The Dead Women of Juarez

FOUR

MORE THAN CHEAP FACTORY GOODS crossed the border from Ciudad Juarez into the States. Too many trucks and too many people meant too many places for dope to hide. The cops tried their best to catch the crooks, but it was a losing battle. More than that: it was a rout. Now the hardcore traficantes, the ones that came up in places like Mexico City, were even taking their fights and their weapons into Arizona, New Mexico and Texas.

Esteban’s product was weed, but he handled a little gumersinda from time to time. He knew Kelly was off the hard stuff, so when raw heroin came through he had one of his brown runners take care of it. Esteban showed respect for Kelly that way, and that was why they kept on together. That and because of Paloma.

Kelly carried a Reyes gym bag with boxing gear on top and a kilo of weed underneath. A setup like that could never make it past the border guards with their dogs and checklist of suspicious parcels, but for a gringo walking around here it was nothing a cop would glance at twice. Maybe not even once when Kelly had been through the grinder like the night before.

He came north, this time by bus, and then walked the rest of the way to a neighborhood so close to the border that he saw the lights of El Paso clearly. Every night was party night on these blocks, with white-boy tourist trash circling around the strip clubs and legal brothels getting drunker and drunker until they staggered back across the downtown bridge with their wallets and their pockets picked clean.

People knew Kelly here; at least enough to let him pass without trying to sell him fake Cuban cigars, flowers, Mexican fly and everything else under the sun. While the rest of Ciudad Juarez settled down for dinner and bed, these blocks hopped. This was where the city came close to being like all the other turista carnivals along the border, and why Kelly only came here when he was being paid.

The place was La Posada del Indio, the Inn of the Indian in English. A large animated neon cartoon Indian, complete with feather headdress of the kind never seen south of the border, marked the door. Inside it was no inn and was barely a saloon: tiny stage for a single dancing girl, a compact bar with two men doubling as bartenders and pimps, plus a dozen tables around which girls constantly circulated.

Kelly bought an overpriced cerveza from the bar. He didn’t attract a swarm of girls, either because of his looks or because they knew the score; La Posada del Indio was a good place to get business done, and the men who came for money instead of pussy had a certain air about them.

“?Usted esta buscando el hombre gordo?” the bartender asked Kelly.

“How did you know?” Kelly asked.

“He was waiting. You’re here.”

Kelly shrugged, but now Esteban would have to come up with a new place for a drop; they knew Kelly too well here. “So where is he?”

“He was waiting a long time. He got a girl.”

Kelly looked around the place for a fat man. Because it was midweek, most of the faces here were Mexican brown and bodies working-lean under the florid lights. Coming closer to the weekend the complexion would shift and the men would get doughier. There would be more cash changing hands, too.

“You want to get your dick sucked?” the bartender asked. “There is a girl, she’s new. She won’t mind your face.”

“No, thanks,” Kelly said. He unconsciously touched the tape on his nose. Even now, after a handful of aspirin, his face throbbed with his heartbeat. “What room did the fat man get?”

The bartender told him. Kelly finished his beer and went out the front door. A narrow alley brought him to the next street where a ramshackle apartment building with rusty iron balustrades sulked in darkness. Women and girls moved up and down concrete steps, leading men in and sending them away.

Kelly ignored the women and they did the same for him. In the bar they were selling, but back here it was business. He went to the third floor and rapped on the last door. He heard nothing from inside until a short, dumpy prostitute opened the door and then the sound of a television game show reached Kelly’s ears.

The woman was topless, dark skinned and had a heavy-featured, almost Indian look. She didn’t smile at Kelly. “What do you want?” she asked.

“He’s lookin’ for me, honey.”

Kelly saw the fat man on a little bed in the room. Light from the television made him seem pasty and blue. He reclined with his pants down around his knees and his cock was somewhere under a heavy pudding of fat.

He covered himself up when Kelly came in. The man wore a Texas State shirt half buttoned with a sweaty white tee underneath. Everything about him was large and fatty, including his hands. The woman put her blouse on.

“You want me to come back when you’re done?” Kelly asked the fat man.

“Nah.”

The fat man paid the woman off. They squabbled about the price because he hadn’t popped his nut. Kelly stood in the corner of the little room and stared into the bathroom; too small for a tub, it had a standing shower infested with roaches. A thick, brown carpet of shiny palmetto bugs gathered in the center around the drain. Kelly wondered whether they would scatter if he turned on the light over the sink and if they did, where they might go.

“You only going to pay me half?” Kelly asked the fat man.

“You got the full kilo?”

“Sure.”

“Then I got no complaints. Let’s see it.”

They left the television on and didn’t switch on a lamp. In the flicker of the tube, Kelly brought out the motivosa tightly wrapped in four flat packets of plastic film. He put the packets on the bed. The fat man took a roll of hundreds out of his pocket and counted out twenty. Then he took off his Texas State shirt.

“Want me to call the girl back?” Kelly asked.

“Funny,” the fat man said. He removed his T-shirt. His body wasn’t hairy, but it looked like it was melting; great folds of pallid flesh drooped from his frame. He had breasts bigger than a stripper.

Kelly took the two grand and recounted it. He put it in his breast pocket, zipped up his bag and prepared to leave. This was the awkward part; some buyers liked to chat, others were all about getting the hell out of there. Kelly preferred the latter. “You’re not gonna put it in a belt, are you?” he asked. “They watch for that.”

“Nah,” the fat man said. He palmed one packet of weed in one hand and lifted a roll with the other. Kelly imagined a musty smell. “Got my own safety deposit box.”

The fat man stowed the weed and put his shirts back on. Kelly couldn’t tell the difference.

“It’s a pleasure,” Kelly said at last. “I’m gonna go.”

“See you next time,” the fat man said. “I’m Frank.”

“Good luck, Frank,” Kelly said and he left.

His chances of seeing Frank again were slim. Every white guy with a dream of making a quick buck on a hop across the border had to try running a little motivosa, and the odds were good, but when the first batch sold and it was time for another run, nerves got the better of them. Would they make it? Could they make it? What if they didn’t make it? And that was that; the head game was harder than the deal.

Smart buyers and sellers used cutouts to divide the risk. The ones that came over themselves, like Frank, were amateurs. But so long as the money was good, there were no complaints from Esteban.

Kelly took a taxi home because it was late and he had money in his pocket. The ride was only five bucks.

In this neighborhood people went to bed early and got up before sunrise. All-night parties were for gringos and losers; around here people worked for a living, and they worked hard. To stay out of the city’s temporary suburbs of particleboard, cinder blocks and plastic everyone in a family had to work hard. It was the way.

He put the outside light on, just a bare yellow bulb without a fancy cover, and went inside to wait. He had