The Second Saladin (2 page)

Ramirez stared at him. He had known such a moment would one day come. A stranger, with information enough to kill him or own him forever. It could only mean the Huerras were done with him and had sold him out, or that the police had finally—

“The last run was January sixteenth,” the man said. “And the next one will be tonight, moon or no moon, and that’s the true law.”

Ramirez fought his own breathing.

“Who sent you?”

“Nobody sent me.”

“How do you know all this?”

“I have friends.”

“Important men?”

“Very important. Very knowledgeable in certain areas.”

“You should have come to me and explained. You are a special man. I can see this now.”

The man said nothing.

“You better watch yourself, though. Somebody might put a bullet in your head.”

“Sure, okay; somebody might. And then somebody might come looking for
him
and put a bullet in
his
head too.”

Ramirez struggled to take stock. The man had not had anything to drink, he was not talking wildly, he was not a crazy man. He had much coolness, much presence. He was a man Ramirez could respect. You wouldn’t fool him too easily. He wouldn’t make mistakes. He would make others make the mistakes.

“All right,” Ramirez said. “But it will cost you more. The distance is a factor, the increased risk, the danger to my way of doing business. This is no easy thing—it’s not running illegals into Los Estados. You want to go the guaranteed way, you got to pay for it. Or go someplace else, to some man who’ll cut your throat in the desert.”

“Nobody cuts my throat. How much?”

“A thousand. Half now, half later.”

“You are a thief as well as anything else.”

“I am a man of business. Come on, damn you, pay up or go someplace else. I’m done with talking.”

“As God wills it.” He handed over the money, counting out the bills.

“Out back, at eleven. Beyond the sewer there’s a small shop called La Argentina. Wait behind it in the yard with
the trucks. A van will come. You’ll be in Arizona tomorrow. Pay the man in America, or he’ll give you to the Border Patrol.”

The man nodded.

“If nothing goes wrong,” he said.

“Nothing will go wrong. I’ll drive the damned truck myself.”

The man nodded again, and then turned and left.

Oscar returned.

“A gringo pig,” he said. “I’d like to cut him up.”

Ramirez would have liked to have seen Oscar try to cut the man up. But he said nothing. He wiped his brow with a handkerchief scented with persimmon, took a sip from the new glass of Carta Blanca Oscar had brought him, and looked about.

“Did you notice?” he said to Oscar. “Even the whores left him alone.”

But now at least he thought he knew why, and he guessed that tonight the man would have with him enough cocaine for all the noses in America.

The tall man crouched in the yard behind the small shop called La Argentina. The odor of human waste from the open sewer in a gully next to El Palacio was disagreeable and thick. He could hear the music the Mexicans like, all guitars and vibration. He could see poor Mexican men gathering in the pools of light along the cobbled street that curved up the hill behind him. The few minutes passed and a drunk and a whore wandered into the yard and came to rest not far from him. Their conversation, in English and Pidgin Spanish, was all of money. The act of sex that followed lasted but seconds.

The man listened to it dispassionately, the two rutting against the side of the shop, in the dim light of half a moon. There was a swift cry and they were done and then
another argument. Finally a deal was struck. Contemptuously, the woman strode away.

“Whore!” the man called, as though he’d just learned it. Then he too left the yard.

A truck pulled into the yard; its lights flashed twice.

“Hey! Where are you?” called the fat Mexican.

The man waited, watching.

“Damn you. Tall one. Gringo. Where are you, damn you?”

At last he stepped out.

“Here.”

“Jesus Mary, you made me jump. Make some noise next time.”

“Get on with it.”

“In back. There are others. Poor men, looking for work with Tio Sam.”

“Others?”

“Just don’t bother them. They know nothing of you and care nothing.”

The man shook his head.

“Two hours now,” Ramirez said. “Longer, because of the special route. Bad roads, much climbing. But it will go fine. Just don’t make no trouble.”

The tall man spat. He climbed into the back of the truck.

“No policemen,” he warned.

The truck crawled up the dark and twisting roads through west Nogales. The shacks began to separate, giving way to wider spaces and the vehicle moved out of the edge of the city, into rough scrub country. Then it began to climb slowly and after a while the road became a track, jagged and brutal.

Ramirez had watched this progress many times; it did not interest him by now. He was thinking of the man in
the back. Yes, the man had had a bundle with him, a pack of some sort. It could carry twenty pounds of cocaine. Twenty pounds? Close to a million dollars’ worth. Ramirez reached inside his jacket and touched the butt of a Colt Python 357 magnum in blue steel, his favorite pistol.

Jesus Mary, it would be so simple.

The tall man comes out high in the mountains, dazed, probably trembling with the chill. He blinks, shivering. Perhaps he turns. Ramirez lifts the pistol, already cocked, and fires once into the center of the body. Then he’d go into the business himself: no more errand boy for the Huerras. He had the contacts too; he knew the people in Tucson.

Jesus Mary, it would be simple.

“Turn here?” Oscar Meza asked.

“No.”

“Keep going?”

“Yes.”

“Reynoldo, I—”

“Keep going.”

“We are going into the mountains. I—”

“Keep straight.”

Ramirez reached down and turned on the radio. He fiddled with the dial until he found a Tucson station. He left it on, thinking of Tucson, a flat new city on a plain surrounded by mountains. He thought of it as a city of money, full of Americans with money, full of blond women and swimming pools.

So simple.

The American country music rolled softly against his ear. The jarring in the cab was thunderous. He prodded his cowboy hat lower down his face, masking off his eyes, set his head against the seat back, and stretched and crossed his legs. He chewed a toothpick and thought of himself as a don, with a palatial estate in the hills outside
Mexico City like Don José Huerra. He thought of blond women and horses.

So how did he know so much? And who was he working for?

This was the crux of Ramirez’s dilemma. In three or four sentences he had delivered up Ramirez’s most closely held secret. If he knew of Ramirez’s connection to the Huerras and the mountain route into America, then—

“Reynoldo, I can tell. This gringo scares you. Say the word and I’ll go back and finish him. Nothing to worry about.”

“Drive on, stupid one,” Ramirez said. Oscar was really getting on his nerves this night. He’d found him five years ago driving an Exclusivo cab and pimping for American college boys down from Tucson; now the fool considered himself a right-hand man. Ramirez spat out the window.

“Lights. And go slower.”

“Yes, Reynoldo.”

The lights vanished.

“Keep the side lights on, idiot. Do you want to go over the side?”

Oscar immediately turned on the lower-powered orange lights.

Ramirez got out a stick of gum as the truck lurched forward. Soon they were on a ledge and the two Nogaleses were visible, the small and pretty American one and its larger, less neat brother, spilling awkwardly over the hills, spangles of light these many miles away. But Ramirez was not a man for views; in fact, he was looking now in the other direction.

“There,” he said suddenly. “Jesus Mary, almost missed her. I’m too old for this.”

Oscar stomped the brake and the van skidded for a breathtaking moment on the gravel and dirt as its treads
failed. Ramirez shot a bad look toward the idiot Oscar, whose fingers whitely fought the wheel. But the van did not slide off. Ramirez, cursing, got out, pulling his jacket tight against him. Cold up here, so high. The men in back would have no coats; they’d shudder and whimper in the chill. But the gringo?

Ramirez’s breath billowed before him. He fished in the brush with gloved hands until his finger closed on something taut; pulling, he opened a crude gate wrapped with an equally crude camouflage of brush to reveal a smaller road leading off the main track.

“She’s ready,” he called.

The truck eased through the gap, turning. It began to slip and drop. Oscar double-clutched as the vehicle tipped off; it seemed to fall, sliding down the incline in a shower of dust, coming at last to rest on an even narrower road. Ramirez swung the gate shut and scrambled down.

The truck picked its way down the switchback in the dark. Ramirez hung out of the cab, watching. It was tough work. Twice the fool Oscar almost killed them, halted by Ramirez’s cry,
“No! No!
Jesus Mary,” only inches before spilling them off into blank space. It was a younger man’s game and Ramirez’s heart beat heavily. Once he even walked ahead, aware of the dark peaks all around him, of the stars and the scalding cold air and the half-moon, whose presence unnerved him. He’d never been here before in the gray moonlight. He crossed himself and swore to light a candle at the shrine of the Virgin.

Finally he ordered, “Kill it.”

Ramirez climbed out of the cab and went back to the rear doors.

If you’re going to do it, here’s the time.

He took out the pistol. He opened the doors. He could smell the men inside, dense and close.

“Let’s go, little boys. Nothing but American money up
ahead,” he joked in Spanish, and stood back to watch them clamber gingerly out. They came one by one—five youngsters and an older man—shivering in the piercing cold. Ramirez waited, not sure what he would do.

He backed off a little and whispered, “Hey, gringo. Come ahead. We’re waiting. Cold out here.”

There was no sound from the truck.

“Hey? You fall out? What’s with this
hombre
, eh?” He leaned forward, into the interior, and could not quite make out if—

The blow smashed him to the earth. Before he could rise, the man was on him. He could feel a blade.

“Patrón, patrón!”
shouted Oscar, rushing to them with a shotgun.

The pistol was pried from Ramirez’s fingers; the man rose and stood back.

“Hey,” called Ramirez. “Don’t do nothing stupid. The gun is for your protection. From
federales.”

“What should I do,
patrón?”
asked Oscar.

“Tell him to drop that shotgun,” said the man.

“Drop it,” yelled Ramirez. The gun fell to the dust.

“Now get up,” the man said.

Ramirez climbed to his feet, shaking his head. He’d been hit with something heavy, something metal.

“I was just making sure you don’t bounce out,” he said. “Don’t do nothing crazy with that gun.”

The tall man tossed the pistol into the scrub. Ramirez marked its fall next to a saguaro cactus that looked like a crucifix. He could pick it up on the way back.

“Okay?” he asked. “No guns now. We’re friends.”

“Let’s go,” said the man.

Ramirez walked ahead, pushing through the knot of men. He didn’t wait to see what the tall man would do. He walked ahead a short way down a path, hearing them shuffle
into line behind him. The moon’s soft light turned the landscape to the color of bone. Ramirez turned.

He spoke in Spanish, quickly and efficiently.

“Now say it for me,” said the tall man. “I don’t have that language.”

“Just telling them how it goes from here. Two hundred meters down the slope. Then a flat place, over a dry creek, then through some trees. A gully, a last field to cross. Okay? No tricks. Just the truth, just a walk in the moon. Some
compadres
of mine wait on the other side. And you are with your Tio Sam, eh?”

“Then do it,” said the man.

Ramirez led them down the incline, thinking of himself,
stupid! stupid!
and trying not to mourn excessively the lost fortune. This
hombre
was a smart one!

The ground was stony and treacherous, strewn with cactus and jumping cholla and other bitter little plants, leather things that caught and tore at him. The feathery moonlight fell, light as powder. Ramirez licked his dry lips. The trees, twisted little oaks, were widely spaced among tufts and rills of scrub and he guided the clumsy party until at last they passed between the last of the trees and came to a stream, dry now, leaped the bed, and gathered finally at the edge of a moon-flushed meadow.

“Hold up,
muchachos,”
he called. He could hear them breathing laboriously behind him.

He scurried ahead. Here was the guarantee: a geographic freak in the landscape, where the underlying sandstone had been drained away until the land itself collapsed, forming this depression, this sudden, unexpected, unmapped flat stretch in the heart of otherwise impassable mountains. Accessible only by the lost road, it was a place where a man could walk across, where no fences had yet been built, where no border patrolman had ever set foot. He’d discovered it in 1963 and had been
guiding the drug shipments through since then, three, maybe four times a year, during the dark of the moon, and never been caught.

But never before in the moonlight. He glanced at the white thing above him, feeling its cold.

He crossed himself.

He peered ahead. A cool breeze pressed against his face.

He took a flashlight from his coat.

Out there, if the arrangements had worked, were two Americans awaiting his signal.

Holy Mother, let them be there. Let them be efficient, dedicated gringos who follow orders.

He blinked twice.

Come on, damn you. You had plenty of time to get ready. The money is good.

A minute passed.

Come on, damn you.

Two blinks in answer.

He scuttled back.