The clock turned past eleven before he saw the truck. More than once he was told about Ortiz’s black pick-up truck, how clean and shiny it was, and the three bodyguards that came with him everywhere. The seats were leather and the fittings real, polished wood.
The truck stood sentinel outside another boxing gym, the third on Enrique’s list. It was not like the others, but had the appointments of a fitness club across the border. Through broad windows on the second floor Enrique saw men jogging on treadmills and on the first floor the entrance was inviting metal and glass. Sunlight glared off white-painted walls that also read BOXEO — SALUD — CALISTENIA — NAUTILUS.
Enrique saw the outline of two of Ortiz’s bodyguards through the heavily tinted windows of the pick-up’s king cab. Their engine idled and the tailpipe dripped condensation as the air conditioning ran. Enrique sweltered with his windows down. Heat rose in steady waves from the asphalt. He parked in a red zone and watched.
A part of him felt silly. In his time with the police Enrique had never sat on a stakeout or prowled the streets looking for suspects. He went from the academy to administration, and though they issued him with identification and a pistol, there was a vast gulf between what he did and other cops did.
Garcia always made sure to point this out. “Don’t get the idea that you’re a real cop,” he said. “Real cops sweat. Real cops have blood on their hands. When you have blisters on your blisters from walking all day and your voice is too tired for you to say goodnight to your wife, then you’ll know.”
Enrique had no wife and no blisters. But still he sat and watched and for a long time nothing happened. His eyelids drooped.
Ortiz emerged from the building. Enrique didn’t know the man by sight, but there was no mistaking him: a man in a blazer and slacks, dwarfed by a long-limbed bodyguard in a dark athletic shirt. They moved to the pick-up and the bodyguard held the door for Ortiz. The man sat in the passenger seat. The guard went into the back.
They moved off and Enrique followed. His cell phone was on the seat beside him, and for a moment he considered calling Sevilla, but the truth was he had nothing to report. “I’m shadowing him,” he could say, but that was all. If he was pressed to arrest the man he couldn’t; sponsoring cocks was not illegal and nor was betting on them. Ask his fighters and Carlos Ortiz was a saint. Money to the managers of the athletic clubs where those fighters graced the ring bought still more praise.
The truck went north into the tourist areas and passed the Hotel Villa Manport. Suddenly Enrique knew where they were going, and when the truck glided to a stop alongside the coral-tiled facade of El Herradero Soto he saw he was right.
Everyone in Juarez knew the restaurant: the cheap, good food and the family atmosphere. The waiters brought pork skins and spicy red salsa to the table as an appetizer and their
Parking closely was out of the question. Enrique circled the block and found a lot with room. He hurried though he had no need to hurry; lunch at El Herradero was nothing to be done away with quickly.
The truck waited on the curb the way it waited at the boxing club. Enrique looked at the crowd of patrons, considering the wait and what he intended to do once he was inside. Did a real cop linger over a meal in the same dining room as his quarry? Should he just stand among the men waiting for food and look through the window? These things weren’t taught to him and he hadn’t learned them by experience. He knew where to file paperwork and the knowledge stung.
He was at the tail of the line when he saw Captain Garcia. The man crossed the street in front of the black pick-up. He thumped his hand on the truck’s hood and made a shooting gesture at the driver. If the driver did it back, Enrique couldn’t see.
There was nowhere to hide himself on the sidewalk except to hunker down below the line of heads. Enrique dropped his shoulders and slumped as if shot. He risked a look through the restaurant window and there was Ortiz in the back corner with his bodyguard at the same table. Garcia made his way across the dining room and joined them. Ortiz shook the cop’s hand and motioned for him to sit.
Enrique didn’t stay to see what they ate.
SIXTEEN
“THEY DELIVER BABIES IN THIS hospital,” Sevilla told Kelly.
If he heard, Kelly gave no sign. He was still and the only sounds that came from him were really from the machines that monitored him and fed him fluids and ensured he still took breaths when he should and his heart beat when it should.
They were alone. Even the police guard had gone because Kelly showed no sign of waking. The nurses asked Sevilla to turn off his cell phone and to refrain from smoking. He asked them where he could find something to drink and they brought him a tray with a carton of juice and a carton of milk. He hadn’t eaten breakfast or lunch and his stomach was empty.
When Sevilla spoke to Kelly he did so in English. This was always the way between them: to speak in English. With Juarez so close to America, so close that one block blended into the next, Sevilla did not understand why people didn’t learn the language of the north. Speaking Spanish and only Spanish in Ciudad Juarez was stubborn and prideful and Sevilla was having none of that; he spoke English with Americans whenever he met them, even if that English wasn’t always so perfect.
“My granddaughter wasn’t born here, of course,” Sevilla continued. “My wife and I, we talked about moving somewhere away from the city where we could keep a garden and maybe some goats. You can make good cheese from goat’s milk.”
The most livid of Kelly’s bruises were fading. He was healing, but he would not wake.
“Ofelia was my granddaughter’s name. Her father… we won’t talk about him. The last thing he gave us was little Ofelia and it was the best he could give. I don’t think he even came to visit her in the hospital. He never called Ana or wrote. For all I know he’s dead. I heard he moved to Monterey, but there’s no way to find out. I don’t care to.
“They were alike, Kelly, my Ana and Ofelia. You could tell just from looking at Ofelia that she would grow up like her mother to be full of life and happiness. And that is saying a great deal in this city. I don’t have to tell you.”
Sevilla worked the waxed cardboard of the drink cartons while he spoke, teasing the seams apart and slowly flattening them. His hands felt the need to do something while his body was still. The smell of disinfectant and the quiet scraped at his nerves; he could not stand to be here for very long.
“When Ana and Ofelia disappeared, of course we were worried. A mother and daughter don’t vanish. Not our Ana, anyway. That
“That was when we met Paloma. I knew her years before you did, Kelly. She and the other women, they made flyers for Ana and Ofelia and pressured the Procuraduria for answers. It made no difference to them that I was a policeman; they wanted only to help… and bring my girls home.”
He was silent a while then, just listening to the hushed functioning of the machines. Somewhere down the hall two nurses talked about another patient and then went on to complain about long hours and scheduling. Sevilla supposed such conversations were the same everywhere, even here.
“I wish you could talk to me, Kelly,” Sevilla said, and then he left.
SEVENTEEN
ORTIZ AND GARCIA ATE A LONG lunch together and then they parted. Enrique followed Ortiz; Garcia would go back to his office now and spend the afternoon with the internet. Enrique burst with questions he wouldn’t be able to ask.
He tried to call Sevilla, but there was no answer. The black truck led Enrique away from the tourist centers and away from the crowded heart of the city and even away from the
