The Dead Women of Juarez

“Kelly, look at me.”

Kelly opened his eye and he saw Sevilla wreathed in smoke. The man was haggard, sweating. Something thumped hard against the wall behind Sevilla and the blinds jumped. “I did not kill her,” Kelly repeated.

“Paloma didn’t kill herself, Kelly. And the men in charge… the man they see is a drug addict working with a known narcotraficante. They know about the heroin, Kelly. They know about Esteban and Paloma and how the money came. They know you can’t go back to the States. All of this they know, and yet now they must take your word for something so serious? Think about it, Kelly. Think about it and save your life.”

“What will you do?”

“Whatever I can do.”

“That’s not enough.”

“That’s all you get,” Sevilla said, and for an instant Kelly saw Ortiz in Sevilla’s place, and smelled beer and limes.

“Goddammit.”

“All these years, Kelly, I’ve been watching you, talking to you… but we were never friends. I always liked you, or maybe I just felt sorry for you.”

“Fuck you.”

Sevilla dismissed Kelly with a wave of his cigarette. “And then you had Paloma. Of course, she was a drug dealer’s sister and I know when she went with Esteban to visit their ‘cousin’ in Mazatlan they were really making contact with Esteban’s supplier. What, you didn’t know this? I’m surprised at you, Kelly.”

Kelly wanted to spit on the table, but his mouth was dry and tasted of blood. “I don’t believe a goddamned word of it,” he said.

“Believe it or don’t believe it,” Sevilla replied. “It’s true. I had no illusions about her or her brother, but her work — her real work, Kelly, not the other things – that was real. I told you before: you wouldn’t believe how much good she did.”

“I don’t want to talk about her anymore,” Kelly said.

“You need to tell me who did this to her, Kelly.”

“I can’t.”

“Because you’re still keeping secrets.”

“Because I don’t know.”

Sevilla stubbed his cigarette out on the table and tossed the butt into the corner. The weight beneath his eyes seemed to deepen. When he shook his head, Kelly thought Sevilla might weep.

“They come to me and they say here is the body, here are the terrible things that have been done and here are the men closest to her. In Juarez, you know, we are always looking for el extranjero, the monster we have never seen before who will do us harm, but we hurt ourselves so well, Kelly, we don’t need strangers. We are a city of dead women. We feed on our own.”

“I didn’t—” Kelly began.

“Okay,” Sevilla said. He put a hand up for silence. “Okay.”

Sevilla rose from the table. He came around and offered his arm. Kelly used the old cop like a crutch and they walked together to the covered window. Sevilla drew the blinds up. On the other side wasn’t sun or open space, but another room like this one.

Kelly recognized both policemen on the far side of the glass. One was young, maybe only twenty-five, soft in the middle and already beginning to lose his hair. The other was older, stronger and wore his mustache and graying hair like a military man. The older cop used his fists a lot. His name was Captain Garcia. The younger sometimes asked questions, though now he was silent.

Esteban sat between them with both hands cuffed to the table. Kelly saw the washbasin and the head-sack discarded in a corner. The table was washed in water turned pink with oozing blood. Esteban’s face was a welter of swelling and bruises. His lips were split a half-dozen times. He was stripped to the waist and his chest was badly marked.

“Wake up, asshole!” Captain Garcia shouted. He took Esteban by the scruff of the neck and pointed toward the window. Kelly saw Esteban’s eyes flickering, alive, and then he realized the window was just that, and not a two-way mirror. Kelly put his hand on the glass. “There’s your fucking friend, puto! What’s he going to do for you? ?Nada!”

“If you didn’t do it, then tell me who did,” Sevilla said in Kelly’s ear.

“I don’t know,” Kelly said.

“Enrique, go get it,” the older cop told the younger.

“You’re small fish, Kelly. I always told you that. Why did they kill her, Kelly? Give me names and it can be them in here instead of you.”

Kelly’s good eye stung with salt tears. “I don’t know,” he said.

The younger cop, Enrique, disappeared from sight. When he returned, he gave something to Captain Garcia. Kelly saw it when Enrique stepped away: a cut-down baseball bat wrapped in masking tape and stained by dirt and old blood. Esteban saw it, too; Kelly recognized fear, but Esteban didn’t plead.

“Don’t do this,” Kelly said instead.

“We aren’t doing this,” Sevilla replied. “You’re doing this.”

“Hold his goddamned hand,” the older cop told Enrique.

Kelly struck the window. The policemen ignored him. He tried to push away from Sevilla, but he was too weak and his uncooperative leg refused to hold his weight. Kelly sprawled against the glass and only Sevilla kept him from falling.

Enrique pinned Esteban’s right hand.

“You want to say something now?” Garcia asked.

“Chinga tu madre,” Esteban replied.

Captain Garcia raised the bat and Enrique looked away. Kelly could not.

One blow smashed three fingers and left them bent in different directions. Esteban screamed. Kelly felt it through the window, shaking the glass, or perhaps it was Kelly’s voice, because Kelly didn’t know himself anymore. The bat came down again and again and once more after that until there was torn flesh and pieces of shattered bone sticking out. Esteban’s pinky was mush, oozing blood and pink meat and flecks of white.

“Stop it! Stop it, goddammit, stop!”

“Make it stop, Kelly! Tell me who did it. If it wasn’t you, then who was it? Tell me, Kelly! I’m begging you, just talk.”

Kelly’s stomach turned over. He broke from Sevilla and toppled onto the floor spitting up bile and water and coral-colored foam. Kelly lunged for the closed door on all fours. He still heard the shrieking and the steady, crunching blows of the bat like a butcher at work.

Sevilla grabbed Kelly by the shirt and half-hauled him from the floor. Kelly swung wildly, felt his knuckles connect and then he was at the door. There was no handle on his side to grab. He pounded his fists against the metal. “Steban! Steban! Paloma, I’m so sorry. Lo siento, lo siento, lo siento.”

Kelly heard Sevilla yelling and the door suddenly bucked. He could not stand. The floor reached up for him. Two guards pushed in through the half-open door and then all Kelly saw and felt were clubs and boots and pain until everything went away.

THIRTEEN

HE AWOKE WITH SOMEONE FLICKING warm water on his face. His left eye still wouldn’t open. Concrete pressed against his wounds because Kelly was on the floor of his cell and not the bunk. He saw a thin, dark man in a white T-shirt and work pants with a metal bowl and dripping fingers. The T-shirt had a big, black peace symbol printed on it.

The man saw Kelly was awake. He smiled thinly and cast more water on him.

“It’s all right,” Kelly said.