Darkness & Shadows (31 page)

She wasn’t lying: the place was in fact a dive, but with a name like Flirty’s, he hadn’t exactly expected anything classy. Dark and stinky was about all they were serving. At one end of the bar, a guy cried into his glass of Whatever. At the other end sat Tristan.

Patrick bellied up next to her.

“Don’t get too comfortable.” She didn’t look at him. “We’re on the move.” She glanced at the bartender, a thin, raw-boned woman in her fifties who looked as though she’d been around the block a few times—actually, more than a few, and maybe dragged. The woman gave Tristan a discreet nod; Tristan returned it and slid off the barstool. Patrick followed her to the rear door.

Outside was a filthy alley that stunk of stale beer, cigarette butts, and other things indeterminable though thoroughly nauseating. A beat-up Buick Regal sat abandoned to one side. Patrick observed the tall cinderblock wall facing them; between that and the building, there was little chance anyone could have been watching from a vantage point.

Tristan glanced up and down the alley, then pointed to the hunk of junk that Patrick had presumed was abandoned. He’d presumed wrong.

“Our new wheels,” she said.

Patrick looked at it, looked at her. “New…”

She shrugged.

“Sweet ride,” he said, but his tone of voice stated the exact opposite. “Where’d you get it?”

“The Gettin’ at Place. Quit asking questions about things you really don’t want the answers to, okay?”

Patrick gave her a wary glance. Her point was a good one.

They got in. It stunk worse than the alley and bar put together.

“Smells like someone threw up in here,” Patrick said.

“Probably.”

“And other nasty stuff.”

“Probably that too, but it’ll get us where we need to go, and right now, it’s all that matters. Put your head down for a few blocks while I make sure we don’t have a tail.”

He did. The smell was even worse with his face closer to the floor.

They exited onto a side street, hopped onto the 5 headed south.

“Did you leave the phone?”

“Just like you told me.”

“Good boy.”

“What if we need to make a call?”

“We’ll use mine. We can get you a throwaway after we cross the border, if we need it.” Tristan was still watching the rearview. She gave a single nod and said, “You can sit up now.”

“So what happens once we get there?”

“I know a guy.”

He sighed. “Phrases like that worry me.”

“I know. There’s a lot that worries you.”

He looked out his window. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“I think you do.”

Patrick didn’t touch that one. Instead, he went for something safer. “So what about the border?”

“Getting in’s a breeze. Getting back into the US will be the challenge.”

“So?”

“So don’t worry about it. I got it figured out.”

He didn’t ask on that one either. He was learning.

About ten minutes later, traffic slowed to a near halt, and Patrick could see the San Ysidro Point of Entry in the distance. The checkpoint station stretched across the freeway, the word
MEXICO
plastered above in big, blockish letters. For Patrick, it spelled trouble. He felt sick. He shifted restlessly.

“Relax, will you?” she said. “We’ve got this.”

Patrick wasn’t sure what they had, other than more problems on the way. But to his relief, they rolled through without a hitch.

Reaching the other side was like dropping into a different world, more congested, more smoggy, everything moving in a hurried and disorganized manner. Patrick had been here many times before while covering stories for
National Monthly
and found the city to be a study in polar opposites. People were either very rich or very poor, their homes either large and extravagant or sadly lacking. Currently, they were in a lacking part of town. He rolled down his window but then thought better of it after letting in the combined funk of smog, raw sewage, and fried food.

Tristan didn’t say anything, but from the look on her face he could tell she wasn’t loving their surroundings much, either.

“Ever been here before?” Patrick asked.

Her voice fell flat when she said, “I’ve been to just about every bad place, and this is one of them.”

He looked at her again, then back at the road, wondering where Every Bad Place was and, even more, how she’d ended up there. He didn’t ask.

They rolled past absolute poverty: houses that were barely homes, some unfinished, some in various stages of decay, others just on the brink of livable. It was difficult to look at, and it was heartbreaking. Tristan made a series of turns until they were bumping down a dirt road. A few miles later, they came to a trailer park. Patrick glanced out, hoping it wasn’t their destination.

Tristan turned into the entrance.

She stopped the car outside a dilapidated trailer with a sign reading
OFICINA
.

“What’s here?” he asked.

“Not what. Who.”

“You know a guy,” he said.

“You got it.”

“Guy got a name?”

“Fat Jack.”

“Not sure I like the sound of that.”

“Not sure you have a choice, but what seems to be the problem?”

Dirt and dust lifted around them, circling off and into the wind. Patrick said, “My years of covering crime have taught me a few things. One is that people who slap adjectives before their names aren’t generally community pillars.”

Tristan got out, slammed her door, and leaned in the window to stare at Patrick. “Do me a favor?”

“Yeah?”

“Take it down a notch, okay? Your jittery bullshit is starting to work my nerves.”

At the trailer, Tristan gave him a final, cautionary glare, then rapped on the bent and rusted screen door. Patrick looked up at the awning and spotted an ancient video camera, wires like tangled spaghetti, duct tape slapped all over. Then he heard a
buzz
—more like an emaciated
fizzle
, actually—and the
click
of a lock.

They went inside to meet Fat Jack.

And fat he was. Patrick gauged him somewhere in the neighborhood of four hundred plus. Fat Jack sat behind a desk, his large body covering up any hint of a chair. Patrick found himself trying to hold his breath. Something in the office smelled rank, a wicked combination of stale cigar smoke and mildew and Lysol.

“Tristan,” Fat Jack said in a high-pitched, wheezy voice that struck Patrick as odd for a man of his size. He dropped a fat hand across the desk.

Tristan shook it.

Fat Jack caught Patrick staring and responded with a churlish expression.

“This is my friend, Patrick,” Tristan said. “He’s cool.”

Fat Jack gave a surly nod and didn’t offer to shake. Patrick was relieved.

“You got us hooked up?” she asked.

Fat Jack wheeled the invisible chair back and reached toward a metal cabinet that proudly sported a
Fuck You!
bumper sticker with a smiley face. From the Happy Cabinet he pulled out a key attached to a chewed-up block of wood,
space 127
scribbled across it in black marker. He slid the key across the desk.

Tristan picked it up and said, “Thanks, Jack. Owe you one.”

“You and everyone else,” he wheezed. “Just remember, payday’s coming.”

“It always does,” Tristan said turning toward the door.

Patrick didn’t ask. Again.

As they pulled away from the office, Patrick said, “He seems nice.”

She shot him a look. It wasn’t pretty.

“And this is a nice trailer park.”

She rolled her eyes. “Sorry, the Four Seasons was booked for the weekend. Maybe next year. Now shut up.”

She pulled into their space, put the car in park. The only person around was a middle-aged guy in a camp chair outside his trailer. He wore a stained wife beater, and the cigarette sticking from his mouth was just a singed filter. He offered them a suspicious glare.

“We’ll be safe for right now,” Tristan said, “and right now that’s what we need.”

Looking at their new neighbor, Patrick wasn’t so sure.

C
hapter
F
ifty
-S
ix

C
HAPTER
F
IFTY
-S
IX

The interior was everything Patrick had expected and less, including a stink every bit as virulent as Fat Jack’s office.

“The seventies called,” he said, gazing around. “They want their trailer back.”

Tristan wheeled toward him, her expression a very stern, very clear warning.

“Sorry,” he said, holding his hands up as if shielding a potential blow, fighting a grin. “That one slipped through the filter.”

“Well maybe it’s time for a filter change. And adjust the attitude while you’re there.”

“Noted,” he said.

The eating area was a paradox unto itself: avocado-colored stove, baked-on grease obscuring the oven window. The aluminum sink was dented, its faucet listing at a peculiar, impractical angle. Off to one side sat a wobbly steel table along with its dysfunctional family of bent chairs, the vinyl seat pads torn and tattered. Toward the rear were two steel cots—looking more like afterthoughts than intentions—with flimsy, undernourished mattresses, stained and striped, akin to something you’d find in a prison cell.

It took every ounce of determination to conceal his disgust, and even more, his intestinal upset. As he turned to Tristan, she said with sharp enunciation, “Not. A. Word.”

He complied.

After settling in—or trying his best to—he felt the tension lift some. They were in a world of hell and both knew it. But Patrick also felt an odd comfort building between them. For some reason, he couldn’t think of anyone he’d rather be there with. It was a startling revelation, considering that in the beginning he couldn’t even stand to be in an elevator with her. And yet, more and more, he was finding so much he liked about her, even admired.

Such an unlikely pair.

They sat at the table, staring at each other in silence.

“I really do appreciate this,” Patrick said. “And everything else you’ve done, too.”

“We’re a team,” she said, with a shrug. “That’s what you do when you’re a team.”

Something in the words resonated strongly with Patrick. Maybe not just the words. Perhaps it was the pure genuineness, the fragile vulnerability she was allowing to show. This woman carried a lifetime of pain, both inside and out, but she wore her scars proudly like a coat of armor. He studied her with admiration.

“What?” she said, revealing her other side again.

“The scar,” he said, now feeling confident enough to ask. “How did you get it?”

She held his gaze, appearing tense and caught off guard by his boldness. Then gradually she relaxed, as if letting down the wall. She looked down at her hands, weaving her fingers together. “I messed with the wrong guy.”

“I know. What happened?”

Still looking down, shaking her head: “I did a deal with a very dangerous man, and it went bad.”

“Who was he?”

“Antonio Bardez. He hired me to move a bunch of gold bars from a refinery. I got greedy. I had this idea to bring them down here and cash them in. Figured I’d hide out for a while until the heat died down. Bad idea. It only took him and his guys a couple of days to find me…” She stopped.

Patrick waited.

Her voice began to tremble. “They took me to a field and staked me out.”

Patrick shook his head. Now he knew why she’d become wary as soon as they crossed the border.

Tristan caught the recognition in his eyes and nodded, tears forming in her bottom lids. She blinked and they glided down her cheeks. Turning her head, she looked out the window, wiping the tears away with her sleeve.

Patrick reached across the table and grabbed her hand, eyes held tightly on her.

“They took turns raping me,” she continued. “It seemed like it went on forever. After they were done, Bardez pulled out a box cutter…” She stopped and closed her eyes, breaths labored, unable to go on.

Patrick gave her hand a quick, gentle squeeze.

“He said, ‘I’m going to make you as ugly on the outside as you are on the inside, so everywhere you go, the whole world will know.’ ”

Patrick kept his gaze steady. He wanted to be there for her when she returned from the terrible memory.

“Then after he cut my face open… he spit in it.”

The creak in her voice cut to the deepest part of Patrick—he tried to speak, but what came out was nothing more than a soft, shapeless moan.

“I laid in that field all night, nearly bled to death, shaking, wild dogs licking the blood off my face. I was in so much pain, inside and out. I’ve never felt so…”

“Alone,” Patrick said.

She nodded, sniffling away tears. “A homeless guy found me in the morning. He untied me, gave me his water, helped me get cleaned up. The day was getting so hot—it was close to ninety already—and even so, he walked with me into town. It had to be a good ten miles.”

“He helped you find your way.”

“I swear, that man barely had any clothes on his back, and yet to me, he had everything. His kindness was so pure, and it came from such a good place, and he offered it so easily.”