The Dead Women of Juarez

“There has to be more.”

“Maybe. Why should I tell you?”

“Because you have to tell someone.”

“Do I? I haven’t told anyone anything for years. Why should I start now?”

Enrique took a slow breath, let it out. “Because I’m asking.”

They were quiet a while. Enrique got the sense that Rojas was taking his measure the way convicts did in prison. Some things were the same in America as they were in Mexico.

“Gabriel liked to party,” Rojas said again, and then he was silent, thinking. “It started when I came down to Juarez to visit him. He would set things up.”

“Drugs?”

“Yes.”

“Who supplied you?”

“Different people at first. Then Gabriel got a steady source.”

“What was his name? Do you know?”

“Esteban.”

“Esteban Salazar?” Enrique asked, and his heart sped.

“I don’t know his last name. He was the one who started to bring in the heroina. Before that it was just cocaine, marijuana, that kind of stuff.”

“He got you hooked.”

“Not me. Gabriel. We used to get drunk and stoned and so did the girls.”

“Prostitutes?”

“Not always.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean they were whores, but sometimes they had to be convinced of it.”

Enrique tried to keep an expression from his face even though he felt himself twisting. There was a suggestion of something in Rojas’ eyes that he didn’t like, a black glittering as he remembered.

“We used to get help from a friend of Gabriel’s father. His name was Ortiz, I think. Sometimes he would party with us.”

“And at these parties you raped women?”

“Yes.”

“How long did this go on?”

“A few months.”

“How much did Esteban Salazar know about this?”

“I don’t know. Enough. He stayed once or twice, but he didn’t like it when things got rough. I told him not worry about it. Poor girls, who are they going to tell?”

Enrique swallowed.

“Eventually he stopped coming and he stopped selling chinaloa to Gabriel. That made him mad.”

“What did he do?”

“He complained to Ortiz. Ortiz had the muscle to solve problems.”

“But he didn’t kill Esteban.”

“No. Gabriel said Esteban had a sister. Even narcos have soft spots, you know?”

“She would be harassed?”

“Sure.”

“Killed?”

“I couldn’t say.”

Enrique continued: “Then you went to the United States?”

“I had to get back to my business in Santa Fe. Gabriel, he had money to burn, but I had to earn a living, you know? I couldn’t just party all the time.”

“Gabriel came with you?”

“Not right away. Eventually.”

“Did you have… parties again?”

“Why the fuck do you think I’m in here now?” Rojas said loudly.

“You were found out.”

“Because Gabriel was an idiot. He was strung out half the time and didn’t know left from right. He didn’t have his daddy’s friends no more. And things are different here. The poor girls, they go to the police. You can’t get them to shut up unless you kill them… and I wouldn’t do that.”

“Gabriel would?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

Enrique pressed, “You know Gabriel killed women?”

“That never happened at our parties.”

“When did it happen? Did he tell you he’d killed someone?”

“I said I don’t want to talk about it!”

Rojas looked down at his cuffed hands, secured to the belly chain. He would not raise his eyes. Something heavy lay mantled across his shoulders. For a burly man, he suddenly seemed weak.

Enrique’s mind raced. The connection between Esteban Salazar and the Madrigals was established, but Gabriel Madrigal was long dead before the murder of Paloma Salazar. The hot link was Ortiz, and Rojas had confessed that Ortiz partied with Gabriel and him more than once.

Esteban could have told Paloma. Paloma could have endangered Ortiz. And then…

“Did Carlos Ortiz ever commit a murder?” Enrique asked.

Rojas was silent.

“Just tell me this, Marco.”

The quiet stretched on. Rojas did not look up. And then he nodded.

Enrique felt flushed. “He killed one of the girls at a party?”

“I saw him do it. At first I thought he was just choking her while he fucked her. But then he didn’t stop. He didn’t stop.”

Rojas wiped an eye with the back of his hand.

“You don’t get to cry,” Enrique said. “You don’t ever get to cry for this.”

He got up from his chair and went to the door. He knocked twice and the guards came. Behind him, Marco Rojas sobbed.

“I have everything I need here.”

“Wait,” Rojas said suddenly.

“What?”

“There’s more.”

FOURTEEN

THE PALENQUE WAS A DIFFERENT place after dark and when the cocks were fighting. Where the dusty parking lot had been mostly empty during the day, it was packed so fully that trucks and cars were parked all along the roadside leading up to the place. Even if he had tried, Sevilla would have been hard pressed to find Ortiz’s black pick-up among all these others. In the end he saw it in the space nearest the entrance, unwatched by even one of the bodyguards, who must both have been inside.

Cigarette smoke layered against the ceiling and condensed like rain clouds. Sevilla fought his way to the bar, bombarded by loud music, upraised voices and the occasional explosive reaction of the crowd around the fighting arena. He had to shout his order to the bartender.

The alcohol was good, but Sevilla allowed himself only one. After that he pushed to the highest rail overlooking the arena. The concrete seats swirled down in a vortex to the center of the action, the cocks facing each other. Men were betting with the official bookmakers and paper slips from previous fights were everywhere,