The Rules of Wolfe, page 17
We lingered over coffee till past noon and then Félix took us for a leisurely drive around Nogales so we could have a look at it. He had his sat phone at hand in case Roberto or Tacho called. We all had Berettas under our belts.
There’s no discounting the difference between the heat here and what we’re used to. On the Texas coast, midsummer’s as humid as dog breath and the sky’s full of bright clouds that can swiftly blacken and tower into thunderheads. You sweat plenty. Here your sweat evaporates as fast as it forms and the air is so drily hot it can make your nose bleed. The sky is huge and cloudless and the pale blue of a gas flame. The sun’s a white smear. There hasn’t been a wisp of cloud all day, but the TV said there was a chance of rain tonight. I thought it was a joke but Félix said it could happen. He said the only thing you can truly predict about a desert summer is that it will be dry and scorching except for rare times when it isn’t, and those exceptions sometimes give notice they’re coming and sometimes don’t.
He drove us all around, showing us this and that, including the fence—made mostly of old sheet metal panels—separating the gringo and the Mexican Nogales. The fence runs for a few miles through the hills east and west of the towns, but doesn’t do much to slow the wetback traffic, as the coyotes simply take their chickens to crossing points beyond the ends of the fence. Félix said there are parts of the border with only a single strand of wire to step over or duck under, and in some places there’s no fence at all, not for miles. Only a sign here and there to denote the boundary line.
A few blocks past the city bullring Félix pointed at a gigantic warehouse on our right that covered almost the entire block, its sign identifying it as Azteca Construcción y Electrónica, SA. He said it was the central warehouse of a construction supplies business, which also happens to traffic in black market goods, mainly explosives, arms, and electronic gear, though it could get you almost anything you might want—an SUV, say, with plates registered to a dead person. Its biggest customer was said to be the Sinas. Félix keeps an open account with Azteca because its inventory is larger and its delivery quicker than those of any supplier in El Paso. His Nogales connection, the Trejo guy, is a managing partner and the one who arranged for last night’s delivery of the Trailblazer and guns. According to Félix, the cops have raided the place only once in the past three years—about five months ago, acting on a tip to an uncrooked cop chief. But a cop on the Sinas payroll alerted the warehouse and the raiders found no scrap of evidence. It didn’t take long for Trejo and his partners to learn that the tipster was a guy who’d once bought some guns from them and later traded the information to the police to get out from under an armed robbery rap. Trejo gave the guy’s name to the Sinas, and the next evening when the tipster’s wife got home from work she found his head in the refrigerator. Minus a tongue. They stashed the rest of the guy in pieces all over the house but were careful not to leave a drop of blood anywhere on the floor, as if they didn’t want to make it easy to find the pieces. The cops found all of him except for the tongue and one foot. A few days later a stink led the missus to look under the washing machine in the utility room and there was the foot. A few days after that as she was making herself breakfast she found the tongue in a jar of jelly.
“I tell you, I gotta hand it to those guys,” Félix said. “They’ve got a real sense of, ah . . . ”
“Theater,” I say.
“Exactly.”
We were in the left lane and slowing for a red light at the intersection past the warehouse when an orange Land Rover gunned across in front of us from the right lane over into the left-turn lane. It would have cleared us by a couple of feet even if we didn’t hit the brakes, but Félix reflexively stomped them, sending me hard against the dashboard and Frank banging against the back of my seat. A sedan behind us screeched its tires too to keep from ramming us.
“Stupid bastard!” Félix yelled.
The Rover was at the head of the turn lane, waiting for the light to change, and we pulled up alongside it. On its door was a logo showing a jagged black mountain range with “Gila Geological Inc.” under it in red lettering and “Tucson, AZ” under that in smaller print. The two guys in it wore dark glasses. The one in the shotgun seat was skinny and had a short thatch on a bullet-shaped head. The driver was a bear-size mestizo with a thin mustache and thick shiny hair combed straight back. He reminded me of somebody, some badass character actor in the movies, but I couldn’t place him. If they were aware they’d nearly caused an accident, they gave no sign of it.
Félix rolled down his window and yelled, “Hey! Hey fuckheads!” He flapped his arm out the window. “Hey!”
The bullethead turned and stared at him.
You stupid cocksuckers! Félix said. Learn to drive!
The bullethead grinned and cupped a hand to his ear. The driver didn’t even glance our way.
Can you can hear this, asshole? Félix said, and gave him the finger.
The bullethead grinned wider and brought his hand up shaped like a pistol and pointed his forefinger and clicked his thumb at each of us in quick succession, then put the tip of the finger near his mouth and blew on it.
Hey, go fuck your mother! Félix yelled.
The bullethead read his lips on that one. He lost his grin and started to open his door, but the big guy snatched him by the arm and I grabbed the back of Félix’s shirt to hold him back too—and then the turn light turned green and the Rover gunned away in a tight left.
Félix stuck his head out the window and yelled, Fuck your mother in the ass, dickhead!
“Take it easy, old cuz,” Frank said. “You scared them off already.”
“Who’s that shithead think he is?” Félix said. “And where’d that other one learn to drive? El Paso?”
Our light turned green and we got rolling, but Félix kept on muttering about “dickheads” and “shiteaters” and “ratfuckers” until Frank and I busted out laughing. He demanded to know what was so fucking funny, which only made us laugh harder. He stared ahead for the duration of another block before he started laughing too. Then a minute later he said, “I don’t know about you guys, but I’m ready to go get laid.”
We had a fine time at the Casa de Gallos, where the girls were fairly good-looking, if not quite the sublime beauties Félix had described, then ate supper at a steakhouse, then repaired to the Cuervo Loco Cantina for a few beers and some eight-ball, where Félix proved to be a shark and took us for twenty bucks apiece. When we got back to the hotel, the sun was down and a hot breeze was swaying the trees and sailing trash paper down the streets.
p
Now, at the end of this long Sunday, we’re bellied up to the hotel bar, having a nightcap. The bartender says the evening forecast is a seventy percent chance of rain, though it likely won’t be more than a shower. Roberto and Tacho each phoned Félix during the afternoon and once again just a few minutes ago, and they gave him identical reports both times. Sasabe and Sonoyta was crawling with Sinas but there was no sign or word of Eddie.
“Like I told you,” Félix says, “they probably took him down already.”
We call it a night and I go up to my room and hit the shower. When I come out my prepaid is tweedling on the dresser top.
It’s Frank. “Check your phone mail and then get over here.”
There’s a message from Aunt Cat, saying Eddie called her and left his own message for us. She recites it in a carefully measured tone, then adds, “I presume this information is something that can help you to find him. Do it.”
There’s a pause, as if she’s about to say something more . . . but she doesn’t.
When I get to Frank’s room he’s just getting off the phone with Aunt Laurel. She was irked at being awakened at this hour—it’s close to midnight in Brownsville—but when he said he had an urgent need for whatever information she could give him about a device called a Buddha, her tone changed and she asked why he wanted to know about that. He told her it had to do with a project we were working on and that was all he could say for now. She explained what the thing is and how it works. She said any pair of receivers would do, and that it was a good thing he knew the kind of phone the Buddha was in, but she had to go out to Delta to look up the tuning code for it. Frank gave her his cell number and she said she’d call him from the shop.
While Frank checks the local directory for a nearby electronics store and gives it a call, I phone Félix and tell him something’s come up and for him to get over here.
The first place Frank tries has the receivers we need and is open till midnight. Then Félix shows up and I repeat La Gata’s message for him.
“He made it to the border? And he’s gonna cross tonight?” Félix says. It peeves him that Eddie didn’t tell Aunt Catalina where he was calling from. “It’d be pretty fucking helpful to know that. Is this kid slow in the head or what?”
“I told you he isn’t,” Frank says in a tone that makes it clear he’s had enough of Felix bad-mouthing Eddie. It’s one thing for us to do it, something else for him to. Félix holds Frank’s stare long enough to convey he isn’t intimidated, and they both let it drop.
But I can see Frank’s as irked as I am by Eddie’s remark that we can do whatever we want with the information. Not too subtle in letting us know he’s not asking for our help, even though he obviously wants it and damn well needs it. Stupid kid. There oughta be a rule against underage pride, at least until you learn how to keep it in check with regard to your own family. Then again, I have to admit our family’s not always a model of tribal harmony.
While we wait for Aunt Laurel’s call it occurs to me it would be useful to have a topographical map of the area. Félix says he can take care of that and seems glad of the chance to be of help. He makes a call and fifteen minutes later a guy shows up at the door with an excellent topo.
25
Eddie and Miranda
With its load of crossers the Suburban heads out on the main highway under a clear moonless sky of gathering stars. The traffic sparse. Envisioning the road map he has consulted many times in the past two days, Eddie recalls that the highway through Caborca runs northwestward all the way to Sonoyta. They are going the other way. Toward a small town called Altar twenty to twenty-five miles east of town, where a dirt road branches north to Sasabe.
They pass a road sign reading “Altar 5 km” and pull over at an isolate wayside café. There are only two vehicles parked in front, and Beto directs the driver, whom he calls Cisco, around to the rear of the building. Waiting there is a dark Ford Excursion. They stop alongside it, and by the light over the café’s back door they can see that it is packed with people. A man gets out of it and Beto gets out too and they walk off behind the vehicles to talk.
Who are they? somebody asks in low voice.
More of you, Cisco says.
Eddie sees the other man give Beto something that he puts in his pocket—money, no doubt. The man then taps a number into a cell phone, says something into it, and passes the phone to Beto. Beto speaks, listens for a while, then says something more and returns the phone. The two men return to their vehicles and Beto gets in and says, Let’s go.
They pull out onto the highway, the Excursion following.
How many more? Cisco says.
Nine, Beto says.
What’s the report on—
“Lingo, man,” Beto says, jerking his head rearward. “Little chickens got big ears.”
“What’s the scout word on the gate?” Cisco says.
Eddie smiles at their switch to English. He knows “gate” means a crossing point, but the guides obviously want to keep the chickens from knowing what they’re talking about. It’s why Canales tested his knowledge of the language—probably tested all of them. Beto and Cisco’s facility with the language and their Texas accents make him wonder if they might be American-born.
“The Border Patrol got extra guys all over the number one gate tonight,” Beto says. “Our scout can run decoys in there but he don’t reckon they’ll draw off enough of the Greenies to help us get by, not with all that backup they got.”
“What about farther out? Number two gate?”
“Same thing. We gotta go to three.”
“Oh man, that’s in mule road country,” Cisco says. “The big dicks been going at each other over who owns it.”
“It’s nobody’s yet,” Beto says. “We’ll be okay.”
Cisco mutters something more but doesn’t argue.
Beto turns around to face the migrants and says, Listen, my friends. They say it might rain tonight. Let’s hope so. The Border Patrol hates working in the rain, even in a little drizzle. Bunch of pussies.
Nervous laughter from the chickens.
p
At Altar they cut north on the dirt road, but only a few miles later they turn off onto a narrower road, hardly more than a trail, that takes them west a short way before curving back northward. It’s slower going here than on the Sasabe road, but Eddie figures they assume there’s less chance of running into any of the big gangs’ smugglers. They’re anyway probably headed for a crossing somewhere west of Sasabe.
Now the night is entirely black but for the forward reach of the headlights and the lustrous mass of stars. Even in the flatlands of south Texas Eddie has never before seen such starlight. But on this moonless night the sky will get no brighter. Behind them the Excursion has switched off its lights and is almost invisible in the darkness and the Suburban’s trailing dust. Most smuggler vehicles along the lower Rio have a cutoff switch for brake lights and taillights, and Eddie would bet these do too.
The darkness inhibits conversation. The main sounds in the Suburban are of its rumbling wheels and the assorted creaks of its chassis. In the side glow of the headlights, passing saguaros look otherworldly. Occasionally there appear distant headlights off to their right, bearing south on the Sasabe road, and then they’re gone. At times they see the feeble lights of a village. A breeze has kicked up and tumbleweeds skitter across the road. Eddie can hardly make out Miranda’s form in front of him. He strokes her ankle and she puts her foot to his crotch and presses lightly. He cannot see her face but knows she’s grinning. Some girl.
p
They’ve been driving more than an hour when Beto says, There it is. All Eddie sees that Beto could be referring to is the derelict remains of an overturned minivan on the roadside ahead. As they come abreast of it Cisco turns left into scrub brush that slaps and scratches against the Suburban as it pitches and yaws like a boat on a restless sea. They proceed like this for a time before the ground smoothes out and they’re on one of the multitude of backcountry trails in this region.
Beto turns and says, Only a few minutes more, my friends, and you will be crossing into the promised land.
Much excited whispering.
Then for a startling instant the Suburban is flooded with light as the Excursion flicks its headlamps on and off.
What’s he want? Cisco says, glancing at the rearview.
All they can see is the dark shape of the Excursion close behind them. And then the road bends and they can see the distant headlights behind the Excursion and advancing on it.
Oh fuck, Cisco says.
“No cop lights,” Beto says, reverting to English. “Not yet anyway.”
The chickens in alarmed chatter. What is it? What’s happening?
Be quiet, all of you, Beto says.
“Better cops than big dicks,” Cisco says. “We run for it or what?”
“Can’t outrun that thing. Look how it’s coming. Hold your speed. Maybe they’re not after us. Maybe they’ll pass us.”
“Yeah, right,” Cisco says. “Maybe they’ll give us a friendly little beep as they go by.” He nods to their right. “There’s the gate.”
“Keep going. Nice and steady.”
The headlights come at furious speed, growing harshly brighter. They vanish when the Suburban goes over a rising curve, but then the headlights clear the rise too and come faster yet. They are closing so swiftly that Eddie is sure they’re going to ram the rear of the Excursion. Then the lights swing out from behind it and a dark SUV goes roaring by in a swirl of dust and cuts in front of the Suburban, its brake lights flashing intermittently as the driver taps the brakes. And all three vehicles slow to a stop.
The breeze clears the dust, and a Lincoln Navigator stands ten yards forward of them in the Suburban’s lights, its rear window impenetrable, its own headlight beams bright on the trail before it. Now a rear door opens and a man steps out with a pistol in his hand and motions for the Suburban driver to roll down his window.
Cisco does it, and the man orders him to turn off the motor and switch to his parking lights, and Cisco does that too.
The Navigator is now but a dark form against the forward cast of its own headlights. All its doors open and more men materialize.
“Oh man, are we fucked,” Cisco says.
“Maybe not,” Beto says. “Maybe they’ll settle for taking the bunch.”
Eddie hopes their assumption is correct, that the interlopers are wetback smugglers pissed off at independents for cutting in on their trade. Better that than Sinas. He has the Taurus in his hand and hears the zipper of Miranda’s tote as she goes for the Glock. He puts a foot against her leg and she places a hand on it and squeezes.
The men spread out but stay forward of the Suburban, giving themselves an angle of fire at the vehicles from both sides without risk of hitting one another. Eddie counts six of them, for sure, maybe two more, hard to tell. A flashlight abruptly shines on the Excursion and then two others play over the Suburban.
