The Dead Women of Juarez

“Only if he wants La Bestia coming to visit him in his cell the way he did with Kelly. He’ll wish we had capital punishment again before it’s over.”

“You’re drunk,” Enrique said. “Goddammit.”

“I was just resting my eyes. I haven’t had anything to drink.”

The parking lot was busier now at the end of the working day with more trucks and more cars nosing up to the palenque. Looking at the place made Sevilla’s temples throb. He left the back seat and did his best to smooth the wrinkles in his suit jacket.

“Why do you want to meet with me if there’s no point? What have you been doing?”

“I have a name,” Sevilla replied. “Carlos Ortiz. Do you know it?”

“No. Should I?”

“He’s a fight-fixer. Kelly knew him. They were together before Kelly took to the needle again. The old man who runs Kelly’s gimnasio del boxeo said some things that made me think. Find out more about him.”

“Where will you be?”

“Home.”

FOURTEEN

HE WAS ANGRY AT HIMSELF FOR drinking and angrier still for lying about it. At least before, when Enrique had been in his home, Sevilla was honest enough to admit that he had drunk too much. That it was happening at all was bad enough. That he was hiding it was unforgivable. He felt Liliana’s eyes on him.

The edges of his attention were ragged as he drove and the headlights made his eyes water. He was glad to reach the safety of his street, and when he at last killed the engine he breathed a silent prayer of thanks.

He wasn’t ready to go in and face the empty house so he sat and stared out over the dashboard at the still avenue. The shootings and the killings of the Sinaloa and Gulf cartels’ war hadn’t ever broken the bubble around these houses. Other, older things had come to bear upon them, but the dead women of Juarez were invisible. Mujeres Sin Voces tried to change that, but the women in black could not be everywhere, standing silent vigil, forcing the feminicidios to the surface again.

Sevilla wasn’t aware of dozing; his eyes were still open. A sharp rapping on the glass of the driver’s side window made him twitch violently and a curse nearly escaped his lips. At first he didn’t recognize Adela de la Garza in the shadow on the sidewalk between telephone pole and car. She wore a hooded sweater that obsured her face.

First he made to open the door, but the woman motioned for him to stop. Sevilla wound the window down. “Senora,” he said, “what are you doing here?”

Adela looked both ways down the street. No one was there and still nothing moved. “I have a message from Ella. Ella Arellano. You wanted to talk to her, yes?”

“Si. Where is she? Her house—”

The woman thrust a folded piece of paper into Sevilla’s hand through the window. “Go to this church on Sunday. The first service. Someone will know you. She will take you to Ella.”

“Why has she gone into hiding? Was it Jimenez? Who is he working for?”

“She will tell you everything,” Adela replied. “I must go.”

“Wait,” Sevilla said. He clambered out of the car, but Adela was already out of earshot and moving quickly. She rounded the corner and by the time Sevilla reached it she was gone.

Under the light of a lamppost Sevilla read the name of the church. He didn’t recognize it. Once more he looked the way Adela had gone, but the woman did not reappear. Reluctantly he left the corner and returned to his home. It felt good to turn on the lamps and bathe the unchanged front room with golden illumination. For the first time the street outside his door had an unwelcome cast.

Again he read the name of the church, willing a picture of the place to rise in his mind’s eye. Nothing. He would have to ask someone, perhaps Enrique if he was not too busy with Ortiz. With nowhere else to put the paper, Sevilla tagged it to the front of his refrigerator with a magnet.

He took a shower because the dust of the palenque’s lot was still on him. He tried to remember all he could about Adela de la Garza’s face, the reflected light in her eyes, the hooded sweater pulled tightly around her like a shield. Of course there was fear, but it was fear with a shape and a name, not some nameless terror.

Senora Quintero never answered his phone message about Jimenez. Sevilla thought to call again, but it was too late in the evening. He passed on his nightly vigil on Ana’s bed, beside Ofelia’s crib, and went straight to his own room. Tomorrow he would visit Kelly at the hospital and then he would call Quintero again.

Despite the long, drunken nap of the afternoon, Sevilla fell asleep easily. He dreamed of battles and men without faces who brought their cocks to fight. One wore a suit and Sevilla knew this was Ortiz. The other dressed in the manner of a policeman and this was Jimenez. Still another had the body of La Bestia and stood guard over the others with his great fists. Though he had no eyes, he saw Sevilla watching, and though he had no mouth, he scowled.

FIFTEEN

IT TOOK THE BETTER PART OF THE morning before Enrique Palencia found Carlos Ortiz.

He made some excuses to Garcia about an appointment with the dentist and went first to the nearest athletic club he knew of, a place where there was boxing two Friday nights a month. There he spoke to the manager.

“Of course I know him,” the man said. “He has the best new talent. It’s his bankroll, you see. Sometimes it’s hard for a fighter to find time to train. Ortiz can arrange that.”

“What does he get?”

“Twenty percent of their earnings. From here that’s not so much, but once he takes his fights to the States he gets much more. In Juarez the top fights pay less than the midcard in California or Texas.”

Enrique made a note of this. “He goes across the border often?”

“All the time. I hear he has many apartments there. He likes to entertain. That’s how he made his mark, you know: arranging parties.”

“I didn’t know,” Enrique said.

The manager went on to tell Enrique more about Ortiz’s fighters, hungry young men from the rough spots in the city, and how they were intensely loyal to him. Better yet, Ortiz was loyal to them, something that wasn’t always the case among managers. Trainers were bound to fighters for the life of a fighter’s career and sometimes even longer, but managers came and went without so much as a farewell.

“That’s Ortiz’s secret, you see,” the manager said. “He has friends.”

From the athletic club Enrique went to a restaurant where Ortiz sometimes held court and from there to a boxing gym. Here he saw some of Ortiz’s fighters, lean and hard like street dogs. Some had jailhouse tattoos Enrique had seen on the arms and backs of convicts in the system, but these men worked as diligently at their training as all the others.

Ortiz’s path led into the tourist districts and out again. The strip clubs and brothels were open in the day for those turistas enterprising enough to cross the bridge and secure a deal, but without the veneer of night to hide peeling paint and chipped wood the streets were sad, deflated somehow. Neon lights were on, hidden by the sun’s glare. Even a short overcast rain would be enough to restore some mystery, but it was not coming.

Enrique didn’t know any businessman who had no office and went the places Ortiz did. Everyone knew him, but outside of the fight venues they were circumspect about how. When they saw Enrique’s badge their faces closed and the questions were harder to find answers for. They told him Ortiz didn’t deal drugs, and this Enrique believed. Drugs in Ciudad Juarez were the province of gangs in and out of prison and the frontline troops of the cartels moving north and east. Drug dealers of the city didn’t wear suits or dine at the Montana Restaurant on steak and baked potatoes. Perhaps elsewhere they did such things, but this was Mexico and the rules were different.