Virtual Virgin

unzipped purse while her eyes were closed, getting pretty. Back out in the still-sizzling late afternoon sun, I collected my furry escort.

Tourists from the United States weren’t subjected to as much scrutiny as those wanting in. Still, me and Ashley’s tourist card, which allowed a stay of more than seventy-two hours, merited a hard look. My small backpack got a total feeling up. Martinez was a surname that could cut both ways.

“Researcher?” the border guard asked.

“I hope to become a reporter, meanwhile I tote and type up things on my laptop for the glamour guys and gals on camera.”

My notebook computer was getting a thorough check too.

“A woman crossing over alone with night coming on . . . that’s beyond dangerous.”

“I’m meeting the crew right on the other side.”

“Anybody who goes into Juarez these days is crazy.”

“I get you. Hopefully they’ll give me a ton of stories to file and I’ll be back over tomorrow.”

“Trust no one.”

“Thank you, sir.” I accepted custody of my phony tourist card and backpack. “I don’t.”

Crossing the bridge, I was charmed to see Mexican children of all ages wading in the Rio Grande shallows as the shadows lengthened. I paused to enjoy the evidence of kids playing in these brutal times in this godforsaken city.

I noticed a small boy holding a squirming puppy maybe six weeks old. How cute, how sweet . . . I’d never seen Quicksilver at that age. A lump thickened in my throat to see innocence in a war zone.

The boy hefted the pup and threw it far out into the river.

No!

I breathed again to see the tiny head surface. The pup swam hard back toward the shore and the boy . . . when it got there, it was again picked up and thrown into the current. Again blind instinct homed it right back to its tormenter.

I curled my fingers in the cyclone fence towering over the walkway. “No!” I cried.

The child looked up, grinned, bent to pluck the tiny pup from the water, and threw it in farther. Even at such a young age, the puppy regarded a human as its pack leader and would return, no matter what.

Already the cultural divide was staring me in the face. Small boys could be cruel, but moreso in a land where families were gunned down and men dumped in acid and beheaded and young women tortured and raped and buried in the surrounding desert. This was where Ric had been sold into slavery by his own kin at the age of four, long before the cartels had become so unbelievably brutal and bold.

“No,” I screamed again, pulling American bills out of my backpack and rolling them up to stuff them between the twisted wires, hoping they’d drift down to the kid, bribe him to be good. He knew he was upsetting the privileged americana. The puppy would soon tire, sink, and be swept away.

In the middle of the broad river another puppy paddled along, it too heading for the tormenting boy. Was an entire litter being slowly drowned? With human life so cheap, I was witnessing the ghastly trickle-down effect.

The next dog-paddler finally reached shallower water. The forehead I’d spotted rose slowly out of the water. A huge canine body came lumbering onto the shore, the water-logged pup a dripping, scruff-of the-neck burden in the big jaw’s delicate grip.

Quicksilver!

Quick dropped the exhausted puppy on the sandy shore, then stood to his full height and shook the water from his fur until his wolfish hackles stood high and almost dry. His jaws grabbed the boy by the scruff of his T-shirt, and, with one toss, hurled him into the river deep enough to sink and rise and tread water, then swim furiously for a distant shoreline.

A preteen girl who’d been watching the entire drama got the courage to wade ashore and cradle the rescued puppy.

Quick gave one wolfish howl that made every playing child pause in saucer-eyed awe. He spun and streaked away, the sunset haloing his fur with an eerie rose-silver light. I was sure the kids had a new legend to report to their families: seeing the guardian spirit of the river who tolerated no rough play with helpless animals.

Awesome work, dude.

Since Quick was my guardian spirit too, I wondered how or when we’d reconnect.

I finished crossing the bridge, newly wary. This was not Texas anymore. Soon I was swallowed into the crowded commercial streets of the city. Restaurants along the main drag were lighting up for the evening, with hookers appearing in shady doorways. I wondered that they dared, but need drove them to risk being inevitable targets. Or their pimps did.

Low-rider cars, rusted and burned-out American classics like Dolly, and taxis loaded with American tourists, cruised by the women, seeking sex, or even a murderous desert rendezvous, for the night.

I walked briskly, hunting the motel I’d found on the Internet.

Sounds of merciless male laughter and gunshots punctuated the growing dusk.

Cars idled alongside me, male passengers shouting out words I’d seen only in my street Spanish dictionary, mostly puta for prostitute. How did the young women who had to work in the border’s American factories put up with such nightly harassment? Puppies and women didn’t fare well here, and the cartels’ Reign of Terror only upped the atrocities.

No wonder Ric hadn’t wanted me here, but he didn’t realize how far I’d gone to save his life. I wasn’t going to let him lose it now. I’d probably already crossed any normal line between life and death to keep him here and with me.

A scabrous nineteen-seventies Chevy had blocked my path.

“Get in,” a voice ordered in English.

Uh, no.

“Puta!” another male voice labeled me.

I looked around. People filled the street. Nobody glanced toward the calls or the car. Or me.

Okay.

I kicked the opening passenger-side door shut on the emerging man. He yowled at his smashed hand, cursing with impressive bilingual zest. Meanwhile, I dashed into the slow-moving traffic, doing the paso doble through a sluggish parade of big old heavy cruising Detroit metal, ending up on the opposite side of the thoroughfare and down a side street.

Cars thronged the main streets. Here people crowded these narrow side streets, too many to permit rapid changes of direction. I returned my attention to locating the Motel de los Flamencos Rosas. That echo of the Strip’s venerable Flamingo Hotel had somehow seemed comforting.

Someone bumped my backpack. I whirled, ready to fight for my vital belongings.

Quicksilver, dry and bright-eyed, grinned back at me.

No one would dare call me puta now.

Ducking into the doorway of a closed dentist’s office, I pulled his collar from the backpack.

“Here’s your brand of silver mojo,” I said, buckling it around his neck.

Under my fingers, the silver circles swiftly shrank to three-quarters full to mimic the moon’s current phase. The collar’s “coins” tracked the moon’s phases, a phenomenon I didn’t understand but accepted, like many eerie happenings these days.

“Come on,” I told Quick, standing. “I’ve got a motel reservation. You’ll have to wait outside while I claim it, but then you’ve got an inside bunk.”

ACTUALLY, I’D LIED. I just wanted to claim a roof in Juarez with a key to a door. Sleep wouldn’t come until much later.

“Quick, I need you to track down Ric and Leonard Tallgrass,” I said after I sat, gingerly, on the one lumpy armchair in the motel room. “I couldn’t bring any weapons across the border into Murder City, so it’s just you and me.”

I pulled my leather workout gloves from my pack while the silver familiar arranged itself into a major spiked forearm band on my left arm. The left one. I knew why: so I could grab cartel killers with my right hand and put their brutal faces through the cheese-parer of metal on my opposite arm. Mean place, mean weapons.