heard what Ortega said. Don’t go to El Rojo.”
The sun was like a hammer on Ines’ back, trying to pound her into the dust. But it meant she could see the other man’s face, broad and pocked with the occasional scar, seamed where he squinted against the light. “If he’s cheaper, I have to. Notold me it would be this expensive.”
The man—another coyote—shrugged and pulled sunglasses from his pocket. “Can’t help it. With all the new laws, it’s a lot riskier for us, and you need documents on the other side. Look, I’ll take you for twenty.”
Ines shook her head. “I don’t have twenty, either.”
“Then stay here a while. There’s jobs—not good ones, but if you’re patient you can save enough to get across.
None of it was safe; even the honest coyotes could get a migrant killed. “I don’t have any choice,” she said.
With the man’s eyes hidden by the sunglasses, she couldn’t be sure, but she thought he gave her a pitying look. “Go with God, then. And be careful.”
Caution had gone out the window when Javier died. Shading her eyes against the desert sun, Ines went in search of La Puerta de Oro.
It lay in Mexicali’s Chinatown, its garish red and gold faded by the elements. The interior was blindingly dark, after the street outside. “Shark-fin tacos,” she said once her eyes adjusted, and the hostess jabbed her thumb toward a table in the back corner.
Two men sat there, both facing the door. The bigger one grinned as Ines approached, licking his lips in an exaggerated gesture, but it was the skinnier one
She cast her gaze down when she got to the table. “I want to get across the border,” she said. Quietly, but not whispering. “I heard El Rojo could take me.”
“I can,” the smaller man said. He was wiry more than slender, hardened to rawhide by the desert sun. Other Mexicali coyotes took migrants in secret truck compartments, sneaking them across into Calexico or up to State Route 7, then onward to San Diego or Phoenix. El Rojo, according to rumor, went a more dangerous route, through the Sonoran Desert. Less risk of being caught by the Border Patrol, but more risk of dying, whether from thirst or the guns of militia. Or coyotes, of the four-legged kind.
Ines sat, eyes still downcast; the last thing she wanted was for him to take her stare as a challenge. “I can pay ten thousand.”
The bigger fellow laughed, a barking sound in the quiet of the restaurant. “That and a bit more will do, girl,” he said, laying one hand on her knee as if she might not catch his meaning.
She controlled her revulsion; pulling away too fast would make her look like prey. It was the other man who mattered, anyway. El Rojo, the red one. There were many possible explanations for the nickname, few of them reassuring.
His method of bargaining showed a sharp mind. From money, he would switch without warning to questions about Ines: where she was from, why she was emigrating, what kind of work she thought she would find. She told him she came from Cuauhtemoc in Chihuahua, and had a brother who crossed at Nogales two years ago; if she could get to Albuquerque, he knew a man who could get her a job as a maid. Seventeen thousand, El Rojo said, and if she was coming from Cuauhtemoc and going to Albuquerque, why had she come to Mexicali? A man had brought her this far, promising help, Ines said, but he’d tried to rape her; she would pay fifteen thousand and no more.
El Rojo smiled, thin, lips closed. “That’ll do. Half now, half when we get there, and Pipo here will show you to your room.”
“My room?” Ines asked, alarm rising in her throat.
Now he showed a glint of teeth. “I’m your coyote now. Full service, from here until your trip is done. Wouldn’t want you getting picked up by the cops.”
Or telling anyabout his business. This was his reputation, that he was shrewd and careful, and utterly without human morals. If she gave him reason to cut her throat, he would, without hesitation.
She’d hoped to send a letter, in case she didn’t survive this trip. “Do you think I’m stupid? I didn’t bring the money with me.”
He gestured at his companion. “Pipo will go with you to fetch it. We have a deal, and until it’s done, you’re mine.”
The “room” Pipo showed her to was a basement elsewhere in Chinesca, though Ines, blindfolded, only knew it by the smell of spices. What sort of deals had El Rojo struck, that he chose to do business out of this part of Mexicali?
Maybe the police just paid less attention to the Chinese district. Certainly Pipo felt comfortable enough to lead her blindfolded through the streets, by a very roundabout path. When he shoved her off the last step and yanked off the bandanna, Ines found more than a dozen people in the basement already, sitting in the light of a single dim bulb, watching her with wary eyes.
“Tomorrow night,” Pipo said, and left.
Ines brushed her hair from her face, nodded at the migrants, and found a place to sit by the wall, where she leaned against a broken piece of tabletop. Nospoke; she didn’t expect it. Right now they were all strangers, in an unknown place, taking an enormous risk. Talk would come later, when shared trials created a sense of bonding; then she would hear about relatives on the other side of the border, or the hope of work—whatever dream or desperation sent them on this journey.
She studied them, though, out of the corners of her eyes, taking care never to stare at anyone. Most were a bit younger than her: in their teens, maybe early twenties. A few women, the rest men; three of the women were cradling children too young to walk. One man was substantially older—maybe his fifties, though with his face so wrinkled by the sun, she could be off by ten years. He made no pretense about not staring at her, though when Ines returned the look he glanced away, scratching his fingers through hair like gray wire.
Fifteen thousand pesos, Ines had promised El Rojo. Assume the same for everyone here; some maybe bargained better, some worse, and she didn’t know if he charged the same for little kids. Seventeen people in this basement, counting her. Assume that was average. Two hundred fifty-five thousand pesos—more than twenty thousand dollars. How often did El Rojo do this? Every month? Less often? More? However she did the math,
One for which many people paid the price.
Javier would’ve told Ines she was an idiot for coming here, for putting herself into El Rojo’s hands. But Javier was gone, and she was the only one who could do this.
She laid down on the hard concrete and tried to get some sleep.
When the basement door slammed open, half the people there were already awake; within seconds, all of them were on their feet, and one mother stifled her daughter’s wail. Pipo grinned at them, blunt face monstrous in the dim light, and jerked a thumb toward the door. “Time to go.”
Ines sneaked a glance at her mother’s old watch, with its extra hole punched in the band to fit her smaller wrist. An hour past sunset. They would make their move in the dead of night.
But it was a lie. She’d passed up that chance when she sat down at El Rojo’s table—maybe when she came to Mexicali in search of him. Ines followed the others upstairs and into the narrow alley behind.
A truck waited there. Ines didn’t see El Rojo, but three other men were helping Pipo, and one climbed into the back with the migrants before the door was rolled down and locked into place. No secret compartment, not here; this was only to get them out of town. Most of the journey would be done on foot.
More waiting, this time in near-total darkness. Ines sat with her backpack in the hollow of her crossed legs, arms wrapped around it, swaying into the gray-haired man or the young woman on the other side every time the truck slowed or accelerated or hit a rough patch of road. The young woman sat in much the same position, only it was a little girl she held, a year old at most. The infant, of course, didn’t understand what was going on, and burbled loudly to herself in the darkness.
“Shut her up, already,” one of the young men said abruptly, breaking the stifling silence that overlaid the noise of the truck. “That brat’s gonna get us caught.”
Ines felt the mother shrink back in alarm. “Hey!” Ines said, glaring into the darkness, as if the complainer could see her. “She’s happy. Would you rather she was crying?”
