The Dead Women of Juarez

with trees and hardy grass. He saw tall, black-painted bars of a long steel fence marching parallel to their route and coils of barbed wire like the kind that guarded Juarez’s civil buildings.

The more open the drive became, the farther back Enrique fell until the truck was barely visible ahead of him. He almost didn’t notice the truck turn until he came closer and closer to where it stopped. There was nowhere else to go; he pulled over onto the shoulder and hoped no one would look back.

A bright white gatehouse broke the line of the steel fence, the roof cupped and spired like a little church. An armed guard in a uniform went to the truck’s window and even from a distance Enrique recognized Ortiz speaking to the man. A moment passed and the ornate gate swung wide. The truck passed through. The way was closed behind.

Enrique turned his eyes to hills. There were more trees here than anywhere along the way and the rolling terrain was greened. Great houses were stashed here and there among the woods, shockingly bright lawns carved out of mesquites and live oaks to go along with white pillars and many windows. There was also a long pool of grass that could only be a golfing fairway. The black pick-up vanished up the road and didn’t reappear.

The gatehouse held three men with truncheons and rifles. They looked out through green-tinted windows at Enrique’s car as it approached and this time two emerged when he drew to a stop before the high gates.

“Excuseme,” Enrique said.

“Turn around,” said one of the guards.

“I was wondering: what is this place?”

The guard drew his truncheon from his belt. The other one held a gun. “I won’t tell you again, pendejo. Back up and turn around.”

“I’m with the police.”

Enrique showed the men his identification. The one with the truncheon stiffened. The second retreated to the gatehouse. Enrique saw the third talking on a telephone.

When the second man returned, he was no longer armed. He spoke quietly to the first and the truncheon went back in its loop. “What can I do for you?” the guard asked then.

“What is this place?”

“Los Campos,” the first guard replied.

Enrique nodded. “I’ve heard of it. Listen: I’d like to ask you about the truck that came through here before.”

“We don’t talk about visitors,” the second guard said. “It’s not allowed.”

“You don’t have to tell me any secrets; I know it was Senor Ortiz,” Enrique said. “I just wanted to know, does he live here?”

The guards smirked at each other. The first shook his head. “No, he’s only visiting.”

“May I ask who?”

“He comes to see Senor Madrigal,” the first guard said, and the second elbowed him sharply. “Though I didn’t tell you that.”

“Your secret is safe with me,” Enrique said pleasantly. “As long as you can keep a secret for me.”

“What’s that?”

“Don’t mention I was here.”

“I don’t even know you,” the guard replied.

“Very good,” Enrique said. He put his car in reverse. “Thank you for your help, gentlemen.”

He turned away from the gates of Los Campos and felt the guards’ eyes on him as he pulled a u-turn in the road. They were still watching him as they shrank away in his rear-view mirror, and then both the men and the gate were gone.

Enrique did not know Los Campos specifically, but he knew of communities like it. They dotted the territory around Ciudad Juarez, well away from the unpleasantness of the city center, the crime and the violence. The big houses were owned by the men who ran the maquiladoras or made it in some other business. Some were ranchers whose holdings were hundreds of miles away. Others still made all their money across the border in the United States, but kept their wealth away from American tax collectors.

Ortiz was not wealthy enough to live in one of these places. This Enrique knew before he even asked. The men and women of the gated communities drove Bentleys and Mercedes and didn’t share the cab of a pick-up truck with anyone. It was doubtful any of them had even so much as touched the seat of the pick-up truck, or would even come near one.

He tried calling Sevilla again, but again there was only voice mail. “Call me when you have a chance,” Enrique said, and tossed the phone back on the seat beside him.

Enrique was excited, but he also felt a fool. He was full of inquiries and mismatched information and names and faces he didn’t know. For hours Carlos Ortiz was a ghost to him and then suddenly he was there, dining with Captain Garcia and patrolling the city as if he were tax collector to some great lord who owned all he surveyed.

The thought gave him pause. Enrique looked toward the fence still rolling past him, marking off land no one visited and where no house was built. There were not even roads leading there to make the promise of new life. The people of Los Campos owned the space because they could own it and not for any other reason.

He wanted to call Sevilla a third time, but he would wait. Instead he drove.

EIGHTEEN

AT EL CERESO EVERYONE GOT A little and no more: a little space, a little time, a little safety. Even those prisoners injured in one way or another got little attention, though the most serious were kept in a segregated unit of eight beds. Esteban was one of the eight, shuffled to and from the mess hall on a staggered schedule that kept the badly hurt inmates from being caught in the crush of the meal line, but still dining among the rest.

They were the walking wounded of El Cereso, with their broken bones and stitches. Esteban’s cast reached from the tips of his fingers to the middle of his upper arm. He hobbled because his legs were still sore from the beatings and his joints ached from being twisted until they nearly came loose of their sockets.

Eye contact was frowned upon in any part of the jail, and the medical exceptions were doubly bound. The others knew that these men had more space, more freedom, more quiet, than all the rest. Those who had little hated those who had more and it did not enter into their minds that abundance was bought with extreme suffering.

Esteban balanced his food tray on the artificial bend of his cast arm. He couldn’t hold it out the way the others did and the men behind the steam trays grumbled and cursed because this meant a smidgen of extra work. “Why don’t you break your other arm already?” one of the mess workers asked and then slopped black beans on the tray. “Then some pretty nurse can come feed you.”

To this and other things Esteban said nothing.

He was gone from El Cereso and the interrogation rooms and the prisoners and the guards and the police. He was gone from the city entirely. His body operated automatically, put food into itself without any guidance and did the little things to maintain itself simply because some part of Esteban’s brain knew they needed doing. He was by the concrete skate ponds of Parque Xtremo, shaded by the climbing tower. He ate spicy tamales, drank beer or got high and he talked to his best friend, the gringo.

Sometimes when it was quiet and Esteban had no demands except to lie on his bunk and be alone, his talks with Kelly roved far and wide. Sometimes they were fanciful. He imagined there was a wedding in Kelly’s future, and though it seemed a womanly thing to do, they talked about who would be there and where the honeymoon would be and then, when all the pageantry was over, when the children would come.

“I’ll be a good uncle,” Esteban said. “I’ll spoil them terrible. ‘?Tio Esteban, Tio Esteban! ?Que tu nos trajo?’ And I’ll give them candy and all kinds of shit. That’s what uncles do.”

Kelly agreed that was what uncles do. They gave knee rides and brought puppies as surprise birthday gifts. They took nephews fishing and sometimes for their first, secret beer. These were the things Esteban looked forward to doing when Kelly and Paloma were married.

In the mess hall Esteban sat with the other invalids and ate his food. He stared past the tray and past the scratched metal surface of the table and to a winding, sun-soaked road leading south toward warm water and