The Dead Women of Juarez (2 page)

Kelly Courter wasn’t a good-looking man. He’d seen uglier, both inside and outside the fight world, but he wasn’t a model and that was okay with him. Kelly’s nose had a crook in it and bent slightly. Even when he didn’t have raccoon eyes he always looked tired because he always felt tired; his body was older than he was.

At thirty he felt like a grandpa getting out of bed in the morning — all aches and protesting joints and sore muscles — and more decrepit still on the day after a fight. He carried too much weight around his middle and his hair was falling out, so he shaved his face and head once a month and let it all grow at the same rate.

He lived in an apartment building ten minutes away from the border crossing into Texas. Just a few miles, a line of police and a mostly dry riverbed separated Kelly in Ciudad Juárez from El Paso. Standing on a street in Juárez with closed eyes, just listening to the sound of Spanish, the rush of cars and smelling exhaust, it was easy to pretend the cities were the same, but Kelly didn’t go north anymore.

His apartment had a concrete balcony. Kelly kept a heavy bag there, though he rarely hit it. For Ortíz’s smokers Kelly didn’t need to be in shape and didn’t need to keep his skills sharp; all he had to do was show up more or less at weight and take a pounding. That he could do. That was what he had left.

He put his stuff in the bedroom and because the air was still went out on the balcony to roll a magic carpet. Sitting in a folding lawn chair with an old, chipped plate for an ashtray, he had a perfect view of a
maquiladora
that turned out automobile seats for GM. Night and day the seats came off the assembly line and went into truck-portable cargo containers for shipment back across the border. Wages started at a buck an hour and topped out before hitting three.

Mexican weed bought away from the tourist traps was always better than anything a man could find on the other side. Some Canadians told Kelly once that their marijuana was primo, but he didn’t believe it. Call it
malva, chora
or
nalga de angel
, Mexico grew
the best shit; if Kelly was going to
acostarse con rosemaria
, go to bed with rosemary, he would do it south-of-the-border style.

The marijuana took the edge off. He didn’t even feel his heartbeat in his nose anymore. Kelly kicked his shoes off and let his bare feet rest on the cement. The car-seat
maquiladora
was lit up like a parade float at Disney World and was pure entertainment.

Once upon a lifetime ago, Kelly got mixed up with heavier stuff and learned to love the needle. He kept it up until he couldn’t even think straight anymore and ended up sweating and puking and shaking in a Juárez hospital for four weeks. On the outside and broke all over again, he swore he wouldn’t touch that shit for the rest of his life, and he hadn’t. Now he stuck with the
mota
.

The smoke wanted to put him to sleep, but Kelly was a soldier; he finished the joint before he went to bed. Without bothering to change out of his street clothes, he sprawled across the mattress, pulled the sheet over his chest and slept.

O
VERNIGHT THE SWELLING CAME
up on his face and his nose was more bent than usual. Under a lukewarm shower, Kelly straightened it out as best he could and let fresh blood swirl down the drain. He ate a monster breakfast to make up for lost calories. The sliding glass door to the balcony was open and he heard the whistle for the morning shift. Working Juárez had places to go and things to do, but Kelly Courter had some free time.

For a fighter it was better to run, but Kelly walked because he didn’t have stamina for anything else anymore. He put on his sneakers and locked up the apartment and headed out. He saw no one because everybody was at work. The only people without jobs in Ciudad Juárez were the very old and very young and sometimes they worked, too, if there was money to be had.

Deeper into Mexico the people got poorer and living conditions rotted away with them. Juárez was a little better because since 1964 it had the
maquiladoras
: factories turning out everything from tote bags to engine parts, mostly for American companies. Like most fighters on the Mexico side, Kelly used Reyes boxing gear, and all that was made in the
maquiladoras
, too.

Wages in the factories were criminal and the cost of living in a city like Juárez was higher than the interior, but for the most part it evened out. Ciudad Juárez had its shantytowns and hellholes in the
colonias populares
, but the
maquiladoras
kept them from taking over. A family could live here. The air was dirty and the city
was crowded. There was crime and death, too — more now than ever before — but there were parks and schools and paved roads. Even though many
maquiladoras
were losing business and their production heading to China because even Mexican goods weren’t cheap enough for Wal-Mart.

Kelly had been to Tijuana and didn’t like the filthy streets and circus atmosphere. Over in Nuevo Laredo it was nothing but whorehouses and bars and places to buy worthless tourist bullshit. He settled in Ciudad Juárez because it seemed enough like home, but wasn’t, and partly because it worked out that way. Things were changing with all the bloodthirsty
traficantes
moving their business farther and farther north and east, but Kelly wasn’t going anywhere.

He walked a mile and then two. He sweated under his shirt, took off his jacket and tied the sleeves around his waist. His face was hidden under a cap and sunglasses, but anyone looking closely would see the beating he took. Fresh tape on his nose was a dead giveaway.

Kelly walked all the way to El Centro, skipping the buses in favor of roadwork, though they roared by at regular intervals and blasted him with hot exhaust. Kelly hadn’t been behind the wheel of any kind of vehicle since he sold that Buick. Driving was no good anyway, especially when the streets were so thick with traffic that he passed block after block of cars and trucks baking in the sun and sweating out the people inside. On foot he could move. On foot he was free. He didn’t want to be trapped or singled out, and pedestrians seemed to be invisible to everyone with wheels.

El Club Kentucky was his stop. He dashed across the street and got a horn and a curse for it. It was cool under the bar’s green awning and milder still inside. The ceiling was high and lined with heavy wooden beams. A few chandeliers with yellow lights, fake candles, dangled overhead, but most of the light came by way of the street glare.

Only a few men were there at this hour in the middle of the week. Kelly took a stool at a dark-varnished oak bar that stretched
all the way to the back. A TV showed
fútbol
, but the screen was over Kelly’s head so he couldn’t watch even if he wanted to.

The Kentucky was almost a hundred years old, but it was in good shape because customers and money kept coming in. They said Bob Dylan drank there and Marilyn Monroe, too. The bar fixtures were as old as the place: big, serious-looking wood and glass and age-foggy mirrors. The bartender was an old man wearing an apron. He gave Kelly a Tecate in the bottle with a little bowl of lime slices.

“
¿Dónde está Estéban?
” Kelly asked the bartender.

“
¿Quién sabe?
” the bartender replied.

Kelly had beer and lime and waited. If it were later in the year, he’d see what tickets to the bullfights were available and lay out for cheap seats he could hustle to drunken
turistas
who didn’t know they could just walk in and get better views for less money.

Estéban didn’t show for over an hour and two beers later. He passed Kelly without seeing him but when Kelly called his name, Estéban turned around like he wasn’t surprised at all. “Hey,
carnal. ¿Que onda?
” Estéban asked. “Where you been, man?”

Estéban took the stool next to Kelly. He was lighter than Kelly and shorter, but his skin was blasted deep brown by genes and time in prison work crews on the American side. He wore sunglasses, but took them off inside. Kelly kept his on.

“I been around,” Kelly said. “Lookin’ for you.”

“Hey, I ain’t hard to find. What happened to your face? You been at
el boxeo
again? When you going to learn, man?”

“I guess never,” Kelly said. “What you drinking?”

“Gonna spend big today, huh? I’ll have a
cerveza
if you’re buyin’.”

Kelly ordered a Tecate for Estéban and another for himself. The bartender brought fresh limes.

“It’s that
puto
Ortíz,” Estéban complained to Kelly. “People he knows… you don’t want to be no part of that world.”

“I just want to lace up my gloves,” Kelly said. He wished Estéban would stop talking about it. “I don’t want to fuck the guy.”

“Everybody he fucks, you fuck,” Estéban returned.

“That doesn’t make any goddamned sense.”

“To you, maybe not.”

They drank. Finally Kelly asked, “You got someone else carrying for you?”

Estéban put his hand over his heart. “What you thinking, man? I been on vacation for a few days, you think I forgot all about you? I ain’t some asshole; I know about loyalty.”

“Well, I took that fight because I couldn’t find you. Rent don’t pay itself,” Kelly said.

“I was down in Mazatlán for a while to see my cousin get hitched. Me and Paloma both. You offending me, man.”

Kelly finished his beer. “I don’t want to argue; I want to get some work.”

“What, like Ortíz gets you work?”

“Shut up about him.”

“Hey, all right,” Estéban said. He clapped Kelly on the shoulder. “Listen: I’m back in town and I gots plenty of stuff for you. In fact, I was goin’ to call you today and see if you wanted to carry some shit for me.”

“What kind of shit?”

“The usual kind of shit. Don’t bust my balls, okay?”

Kelly signaled the bartender for another beer. He put some money on the rail and the old man made it disappear. A fresh bottle of Tecate came, still sweating water from the cooler. “Okay,” he told Estéban. “Tell me when and where.”

M
ORE THAN CHEAP FACTORY GOODS
crossed the border from Ciudad Juárez into the States. Too many trucks and too many people meant too many places for dope to hide. The cops tried their best to catch the crooks, but it was a losing battle. More than that: it was a rout. Now the hardcore
traficantes
, the ones that came up in places like Mexico City, were even taking their fights and their weapons into Arizona, New Mexico and Texas.

Estéban’s product was weed, but he handled a little
gumersinda
from time to time. He knew Kelly was off the hard stuff, so when raw heroin came through he had one of his brown runners take care of it. Estéban showed respect for Kelly that way, and that was why they kept on together. That and because of Paloma.

Kelly carried a Reyes gym bag with boxing gear on top and a kilo of weed underneath. A setup like that could never make it past the border guards with their dogs and checklist of suspicious parcels, but for a gringo walking around here it was nothing a cop would glance at twice. Maybe not even once when Kelly had been through the grinder like the night before.

He came north, this time by bus, and then walked the rest of the way to a neighborhood so close to the border that he saw the lights of El Paso clearly. Every night was party night on these blocks, with white-boy tourist trash circling around the strip clubs and legal brothels getting drunker and drunker until they staggered back
across the downtown bridge with their wallets and their pockets picked clean.

People knew Kelly here; at least enough to let him pass without trying to sell him fake Cuban cigars, flowers, Mexican fly and everything else under the sun. While the rest of Ciudad Juárez settled down for dinner and bed, these blocks hopped. This was where the city came close to being like all the other
turista
carnivals along the border, and why Kelly only came here when he was being paid.

The place was La Posada del Indio, the Inn of the Indian in English. A large animated neon cartoon Indian, complete with feather headdress of the kind never seen south of the border, marked the door. Inside it was no inn and was barely a saloon: tiny stage for a single dancing girl, a compact bar with two men doubling as bartenders and pimps, plus a dozen tables around which girls constantly circulated.

Kelly bought an overpriced
cerveza
from the bar. He didn’t attract a swarm of girls, either because of his looks or because they knew the score; La Posada del Indio was a good place to get business done, and the men who came for money instead of pussy had a certain air about them.

“
¿Usted está buscando el hombre gordo?
” the bartender asked Kelly.

“How did you know?” Kelly asked.

“He was waiting. You’re here.”

Kelly shrugged, but now Estéban would have to come up with a new place for a drop; they knew Kelly too well here. “So where is he?”

“He was waiting a long time. He got a girl.”

Kelly looked around the place for a fat man. Because it was midweek, most of the faces here were Mexican brown and bodies working-lean under the florid lights. Coming closer to the weekend the complexion would shift and the men would get doughier. There would be more cash changing hands, too.

“You want to get your dick sucked?” the bartender asked. “There is a girl, she’s new. She won’t mind your face.”

“No, thanks,” Kelly said. He unconsciously touched the tape on his nose. Even now, after a handful of aspirin, his face throbbed with his heartbeat. “What room did the fat man get?”

The bartender told him. Kelly finished his beer and went out the front door. A narrow alley brought him to the next street where a ramshackle apartment building with rusty iron balustrades sulked in darkness. Women and girls moved up and down concrete steps, leading men in and sending them away.

Kelly ignored the women and they did the same for him. In the bar they were selling, but back here it was business. He went to the third floor and rapped on the last door. He heard nothing from inside until a short, dumpy prostitute opened the door and then the sound of a television game show reached Kelly’s ears.