Casa de Gallos, which bills itself in English as a “gentlemen’s club” but is in fact a very fine whorehouse with beautiful girls. And just down the street from it is an excellent cantina with pool tables. He proposed we check into a hotel in that neighborhood and spend the next couple of days sporting with the girls, shooting a little pool, putting down a few beers. Then we call Catalina and say we’re very sorry but we found no sign of Eddie. “She’s happy we tried and we all go home,” he said.
He caught the look that passed between me and Frank. “I know,” he said. “You want to keep your word to the old girl. Me too.” Which was why, he said, he’d brought Tacho and Roberto. He told us they’re of Yaqui descent and know the Sonora border very well, they can speak three languages and can go without sleep for days at a time. He would send one of them to Sasabe and the other to Sonoyta. They’d keep their eyes and ears open and if they got any wind of Eddie they’d give us a call on a satellite and we’d haul ass out there.
“How’s that for a plan?” Félix said. “You won’t be lying when you tell her you tried.”
Frank looked at Tacho and Roberto, assaying them in some private way. They hadn’t said a word throughout the meal. Then he looked at me.
“Okay with me if it’s okay with you,” I said.
p
We didn’t get to Nogales until after midnight, Frank and I managing to get a little sleep on the drive. The town dwarfs the American one of the same name directly across the border, so that only when you speak of the American Nogales do you have to specify which one you mean. We checked into a hotel, and while Félix went off to make a landline call from a phone at the rear of the lobby we had a drink with Tacho and Roberto at the bar. We’d left our weapons with a pal of Félix’s on the U.S. side because the Mexican authorities can be very harsh indeed with somebody who tries to slip a gun into the country. Such stringent gun-control laws are pretty funny when you consider the kind of firepower steadily shipping in to the cartels, some of it from us Wolfes, I admit. But Félix had a connection in Nogales, a guy named Trejo, who could fix us up. When he got back from making the call he said that sometime before dawn a dark green Trailblazer would be parked next to the Cherokee in the far corner of the hotel lot and the keys to it left for us at the front desk. In the Trailblazer would be a large tool chest containing five Beretta nines and a pair of M-4 carbines, plus extra loaded magazines for each weapon. While it was unlikely we would need the guns, it was better to have them and not need them than need them and not have them. Longtime rule.
p
Frank and I slept late and then joined Félix in the hotel patio for brunch. He told us Roberto and Tacho had departed before sunrise, one in the Trailblazer, the other in the Ram. They’d slipped a note under his door and left the keys to the Cherokee at the desk. The note said, Todo exacto. Félix had gone out to the Cherokee and found the tool chest with the weapons in it, minus two pistols that Roberto and Tacho took, but with the nice surprise of scopes on the M-4s. Trejo would charge a bit extra for that amenity but had been wise to include it. In such open country the lack of a scope could be a serious deficiency. Tacho and Roberto knew what Eddie looked like because Félix had given them a copy of a picture of him taken at Aunt Cat’s birthday party six months ago. He’d received the picture yesterday afternoon in El Paso via e-mail from Jessica, sent at Catalina’s instruction. I wouldn’t think Aunt Cat had explained to Jessie why she sent it or that Jessie asked.
