Rosarito Beach (23 page)

G
etting a new car would be simple. Hiding Tito's corpse, not so simple.

Kay drove to a run-down apartment building in Del Mar. Inside one of the units lived a surfer—at least a guy who used to surf before he decided he liked dope better than the perfect wave. He was a minor snitch, and Kay had used him a couple of times; the main thing was, she could put him in jail anytime she wanted and the surfer knew this.

She parked her car in the small lot behind the apartment building. Tito would be okay sitting in the front seat; in this neighborhood, a guy sleeping off a binge in a car wasn't a novel sight. At one time, the apartment building's front door was always locked and you had to buzz a tenant to get in, but the lock had been broken and no longer functioned. Kay walked right up to a unit on the second floor and started pounding on the door.

Two long minutes later, the ex-surfer yelled from the other side of the door: “Who the hell is it? What do you want?”

“It's Kay Hamilton, Rodney. Open the door or I'll kick it down.”

Rodney, who liked to be called Rod-Man, opened the door wearing only dirty white boxer shorts. He had long blond hair, touching his shoulders, and a tanned but booze and drug-ravaged face. His once finely toned body was wasting away, and his toenails looked like talons.

“Jesus, Hamilton,” he said, “it's almost three in the morning. What the hell do you want?”

Kay pushed past him and into his filthy apartment. The place smelled like rotting garbage and spilled beer. “I want your car and your cell phone. I don't have a lot of time, we've got something big going on, and I need a clean car and a clean cell. You give me any shit, I'll have your skinny ass hauled off to jail.”

“My car and my cell?”

“Rodney! Wake up! I'm telling you, I don't have time to screw around here.”

“Yeah, sure, I'll get the keys. But when will I get my car back? I need my car.”

“Later today, I'll call you and tell you where it is. The phone will be in it.”

“But how can you call me if you have my phone?”

Good question, and one that Kay should have been ready for. She wondered how many other things she was failing to think about.

“Give me a phone number for somebody who lives around here,” Kay said, “and I'll call that person. But if for some reason I need the car and the phone longer, you just sit and wait for my call, no matter how long it takes. If you don't, if you call anybody and tell them I have your car, I swear to Christ, Rodney, I'll ship your ass off to Victorville.”

Rodney came back with his keys and the phone, then seemed to take forever to write down a phone number on the back of an envelope. “Call Trixie. She lives downstairs and she has a thing for me.”

Kay was thinking that Trixie must be one desperate woman to have a thing for Rodney, but didn't say so. Instead, she decided to give Rodney a little carrot to compensate for all the stick. “If everything works out okay, I'll mail you five hundred bucks for helping me out.”

“Seriously, Kay?”

“Yeah, seriously, Rodney.”

Rodney was most likely never going to see his car or his phone again.

Or Kay, for that matter.

—

N
ow for Tito's body.

Kay found Rodney's dusty, dented Ford Focus in the parking lot, started it up—and noticed the gas gauge was almost on empty. Great. She backed up Rodney's car directly behind the marine's car and, after sweeping all the shit off Rodney's backseat onto the floor—fast-food wrappers, a dozen empty beer cans, a couple of baseball caps, a beach towel, and some nasty-looking swimming trunks that were as stiff as cardboard—she transferred Tito's corpse to Rodney's car. She was really getting tired of moving Tito around, and when rigor mortis set in, it was going to be even harder to move. She tossed the beach towel over the body, then wasted fifteen minutes driving around Del Mar, praying she wouldn't run out of gas before she found an open gas station. She filled up the tank, paid with cash, and then headed toward La Mesa.

It was now three a.m.

Kay didn't have a garage at her San Diego house—just a carport—and when she moved from Miami she rented a unit at a public storage place. She kept a mountain bike there she rarely used, skis she would use again one day if she ever found time to go skiing, some camping equipment—a tent and sleeping bag and a little propane stove—and a couple of old surfboards. It was all stuff she didn't want cluttering up her house but didn't want to throw away.

The good thing about public storage places was that customers had access twenty-four hours a day. There was a chain-link fence surrounding it and a gate, but the gate opened by punching a code number into a keypad, and all the customers were given the number. The bad news was that it was located in La Mesa, half an hour northeast of San Diego, which was out of her way since she wanted to go south, across the border. The other thing was, she paid for the storage unit with an automatic withdrawal against her checking account, and if somebody, like the marshals, decided to look at her financial records—and she knew they would—they might go check out her unit.

So she was going to stash Tito's body at the storage place—just not in her unit.

On the way to La Mesa, she stopped at an all-night Vons and ran inside, praying they'd have what she needed. They did. A padlock. Ten minutes later, she arrived at the storage place, punched in the security code, and drove through the gate.

The storage units were made of sheet metal, had roll-up doors, and varied in size. Some were as big as one-car garages. The small units, like the one she had, were six-foot cubes. Some were heated; the last thing she wanted was one with heat. A lot of the storage units were empty—maybe more than normal since the economy had tanked in 2008—and the units closest to the office and the main gate were usually rented first. The farther back you went there were more empty units, and what Kay wanted was a row where at least half the units already had locks on the doors.

Six rows in from the gate, she found a row that had several unlocked, unrented units and some that were padlocked. She opened one of the unlocked units, dragged Tito's body inside, and put her new padlock on the door. She didn't bother to memorize the combination.

If she got lucky—it seemed like too much of what she was doing relied on luck—nobody would rent this particular unit and the guys who managed the place wouldn't even notice a lock on an unrented unit. In a few days, of course, Tito's corpse was going to start to stink, but that didn't matter. Jessica had to be rescued long before Tito started to rot.

Now, finally, it was time to cross the border.

J
essica didn't know how long she'd been in the room. She knew she'd been kidnapped at three p.m. and talked to Kay about six, but hours had passed since she'd spoken to Kay. Without a watch and in a windowless room, she had no idea just how many hours; she was guessing ten or twelve, but she was anything but certain.

She'd slept for a while, but not much, and she was tired. She couldn't sleep thinking that if Kay couldn't—or wouldn't—do what these drug people wanted, she might not be alive tomorrow. She was also thirsty. Really thirsty. A few hours before, Carlos had given her two pork-filled tacos and two bottles of water. She didn't know if it was the salt in the pork or the drug she'd been given when she was kidnapped, but she couldn't seem to get enough to drink and she finished both bottles. Which meant she needed to pee again, but the thought of Carlos leering at her—staring at her thighs, hoping to get a glimpse of her crotch—had made her put off peeing as long as possible. But she couldn't wait any more.

She pounded on the door, and when no one came after three or four minutes, she pounded on it again.

—

C
arlos Núñez felt his wife prodding him with her elbow. “Get up,” she said, “the girl is hitting the door.”

“She can wait,” Carlos muttered, and burrowed under the covers.

His wife poked him again. “Get up. She's going to wake the baby,” his wife said—and at that moment the baby in the crib next to the wall began to wail.

Carlos cursed and threw back the covers. If it wasn't for Mora's man, Perez, he would have lashed the little gringa bitch with his belt until she bled. His wife was now out of bed with the baby, and he said, “Go make breakfast.” If he couldn't sleep, neither would she.

Mora had told Perez to take the girl to Carlos's house because it had rooms in the basement where the cartel stored marijuana and heroin before shipping the drugs north. The surrounding houses in the neighborhood were occupied by more cartel men—men like Carlos who barely made any money and who were treated like pack animals. So Perez came to Carlos's house—
his
house—and ordered Carlos and his wife to move down to the basement and take care of the girl like they were zookeepers, while Perez and his girlfriend settled in Carlos's bedroom. All this when the house was already crowded with Carlos's two other children and his oaf of a cousin, a man who bathed only if his wife screamed at him.

Carlos Núñez wasn't the only one suffering, either. Perez had garrisoned two dozen men in nearby houses, men he could call on if someone tried to get the girl back; Carlos's wife and the neighbors' wives had to cook for all of them.

But what else could they do?

—

T
he door finally opened, and Jessica stepped back as Carlos entered the room. It looked as if he'd been sleeping, and he was angry that she'd woken him. He was wearing a sleeveless T-shirt, exposing his scrawny arms, and lightweight sweatpants.

“What time is it?” she asked.

“You woke me up to ask the time?”

“No. I . . . I need to pee. And I'm thirsty. But what time is it?”

“Never mind what time it is.” He yawned, then unconsciously scratched his butt. Gross. “Well, come on,” he said. “I want to get back to bed.”

Jessica stepped past him, this time smelling not his cheap cologne but the stale beer on his breath. He walked behind her to the small bathroom and, as she had done before, she lowered her shorts as little as possible and peed. And, as he had done before, Carlos stared at her thighs. He made her sick. She got off the toilet, pulling her shorts up simultaneously.

“Can I have some water?” she asked. She was still in the bathroom, and he was still standing in the doorway.

“Yeah, yeah. I'll bring you some in a minute. Now back to your room.”

He moved aside so she could leave the bathroom, and as she stepped past him, he pinched her butt—really hard, hard enough to leave a bruise—and Jessica shrieked. His intent hadn't seemed sexual; he just wanted to hurt her. Impulsively, she placed her hand on his chest and pushed him away from her. Carlos staggered backward, then raised his hand to slap her, but as he was about to strike, a door opened down the hall and Carlos's head spun in that direction.

Jessica saw Perez and another man step out of the room where Jessica had been taken to Skype with Kay. The man with Perez was older than Perez but looked cut from the same mold: slim, neat, dark-haired, something vaguely military about him.

“Carlos, what are you doing?” Perez asked in Spanish.

“I'm just taking her back to her room, sir,” Carlos said. “She had to go to the bathroom again.”

Jessica didn't know what they were saying, but she could tell that Perez sensed something had happened between her Carlos. And then Perez said to her in English, “Are you all right?”

Jessica hesitated, thinking about ratting Carlos out, but decided not to. “Yeah. I'm okay.”

Perez stared at Carlos intently for another moment, then he and the other man proceeded to a door at the other end of the hallway.

Jessica watched as Perez held the door for the older man and let him pass through the door first. Perez acted deferential toward the other man and Jessica thought that this might be Perez's boss, the big honcho in charge. And when Perez opened the door, Jessica noticed two other things: the door at the end of the hallway wasn't locked, and there were steps going up on the other side of the door.

Carlos gave her a push to get her moving, and Jessica walked back to her room. Just before he shut the door, she said to him, “Don't forget the water. And if you touch me again, I'm going to tell Perez.”

He gave her a look of pure hatred, and she could imagine that all his life he'd been pushed around by men like Perez, men bigger and smarter and tougher than him.

“I'll bring you the water when I feel like it, you little—”

Carlos uttered something in Spanish that Jessica didn't understand, probably a swearword, but she could see that he was definitely afraid of Perez.

—

J
essica hoped Carlos would take his time bringing the water. She had to make a decision, and she had to make it quickly—before he returned.

They were forcing Kay to do something. And after Kay did whatever she was supposed to do, Jessica was certain that they were going to kill her. No matter what Perez had told her, they couldn't let her go after she'd seen their faces and knew some of their names. And before they killed her, they were probably going to rape her, and if Carlos got the chance, he was going to do something even more awful to her. She didn't know exactly what, but she could tell he was the kind of sick little man who enjoyed causing pain and he would make her suffer. So she figured she had two choices: She could sit in her cell and hope and pray that Kay would somehow manage to free her before they killed her, or she could try to escape.

She knew Kay was good at her job; everything she'd read about her said she was. And she'd watched Kay as she prepared to go out at night sometimes, dressed in those black combat fatigues, strapping on the bulletproof vest, the eager look on her face as she put the black Glock in her shoulder holster. Kay was a hunter and she was fearless—but even as good as she was, how would Kay ever find her? The guys who'd kidnapped her wouldn't have been so stupid as to have put her in some place where she'd be easy to find.

But Jessica figured she had one big thing going for her: She knew they needed her alive and unhurt, at least for the time being. And Kay was probably checking periodically to see if she was okay, so they wouldn't kill her until Kay did whatever she was being forced to do. This meant that if she tried to escape now and they caught her, they probably wouldn't kill her immediately. But what would they do? How would she be punished? Would they just beat her, or would they do something worse?

She thought about what she'd seen in the hallway: the unlocked door and the flight of stairs. But she didn't know where the stairs went. Just up. She didn't know what kind of building she was in—if it was a house, a warehouse, or an office building. She didn't know how many people were in the building. And she decided that none of that mattered.

She wasn't going to rely on hope and prayer.

—

C
arlos, probably just to get back at her for waking him up, waited fifteen minutes before bringing the water. So for fifteen minutes Jessica stood in front of the door, hands clenched into fists, ready to strike the minute the door opened. She knew he wouldn't knock before he opened the door.

She heard the key turn in the lock and took a breath. The door swung open.

“Here's your wa—”

He was completely unprepared when she kicked him in the groin. She just wished she were wearing shoes. He bent over and dropped the water bottle on the floor, and she kicked him again, in the face, and she thought she heard something crunch, maybe his nose. He fell back against the wall opposite her door, and when he did she ran for the door at the end of the hallway.

She heard Carlos yell but ignored him, flung the door open, and ran up the stairs, where there was another door at the top.
Oh, Lord, please don't let the door at the top of the stairs be locked.
It wasn't.

She saw that she was now in a kitchen, and that two women were there. One was at the stove, stirring a pot, and the other was sitting at a table, feeding a baby a bottle. The woman with the baby shrieked when she saw Jessica.

Jessica looked about frantically for another exit—and there it was, a door that led outside. Through the window in the door, she could see a building next door to the building she was in. She ran to the door, yanked it open, and as she did, she could hear someone pounding up the stairs.

She saw she was in a narrow alley between two small houses. She looked to her right and saw cars going by on a street. Lots of cars. A busy street. She ran toward the street. She figured it was still early morning, because Carlos had been sleeping, but there were vehicles moving down both sides of the road in slow processions, bicycles whizzing by, cars honking, people walking. She didn't know where she was—obviously some big city—and she didn't know which way to go. She picked a direction—left—and started running.

She glanced behind her and saw Perez coming after her. Jessica was fast—she could have been a sprinter at school if she'd wanted to go out for track—but Perez was fast, too, and his legs were longer than hers.

As she ran, dodging pedestrians, her bare feet slapping the pavement hard, she looked for someplace to hide, for a building to duck into. She wondered if anybody in a car would stop and let her in, but she figured by the time she stopped a car and convinced a driver to let her in, Perez would be on her. She glanced behind her; Perez was gaining. Then she saw her salvation: a Mexican cop directing traffic at an intersection, only fifty yards away. He was wearing a uniform, a baseball hat on his head with some sort of insignia on it, and dirty white gloves on his hands. Jessica ran directly at him, screaming, “Help! Help! Help me!”

The cop looked over at her, puzzled by the barefoot young girl heading toward him, screaming. Most likely, he could see Perez behind her, too. Jessica ran into the street, oblivious to the traffic, and heard a driver slam on his brakes and the angry toot of a horn, and then Jessica was right in front of the cop.

She noticed the cop was armed. Thank God. She grabbed his arm, pointed at Perez, and said, “He kidnapped me! Help me!”

God, she wished she could speak Spanish. She could tell the cop didn't understand her.

A moment later, Perez, breathing heavily, was standing in front of the cop. He spoke to the cop in Spanish, pointing at Jessica, pointing back up the street at the house she'd fled from. She heard him say the word
Olivera
several times. The cop, instead of questioning Perez or drawing his gun, just stood there listening as Perez talked. Then the cop said something, and it looked to Jessica like he was apologizing to Perez. What the hell was going on?

By now Carlos had caught up with Perez. He was bleeding from the nose, and there was blood all down the front of his shirt. Perez reached out and grabbed Jessica's left arm and started dragging her back to the house. She turned and yelled at the cop, “Do something! Help me! He's kidnapping me!”

She struggled to break Perez's grip on her arm, and yanked free of him for a moment, but when she did, Perez backhanded her across the face, knocking her to the ground. People on the sidewalk had stopped to watch, and they saw Perez slap her, but none of them did anything.
What was wrong with these people?

Perez pulled her to her feet, and Carlos grabbed her other arm and helped drag her back toward the house. As they pulled her along, Jessica screamed again that she was being kidnapped—some of these people
must
speak English—but at the same time Perez made soothing sounds in Spanish to the people they passed, probably explaining to the onlookers that Jessica was simply crazy or something.

The damn cop just stood there. Then, after a moment, he started directing traffic again, making a point of not looking in Jessica's direction.

—

I
nside the house, they took her down to the basement. Standing in the hallway was the Bear, the big, gross-looking, unshaven man she'd seen when she first arrived.

“You must think this is some kind of game,” Perez said to her.

Jessica didn't say anything. She was terrified now, wondering what they were going to do to her.

“I'm going to show you it's not a game,” Perez said.

He pulled a weapon from behind his back, a stubby, black automatic. It must have been tucked into his belt.

Oh, God, he's going to kill me.

But he didn't. He shot Carlos—right in the center of the forehead. The shot was so loud in the concrete hallway that for a moment Jessica couldn't hear.