“There on the table,” Guilar said.
On the folding table was a black thirty-three-gallon plastic bag commonly used for the collection and disposal of lawn clippings.
Delgado went to the table and sat in one of the plastic chairs. As he reached for the top of the bag, he noticed that it had been put on top of an official-looking envelope. The return address of the envelope read: CITY OF DALLAS, WATER UTILITIES DEPARTMENT, CITY HHALL, 1500 MARILLA STREET, DALLAS, TX 75201. Across the envelope in big red lettering was printed: FINAL NOTICE!
No wonder the damned water’s turned off.
The idiots didn’t pay the bill.
The house was still listed under Delgado’s grandmother’s name. The utilities were under a phony name and were supposed to be paid in cash every month. In lieu of proving their creditworthiness, they’d had to put up a five-hundred-dollar deposit in order for the city to agree to begin service. But that had been a helluva lot better than giving a social security number or driver’s license number-genuine or stolen-that would then be part of the City of Dallas database and could somehow come back to bite them in the ass.
Delgado noted that the envelope also had a familiar stain across the words FINAL NOTICE! And there was some white powder residue.
He licked a finger, wiped at the residue, and touched it to his tongue.
Coke.
No wonder they forgot to pay the bill.
Too damned coked out…
Miguel saw what he was looking at and raised his eyebrows.
“Ramos was supposed to pay that,” he said.
Delgado shook his head, disgusted at the idiocy of the seventeen-year-old Ramos Manuel Chac?n.
And it’s probably the same stupidity that’s the reason we haven’t heard from him.
Los Zetas didn’t grab him.
He’s down there throwing coke at those gringo college girls to get in their pants.
“It needs to be paid, Miguel. We don’t want the city thinking this is now an abandoned property, and come around for a look. You take care of it tomorrow.”
“S?.”
Delgado grabbed the top of the big black bag and untied the overhand knot that held it closed. Inside he saw almost fifteen individual zipper-top clear plastic bag. In each of the bags was a cell phone or a small address book or a spiral notepad or a wallet-or a combination thereof. Each bag had a number written on it in black permanent marker ink along with a brief description. One, for example, had “#6 Fat girl, 18, w/striped hair.”
Delgado knew that if he went to the bedroom where the pudgy girl had been taken, somewhere on her body, probably on top of her hand, he would find “#6” written in black ink.
He dug around in the large bag until he found one labeled “#10 hot teen girl w/pink top.”
He removed it from the black bag and put it on the table. In the bag was a cellular telephone with a pink face. The back side had rhinestones hot-glued to it in the shape of a heart.
The phone was on, and he pressed keys until he was scrolling through its address book.
“Ahhh,” he then said, reading on the small screen: MADRE. “Bueno.”
He readied the digital recorder in his left hand, putting his index finger on the PLAY button. Then he pushed the green key on the cellular phone’s keypad.
Three rings later, he heard the cheerful voice of an older woman.
“Hola, Maria!” she said in Spanish. “How are you?”
Delgado barked back in Spanish: “We have your daughter!”
Then he held the digital recorder to the cell phone and played the audio recording. It was the one with both the boy and girl screaming.
He gave that to a count of five, pushed STOP on the digital recorder, and put the pink-faced phone back to his ear.
“Do as I say, and you get the girl back alive!”
He listened for a response. But he heard only silence, and then, in the background, a concerned young voice saying, “Madre? Madre?”
Delgado looked at Guilar and said, “Shit! I think she fainted!”
He pushed the red END button on the cellular phone.
Then he reached across the table and picked up the black ink marker. He wrote on the bag: “1. Called ‘Madre’ 9/9 9:50pm. Woman fainted?”
Then he stuck the phone back in the bag. And fished out another. And repeated the calling process.
This time, he speed-dialed the number on the menu linked to the listing that read HOME, and when the man answered, he began their exchange by playing the audio clip of just the girl screaming.
Delgado knew that it did not matter that the recording was of another girl. When parents heard a female’s voice screaming and were told that it was their child, they tended to believe exactly that. And not believing carried serious consequences. If the receiving telephone had caller ID, so much the better when Delgado called using the girl’s personal cell phone.
Then he barked in Spanish: “We have your loved one! Do as I say, and you will see her alive again!”
Delgado carefully explained that he wanted the two thousand dollars that was to be paid to the coyote. He said that it was to be sent to Edgar Cisneros at the Western Union, Mall of Mexico, Philadelphia.
Delgado had a fake Texas driver’s license with that name and his picture. He’d bought it for three hundred dollars. It had been made by the same counterfeiter who lived in a loft apartment near that expensive private school, Southern Methodist University. He sold to the sorority girls and other students there what the kids simply called “fakes.”
“If you do not do as I say, and especially if you contact the police,” Delgado said in an angry tone of voice, “your loved one will be dead this time tomorrow. When we get your money, she will be taken to Dallas and released.”
He put the recorder and the cell phone face-to-face and hit PLAY.
“Someone! Anyone! Help me! No…”
After a few seconds, he broke off the call.
Delgado looked at Miguel Guilar. Guilar smirked. He knew damn well that Delgado had no intention whatever of releasing the girls. They were all, or at least the more attractive ones, going to be moved to Philadelphia.
Miguel Guilar’s phone then buzzed once. He pulled it from the clip on his belt, then read the text message.
“Uh-oh!” Guilar said. “Look at this! And a Mexico City number.”
He held out the phone for Delgado to read it.
“What do you think that means?” Guilar said.
011-52-744-1000
ramos here… i borrow amigos fone… am in houston jail… u bail me out?… police want me 2 say i live on hatcher… y is that?
Juan Paulo Delgado’s eyes went to the envelope.
His stomach suddenly had a huge knot. He had to consciously squeeze his sphincter muscle-he thought he might have shit his pants.
Why? Because you didn’t pay the water bill, you fucking idiot!
And they obviously found it in your car, then bluffed you!
Right about then, El Cheque walked in, holding up his cell phone. He had a confused look.
“Ramos just sent me a text…”
Dammit!
Delgado bolted out of the chair and grabbed the black plastic bag.
