Do They Know I'm Running? (50 page)

“Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”

“I’m just making a point, okay? Don Pato knows about this girl coming up with your cousin. He knows what’s supposed to
happen. I don’t make it happen, I look weak. I can’t afford that. I look weak, next day I’m dead.”

Happy realized finally what El Recio was saying. “I don’t know why Roque would have a problem handing this girl over.” Thinking: Now who sounds weak?

“Things happen, you know? I hear she’s like crack for the
eyes, güey
, and she’s got a voice. You know how all the big shots down here wanna be sung about. You’re nothing unless there’s a
corrido
on the radio pimping you up. There’s talk this
pichona
and your cousin, like, connected or some such shit.”

“You want me to talk to Roque, explain what the deal is?”

“When the time comes. Maybe, yeah. Meanwhile I got some bad news on another front.”

Osvaldo appeared in the kitchen doorway, a disheveled silhouette, and made a chittering sound with his tongue and teeth. El Recio, without turning, gestured for patience.
“Momentito, cabrón.”
Reaching again into a pocket, this time he withdrew not the inhaler but a small plastic bag of salted plums called
saladitos
. They smelled like something plucked from the inside of a pig and brined in lye. He lifted one to his mouth, tilted the bag toward Happy, shrugged when the offer was declined, then continued. “This Arab dude you wanted to bring across. There’s a problem. An American showed up last week, frumpy motherfucker, kinda fat with crooked glasses, lugging this big old briefcase with him, he met up with Don Pato over dinner at El Gallo. Again, okay, I don’t know everything, but the fat guy was, like, way interested in this friend of yours and some kinda deal got made. Just so you know, the Americans are pissing blood over the way things are down here. Too many bodies, too much news about it, and the news is, like, freaky. They’re willing to go with a winner, even tip their hand, pick a favorite, if it means things calm down. None of this is official, it’s all secret-handshake spook shit, but whoever the winner turns out to be—and this guy was here to say they’d be happy with Don Pato—he’s gotta understand,
we can’t be moving ragheads across the border. Them, we turn over to this frumpy fat motherfucker and his people. Hear what I’m saying?”

He saved my life, Happy thought, wondering if he should believe that anymore. “What happens to him after you turn him over?”

“Not your problem,
güey.”
The skeletal hand returned to Happy’s shoulder, a lingering squeeze. Deep in their sockets, El Recio’s red-veined eyes warmed. “You stepped up tonight. I wanted to see you carry your weight. You done good. You’re part of the picture now, right?” He licked bits
of saladito
off his teeth. “You got no place to go to up north, there’s serious heat on you there. And there’s people down south now want your fucking head, or your cousin’s head. Yours’ll do in a pinch, hear what I’m saying? Best idea you got, stay here with me. Don Pato, the others I mentioned, they’re serious cats—run the whole goddamn show, this stretch of the border. Anything moves across, it’s got their brand on it, otherwise you die. I do what’s necessary, they watch my back. Same thing with you and me. Be cool, stand up, don’t give me nothing to worry about, I’ll look the fuck after you. I’ll get your cousin across. The rest can’t be helped.”

From the kitchen doorway, Osvaldo made his tetchy little sound again. The mother was mewling hysterically behind her gag. Hilario backhanded her but she wouldn’t settle down.

“Back to business,” El Recio said, stuffing the bag of
saladitos
back in his pocket. “We’ll talk more over breakfast.”

THOUGH THE WATER WAS TEPID THE SHOWERS FELT LIKE LUXURY—
first Lupe, then Roque, finally Samir, each of them scrubbing off the grit and stickiness and toweling dry in the small spare room, nothing but a twin bed for furniture. What else was needed, given its usual hourly occupants? Bergen took a room for himself, Pingo would sleep in the van. The tally of money owed was
inching upward—three hundred dollars per person for the ride, which Bergen said would barely cover gas, even at Pemex prices, then the room, food. They’d already pooled their money and handed over what they’d had, the rest being due on credit, for which Roque gave his address, the names of both Tía Lucha and Lalo as guarantors of his debt. Bergen had never promised charity but it all added up so fast. Still, Roque supposed, better that than paying out to some
salvatrucho or pandillero
who’d just keep the shakedown going forever back home. He got it now, it wasn’t just that nothing was free. The moment you agreed to pay, you opened the door to hell. Bergen was simply a friendlier breed of devil.

Lupe joined him outside and they sat together beneath a roadside mango tree, gazing through the darkness and the day’s last traffic at the fishing fleet moored to its lantern-lit docks. The breeze carried the scents of sea salt and beach rot and the echoes of beery laughter.

—
We should have gone for a swim before the shower
, he said.

Using both hands, Lupe spread her damp hair to let the wind help dry it, lifting her face toward the starlight. The bruising from Lonely’s beating had all but healed.—
It’s stupid to swim at night. You can’t get your bearings
.

—
There’s plenty of light from the bar, the docks
.

—
The waves can be dangerous
. Her voice was adamant, almost shrill.—
I heard of a woman whose neck was broken just a few months ago and she was a very strong swimmer. The undertow kills several people every year
.

For a second, he felt ridiculous. Then he figured it out.—
You don’t know how to swim
.

She shrugged, shook her hair.—
Let me guess. You want to teach me
.

—
I wasn’t trying to insult you
.

—
I’m sorry. It’s just …
She glanced up into the dark tree.—

We both know what’s coming. I’m tired of thinking about it. Get me a mango, would you?

Climbing up a ways to one of the middling branches—the lower ones were picked clean—he tugged a plump mango from its rubbery stem and tossed it to her, then scrambled back down. Using her nails, she peeled away the skin so they could trade bites. Soon their faces were tacky with juice and pulp.

Between swallows, he said:—
I’m going to need another shower
.

She slipped her sticky hand in his, their fingers interlocking. He tilted his head to venture a kiss, only to see Samir approaching, chafing his burred black hair with a towel.

—
I am sorry to interrupt
, he announced, sounding more flustered than contrite.—
I have been thinking today, very much, very long, about our situation. I have thought of what Fatima would want of me. I have prayed. And I am here to tell you I am ashamed of how I have behaved. Yes, I need very much to reach America—not for my sake. My family’s. But I have been thoughtless, even cruel, in how I have spoken. It needn’t be so. I had a chance earlier to talk with Pingo. He knows a man at the border, his uncle, he lives in a town called Naco, who could help us get across. There would be no need to deal with this El Recio character in Agua Prieta. For all they know we burned up in the car, right? Who can say differently, how soon? Months it will take, longer most likely, for them to determine for certain who it was in that car. Again, yes, there is the issue of money and Happy has told you there is none, fine, but things change. You, Roque, can pass over as you please, perhaps you could head home, ask among friends or family. I could wait with Lupe in Naco
. He stood with his shoulders folded forward, as though preparing to bow. His deep-set eyes lacked their usual indignation.—
I am agreeable, is what I am saying. I no longer want us to fight among ourselves. It is wrong
.

No more was said about it. But later, when the three of them settled in for the night inside the tiny stifling room, Samir took
the floor in a sign of goodwill. Roque and Lupe negotiated the narrow bed, spooning though fully clothed, his stomach pressed into the hollow of her back as she pillowed her head on his arm. In time their breathing synchronized, drowsiness settled in. Samir fell asleep first, though, snoring with a chesty rasp. Perhaps we don’t know what’s coming after all, Roque thought, and shortly Lupe took his hand, nudged it inside her jeans, pressing it against the downy warm curls, holding it there in a gesture of possession, him of her, her of him.

FROM HIS TABLE NEAR THE BACK, LATTIMORE SPOTTED HIM IN THE
doorway, the distinctively scruffy beard and hair, the rumpled suit, the cockeyed glasses, the clownishly fat and battered briefcase—McIlvaine, the security man from Dallas, what was his company’s name—Bayonet? The man made eye contact, offering his tea-colored smile, then began picking his way through the tables and Lattimore felt his stomach plunge with an almost punitive sense of dread. His sandwich turned into a soggy wad of nausea in his hands. Banneret, he thought, that was it. “Jim!” McIlvaine thrust out his hand. “Mind if I sit?” Lattimore nodded to the open chair, setting his oozy sandwich down and reaching for a napkin. “Let me admire your investigative skills—you found me how?”

“Inspired guesswork.” McIlvaine reached across to a nearby table where a menu sat unused and plucked it for his own use. “The receptionist said you were out, the hour suggested lunch, I decided to wander around the area, take my chances.” He pushed up his glasses, reading a nearby chalkboard listing specials.

“That’s all you wanted, company for lunch?”

“No need to sound so put-upon. I’m not expecting a fanfare but I do have news I think you’ll find useful, if you haven’t already received it.”

Lattimore, resisting a smile, took a sip of his lukewarm coffee. Since the screwup with Happy the information chain had gone into lockdown. The case was infamous, no one wanted his name near it. Memos and e-mails gathered dust somewhere out in the bureaucratic nowhere. Not one single agent outside the country would return his calls. “I’m all ears,” he said.

Folding his hands across his midriff, McIlvaine settled into his chair. “I heard the news, the bad business on your end. Quite a cock-up, as our British friends would say.”

“Yes.” Lattimore tasted the grit of his coffee dregs. “British friends, one can’t have too many of those.”

“Oddly enough, you’re near half right.” The waitress bustled past and he caught her eye, tipping his menu back and forth as a signal. “Turns out my friend in the Green Zone knew a Brit journalist doing a story on the Al Tanf refugee camp. He got in touch, I scratched out a list of questions, ones I thought you’d want answered given our previous discussion. Well, unhappily but not too surprisingly, he came up empty. There is no record of a woman named Fatima Sadiq in the Al Tanf refugee camp, nor any woman named Fatima with a daughter named Shatha, or more generally a woman married to an interpreter working for the coalition, the Salvadorans in Najaf specifically. Nothing, nada. Sorry. Now who knows how doggedly this Brit asked his questions—it wasn’t really his focus, after all, just one of those quid pro quos one accepts in a war zone.”

The waitress materialized. McIlvaine ordered a grilled liver-wurst and Swiss on corn rye with pepperoncini and onions, mustard not mayo, coleslaw side, iced tea with extra lemon, then handed her the menu and watched her flee.

Lattimore, prompting, “Andy?”

“Where was I …” He adjusted his glasses, glanced at his watch. “Ah yes. Perhaps your Samir’s Fatima, if she exists, has moved to another camp, Trebil for instance. Maybe she’s gone back to Baghdad, meaning she could be God only knows where.

These are not people who trust the government or the press, the Palestinians, I mean. They feel very much hunted and betrayed. But there’s something else too. Something rather curious.”

A busboy delivered a dewy tumbler of iced tea and a saucer of lemon slices. McIlvaine fussed the straw from its wrapper. The busboy, a Latino, vaguely reminded Lattimore of Happy’s cousin Roque and he suffered a sudden flash of misgiving, wondering where the kid might be.

“My friend spoke to a contact he’s developed, a man once very well appointed within the Mukhabarat. Obviously, this is very sensitive. I can’t tell you any more than that about the man.”

Like I could burn him from here, Lattimore thought.

“But he remembered a Palestinian named Salah Hassan from the al-Baladiyat neighborhood. The man was arrested for trafficking in foreign currencies sometime after the end of the Iran-Iraq War.” He began squeezing lemon into his tea, one wedge, two. “Curiously enough, this Salah Hassan had a wife named Fatima and a daughter named Shatha. And after her husband’s imprisonment—they cut off his hand, like they do with thieves, then stuck him in a prison somewhere to be forgotten—the woman, this Fatima, she not surprisingly fell on very hard times. There are brothels in Baghdad, obviously, though they’re known to favor green lights, not red. Apparently this Fatima had a small but very devout clientele. But once Saddam’s regime fell and the Mahdi militias began their persecution of the Palestinians, which became quite indiscriminate after the bombing of the Al-Askari mosque in Samarra, she grabbed her daughter and fled the area and no one is willing to admit they know where she ran off to. Assuming anyone knows. Maybe one of those devoted patrons stepped up, whisked her off to his tent in Araby.”

The waitress returned to the table, this time with McIlvaine’s sandwich and coleslaw. Setting it down, she turned her attention to the remains of Lattimore’s lunch and cocked an eyebrow. He leaned back so she could clear. Earlier, he’d considered flirting—
innocently, of course, unless she responded—but McIlvaine was like a sexual black hole. Once she was gone: “This source of your friend’s, any chance he got a look at the document you showed me, the one linking Samir to the Mukhabarat?”

McIlvaine stuffed a paper napkin into his collar, gripped half his sandwich in both hands and leaned forward over his plate. “It’s a contact sheet, that’s all. At some point he was brought in for an interview. That’s all you can infer from it reliably. Whether there were others—contacts I mean, interviews—it’s impossible to tell. Sorry, nothing else on that end to report.”