River of No Return : A Jake Trent Novel (9781451698053) (3 page)

“Gerry Spence. No, I haven't practiced, I—”

Scott interrupted. “I called you when I got laid off way back; thought maybe the firm could use someone. You never called back.”

“Yeah, I'm sorry about that. I should've—”

Another interruption. “Aw, no worries. I'm just fucking with you. You want a Scotch? I brought over a hell of a bottle.”

Jake held up his wine glass. “I'm good.”

“Suit yourself. More for me! Let's catch up later.” Scott punched him hard in the arm and walked away.

Jake turned to Divya and rolled his eyes; the pace of the interaction had stunned him. She noticed the redness in his face.

“So, Scott hasn't changed,” Jake said sternly.

“And neither have you.” She smiled. “Let's find a seat.”

Divya played the coquette and Jake the hesitant participant. Washed down with a few glasses of Stags' Leap SLV Cab, her flirting was palatable. But the moment was soon ruined. It wasn't more than an hour until a well-besotted Scott zeroed back in.

“I just don't get it. No offense.”

“None taken.” What Jake meant was he wouldn't bother acknowledging the slight.

“You give up all for what? To be a rancher?” Scott hee-hawed at his own repartee.

Divya tried to come to Jake's rescue. “It's beautiful there, from what I've heard.”

Jake shrugged, not backing down, but unwilling to stoop to Scott's level. “Takes all kinds, I guess,” he muttered.

“I get it!” Scott's epiphany made his face look like a surprised pig's. His balding head harbored beads of sweat from all the eating, drinking, and disparaging. “You couldn't take the pressure!”

Keep it together,
Jake thought.

But it was too late. “The hell do you know about pressure?” Jake blurted out.

A moment-long stare down between the two men.

“Here.” Divya to the rescue again. She interrupted and poured both of them more wine.

“I gotta take a piss.” Scott stood and strode away.

When he returned, Jake changed the subject. He had no interest in a pissing contest, despite his opponent's empty bladder. “So, you're helping with the lobby?”

“It's not a lobby,” Divya murmured.

Scott huffed. “No way. Can't take the time off. New wife wants a swimming pool. That's pressure.” He rolled his eyes. “Seven figures last year, Jake. Corporate litigation. Better than I woulda done if you'd thrown me a bone back then. I guess I should thank you.” He raised his glass, almost spilling the contents. So much for avoiding the pissing contest.

“Congrats.” Jake gave Divya a smirk and then drained his just-filled glass.

“Speaking of, are government employees supposed to be lobbying, Divya? Sounds like a conflict of interest to me.” Scott wagged his finger in her face.

“Government?” Jake's attention was piqued.

“Legal aid, he means.” Like Jake, she adeptly changed the subject. “Let's play a game!”

Jake didn't get to bed until 12:30 a.m. The crowd had gotten worked up discussing politics and the law, and Scott remained ruthlessly acerbic. He stirred awake at 3:30 a.m. in a cold sweat, ran to the bathroom, and vomited.

Welcome back to the real world
, he thought.

4

TLAXCALA, MEXICO. OCTOBER 16.

6:30 P.M. CENTRAL STANDARD TIME.

Going home was easy. For the first time she had the money to bus it rather than rely on a ride. When she'd moved to Jackson, Esma rode in a two-door '88 Honda Accord with five others—one pregnant and vomiting, two others chain-smoking harsh Vera Cruz tobacco. Thirty-six hours. She'd made the trip a half dozen more times: running money to her mother, and returning with the food and drink her friends in Wyoming missed from home. It was the least she could do.

Never again,
she'd said.

The Border Patrol on the highway was probing and demeaning. They treated the commercial bus passengers marginally better; if they knew you had some money, they figured you were legit.

Family
was a tricky word for Esma. Her father was a tyrant.
Angry and drunk, he made her mother's life miserable. Esma hadn't spoken to him since first going to the States. She preferred it that way.

Her mother couldn't see it so clearly. They'd never divorced; instead, they dragged out the troubled alliance. He came and went, bringing joy on arrival and leaving a trail of emotional destruction behind him. He sometimes disappeared for months at a time.

Esma and her mother had an unspoken rule. Papa was never mentioned, though she could hear in her mother's voice whether he was around. Manic or morose, never even-keeled.

Which is why it was such a shock when Arturo the Terrible opened the door. Her mother had given no hint over the phone that he might be around. Esma didn't see it coming. Her initial impulse was to curl up in a ball, submit. But she was better than that now, though it took a little forced moxie.

“
Señor
.” She nodded her head and squeezed past him, holding her breath. He smelled of tequila and Te Amo cigars. In her peripheral vision, she glimpsed a crooked smile. He was happy to see her squirm.

Leticia.
Mam
á
.
The poor soul. Still beautiful at sixty-six, she was in the kitchen looking flustered.

Mother and daughter exchanged a short embrace. Esma wanted to look into Letty's eyes, search for any insight into why she still tortured herself. But Mamá was too smart for that. She eluded eye contact, muttering something about dinner.

Arturo had wandered into the
cocina
, bumping and brushing the relics hanging on the adobe arch. He fumbled with a bottled of off-color liquor. When it was opened, he poured an ample portion into a dingy cup and held it out for his daughter.

She didn't acknowledge the gesture.

“Try it.” Leticia spoke in Spanish. “He makes it himself.”

“Quite the accomplishment.” English in return. An insult. Her parents didn't understand the words, but Arturo laughed, getting the gist. His teeth were as yellow as his eyes. They glowed against his puffy brown face.

“I thought we would go to church after dinner.” Spanish again.

Esma responded to her mother in like tongue. “To repent for our sins?” Another laugh from Arturo. “I'm going to settle in.”

The small house had a second story that had been added after the initial construction. The ceilings were low, and the floors were sloped and creaky.

Her childhood room remained much the same, aside from a few extra knickknacks that were being stored.

She could hear her father downstairs growling at her mother. “She's
always
been a bitch! She didn't even say hello! She can't stay in a hotel with all that money?”

Dios m
í
o.
Esma sat on her old twin bed and cried. She missed J.P. now. Arturo's reappearance put J.P.'s faults into perspective. She wanted out, and she had been there only for half an hour.
Poor Mam
á
.
Esma knew her presence was going to fuel Arturo's rage to rare heights. The grumbling from the kitchen had already turned into shouting and tears.

Esma wiped her eyes and opened the front zipper of her roller case. She took out her checkbook and emptied her modest savings in her mother's name.

“Dinner!” Her mother shouted from the bottom of the stairs. She could hear the fake cheerfulness. Feigned normalcy.
A perfect family
dinner.

Esma took her luggage and went back downstairs. Her mother did not look surprised.

Arturo was pouring another drink, wearing a shit-eating grin.

Esma handed her mother the check and turned to her father. “Keep it up. I hope it kills you.” English.

Never again,
she promised herself on her way through the door.

* * *

Boarding the bus, she felt ashamed. She had abandoned her homeland and the woman who raised her. But what solution was there? Arturo had plagued her mother for forty years, despite Esma's best efforts. She knew if she stayed, she would only make things worse.

* * *

Esma tried to make small talk with the other passengers, working-­class women in their thirties and forties, but they were wary of her. Maybe her accent had changed over the years, giving away her Americanness. Or maybe it was her J.Crew slacks, peppered with the red dirt from the yard where she had once played as a child.

Executive Housekeeper.
Esma loved that they added the “executive” to make it seem as though she were something other than the head of housekeeping. But the hotel
was
fancy—five stars—and it was, on its face, a good job: $45,000 a year, plus benefits. What more could a girl from the outskirts of Tlaxcala ask for?

Still, she knew what the management thought of her. Pretty?
Yep, the men
even think I'm “sexy.”
Hardworking?
Of course, like all beaners
are.

And she could speak Spanish! The only thing that really mattered. Was she smart? A good person? They had no idea; they'd never bothered to find out.

She spent the night at a little motel in Miguel Ahumada with five other women from the bus, who had slowly warmed up to her. She would cross the border in the morning, legally and with all the right papers. She knew that wouldn't be the case for some of the passengers.

Esma could sense their nerves, smell their anxiousness. But they wouldn't turn back; they were all headed to the States because they needed money, and not for trivial reasons. Most of the passengers were immigrating to the States to provide medical care and food for their families back home.

At about 1 a.m., some young men from the bus kicked in the door to their motel room, drunk on tequila. They woke the women up, laughing, propositioning them.

Esma wasn't afraid. She could see weakness in their faces and in the way they moved. As far as threats went, she'd faced much worse.

When one of the men grabbed her and tried to lead her away she hissed sharply in his ear in Spanish.
You don't have to do this. Your mother and
father would be ashamed.

The man slapped her hard across the face and called the rest of the gang out of the room. The other women quietly nodded at Esma, thanking her. Esma dabbed the blood from her nose in front of the bathroom mirror, half wishing her skin were another color. Then she lay down on the mildewed floor of the crowded room. From the bed above, someone tossed her a sheet and a pillow.

“
Gracias
.” Her accent sounded unfamiliar, even to herself.

In the morning, the passengers from the bus went in different directions to rendezvous with their
coyotes
, the smugglers who would help them into the States, if all went well. More often than
not, aspiring immigrants weren't successful; they either got ripped off or were detained shortly after crossing the border. There were stories of women being kidnapped, force-fed heroin, and sold as sex slaves. All this after they'd handed over their life savings to fellow countrymen who had promised to help.

* * *

The border agent glanced up to see a striking young woman in a slightly dirty pantsuit standing in front of his window.

“You can't walk through this line; motor vehicles only.” He gave her a confused look. Something about her confidence, her resolve, was off-putting. Behind her, a line of a dozen cars honked, their drivers agitated. She paid them no mind.

She looked bedraggled, but her beauty couldn't be disguised by things as relatively dull as dust and grime. She said nothing in response to the agent, just handed him a neatly paper-clipped stack of papers.

He looked them over, then reclipped them and handed them back.

“What the hell are you doing?” A gust rolled through the checkpoint, blowing sand across Esma's face. She didn't flinch. The agent slid his door shut momentarily to protect himself.

When he opened it, he spoke again. “You've gotta be careful out here. A woman who looks like you, I mean.”

Esma huffed. “Am I free to go?” She tucked a few disheveled strands of black silky hair behind her ear, still staring squarely at him.

“Where are you going? For how long?”

“Home,” she said obstinately.

He looked around to make sure a supervisor wasn't watching and then swiped his hand through the air, left to right, from Mexico to the States.

“Be careful.”

Esma shuffled through the checkpoint, catching a few curious stares from the contraband-search team as she passed. A man on the team whispered to his female coworker, who snickered. Esma kept walking fast, afraid to look back. She had no desire to be questioned or detained.

In a few minutes she was a quarter mile past the border. Here she turned around and found no one following her. She took a deep breath and stuck her thumb in the air. She'd left herself only a few dollars, giving the rest to her mother.

It wasn't long until a recent-model Volvo station wagon pulled over. The family took her as far as Santa Fe. They pulled into the plaza and offered to buy her dinner, but she declined. For a moment, she stood in front of the luxury hotel and watched the man and his wife check in, while the kids ran around the lobby, looking for a swimming pool or vending machine.

Life must be good.

The pueblo-style plaza, while mostly authentic, looked like a mockery to Esma in the fading evening light. The plaza here featured tourists and expensive German cars parked in valet lots. That familiar conflict arose within Esma—irritation at the vanity of the American lifestyle versus the urge to indulge in it.

Esma walked several miles along the highway, almost to Española, before she got picked up again. This time, her company was more country music than country club. Esma didn't mind; she just wanted to get back to J.P.—to get back home.

The Dodge pickup truck had recently been washed. Its black glitter coat, complete with chrome trim accents, reflected the harsh lights from the run-down roadside casinos. The two gringo men were quiet well into Colorado. The only thing they had asked
was
Where
to
? The driver's response worried Esma a bit: “Jackson? Us too.”

What are the chances?

Esma tried not to think about the coincidence. She was happy to be escaping Tlaxcala.

She awoke at 5 a.m., surprised that she'd been able to fall asleep. The driver and the rear-seat passenger had swapped spots sometime during the night. Her new partner in the backseat was staring at her with a wry smile.

“Morning,
chica
.” His breath reeked of wintergreen chewing tobacco, his teeth brown.

The man's hair was short, blond, and unevenly cut. The right side of his head bore a long scar where no hair grew.

Before Esma could look away, the man acknowledged her stare.

“Name's Ax.”

Jesus
,
Esma thought.

She concentrated her attention out the window so as not to stir up any more unwanted information.

A roadside sign read:
BAGGS, WY—41
MI
.

Well, that's a relief.
The vessel, despite its dubious crew, appeared to be going in the right direction.

She drifted back to sleep.

* * *

Esma woke up to her ears popping from altitude and loud country music. She looked out the window, trying to figure out how much progress they'd made during her slumber.

Verdant, groomed fields dominated the landscape—potatoes and barley, not hay. At the junction of the highway and a small dirt road, she saw a familiar sign:
GRUPO MODELO
BREWING
. She knew
she was in neither Mexico nor Wyoming. They were somewhere in Bumfuck, Idaho, where the brewery owned massive tracts of land.

What the hell?

She closed her eyes again so she wouldn't attract attention. Over the music, she heard one of the men say, “Twenty grand, man! What the hell would
we
do with her anyway?”