The Dead Women of Juarez (23 page)

Garcia made a sound like a cough. “That’s because I’m here, you idiot,” he said. “Why are you calling my boy? It’s bad enough you have him looking after that
rulacho
, Estéban Salazar.”

Sevilla’s fingers were cold on his phone. “What do you mean?”

“I mean he’s been calling all around about him. Trying to get him settled. He’s turned into a regular guardian angel.”

“He’s part of your case. Maybe Palencia just wants to make sure you have all your witnesses.”

“We don’t need any witnesses. Someone ought to put a bullet in Salazar’s head and call it a day.”

“He confessed?”

“What do you think, Sevilla?”

Sevilla looked into his lap. His notepad was there, open to the address of the
palenque
. Before he had been excited, energized by the name of Ortíz and Urvano’s words. Now he felt suddenly enervated, as if he’d been too long in the sun and the juice was sapped from him. “When did he confess?”

“Yesterday. I spoke to Señora Quintero about it this morning. She’s a piece of ass.”

Fucking naco
, Sevilla thought, but he said, “That’s good news.”

“He said it was the American who started it. Came up with the plan and when to do it. Salazar just helped him. Can you believe someone who would do that to his own sister? He’s like those sick bastards in the Sinaloa.”

“He confessed to all of it?”

“
Sí
. No thanks to you or Enrique. The two of you would rather cuddle and kiss these sons of bitches than give them what they deserve.”

A retort came to mind, but Sevilla sighed instead. “Congratulations,” he said.

“Thank you. Now, you want me to have Enrique call you? You can go cry into your drinks about a few broken bones.”

“No,” Sevilla said. “No.”

“Then fuck off back to your
narcos
,” Garcia replied. “They’re taking over the whole goddamned city.”

The line went dead. Sevilla folded his phone and put it in his pocket. For a long time he sat still and silent.

“
¡Chingalo!
” He pounded his fist on the steering wheel. “
¡Chingalo! ¡Chingalo!
”

The moment passed. Sevilla lapsed back into silence. Without thinking he reached beneath the seat, his hand searching for a bottle wrapped in paper, but there was nothing there. He nearly cursed
again and then he thought he might cry. Two men emerged from the entrance to the
palenque
, got into a rust-sided old Chevrolet and drove away. They were oblivious.

Sevilla covered his face with his hands. “Estéban, you stupid bastard,” he breathed. In the same moment he knew he would have done the same thing if their places were reversed. The memory of the bat coming down on Estéban’s hand was fresh.

He found his phone again and dialed another number. No one answered and the line switched to voice mail. Sevilla took a deep breath. “This is Sevilla. When you get a chance, call me. We should meet. I know about Estéban so there’s no need to tell me. There’s still a chance to make this right.”

Afterward he held the phone in his hand, willing it to ring, but it was dead weight. He put it away. He started the car again and then turned the ignition off. The
palenque
squatted in the heat and dust, waiting for him. He thought of the shade and fans blowing cool air and a bar with iced beer and harder liquor. It wasn’t so late in the day that a drink would ruin it, nor so early that he would have to hide what he’d done.

The phone didn’t ring. If it rang he would not go inside and he would not drink. If it didn’t ring, he would treat himself this once. He wouldn’t drink so much that he couldn’t drive safely. Maybe he would watch the fights. Maybe he would even bet on them and let the clock turn lazily toward evening. He could afford two or three drinks then.

Sevilla was out of the car and across the lot before he decided to go. The phone did not ring and he put it away. The entrance to the
palenque
was shady and smelled of mixed alcohol, chicken blood and straw. When he entered no one looked his way and when he ordered a blended whisky no one spoke a word of blame.

S
LEEPING IN THE BACK SEAT OF HIS
car was not so bad when the sun lay low along the horizon and the windows were open to allow a little breeze. The phone buzzed in Sevilla’s pocket and then it rang. He stirred. His hand found the phone on its own.

“Sevilla,” he said.

“I called three times,” Enrique said.

“I’ve been busy,” Sevilla replied.

“You sound like you’ve been sleeping. Where are you?”

“At a cockfighting arena. I won three wagers.”

“What are you doing there?”

Sevilla struggled to sit up. His foot caught on the armrest and for a moment he felt trapped. “What difference does it make to you? Where have
you
been?”

“Estéban Salazar is back at El Cereso,” Enrique said. “I’ve been trying to meet with him.”

“Why? He already confessed, the stupid bastard.”

“Confessions can be recanted.”

“Only if he wants La Bestia coming to visit him in his cell the way he did with Kelly. He’ll wish we had capital punishment again before it’s over.”

“You’re drunk,” Enrique said. “Goddammit.”

“I was just resting my eyes. I haven’t had anything to drink.”

The parking lot was busier now at the end of the working day with more trucks and more cars nosing up to the
palenque
. Looking
at the place made Sevilla’s temples throb. He left the back seat and did his best to smooth the wrinkles in his suit jacket.

“Why do you want to meet with me if there’s no point? What have you been doing?”

“I have a name,” Sevilla replied. “Carlos Ortíz. Do you know it?”

“No. Should I?”

“He’s a fight-fixer. Kelly knew him. They were together before Kelly took to the needle again. The old man who runs Kelly’s
gimnasio del boxeo
said some things that made me think. Find out more about him.”

“Where will you be?”

“Home.”

H
E WAS ANGRY AT HIMSELF FOR
drinking and angrier still for lying about it. At least before, when Enrique had been in his home, Sevilla was honest enough to admit that he had drunk too much. That it was happening at all was bad enough. That he was hiding it was unforgivable. He felt Liliana’s eyes on him.

The edges of his attention were ragged as he drove and the headlights made his eyes water. He was glad to reach the safety of his street, and when he at last killed the engine he breathed a silent prayer of thanks.

He wasn’t ready to go in and face the empty house so he sat and stared out over the dashboard at the still avenue. The shootings and the killings of the Sinaloa and Gulf cartels’ war hadn’t ever broken the bubble around these houses. Other, older things had come to bear upon them, but the dead women of Juárez were invisible. Mujeres Sin Voces tried to change that, but the women in black could not be everywhere, standing silent vigil, forcing the
feminicidios
to the surface again.

Sevilla wasn’t aware of dozing; his eyes were still open. A sharp rapping on the glass of the driver’s side window made him twitch violently and a curse nearly escaped his lips. At first he didn’t recognize Adela de la Garza in the shadow on the sidewalk between telephone pole and car. She wore a hooded sweater that obsured her face.

First he made to open the door, but the woman motioned for
him to stop. Sevilla wound the window down. “Señora,” he said, “what are you doing here?”

Adela looked both ways down the street. No one was there and still nothing moved. “I have a message from Ella. Ella Arellano. You wanted to talk to her, yes?”

“
Sí
. Where is she? Her house—”

The woman thrust a folded piece of paper into Sevilla’s hand through the window. “Go to this church on Sunday. The first service. Someone will know you. She will take you to Ella.”

“Why has she gone into hiding? Was it Jiménez? Who is he working for?”

“She will tell you everything,” Adela replied. “I must go.”

“Wait,” Sevilla said. He clambered out of the car, but Adela was already out of earshot and moving quickly. She rounded the corner and by the time Sevilla reached it she was gone.

Under the light of a lamppost Sevilla read the name of the church. He didn’t recognize it. Once more he looked the way Adela had gone, but the woman did not reappear. Reluctantly he left the corner and returned to his home. It felt good to turn on the lamps and bathe the unchanged front room with golden illumination. For the first time the street outside his door had an unwelcome cast.

Again he read the name of the church, willing a picture of the place to rise in his mind’s eye. Nothing. He would have to ask someone, perhaps Enrique if he was not too busy with Ortíz. With nowhere else to put the paper, Sevilla tagged it to the front of his refrigerator with a magnet.

He took a shower because the dust of the
palenque
’s lot was still on him. He tried to remember all he could about Adela de la Garza’s face, the reflected light in her eyes, the hooded sweater pulled tightly around her like a shield. Of course there was fear, but it was fear with a shape and a name, not some nameless terror.

Señora Quintero never answered his phone message about Jiménez. Sevilla thought to call again, but it was too late in the evening. He passed on his nightly vigil on Ana’s bed, beside Ofelia’s
crib, and went straight to his own room. Tomorrow he would visit Kelly at the hospital and then he would call Quintero again.

Despite the long, drunken nap of the afternoon, Sevilla fell asleep easily. He dreamed of battles and men without faces who brought their cocks to fight. One wore a suit and Sevilla knew this was Ortíz. The other dressed in the manner of a policeman and this was Jiménez. Still another had the body of La Bestia and stood guard over the others with his great fists. Though he had no eyes, he saw Sevilla watching, and though he had no mouth, he scowled.

I
T TOOK THE BETTER PART OF THE
morning before Enrique Palencia found Carlos Ortíz.

He made some excuses to Garcia about an appointment with the dentist and went first to the nearest athletic club he knew of, a place where there was boxing two Friday nights a month. There he spoke to the manager.

“Of course I know him,” the man said. “He has the best new talent. It’s his bankroll, you see. Sometimes it’s hard for a fighter to find time to train. Ortíz can arrange that.”

“What does he get?”

“Twenty percent of their earnings. From here that’s not so much, but once he takes his fights to the States he gets much more. In Juárez the top fights pay less than the midcard in California or Texas.”

Enrique made a note of this. “He goes across the border often?”

“All the time. I hear he has many apartments there. He likes to entertain. That’s how he made his mark, you know: arranging parties.”

“I didn’t know,” Enrique said.

The manager went on to tell Enrique more about Ortíz’s fighters, hungry young men from the rough spots in the city, and how they were intensely loyal to him. Better yet, Ortíz was loyal to
them
, something that wasn’t always the case among managers. Trainers were bound to fighters for the life of a fighter’s career and
sometimes even longer, but managers came and went without so much as a farewell.

“That’s Ortíz’s secret, you see,” the manager said. “He has friends.”

From the athletic club Enrique went to a restaurant where Ortíz sometimes held court and from there to a boxing gym. Here he saw some of Ortíz’s fighters, lean and hard like street dogs. Some had jailhouse tattoos Enrique had seen on the arms and backs of convicts in the system, but these men worked as diligently at their training as all the others.

Ortíz’s path led into the tourist districts and out again. The strip clubs and brothels were open in the day for those
turistas
enterprising enough to cross the bridge and secure a deal, but without the veneer of night to hide peeling paint and chipped wood the streets were sad, deflated somehow. Neon lights were on, hidden by the sun’s glare. Even a short overcast rain would be enough to restore some mystery, but it was not coming.

Enrique didn’t know any businessman who had no office and went the places Ortíz did. Everyone knew him, but outside of the fight venues they were circumspect about how. When they saw Enrique’s badge their faces closed and the questions were harder to find answers for. They told him Ortíz didn’t deal drugs, and this Enrique believed. Drugs in Ciudad Juárez were the province of gangs in and out of prison and the frontline troops of the cartels moving north and east. Drug dealers of the city didn’t wear suits or dine at the Montana Restaurant on steak and baked potatoes. Perhaps elsewhere they did such things, but this was Mexico and the rules were different.

The clock turned past eleven before he saw the truck. More than once he was told about Ortíz’s black pick-up truck, how clean and shiny it was, and the three bodyguards that came with him everywhere. The seats were leather and the fittings real, polished wood.
See how he does business?
they told Enrique.
You can trust a man who hasn’t forgotten his roots. He doesn’t need a fancy car
.

The truck stood sentinel outside another boxing gym, the third on Enrique’s list. It was not like the others, but had the appointments of a fitness club across the border. Through broad windows on the second floor Enrique saw men jogging on treadmills and on the first floor the entrance was inviting metal and glass. Sunlight glared off white-painted walls that also read BOXEO — SALUD — CALISTENIA — NAUTILUS.

Enrique saw the outline of two of Ortíz’s bodyguards through the heavily tinted windows of the pick-up’s king cab. Their engine idled and the tailpipe dripped condensation as the air conditioning ran. Enrique sweltered with his windows down. Heat rose in steady waves from the asphalt. He parked in a red zone and watched.

A part of him felt silly. In his time with the police Enrique had never sat on a stakeout or prowled the streets looking for suspects. He went from the academy to administration, and though they issued him with identification and a pistol, there was a vast gulf between what he did and other cops did.