Do They Know I'm Running

messed up.”

Godo’s pocked face looked like a mask in the candlelight. “My hand’s fine.”

“Wrapped up like that?”

“I can carry my weight.”

“I wanted you kept out of it.”

Godo chewed on that for a bit. “You ashamed of me?”

“I’m trying to be thoughtful, pendejo. Everything you been through?”

“You my mother now?”

Drop it, Happy told himself. “That’s not my point.” He glanced up at the watery shadows again, feeling as though, if he stared long enough, they might speak. “You still get nightmares?”

Godo reached beneath his cot. “You know I do. And not just at night.” He checked the duffel holding his guns. “Thing back in Crockett eating you?”

Happy wanted to close his eyes but felt afraid. He could hear the dying man’s blood, smell the girl’s screams. “Stuff just comes out of nowhere.”

Godo settled back on his own cot, lacing his fingers beneath his head. “Sorry to tell you this, cabron, but that’s gonna be part of the mental furniture from now on.” He nudged off his shoes. “Welcome to the house.”

Thirty-Nine

THEY HIT THEIR FIRST CHECKPOINT WITHIN HALF AN HOUR OF setting out, between Puente Copalita and the turnoff to the beaches at Huatulco. Contrary to Bergen’s prediction, he wasn’t waved breezily through. He was directed to the berm. He was told to have everyone step out of the van.

Roque was struck by how young the soldiers looked; even the lieutenant interrogating Bergen appeared to be no older than twenty. He reminded himself of Sisco’s advice regarding moments like this-keep smiling-as he watched a German shepherd sniff the undercarriage of the Eurovan, straining his leash. Meanwhile, maybe twenty feet away, a group of especially entrepreneurial local women dressed in festive pozahuancos were selling fruit, snakes, even an iguana on a rope, in the event the detainees might want to take the opportunity for some impulse shopping. One woman waved frantically at a cluster of bees swarming her bucket of sweet panochas. It was midmorning, still reasonably mild with the breeze off the ocean, but Roque couldn’t help himself, he was sweating like a thief.

The pimpled soldier who took his passport flipped to the border stamps.-You’ve come up from El Salvador, through Guatemala.

His voice was reedy with forced authority. Roque acknowledged the observation while the soldier checked his face and arms for tattoos, told him to open his shirt so he could inspect his torso as well. Roque obliged: clean. The young soldier, expressionless, handed back his passport, then moved on to Samir.

Thanks to Beto’s compas in Tecun Uman, both the Arab and Lupe had voter registration cards from Veracruz, mocked up with the obligatory lousy picture, one of the few ways the salvatruchos had actually come through. Bergen, fearing their accents might nevertheless give away the charade, had enlisted the company of a frog-faced local named Pingo who, as far as Roque could tell, was on board chiefly to blow smoke.

– We’re headed for Nogales, get work permits from the union, you know? He almost crackled as he talked, mesmerist eye contact, homely smile.-Gonna pick cantaloupes in Yuma. Used to be you had to go through recruiters, couple hundred a permit, goddamn shakedown. With the union, the growers pay. For real. Least that’s how it’s supposed to work. Not like the recruiters gonna cave without a fight. Fucking gangsters. Couple union dudes been shot, I heard.

The pimply soldier paid Pingo little mind, choosing instead to glance back and forth-Samir’s face, his ID picture, looking for something, lingering, then all of a sudden handing the voter reg card back. Moving on to Lupe he repeated the process, mimicking his own actions so unimaginatively Roque caught on finally it was all just mindless rote. The guy barely glanced at Pingo’s ID. Roque felt his shoulders unbind.

Then the lieutenant told Bergen to open the back of the van.

The whole reason the American was traveling north was to deliver a vanload of art to a dealer he knew in California. That was his story, anyway.

– You know how it is, Captain, he told the lieutenant, ever since the troublemakers caused all the problems here in Oaxaca, the tourist trade has dried up. No one comes to the galleries anymore. You have some of the most talented artists in the region on the verge of going broke. He removed a cardboard tube from the back, popped open one end, shook out the canvas that was rolled up inside.- Here, let me show you something.

The lieutenant nosed around the boxes of tin ornaments, copal wood carvings, hand-painted masks and figurines, ceramic bowls and pitchers, then called for the dog handler to bring the shepherd around. The animal hiked his forepaws onto the bumper, probed the nearest boxes with his snout.

Bergen, undeterred, unrolled the painting.-Look at that. The colors remind me of Chagall. But the artist is from here, just over the mountain in Zimatlan. Now here’s a question for you, Captain: How much do you think this painting is worth? He paused, as though to give the lieutenant time to think, playing the thing out, milking it.-Up north, it will fetch five thousand dollars. Five thousand. Imagine what that means to this artist and his family.

Roque had to grant the man his bullshit. What he was leaving unsaid was that the artists whose work he was carrying north had exclusive contracts with fiercely competitive local galleries. You could get blacklisted if any of the curators figured out they were getting backdoored. But nothing was moving here and the artists had mouths to feed, supplies to buy. So on the sly Bergen had offered to broker their work to a gallery in Santa Monica, for which he was getting three times the normal commission-calculated on the 500 percent markup on the other end-but what could they do? A smaller slice of something still beat a bigger slice of nothing.

The point, though, was Bergen had an angle. God only knew what else he was up to, Roque thought, half expecting the German shepherd to alert on the boxes piled in back-there’d be pot or scag or crank in there, courtesy of Bergen’s old paymasters, maybe Pingo the joker.

The dog dropped down onto the pavement. No alert. The lieutenant curtly gestured the American and his curious pack of fellow travelers back onto the road, then marched toward the next waiting vehicle, his retinue of baby-faced soldiers traipsing along behind.

Bergen rolled up his painting and suggested with a glance that everyone climb back into the Eurovan with as much oomph as they could muster. As they pulled onto the highway, he studied his rearview mirror and said, “My guess is that’s the worst we’ll have to handle.”

“That’s not what you said before.” Sitting in back on the passenger side, Roque leaned out his window, tenting his shirt to dry his skin. “You said they’d just wave us through.”

“I made no promises.”

“Yeah. I can see why.”

To the west, immaculate beaches melted away into emerald green water frothed with surf. Pelicans strafed the waves for food. The southern end of the Sierra Madres dropped into the sea. Roque wished he could enjoy it all but he could only think of who wasn’t there to enjoy it with him. He’d abandoned his uncle to a lonely grave, far from everyone he loved. It brought to mind his strained conversation with Happy. So much anger, so little grief, but that was hardly surprising. Things have taken an odd turn, he’d said, there might be a bug on Tia Lucha’s phone. What had they gone and done, why head for Agua Prieta? And whose side would they take when it came time to talk El Recio into letting Lupe go?

Tourists:

Oaxaca is Temporarily Closed.

It will Reopen as Soon as There is Justice.

“That reminds me,” Bergen said. “I did a little nosing around about what happened to you folks on the highway the other night. Appears you were mistaken for somebody else. The governor here is facing something that, in its