Angel Baby: A Novel (5 page)

A
CRUISE SHIP IS DOCKED IN
E
NSENADA
THIS MORNING
, so the streets of the grimy port city are filled with tourists. The shopping district has sprung to sudden, noisy life, with mariachis playing, taxis honking, and smiling touts standing in front of every restaurant and souvenir store, running through their pitches in an effort to pull customers from the crowd.

“Real Cuban cigars, my friend.”

“Lunch special, two-for-one margaritas.”

“Mr. Whisker, Mr. Whisker, come look at my junk. Buy your girlfriend something.”

Rolando watches the hustles from the second floor of Fuego, the disco he owns here. He’s cleared enough space in a storeroom for a desk, a couch, and some chairs, hung a few posters of bikini-clad Tecate girls on the walls, and calls it his office. Music is playing downstairs, and the bass tickles the soles of his feet. Carlos opens the club during the day when a boat is in and has a couple of girls dance on the poles. Guys wander in looking for cheap tequila shots and end up springing for a quick blow job, and Carlos moves a bit of coke and weed, too, letting the purchasers get high in the bathroom.

Rolando tried grinding tourists in Tijuana when he was a kid, got paid a few pesos for steering shoppers to a cousin’s leather store on Revolución. He never learned enough English to make people trust him, though, and couldn’t bear looking stupid in the eyes of the foreigners. The first man he ever stabbed was a marine who made fun of his accent. “Jew guys wan’ belt? Jew guys wan’ boots?” the jarhead said, mocking him, and Rolando flipped open his knife and stuck it in the boy’s thigh. The police caught up to him later and beat him black and blue but didn’t arrest him. The
pendejo
was only a tourist, after all, and who hadn’t wanted to let the air out of a tourist at one time or another?

Rolando turns away from the window to face the two cops sitting in his office now. Look how far he’s come. The men are here to pick up their monthly payoffs and want to know if there’s anything they can do to earn extra money. One is young and thin, the other fat and older. The fat one does the talking.

“Maybe you need some bodyguards?” he says. “Maybe you need our guns?”

Rolando gestures at Ozzy stationed by the door and Esteban lounging on the couch.

“I’ve got all the guards and guns I need for today,” he says. “But tomorrow, who knows? I’ll remember your offer when the devil comes to call.”

The cops chuckle and shake their heads.

“Seriously,” Rolando continues. He lowers himself into the chair behind his desk. “I’ve committed sins even he can’t abide.”

The men’s smiles disappear, and the young one dabs sweat off his forehead with the sleeve of his uniform. The police are always scared when they come to see El Príncipe. They know he’s connected to the cartel. They know about the beheadings, the dismemberments, the barrels of acid. They’ve mopped up the blood and hauled the mutilated corpses to the morgue. But still they sit across from him, desperation outweighing fear, and offer to violate their oaths and piss on their honor in exchange for an envelope stuffed with cash. Rolando understands that a man who’d do this can never be trusted, but he may be useful.

He reaches into his briefcase for their pay, tosses it onto the desk, and smiles inwardly as they reach for the packets.

“Keep your eyes open,” he says, “except when I tell you to close them.”

The men chuckle again, already standing, eager to be on their way. Ozzy opens the door for them and locks it when they go out, then makes a face and spits on the floor. He can’t stand a crooked cop either.

Rolando gets up and walks to the window again, looks down on the milling cruise ship passengers. Indian kids circulate among them with trays of string bracelets and chewing gum, dirty hands upraised, begging for pennies. The passengers ignore the children and wonder why the city doesn’t keep them out of the tourist areas.

Fucking Americans.

Esteban’s phone beeps. “Flaco’s here,” he says.

A few seconds later there’s a knock at the door. Ozzy steps out into the hall to pat Flaco down, then escorts him in.

“Hola, Tío,”
Flaco says to Rolando. They shake hands. Flaco is tall and skinny with bulging eyes and big ears that stick straight out from his head, a country boy from top to bottom, with his boots and hat, his jeans and silk western shirt, a cockfight embroidered on the back. He’s up from Michoacán, Apatzingán, where his family grows poppies and processes the resin from the plants into black tar heroin. With the permission of the Tijuana cartel, Rolando buys heroin from Flaco, smuggles it into the U.S., and distributes it all over California and Arizona. It’s a good business. Even after paying taxes to the cartel, Rolando makes much more money than he can spend.

“How’s your father?” he asks Flaco.

“Still busting everyone’s balls,” Flaco says.

“That’s good, huh?”

“The Lord has really blessed him.”

These farmers are religious, won’t drink or fuck a whore. All they care about is money. They’re Rolando’s mother’s people. She grew up down there, and Flaco is Rolando’s cousin or something, someone he can rely on.

They discuss the next shipment, one hundred pounds arriving on Saturday. The deal could easily have been set up by phone, so Rolando suspects there’s something else behind this visit. Sure enough, after a bit of hemming and hawing, Flaco finally gets around to the real reason he made the trip north.

“I want to buy some new trucks,” he says. “Three F-450s, one red, one black, one gold.” He blushes, embarrassed by the extravagance of his request. Rolando wishes everyone he dealt with was as humble as this boy.

“Three?” he says, playing with the kid.

“Do you know somebody who can get them?” Flaco says.

Rolando assures him that the purchase can be arranged, give him a couple of days. All it’ll take is a call to San Diego. He might even have them bring up an extra one for himself. He asks the boy about his mother. She had an operation recently, some kind of cancer. His phone rings as Flaco begins to respond, and Rolando raises his hand for silence when he sees that it’s Jorge, one of his street guys.

“Boss,” Jorge says. “Something fucked’s happened.”

He stopped by the house to collect some money El Toro owed him but got worried when the big man didn’t come out to open the gate. Climbing the wall surrounding the property, he saw that the front door of the house was wide open and decided to investigate. Inside, he found El Toro and Maria shot dead and Luz missing.

“I’m in the yard now,” he says. “What should I do?”

“Do you have a gun?” Rolando asks him.

“Simón.”
Of course.

“Stand guard until I return. Don’t let anybody in.”

Rolando punches out and hits the button for Luz. Her phone rings and rings until voice mail picks up. “What the fuck is going on?” he says. “Get in touch with me as soon as you can.”

Everyone’s staring at him, wondering what’s happened, but all he can think about is Luz. The men responsible for this will hurt her, he knows. Women, children—nobody’s off-limits anymore. He covers his mouth with his hand, keeps himself under control, but a scream still echoes in his head:
Where are you, baby? Where are you?

He spends the drive back to Tijuana trying to figure out who killed his people and kidnapped his wife. Carlos Avila was squeezed out when the cartel gave Rolando his territory, and word is that he’s still holding a grudge five years later. There’s also a rumor that the cartel intends to do away with independents like Rolando and take over the heroin business in addition to cocaine. This might be their first move.

Then again, it could have been someone he brushed against on his way up, someone whose brother he killed, whose sister he fucked, whose son OD’d on his dope. A powerful man has enemies, a successful man breaks hearts, and the losers will always try to destroy the winners and drag them back down into the mud.

Whoever it was, he’s dead. He’s dead, his family’s dead, his friends. Even the memory of him will be erased.

The road hugs the coast, passing luxury condo developments filled with American retirees and tumbledown fishing villages where dogs fight over garbage in the streets. Behind it all is the Pacific, the first flash of sunset imparting a pink tinge to the surf that batters the rocky shore.

Rolando learned to swim there, learned to catch and ride a wave. He remembers being out in the water at this exact time of day some long-ago summer, how the sea cooled his sunburned skin, how the spray solidified the light, how humbling it was when the sea took control, lifting him, cradling him, then hurtling him toward shore. He had friends who never needed anything more than this, and he used to tell them it was because the salt water had softened their brains. But they were the smart ones, he sees that now, Paulito and Juan and El Gato; Chino, Zap, and Sid Vicious.

Dusk is settling over Tijuana by the time they get back. The dusty air gilds every tire shop and shack cantina with a golden aura, and evening’s shadows soften the daytime glare. The city’s roar has quieted, and worried wives let out sighs of relief when their husbands return home safe from work.

The twilight calm does nothing to ease Rolando’s mind, however. The house is dark when they pull up in front, and as the gate slides open, he wonders whether he might be walking into an ambush. He climbs out of the Escalade with his Beretta in hand, ready for anything.

“Here I am, boss,” Jorge says, stepping out of the dark, hands over his head.

“You’re alone?”

“Only me.”

“You didn’t see Luz?”

“I didn’t see nobody.”

Rolando turns to Esteban and Ozzy. “Keep watch out here,” he says, and motions for Jorge to accompany him into the house.

The two men walk up the steps leading to the front door. Rolando starts to push the door open.

“Get ready,” Jorge says. “They’re right here in the hall.”

Rolando turns on the light in the foyer. A huge crystal chandelier throws a lacy pattern over the walls and floor. The bodies lie in a heap in front of the office. Rolando moves toward them and switches on another light. Blood everywhere, and the smell of it too. Flies buzz around the corpses, skittering across their dull, dead eyes and darting in and out of their noses and mouths and the new holes the bullets made.

“Luz!” Rolando shouts. His thought is that she might be hiding somewhere, too frightened to show herself. “Luz!”

One of the parrots in the living room screeches. Rolando calls Luz’s phone again, hears it ringing upstairs. Taking the steps two at a time, he races to their bedroom, bursts in, and finds the phone on the nightstand.

Room by room he searches the rest of the house, checking inside every closet and under every bed. Don’t be frantic, he tells himself, be thorough. There’s no sign of her, but also no signs of more violence.

“Send in Esteban,” he tells Jorge.

He kneels next to the corpses. The shock has passed, and now his anger is building. Two people he trusted, who trusted him, gunned down like dogs.

Esteban comes through the front door and walks over to stand beside him.

“Jesus Christ,” he mutters when he sees Maria and El Toro.

“Get rid of the bodies and clean up the mess,” Rolando says.

He enters his office. It’ll be an easy matter to find out what went on here today. There are cameras all over the house, inside and out. They record everything that happens and feed it into his computer. A better setup than the president’s, the salesman said.

He sits at his desk and turns on his laptop. He left the house at 9:45, so he starts there, cycling through various cameras. The footage jumps forward one minute with each tap of his finger. At 10:06 Luz goes to the bedroom and lies down. The rest of the house is quiet, just Maria puttering about. At 10:15 Maria walks upstairs to fetch the laundry, then, with the next tap of his finger, she’s gone. Luz gets out of bed. She dresses quickly, puts a few things into a backpack, and Rolando tracks her as she walks downstairs.

The muscles in his back tighten when she approaches his office. He switches cameras and watches her open the safe. She removes the money and the gun he kept in it and puts them in the pack. Then she turns and looks right into the lens, right at him. She knows about the cameras, knows he’ll be watching her, but doesn’t care. In fact, something like triumph shines in her eyes.

Two cameras, one in the office and one in the hall, capture what happens when she turns to go. He watches the footage again and again, hoping each time to see someone else do the killing, but it’s always and from every angle Luz who pulls the .45 from the backpack and, in a series of blinding flashes, guns down Maria and El Toro, then runs out the front door and through the gate.

He didn’t have to marry her after he took her from El Samurai. The old man treated her like a whore, and he could have, too, could have used her up and thrown her out with the trash. But little things about her got to him. The sadness that made her every smile a gift, the tender heart revealed when she dropped her guard, how she’d reach for him sometimes, so desperately, as if she really needed him. He fell for all of it, even though in the next instant the bitch would slice him open with a hooded glance or hateful word. That was her real power, that she could hurt him. She knew all his fears, all his weaknesses, and how to use them against him. And that’s why he married her, he sees it now, the real reason: to keep his greatest enemy close.

He makes his decision quickly, has been formulating it ever since her betrayal began to play itself out on the computer screen. The money and the gun mean nothing to him, but he does want her. When she ran last year, he put it down to the drugs. This, however, is something different, something she planned. She killed Maria and El Toro, stole his money, and made him look like a fool. As much as he loved her yesterday, he hates her now, and this won’t end until she begs him to die. He’ll catch her and bring her back, start on her with his fists and move on to the knife.