Authors: Sylvia Sarno
Kika rested her head on her outstretched arm. Travis Olson’s situation reminded her of her own lonely childhood. Since she was six years old, every year on her birthday, Antonia had forced Kika to accompany her to Mexico City’s poorest neighborhoods where she served the homeless soup and bread at the churches that took them in. Kika remembered the pungent smell of the men’s unwashed bodies, their decayed teeth, and their brown sun-ravaged faces. When Antonia’s back was turned, the men would pinch Kika’s cheeks and pat her bottom. Kika grew to dread her birthday.
As she grew older, Kika’s suffering increased. Antonia would, without warning, reach out and slap her. “Sour face, sour face!” she would say. “I’m sick of seeing your sour face. Little girls are supposed to smile. Where’s
your smile?” To this day, Kika rarely smiled— the force of her mother’s hand on her cheek still smarted.
In high school, Kika had mustered the courage to ask Antonia for a favor.
“Oh Mother, the Fathers at the Virgin of Guadeloupe are planning a new festival. Some of the girls from school are going. Poor people from all over Mexico are coming to ask the sacred Virgin’s help with their children. There are so many sick children and runaways. I want to help these families. Oh please, mother, let me go.”
Antonia’s fists went to her hips. “I decide where your duty is, Cristina. Shame on you for wanting something so badly.”
Kika ignored the warning signs. “I just want to help, Mother. I want—”
Antonia raised her arm
.
Kika’s hands flew up, ready to defend herself. When she realized what she was doing, she forced her hands away from her face. Antonia had her best interest at heart. It was Kika’s duty to obey, even when her mother was hard on her
.
When Kika woke up she realized that she was still lying in the same spot where she had fallen. She could hear mother in the kitchen eating her dinner. The sound of her masticating had filled Kika with revulsion
.
Kika reached for the tissue box on the nightstand.
Please, Mary. Help me forgive Antonia
. But forgiving was hard. Antonia’s hatred for her daughter had seemed to grow with time. When Kika was twenty, doctors removed plum-size growths from her ovaries; she had been cramping and bleeding for weeks prior. They told Kika that she had a severe case of endome-triosis and would likely never bear children. When Antonia heard the news she was smug. “So God does not wish you to have children? Poor Cristina.” Kika had wanted to kill her mother.
That she would never conceive was the great tragedy of Kika’s life. Now Max, who wanted children as much as she did, was talking of
marriage. For a girl who had once dreamed of entering a convent, the choice between Max and the Blessed Virgin had been tough. In the end, when she chose Max, Mary didn’t seem to mind.
But the question of her infertility hung like a teetering roof over Kika’s future.
10:30 P.M
.
J
ust when it seemed that Earless Man would have his way with her, Ann had heard shouts and pounding feet. After Earless Man had ordered Animal Man to remove Ann from the room, he jerked his gun free and left through the double doors. In his haste, Animal Man had forgotten to tape her mouth shut. It seemed like days ago.
Now, back in her dark closet, Ann’s thoughts continued to drift downward. She knew she should be grateful the thugs hadn’t done more to her, but she was in no mood for gratitude. She had discovered their drug tunnel—they would be crazy to free her.
Ann rolled onto her side and winced; her body was cut and bruised all over. She had been foolish. Instead of acting on reason, she was propelled by half-formed conclusions that she had insisted, in her ignorance, was fact. Tijuana and then the warehouse. Richard was right—she had rushed into things without thinking through the consequences. And now her child might pay the price for her rashness.
Travis
. Her heart aching, Ann remembered when her son was big enough to sit on his own. He would spend the longest time going through buckets of toys; shaking, banging, exploring each item with his mouth before moving on to the next thing. Travis loved playing in the backyard, rubbing dirt all over himself, splashing gleefully in his little pool. He would spend hours putting blocks together—gradually working his way up to building more complicated Lego structures. Those fun-filled days seemed to be part of another lifetime.
As Travis had gotten older, and Ann grew restless, she started filling her need for more activity by re-arranging things in her house, buying more stuff, and especially with cleaning. Her cleaning obsession had first started when Ann was very young. Every Saturday, she and her mother would clean their whole house together. Ann’s reward when the work was done—a pizza and ice cream lunch. After her mother moved out, Ann’s father had offered to hire a maid, but Ann refused. Cleaning had become her way of restoring order and control in her life.
Ann’s thoughts strayed to Kika. She realized that if she had tried to reason more with the social worker, instead of being so defensive, the situation might not have gotten so out of hand. Resolving to become a more patient, understanding person, Ann pleaded, “God, give me the strength to get through this.”
C
HAPTER
11
Wednesday, October 10
8:00 A.M
.
K
ika heard a car stop outside her house. An object hit the porch with a thud. She swung her legs over the side of her bed and headed for the stairs.
Though Kika had slept through the night she felt sluggish. Her head aching, she leaned down to pick up the daily newspaper wrapped in a plastic sheathe. She opened the paper hoping to find good news about Travis Olson. Bold words across the front page took her breath away. “ANN OLSON MISSING. After the mother of missing child, six-year-old Travis Olson failed to return home last night, husband Richard Olson called police….”
Twenty minutes later, after a shower and a quick cup of coffee, Kika eased her car from her driveway and headed to San Ysidro, to the Ramirez residence where Ann was last seen.
When Kika introduced herself, Mrs. Ramirez tried to shut the door in her face. “
You
took that boy!” she shouted.
Kika pushed back on the door. “I had nothing to do with it! Look. I’m not leaving until you talk to me.” Kika’s boldness seemed to crush
Mrs. Ramirez’s resistance. As soon as she backed away, Kika followed her into the dark house.
On the sagging sofa, Mrs. Ramirez picked up a cigarette from the ashtray at her elbow. After sucking at the remaining tobacco, she crushed the stub in the tray. She slipped a second cigarette out of its pack. Her mechanical gestures, her wooden demeanor, and her glazed eyes informed Kika that Mrs. Ramirez was high on drugs.
“You were the last person to see Ann Olson,” Kika said, hoping to get Mrs. Ramirez to admit the truth so she could get down to the business of finding Ann.
Mrs. Ramirez’s hands began to shake.
Kika guessed that Mrs. Ramirez was not forthcoming about Ann because she was afraid. “No harm will come to you if you tell the truth about Ann Olson,” she said in a quiet voice.
Mrs. Ramirez started rocking back and forth. Ashes from the cigarette cascaded down her soiled tee shirt onto the sofa.
“Mrs. Ramirez,” Kika said. “Mrs. Olson’s life’s in danger. It’s your duty to help her.”
Marty Ramirez mumbled something about being afraid.
Mrs. Ramirez’s poor living conditions; her proximity to the border; the fighting in Tijuana; her own recent conversation with Max about the drug cartels… Suddenly Kika understood. Mrs. Ramirez was afraid to say what happened because she knew that whoever was holding Ann could very well harm
her
. Her voice softer, Kika said, “This has to do with drugs, doesn’t it?”
Mrs. Ramirez waved her hand. “Please… Go away.”
Confident she had hit on the truth, Kika pressed on. “Ann is danger. You must tell me where she is.”
Marty crumpled forward. “The warehouse,” she mumbled. “She went looking for Jesús.”
1:00 P.M
.
K
ika Garcia and Max Ruiz faced each over coffee at the Starbucks on Camino de la Plaza, a few minutes from the San Ysidro border crossing. Kika was grateful her boyfriend was able to meet her on short notice, given his heavy work schedule and the unpredictable wait time to enter California. Fortunately with the Border Fast Pass it took only twenty minutes to cross in. Speaking in Spanish, Kika was agitated and talking too fast.
Max replied in their native tongue. “Slow down, Kika. You’re tripping all over your words.”
“Okay. Okay,” she said, slowing down her breathing.
Max gathered her hands in his. “Now tell me from the beginning, Cariño. The police thought you had kidnapped the Olson boy?”
Kika cringed. “And to think everyone thought that I did it.”
“Cariño, why didn’t you say anything about this before?”
“I was holed up with you in that funeral home for days. Remember? I only found out when I turned my phone back on.”
Max’s voice was a little stern. “Could it be that you knew something about this and didn’t want to tell me?”
“I was upset about the child,” Kika said. “But not because I had anything to do with his disappearance. Come on, Max. Did you really think I would kidnap anyone?”
Max’s smile was beautiful. “Of course not, Cariño. But why were you upset about this boy, then?”
Kika never did get around to telling Max about her trouble with the Olsons. He was in South America on business when the investigation started. “I was upset because I thought his mother was abusing him.”
Max pulled back. “You don’t think Señora Olson had a hand in this, do you?”
“I did at first, but not anymore.”
“And now she’s missing.”
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” Kika said. “You see, I think I know what happened to her.”
Her boyfriend lifted his hands in a questioning gesture. “What’re you talking about?”
Kika told Max about her visit to Martina Ramirez.
Max’s eyes grew still. “What else did she tell you?”
“She told me about this abandoned warehouse where her son played with his friends. After I pried the information out of her—about the warehouse— I went to check the place out myself.”
“You did
what?”
“Guess what I found.”
Max’s frown deepened. “Where exactly is this place?”
“It’s by the border. No one around for miles.” Kika’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Max, I saw a graveyard.”
His droopy eye opened wider.
“The warehouse door was unlocked. The place was so creepy. There was a car filled with bullet holes and something strange about the floor. I managed to pull a board up. Guess what I saw?”
Max’s face had darkened. “A hole.”
Kika nodded, excited. “I was so scared. I ran out of there as fast as I could. Then I called you.”
Max’s fingers tightened over hers. “Do the police know about this place?”
“Martina Ramirez was too afraid to tell them. I asked her to keep the warehouse a secret until I checked it out. She agreed.”
Max’s gaze turned inward as he apparently considered what she had just revealed. “This could be the way,” he finally said.
“The way to what?” Kika asked.
“El Martillo’s drug tunnel,” Max said. “They must have captured Mrs. Olson when she went looking for the missing child.”
The glimmer in Max’s eye told Kika that he was hatching a plan. Something dangerous. “What’re you going to do?”
“I’m gonna avenge my brother. That’s what I’m going to do.”
“And what about Ann?”
“If she’s still alive,” Max said, “we’ll get her out.”
“Who’s
we
?”
Max’s voice was hard. “That son of a bitch cousin of mine, Julio. That’s who!”
8:00 P.M
.
M
ax reached forward and signaled his driver to pull up to the curb. “Wait for me, Herman. It might be a while.”
Max stood looking up at the modest ten-story building, one of many that lined Playa de Tijuana. The windows of Julio Ruiz’s latest Baja residence, located on the top three floors of the tan edifice, were brightly lit against the night sky. The muffled sounds of the Pacific Ocean, on the other side of like structures stretching along the beach, mingled with an ambulance siren in the distance.
A heavily muscled man sat in a parked car directly in front of the building. The man’s eyes tracked Max as he stepped up to the front door. Max scanned the resident directory for Julio’s alias. Looking back over his shoulder, Max noticed that the man’s eyes were locked on his every movement. He’s probably one of Julio’s men, he thought.
Max pressed the buzzer. Waiting, he noted the video camera propped high in the inside vestibule. The intercom crackled and a male voice answered. Max repeated the secret code Julio had given him on the phone while he was en route to Playa de Tijuana. He pulled the buzzing door open, entered the vestibule, and waited. The first door firmly shut behind him, the second door buzzed Max in.
After one of his cousin’s bodyguards patted him down, Max was escorted into the penthouse apartment. The soaring ceiling of the huge living room was covered with skylights, their angular frames revealing dark skies dotted with specks of lights. Beyond the wrap-around balcony visible through the floor-to-ceiling-windows, the Pacific Ocean heaved and churned. The rich purple of the leather sofas and the bright yellow and green of the accent cushions matched the colors in the abstract paintings on the walls. Glancing around, Max pursed his lips. He had little tolerance for such so-called art.
Julio Ruiz entered the room. Though short and slender, with a pale, boyish face that belied his thirty-nine years, his cousin had a magnetism that drew people to him.
The weak ones especially, thought Max.
It’s that narco swagger and those piercing black eyes that never miss a thing
. When his cousin leaned in for an embrace, Max pulled away. He was in no mood to fraternize with the enemy.