Tequila Sunset (21 page)

They had their meal together in the little storefront restaurant between a tool shop and a hair salon and afterward they walked the street. When Flip held Graciela’s hand she did not pull away. At the next block there was a fruit store and Flip bought a bunch of apples for his lunches and an orange that he split with Graciela.

“I missed you,” Graciela said.

“I didn’t know what to do.”

“You listened to what I said. That was the best thing to do.”

“There’s just one thing I got to know,” Flip said.

“Flip…”

“It’s not like that. I just want to know: did José tell you to talk to me that first night?”

Graciela watched her feet as they strolled the block. They passed a mother leading a small child while pushing a baby in a stroller. Flip stepped out of the woman’s way. “Why do you want to know that?” Graciela asked finally.

“Just tell me. Please?”

Graciela stopped in front of the barred windows of an appliance store and looked through the dirty glass at a line of refrigerators facing a row of washing machines. Flip watched her. She hadn’t dropped his hand.

“If I say yes, will you think I’m a bad person?”

“What? No way.”

She nodded and then shrugged and then looked at Flip guiltily. “He told me to make you feel welcome. But he didn’t tell me to do nothing else. I did that on my own.”

“It was real,” Flip said.

“It is real,” Graciela said and she came to him and kissed him as hard as she could. Flip let his arms settle around her narrow waist and kissed her back. When a big truck rumbled by and kicked up a cloud of dust over them, they didn’t notice.

TWO

T
HEY SPENT THE FIRST PART OF THE AFTER
noon in a training seminar on gang violence that was utterly boring and completely irrelevant. There was not an officer in the conference hall that hadn’t learned the same things from working the street as the expert speakers put on their PowerPoint slides. It had been all Cristina could do to keep from falling asleep. Robinson nudged her when her head began to nod.

When they returned to the squad room their desks were laden with reports, the fruits of several shifts’ worth of uniform patrols and 911 calls. If the uniforms deemed it “gang related,” it went to the gang unit for a follow-up. Most of it was nothing, sometimes it was something, all of it was tedious.

Cristina was glad when her phone rang. “Salas,” she said.

“Cristina, it’s Jamie McPeek.”

“Hello, Agent McPeek.”

Robinson looked up from his work.

“I’m calling everyone who should know to tell them: Matías Segura was almost hit last night.”

“Hit? What happened?”

“There aren’t a lot of details right now. He was out and a truckload of shooters tried to kill him on the street. His wife was with him.”

“Are they thinking it’s the Aztecas?”

“It would make sense.”

“Is his wife okay?”

“She’s fine. They’re both fine. They were lucky.”

“Thanks for keeping me in the loop.”

“Not a problem. Is there anything more on the Esperanza case?”

“He’s out on bail. Probably already back in business.”

“In Mexico he’d be dead on the side of the road by now.”

“Let’s be glad this isn’t Mexico.”

Cristina hung up the phone. She turned to her computer and called up the file on Emilio Esperanza. His picture flashed on the screen. Even in his mug shot he was smirking.

“You going to tell me what that was all about?” Robinson asked.

“That Mexican cop, the one I told you about? The Aztecas tried to kill him last night.”

“No shit. What’s that have to do with Esperanza?”

Cristina shook her head. “Nothing.”

“You worried he’ll put a green light out on you?”

“You think he’d do that?”

“I don’t know,” Robinson said. “Anything’s possible. You live right in the middle of Azteca territory, you busted his balls in interrogation.”

“You’re not making me feel any better.”

“Sorry. Just thinking out loud.”

Cristina scrolled through Esperanza’s record trying to will something new to appear, but it was all the same things. There was not even something she could pull him in on and sweat him for.

The judge set the bail too low. In the courtroom at Esperanza’s arraignment there had been a half dozen or more rangy, tattooed young men watching the proceedings. Any one of them could have substituted for Esperanza; they were the same person, essentially, and in the end they were all interchangeable. That’s why the gangs never went away no matter how many went into the system: there
were all the identical soldiers ready to pick up where the fallen ones left off.

She thought of Matías Segura. They had only met for a little while, but she thought she could understand him. How many Emilio Esperanzas had crossed his path in the years he had been working? How many José Martinezes? In Mexico it was worse than the worst day in El Paso. At least Cristina and Robinson did not have to deal with bodies lying in the streets, or in back alleys with their heads and arms hacked off. They did not have to live with the knowledge that Los Aztecas owned the city and they were just living in it.

Cristina called home. “Hi, Ashlee, it’s me,” she said. “Can I talk to Freddie?”

Freddie came on. “Hello?” he said.

“Hi, Freddie, it’s Mom.”

“Hi.”

“How was your day at school?”

“I didn’t have a good day.”

“No? What happened?”

“I can’t know,” Freddie said.

“You can’t know? Why not?”

“I said I can’t know.”

“Well, I’m not mad. Are you being good for Ashlee?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. I’ll be home in time for you to go to bed.”

“I’m going to play Roblox now.”

“You do that, peanut. I love you.”

“Bye.”

When she put down the phone she wanted to be home so she could hold Freddie and squeeze him tightly until he told her that was enough, just like she wanted to be home to make a real dinner for him and spend time with him. And maybe if she did those things she wouldn’t be afraid for him anymore, sitting at his computer in
a little house in the Segundo Barrio, not knowing anything about what went on beyond those walls.

“Freddie good?” Robinson asked.

“Yeah.”

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s nothing. Whenever somebody takes a shot at a cop, I get nerves. And you’re not helping.”

“What did I do?”

“Emilio Esperanza isn’t going to his capo to put a green light on an El Paso cop. Even he wouldn’t be that stupid. You’ve got me thinking Freddie’s going to be an orphan by the time he’s eleven.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know it bothered you so much.”

Cristina cleared Esperanza’s record from her computer screen. She didn’t want to look at his face anymore. It was bad enough that she was still thinking about it and the way he looked when the judge announced his bail. He knew right then he was going to walk, and if the inclination struck him, he could take one step across the border and just disappear into Juárez. Los Aztecas would take care of him; he was their family.

“I’ve got to get out of here,” Cristina said.

“I’ll go with you.”

“All this paperwork’s going to be here tomorrow.”

“Then it can wait. I’ll walk you to your car, make sure nobody tries to take you out.”

“Thanks, Bob.”

“Don’t mention it.”

THREE

M
ATÍAS HAD NEVER BEEN INSIDE CARLOS
Lopez’s office before. He had come to the door a few times and he’d glimpsed it from his desk, but he had never set foot across the threshold. It was an alien feeling, being in there, and he wanted to go.

The blinds were half-drawn and the office was dim. Lopez had a broad desk and his chairs were all upholstered with black leather. There was a couch. A neat stack of reports stood on one side of his blotter, an arrangement of pens on the other. In many ways it was exactly what Matías might have expected: orderly, clean and utterly ordinary.

The door was closed so he did not hear Lopez’s steps approaching. Suddenly it was opened and Lopez came in with another man Matías had never met. The man wore a suit that made Matías’ seem cheap and if he carried a weapon it wasn’t obvious. His hair was flat against his scalp and had a sheen to it. Matías got to his feet.

“Matías Segura, this is Hector Romero,” Lopez said. “He’s from the Attorney General’s office. Up special from Mexico City.”

“
Mucho gusto
,” Matías said and he offered Romero his hand. The man’s shake was surprisingly firm and his hands weren’t soft. Matías wondered what Hector Romero was before he became a lawyer.

“Please, Sr. Romero, have a seat,” Lopez said. “Can I offer you something to drink? I have Scotch whisky.”

“That would be fine,” Romero replied. He took the chair next to Matías and crossed his legs. Matías saw that he had very shiny black wingtip shoes without a trace of dust on them. He resisted looking at his own shoes.

“Matías? Will you join us?”

“Sure.”

Lopez poured three glasses and gave Romero his first. “
Salud
,” he said.

Matías thought the Scotch tasted like rubbing alcohol. If he had a drink, he preferred beer. Maybe that made him less refined. Romero seemed to like his.

“Sr. Romero is here because of the incident that occurred last night. He flew up right away at the specific request of the Attorney General,” Lopez said. “They are very concerned in Mexico City.”

“We’re concerned in Ciudad Juárez, too,” Matías joked, but Romero didn’t smile.

“I understand your wife was with you at the time.”

“She was.”

“Is she all right?”

“Yes. In shock, but all right.”

Romero considered this with his fingertips on his chin. He tapped his lips, and then said, “I am here not because this is an unusual happening in Juárez, but because it is so common. For a time we were losing officers every week. But now they have come after you, a prominent member of the PFM.”

“I’m not that prominent,” Matías said. “I’m just a man doing his job, like everyone else here.”

“You are part of the joint American and Mexican operation against Los Aztecas,” Romero said. “A very important part. Our concern at the PGR is that Los Aztecas have found out your vital role in all of this and have conspired to rid themselves of you.”

“Every policeman in Juárez is a target.”

“But not every policeman is an agent with the PFM with
connections across the border. How many people know of your position?”

Matías thought for a moment. “A few dozen. We’ll call it fifty people on both sides of the border. You know about me in Mexico City.”

“And a leak could have come from anywhere.”

“Are you saying I’ve been sold out by someone on the inside?” Matías asked.

“There has never been a police unit assembled in Mexico that hasn’t succumbed to corruption or co-option by the cartels,” Romero said. “That means the locals, the state police, the PF, the PFM… anyone. And I don’t know how it is in the United States, but their security can be suspect.”

Matías shook his head. “I don’t see someone on the American side giving my name to the Aztecas. No.”

“Then you admit it must have happened here.”

A sense of melancholy settled over Matías, and he looked away from Romero toward the windows. In the hours after the attack he had almost managed to convince himself that it had been nothing more than a random assault perpetrated by one of the armed factions in the city. These things happened all the time and for no reason that could be fathomed. Sometimes Matías thought they killed just because they could.

If Matías was the target, then a pall of suspicion fell on everyone, even the men in this office. He did not like the sensation of suspecting the whole world, of having to watch what he did and said every moment of every day. But of course that was what he had been doing anyway. Who was he trying to fool?

“The Aztecas have marked you,” Romero said. “What do they call it? A ‘green light.’ You’re now directly in their sights.”

“What do you suggest I do about that?” Matías asked.

“One thing that has been recommended is removing you from your position in the American thing. That was certainly what
caught the Aztecas’ attention in the first place.”

“It could have been anything,” Matías protested. “I’ve been working inquiries involving Los Aztecas for two years now. I’ve made cases against them. I’ve testified in court.”

“But never have they openly tried to kill you in a public place,” Romero said. “That is the difference.”

“Then what do you want to do?”

“We could rearrange your duties.”

“What do you mean, ‘rearrange’ my duties? So you are removing me!”

“No, no, no,” Lopez said. “It’s only something that’s been proposed. People high up are concerned.”

“I’m concerned. It’s me they were shooting at,” Matías said.

“You won’t be reassigned,” Romero said.

“Good, because that would be a foolish thing to do. It would send a message that we can be swayed by violence. That can’t be allowed.”

“I agree completely,” Romero said flatly.

Matías blinked. “You do?”

“Yes. But now we must tread carefully. Someone passed on information about you, and we have to know who that is. My office has opened an official inquiry into the matter. We’ll find the one who talked.”

“When you do,” Matías said, “I want to thank them personally for all that they’ve done.”

“I’ll see to it that you get that chance.”

FOUR

T
HE FINAL TRUCK WAS UNLOADED AND THE
work gloves came off. Back support belts were stripped off. Men made for their lockers and the time clock. Flip went with them.

He was slow to put together his things and slower still to leave the building. What came next, he wanted nothing to do with, but he was bound to it. Flip felt the expectations smothering him.