Do They Know I'm Running

salvatruchos got us.”

“Tio, who knows what El Chusquero’s really up to here? He’s not doing this out of kindness, it’s going to cost. And Happy made it clear, there’s no more money. This last payment’s the end.”

“Maybe we could work something out.”

“No, Tio, listen to me. I know how the guy thinks. He’ll strand us in the middle of nowhere till we pay. And let me repeat: There is no more money.”

“So you’re okay then with handing that girl over to some padrote.” Pimp.

“Good God, how can you say such a thing? I just-”

“We’re not going to have a lot of choices. This one presents itself. I say we consider it. Unless you-”

Tio Faustino broke off his sentence, stiffening imperceptibly, eyes veiled. He seemed to be saying, Don’t look. Shortly, however, the newcomer who’d caught his eye was grabbing a nearby chair, dragging it over to their table through the gravel. Finally, as the chair came close and the stranger plopped down, Roque glanced his direction.

Twenty-Seven

HE WAS HANDSOME LIKE AN EXOTIC ANIMAL, LATE TWENTIES, indio features and muscular, his flat bronze face astonishingly smooth-skinned. His arms were tattooed but his hands, his face, his neck were clear. He wore a Giants cap and an immaculate T-shirt.

“Roque, Faustino-hey.” Their names rolled off his tongue naturally, without affected familiarity. “I’m Beto, your guia. Take you from here to Agua Prieta.”

Roque remembered the name, he was Lonely’s man in Tecun Uman. His English was solid, the accent soft, that lilting musicality few Latinos lost.

Beto gestured to the Indian woman working refreshments for a third tamarindo. She dug one from her cooler, tottered over, money changed hands. It gave everyone a second to think.

Finally, Tio Faustino said, “You’ve lived in the States.”

Beto laughed. “Yeah. Up around Salinas.” He fussed with the straw for his tamarindo, punctured the plastic bag, took a sip. “Worked construction, I was a carpenter, till I got snagged running a stop sign. Believe that? Bad luck, man. Now I can’t go back for ten years.” He checked out the patio area, then a shoulder roll, a bodybuilder tic. “Getting used to it here. Life’s okay. And who needs the constant paranoia, right? Crazy back there now.”

Roque said, “Look, we don’t know who we’re supposed to be dealing with.”

“Nothing’s changed.” Beto’s eyes darted between Roque and Tio. “We’re good to go.”

Tio Faustino said, “How did you know where to find us?”

“This shithole?” Beto glanced up at the cracked and moldy stucco wall of the posada. A large black pijuyo perched on the edge of the roof. “This is my town. What goes on here’s my business. Look, you guys paid for us to get you to the States. That’s what I’m here to do, my leg of the trip anyway.”

A group of Mayan women in traditional traje wandered into the courtyard from the street, clearly lost. With birdlike titters they bowed a group apology, turned around, vanished.

“This is the one day of the year you can cross over without showing documents,” Beto said, explaining the crowds. “There’s another fair right across the river. Mexicans come here, Guatemaltecos go there, trade goods, just for the day. Try to get farther than Tapachula, they’ll nail you. But you should see the mob down along the river. Hundreds of people, these crappy little rafts, scrap wood lashed to inner tubes. It’s nuts.”

“It hasn’t been the easiest trip for us, either.” Roque ignored a warning glance from his uncle. “But you probably know that.”

Beto smiled acidly, then glanced around again, making sure no one was in earshot. “Captain Quintanilla, that what you mean?”

“We never heard him called anything but El Chusquero.”

Beto shook his head, whispered, “El Choo-scay-ro,” like the punch line to a raunchy joke. “Toad-faced fuck. You realize that whole ambush on the road was a hoax, right? Those guys at the roadblock, they were his men, I don’t care what he told you.”

Roque and Tio Faustino sat there, taking that in. Finally, Tio Faustino said, “They got shot. Two of them. Straight to the head.”

“No, trust me.” Beto tottered his fingers, a puppeteer.

“That makes no sense,” Roque said, at the same time realizing it was possible. He hadn’t seen the shootings up close, everybody else ducking down inside the car, terrified. “Why go to all that trouble just to kidnap us anyway?”

“Who knows what goes through that sick fuck’s head? I’m telling you it was bogus. Captain Quintanilla’s way of amusing himself, jerking the chain, adding a tax for moving you through Jutiapa. He makes it look like a gang thing. Something goes wrong, one of you dies, he can walk away, hang it on us.”

Tio Faustino sat back in his chair. “I can’t believe this.”

“Now, let me guess, I’ll bet he’s pushing to get you to cross over to Oaxaca with his people here. Don’t do it, my friends. You’ll die.”

Beto struggled for a notepad stuck in his back pocket. A pencil stub was fastened to it with a rubber band. He opened it to a page where there was a crude map of the coast.

“They’ll send you by boat. Pick you up around here,” he pointed with the pencil, “little outside Champerico, take you to a huequito, a little smuggler’s cove, outside Puerto Escondido. That’s what they say. But how you supposed to get the rest of the way through Mexico?”

“They told us they’d take us overland,” Tio Faustino said, “all the way to the States.”

Beto tossed the pencil down. “Seriously? They tell you two boats, two whole boats, just vanished the last couple months? They tell you fifteen poor fucks drowned just last week? What was left of the boat washed up in pieces. Shit that floats outta Haiti’s got better rep than that.”

High in the conacaste branches, a zanate cawed. The pijuyo on the roof’s edge fled. The zanate swooped down, took its place, a leathery curl of something, flesh maybe, in its talons.

Tio Faustino said, “How are we supposed to trust you?”

“Look, you paid, everybody got his slice, we’ll get you home, okay? El Chusquero on the other hand.” He sat back, crossed his arms, biceps popping. Not carpenter muscle. “Guy’s a bug eater, know what I’m saying?”

Roque told himself not to fall for this but it was seductive. It didn’t just sound like the truth, it was the truth, as far as he knew it. But what con wasn’t salted with truth, how else would suckers buy into the bullshit? He was tired of being a sucker. “Why believe you, not these other guys? You were supposed to get us this far. Look what happened.”

“Wanna go by boat? Fucking be my guest. But say they get you to Puerto Escondido-and that’s a big if, okay? Like I said, you got the whole rest of Mexico to get through. They say they’ll take you overland, sure, and hit you up every step of the way, one leg of the trip after the next. Pay or get left there, stranded, and hold on to your ass so it don’t blow away. That what you want? You’ve already paid. Why pay twice, three times, four?”

“That would’ve been nice to hear before I had to beg twenty grand more off my cousin. So going by boat’s no good. What’s your plan?”

Beto opened his notebook to another page, another rough map. “Know what we call Chiapas? The Beast. More arrests there than anywhere. If it ain’t the federales, it’s the Mexican la migra. If it ain’t them it’s the paramilitaries, the vigilantes. And yeah, I’ll admit it, the maras prey on the poor fuckers too. You pay for protection or you just fucking pay, all right? The way to get through Chiapas, honest to God, is you walk or take the bus. Both, actually.” Again, using the pencil as pointer: “There are checkpoints along the way. Tapachula, Huixtla, Escuintla, Pijijiapan, Tonala, Arriaga. You have to know where the roadblocks are or you’ll still be on the bus when it gets stopped. No documents? Too bad. Get sent right back where you came from.