The Devil's Bounty (24 page)

‘Who is she?’ she asked Ty.

He hesitated. ‘It’s some messed up bullshit is all. Now, let’s go.’

She didn’t move. ‘I asked who she is.’

‘Santa Muerte,’ he said.

Muerte. She knew that word.
Muerte
was Spanish for ‘death’.
Santa Muerte
. Saint Death.

The junkie had stepped from the semi-circle of the crowd towards her. He had his hand out, asking her for money. Ty took a step towards him, ‘Back off, asshole,’ his hand resting on the butt of his handgun. The junkie lurched back into the crowd, spitting at Ty’s feet as he went.

‘Okay,’ he said to her quietly. ‘You have until the count of three. When I hit three you are on your own, Julia. You got me?’

She said nothing. She knew she had to leave, that she had no choice if she wanted to stay alive, but the shrine was drawing her towards it.

‘One.’ His voice betrayed the weakness of a parent who has threatened a sanction they’re not sure they’ll be able to deliver.

‘Two.’

She turned back towards the SUV, ready to get back in but his hand grasped her elbow. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Too many people have seen us now. Seen the vehicle we’re in. We’re going to have to walk.’

Tears bulged at the corners of her eyes. Her lack of control had made the hole they were in even deeper than it had been. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Save it,’ said Ty. A huge arm folded over her back and he led her meekly away from the shrine. She glanced back at the vehicle,
abandoned in the middle of the road, the rear passenger door still open.

Ty set a brisk pace but eventually he had to slow down. The only way she would have been able to match his long, loping strides would have been if she had jogged and she was too tired for that. Beyond the shrine, he shepherded her down a side-street, away from the prying eyes of the crowd, who, no doubt, were still discussing the behaviour of the two crazy Americans who had offered up an SUV to Saint Death.

The GPS clasped in his hand, Ty was busy recalculating their route. He turned down the volume and zoomed out, trying to commit the new route to memory, aware that he would need his eyes on the girl and the surrounding streets rather than the screen.

They had under a mile to cover. Given the traffic, walking wouldn’t take much longer than driving. They might be more mobile too, and it would be easier to adjust their route, to duck into a doorway if he saw the cops. The drawback was that they were both exposed. You could hide in a car. Now everyone they passed could see them.

As they walked, he scanned the buildings. He and Julia drew interest but it lasted no more than half a block.

He wondered how long it would take the cops to find the abandoned RAV 4 and work out who the occupants had been. Less time than it would take him and the girl to cover the mile, that was for sure. And if they knew he had her so close to the consulate they would be able to figure where they were headed.

At the end of the block, he spotted a store with racks of clothes left out on the sidewalk. As they reached it, he guided Julia in as
a Federal Policía car sped down the next street. ‘What are we doing?’ she asked.

Three minutes later and fifty dollars lighter (twenty for the clothes and thirty for the owner’s silence), they emerged from the store, the girl’s long hair tucked up under a baseball cap, both of them wearing long sleeves, the tall man with a wind-breaker zipped up to his chin. Hand in hand, they strolled across the street, without a care in the world.

Looking ahead, Ty swore that if he pulled this off he would head back to that old witch Santa Muerte and leave her the biggest goddamn spliff he could find, with a whole goddamn case of tequila.

Sixty-three

LOCK HUNKERED DOWN
next to the thin plywood door of the one-room shack where he was holed up with Charlie Mendez. Outside, a group of children were busy kicking a soccer ball. Behind him, Mendez was sprawled on a threadbare floral couch, his chest rising and falling as he slept. Sunlight splashed lazily through a Perspex window, etching a yellow square on the bare floorboards. The facilities were meagre – a chemical toilet out back, but no electricity.

After a nerve-shredding night spent one step ahead of the police search party, they had chanced upon the owner, a heavy-set middle-aged woman, as she was leaving for work at around four in the morning. As soon as she had turned the corner at the end of the street, Lock had snuck them inside, figuring they would probably have the place to themselves until early evening when she would return from one of the factories or a day spent cleaning rich people’s houses.

Mendez had fallen asleep quickly, the exhaustion of the pursuit
and the consequent huge dump of adrenalin taking its toll. Lock had kept guard by the door. A cursory check of the GPS on his cell phone, before he had powered it down, had given him their position.

They were approximately five miles north of the city centre, and south of the Rio Grande by less than a mile. To the west lay the highway they had fled. To the east lay the desert. But to the north lay another highway where headlights twinkled in the distance, and that highway lay in the United States. They were closer than he would have dared believe possible, but it was an agonizing proximity.

Though the distance may have been less than a mile, more and more cops were pouring into the
colonia
with every minute that passed, and even if they could make good their escape, they still had to cross the border. Ten, even five years ago, it would have been a matter of wading the river. But now they faced not only the river but a whole host of defences aimed at keeping people out of the United States. The irony of an American trying to break back into his own country wasn’t lost on him but that was what he faced, and the plain fact of the matter was that they wouldn’t be able to achieve it during daylight. They would have to sit out a long day and wait until night fell again.

On the up-side, he had Mendez, and the shots aimed at him from the helicopter had made him broadly compliant. Mendez knew that, on his own, he was most probably dead. The knowledge had served – it often did – as a calming influence. Lock wasn’t sure how long it would last but Mendez was aware that, at this very second, the only person who appeared even vaguely interested in him staying alive was Lock. If it hadn’t been for him, he’d already be dead.

Sixty-four

TY STOOD AT
the edge of the crossing, directly opposite the office building that held the consulate, and gave Julia’s hand a reassuring squeeze. He had talked to her the whole way there, as they played the part of a happy couple, trying to keep her calm. He had asked her about her family, about her memories of growing up. Safe stuff designed to reassure.

The walk had gone quickly. There had been a moment when, darting through traffic, a motorcycle cop had stopped to stare at them. Ty had bluffed with a friendly wave, and that single nonchalant act had been enough to satisfy the cop’s curiosity as he took off with a macho twist of his handlebars.

It was as they started to cross that Ty noticed the two men. Both Hispanic, both wearing wrap-around sunglasses, each man posted within twenty yards of the two entrances to the consulate building. They might have been working for the Americans – US consulates were often staffed by locals and now, with military resources stretched, regularly used private security. As they hit the
opposite sidewalk and Julia made towards the nearest entrance, a set of glass double doors, Ty pulled her in the opposite direction towards a row of stores on the ground floor of the building.

He cursed his own stupidity. If the cartel and their buddies had guessed that he wasn’t going to risk the border crossing, where they could easily be detained in Mexico on a pretext, and instead head straight for the the consulate, they wouldn’t have cops on show to scare them off. They would be watching from the shadows. A spider didn’t sit in the middle of a web waiting for the fly: he clung to the edges.

Ty studied the storefronts. ‘Here,’ he said, guiding her towards a nail salon as one of the men swivelled around to watch them.

Inside, the salon was quiet. The owner bustled over and, without asking, got Julia to sit down. Ty pulled out his cell phone and motioned towards the back of the salon. ‘Okay if I make a call back there?’

‘What’s wrong?’ Julia asked, as the owner shrugged in agreement.

‘Just be cool.’

Ty stepped away and pulled up the number Lock had given him. A few seconds later a woman answered, speaking in English but with an accent: ‘American Citizen Services Unit.’

Without explaining who he was or why he was calling, Ty asked to be put through to a member of the consular staff. He was put on hold. The phone pressed to his ear, he walked to the front of the store and peered out. The two men he had spotted were standing next to each other now. One was nodding towards Ty, who was only partially obscured by the gaudy stencilled advertising plastered across the window.

Finally there was a click, and for a second he thought he had
been cut off or placed in some kind of automated queue. A second later there was a voice, a real live human being. ‘How may I help you?’

He stepped away from the window, and started to speak. He gave the man at the end of the line Julia’s name and explained that they were across the street but that two men were positioned outside the consulate who, he believed, had been placed there by people who wished to prevent Julia’s safe return to her family.

‘Mr Johnson, please stay on the line, and I’ll be right back to you.’

Before he had a chance to protest he was put on hold. He walked back to the window and took a peek. The two men were still in heated discussion. One was on a radio. Not a cell phone but a walkie-talkie. From the corner of his eye, Ty caught a flash of red light as a patrol car sped down the avenue. The two men watched it pull up not far from them. Walkie-talkie Man keyed his radio again. At the same time the consular official came back on the line.

‘Mr Johnson, I want you and Julia to stay exactly where you are. If you have a weapon please do not draw it. Do you understand me?’

‘Yeah, got it.’

The patrol car was joined by another. One of the two men, the one without the radio, broke off to go and speak to the cops as the one with the radio started towards the salon. The owner, completely oblivious to the scene unfolding outside, remonstrated with Julia, who was fidgeting in her seat.

Walkie-talkie Man was walking at a clip now, his right hand dropping into his jacket and under his left shoulder. Not wishing to be overheard, Ty killed the call. He didn’t know what kind of
bullshit was going down and he wasn’t about to stick around to find out.
Sit tight, my ass
.

He crossed to Julia. ‘We gotta go,’ he said, tossing twenty bucks in the direction of the protesting salon owner, for whom a half-finished manicure was clearly some severe breach of beauty-shop etiquette.

Walkie-talkie Man was no more than ten seconds from the door. His partner’s discussion with a cop who had got out of the patrol car was proving animated.

Ty turned to the salon owner as he pulled Julia to the back of the store. ‘You have a way out back here?’

She stared at him, uncomprehending. Julia tried to translate her few words of stitched-together Spanish, earning a shake of the head and a finger pointed at the front door, which was now opening as Walkie-talkie Man shouldered his way through. Beyond him the Federales were making their move too, running not walking towards the salon.

Ty’s right hand came up, with the gun, finger on the trigger.

Walkie-talkie Man froze. ‘Dude, chill out,’ he said, his accent pure California surfer. ‘I’m from the consulate. We’ve been waiting for you. If you hadn’t stopped to get your goddamn nails filed we would have had you inside by now.’

Ty lowered the gun. The guy flashed his State Department identification to prove his point and apologized in fluent Spanish to the salon lady. He motioned Julia towards him. ‘Stay close. They’re going to give us some static but they touch you and I have four men across the street ready to turn this place into the goddamn Alamo.’

Julia managed a smile, which soon dissolved into tears of relief. The State Department official, whose ID had him down as
Armando Hernandez, turned to Ty. ‘You too. Stay close to me. You’re not exactly flavour of the month with some of these assholes.’

He walked them to the door, shielding Julia with his stocky frame as Ty brought up the rear. Halfway across the street, he glanced back at Ty. ‘Kind of disappointed in you, Mr Johnson. All us Hispanics look alike to you or something?’

Sixty-five

RAFAELA WALKED BACK
into her apartment, threw her bag and keys on to the kitchen counter and took off her jacket, but kept on her holster with her loaded service weapon. She had been relieved of her duties pending an official inquiry into the ‘unauthorized release of the two Americans’: her boss wanted her out of the way while he assured the consul general that everything was being done to find Charlie Mendez. That part was true enough. For once they weren’t just putting on a show. They did want Mendez – and Lock – just not alive and talking.

She filled a plastic jug from the kitchen tap and watered the plants out on her little terrace balcony. After the death of her husband and everything that had followed, she had clung to work, though in her darker moments she told herself that she was more social worker than cop. Cops found the bad guys, gathered evidence and made sure they were put behind bars. Rafaela picked up the rag-doll bodies of young women from the streets and comforted their heartbroken parents as best she could.
What good
was
that? What good was she?
The bodies piled up anyway and she made no difference. The streets weren’t any safer. Worst of all, the dead girls weren’t even the main event: they were a sideshow. Sure, the media got excited as they speculated on the serial killer or killers but really they were nothing. There was a war on drugs. There would never be a war on the rape and torture of young women.