The Dead Women of Juarez (28 page)

Madrigal and Sebastián waited in a sunroom off a restaurant-sized kitchen. The glass was angled to catch the worst glare of the rising sun without sparing any of the dawning light. Fruit and toast and meat were laid out on china and silver for Sevilla’s delectation. Orange juice, grapefruit juice and coffee were offered. He took the coffee.

“If there’s something you want that you don’t see, Arturo will be happy to prepare it for you,” Madrigal said. He indicated the servant, who poured Sevilla’s coffee and even added the sugar to his taste.

“This is more than enough,” Sevilla said.

“I always believe in a big breakfast,” said Madrigal. “A big breakfast, a big lunch and just something to tide me over for the night. Some people obsess about dinner. I’m not one of those people.”

“Which do you prefer, Señor Villalobos?” Sebastián asked in a tone of voice that suggested he was not interested in the answer at all.

Sevilla dipped toast in fresh egg brought by Arturo. “Breakfast suits me very well, thank you.”

“My son is just learning the benefits of breakfast,” Madrigal said. He cast a sidelong look at Sebastián that needed no translation. A closer look at the younger Madrigal revealed circles beneath the eyes nearly hidden by the deep tan. Sebastián turned his head away.

“That’s the way it is with young people. I remember a time when I could work all night and still have energy enough to keep going until lunchtime,” Sevilla said. “These days I take siesta very seriously.”

“A dying tradition,” said Madrigal.

Sevilla considered trying to draw Sebastián into the conversation, but it seemed it would do no good. Sebastián looked out the windows now on a perfect square of green back lawn. A long, narrow rectangle of swimming pool was set within the square, surrounded by a scattering of tables and chairs and shady trees designed for lazy afternoons whiling away the worst heat. The grass was unnaturally robust and Sevilla wondered how many thousands of pesos were spent making it look just so.

“If you’ll excuse me,” Sebastián said abruptly. He dropped his napkin on his plate and left the table without further word. Sevilla watched him go, and when he turned back to Madrigal he saw nothing but contempt in the man’s expression.

“You have to forgive my son for being stupid,” Madrigal said.

“I don’t think he’s stupid,” Sevilla soothed. “He’s—”

“He’s stupid. What is that expression? ‘An heir and a spare’? That’s what I had, only my heir is gone and my spare is a willful disappointment to me.”

“Willful?”

“Yes. As if he has nothing better to do than waste my money and my time.”

Sevilla wasn’t sure how to address that. He turned closer attention to his plate and his coffee. Outside on the lawn, a gardener with a broad straw peasant hat and loose-fitting white uniform used a roller to create unnaturally flawless stripes in the grass. Such a treatment might not even last an entire day, but the effect was striking.

“Do you have children, Juan?”

“No. I’m afraid my wife and I were never blessed.”

Madrigal made a gesture with his hand that seemed wistful, as if
he were drawing back a curtain on something. In his other hand a glass of grapefruit juice was poised, but he didn’t drink from it. He spoke looking out at the grass and not at Sevilla. “Gabriel was my eldest. Manners? His were impeccable. Work ethic? He did more to monitor our business than I did.”

Now Madrigal fixed Sevilla with his gaze. “It was the drugs. He was working so hard, he started using them to stay up later, do more. And then they ate him alive. By the time he went to the States, he wasn’t my Gabriel anymore. He was someone else. Someone I didn’t know.”

“Drugs are killing Mexico,” Sevilla said. He no longer had stomach for breakfast, but he couldn’t think of anything to do with his hands. If he did nothing, he would look the fool, so he continued to eat as if he had the appetite of two men. He watched the glass of grapefruit juice suspended above the table in Madrigal’s hand, unmoving. “All along the border. They come for the American market.”

“Americans,” Madrigal said. Suddenly he put the glass of juice to his mouth and drained it in one gulp. His face turned from the bitterness. “I won’t say they’re useless because their dollars paid for all of this, but sometimes I think they’re a blight. It was one of Gabriel’s American cousins who first introduced him to
cocaína
. Little weasel. From my wife’s side of the family.”

As quickly as the mood turned dark, there was sunshine again. Sevilla saw the lamplight come on in Madrigal’s eyes. The man straightened in his seat. “I’m going to change, Juan, and then we’ll play. How many strokes would you like me to give you?”

“Whatever you feel comfortable giving up. You’re my host. I don’t want to make demands of you.”

“You see?” said Madrigal, and he pointed a finger at Sevilla. “That is what I mean.
Manners
. Men like you and me, we know what is polite and what is not. And we
try
to teach our children, but to no avail. I will return.”

With that Madrigal left Sevilla with the table of food still spread
before him. Sevilla put a piece of toast down and pushed the plate away from him. Arturo and two maids in uniforms came to clear up. “Señor Madrigal asks that you wait for him outside,” Arturo told Sevilla. “He will only be a few minutes.”

Double French doors opened out of the sunroom onto the striped green lawn. Sevilla’s shoes sank deeply into the grass. He smelled water and saw droplets still suspended here and there among the blades. A sharper, chlorinated odor rose from the pool as Sevilla came nearer.

He didn’t hear Sebastián approach. He saw the younger Madrigal’s reflection in the pool. “You surprised me,” Sevilla said.

“It’ll be a little longer,” Sebastián said by way of reply. The sun was higher now and lanced across the lawn. Sebastián took sunglasses from a case attached to his belt and put them on. He was dressed for the game in shorts and a collared pullover. His arms were lean and muscled so that the individual cords in his forearm stood out when he moved his fingers.

They stood together without talking for a while. Finally, Sevilla said, “I hope you know I don’t take seriously the things your father says.”

“Take them seriously if you like. It makes no difference to me.”

“I only mean it’s none of my business.”

“No,” Sebastián said, “it isn’t any of your business. But my father doesn’t have any problem insulting his own son to strangers.”

“Well, I don’t—”

“You don’t need to explain anything,” Sebastián interrupted. “You are my father’s guest and I’ll treat you the way I’m expected to treat you. And then you can go.”

Sevilla tried to read Sebastián’s face, but the man’s eyes were well hidden behind dark lenses. “I didn’t mean to offend you.”

“Do I seem offended?”

“Frankly? Yes.”

“Then perhaps I am. But as I say, it makes no difference. You’ll play your round, my father will invite you to swim and stay for lunch and then you’ll go back to wherever it is you come from.”

“Ciudad de México.”

Sebastián looked at Sevilla. His sunglasses made his face a hollow-eyed skull. “Like I say: wherever you come from.”

T
HEY PLAYED AND
S
EVILLA LOST
. H
E
was paired with a friend of Madrigal’s, an older gentleman who also made his home in Los Campos. As Sebastián predicted there was swimming and drinks and a lunch as lavish as breakfast. The elder Madrigal held forth on the drug wars and the business of the
maquiladoras
and a dozen other subjects, but not once did he speak of the dead women of Juárez. Neither did he make mention of his dead son.

“When you return to Ciudad Júarez, you must visit again,” Madrigal told Sevilla when they parted. “And if I find myself in Mexico City anytime soon, I may call on you.”

“Yes, you must,” Sevilla lied. “You have been too kind to me, Rafa.”

“It was nothing, Juan.
Adiós
.”

Sebastían did not bid Sevilla farewell. He vanished after the golf game and did not reappear even for lunch. His father made no comment on his son’s absence and it was just as well; the episode of the morning was still fresh in Sevilla’s mind and he was glad not to have a repeat.

He felt tension slipping away from him with each mile he put between himself and Los Campos. He opened the window to let the clean country air in. Soon he would be in the thick of Juárez where the air was not as dirty as somewhere like Juan Villalobos’ Mexico City, but bad enough. Enterprising youngsters and businessmen didn’t ply the lanes at stoplights offering hits of pure oxygen to
drivers mired in traffic, but as the city grew the promise of those days drew closer.

By the time he saw the Hotel Lucerna rising out of the buildings ahead Sevilla felt almost like himself. The golf game had been terrible, but at least he’d known the difference between one club and the next. The swim was cool and relaxing, the drinks not enough to sate a thirst built over several days. Lunch left him feeling bloated and overfull. Madrigal offered a shady place for post-meal rest, but then and now Sevilla could think only of the queen-sized bed in his suite.

He returned the car, paying the bill in cash, and arranged for someone to bring up the golf clubs. He went up on the elevator alone and emerged into a quiet hallway likewise deserted. The suite door had an electronic lock opened with a card key. When the LED above the handle showed green, Sevilla pushed his way inside.

The man yanked him through the door before it was fully open. It banged wide and then slammed shut on pressurized hinges. Sevilla felt his feet leave the floor. He fell hard then and his knee screamed with pain.

When he reached for his gun it wasn’t there, but it hadn’t been there for days. Sevilla was dizzily aware of two men before one kicked him in the head and opened a broad gash over his eye. He went over onto his back as if dead. The suite’s front room went from light to dark and back again.

Someone grabbed a fistful of Sevilla’s hair and lifted his head clear of the parquet floor in the entryway. The picture of Ana and Ofelia was shoved in his face. The glass in the frame was broken, the frame itself twisted out of true. He saw Ana smiling at him through blood.

“Who is this, old man? Your wife? Your kid?”

“Probably his whore,” someone else said, and there was laughter. There were three of them, not two. Sevilla heard the crash of something breaking in the bedroom. All the furniture in the front
room was overturned and the stuffing torn out. Even the area rugs had been flipped upside down.

“I—” Sevilla began.

The man smashed Sevilla in the face with the picture glass-first. Bits stung him on the cheek and lip. He was kicked in the side, in the stomach. Lunch roiled up out of him. Sevilla could see only the men’s feet as they moved back and forth; he was not strong enough to look up at their faces.

“Find another family to grift,” said one of the men. He stepped on Sevilla’s hand.

One left. Another rummaged in the bedroom and the bathroom until it was destroyed. The third stood over Sevilla and stomped him whenever the pain tried to pass.

“Stay down there, old man,” he said, and Sevilla did what he was told.

The last two conferred, but Sevilla’s ears were ringing. They took turns kicking him then until there was no part of him that didn’t hurt and no way to see through the curtain of red that obscured his eyes. He was barely aware of them leaving and then was aware of nothing for a long time.

H
E WOKE
. “K
ELLY
,”
HE BREATHED
.
His teeth felt loose and he tasted salt and copper.

“It’s Enrique.”

Sevilla was on the flipsided rug. He saw only the ceiling, but the light had changed and he knew it was evening. His body throbbed and his kidneys ached badly enough that he knew he would piss blood when the time came. Enrique touched his face with something cold and wet and smelling of strong liquor.

“There’s no alcohol in the medicine cabinet,” Enrique said.

“Don’t tell… the hotel,” Sevilla replied.

“I haven’t. You’ve been asleep for hours. I almost called an ambulance.”

“Don’t call them, either.”

“What happened?”

The cut over Sevilla’s eye was swollen and his vision reduced to a slash. He ran his tongue thickly over his teeth. They were all there. When he flexed his hands he knew his arms weren’t broken but his knee was a white-hot coal of agony. He would have to stand to know whether he could even walk.

“Give me something to drink,” Sevilla managed.

Ice jingled and whisky was poured. Sevilla knew it by scent before it touched his lips. The drink was hot and healing in his stomach and reached out for his other pains to smother them in coils of soothing warmth. He swallowed more and finished the tumbler and then sucked an ice cube until it, too, was gone.

He was ready to sit up. Enrique helped Sevilla prop himself against the ruins of a gutted sofa. Stuffing was scattered everywhere in tufts and gobbets. A slowly turning ceiling fan stirred the mess.

“Are you going to tell me what happened?”

“Have you seen the place?” Sevilla asked.

“Yes. It’s all like this.”

“Then it’s done.”

“What do you mean?”

Sevilla wanted to close his eyes and sleep again. Just the act of sitting upright drained him. But the bed would be stripped and broken, too, and sometime the housekeeper would want access and everything would be revealed. In his mind Sevilla was packing already, planning his retreat.

“The picture.”

“It’s here,” Enrique said. He pressed it into Sevilla’s hand. It was out of the frame completely now and flecked with blood Sevilla knew was his own. Tears threatened to well up. His eyes burned.

“More whisky.”

“Not until we talk.”

“Goddammit, Enrique, what is there to talk about? It’s over. They know.”

“How could they know? What happened today?”

Sevilla shook his head. The gesture made his spine hurt at the base of his skull. “I thought I had them fooled, but I must not have. It was Sebastían. He let his father keep me busy while he…”