The Guardians (29 page)

Now I really was worried. “What's happened?” I asked again. Gabo, who had put on some clothes, came over to hear.

“Asmo Rosado, whom I believe you know, got out on bail today.”

“Who?” I asked.

“He also goes by the alias El Toro Arellano,” the deputy said. “He pretends he's with the Arellano family cartel of Nuevo Laredo. But he's only a local petty thief.”

“Do you think El Toro would come here?” Gabo asked. He put an arm around me. Then I put an arm around him. We looked like we were holding each other up.

“I don't know anything about Rosado or his intentions,” el sheriff said. “When I heard and remembered that you folks knew him, I thought I'd take a little ride out here to check things out.”

And that's what they did. They walked around the property with flashlights and got back in their vehicle and slowly drove off. Gabo and I watched from the windows. Then my nephew went to sleep on the couch with his new pistol. Me with my old rifle, I went to bed. El abuelo gave him the gun some time back. Where he got hold of it, we didn't ask.
“GET YOUR TíA TO TEACH YOU HOW TO USE IT,
”was all he said. Oddly enough, Gabo, not being capable of smashing a bug, was glad to have the weapon. It didn't take much shooting practice—hitting cans here on the property—before my nephew got the hang of it. Must be the old rancho blood he carries in his veins.

MIGUEL

“WHAT DID I TELL YOU?
”my abuelo Milton growled, pounding his cane on the kitchen table. I was sitting on a chair half tilted back and lost my balance. “Ching …” I muttered after I banged my head against the wall behind me. Because it was daytime, the old man had to stretch his neck just like his dog did at every sound.
“GET THE HELL OFF THE FLOOR.
”

I wasn't spacing out. I was saying a prayer to the Great Spirit. I joined a new sweat lodge up by Ruidoso. Both men and women this time. We'd done a sweat for my whole family the week before. Ever since Crucita's father, who was even older than my abuelo Milton, heard the news, he was in the hospital. His wife at his side wasn't looking too good, either. If anything would've broken that old man it would be for something to happen to his only daughter. And something had.

My grandfather, far from becoming debilitated by bad news, was more ornery than ever.
“YOU ALWAYS GOT TO GO AFTER THE WEAKEST LINK. THAT'S HOW YOU'LL CRACK THOSE PACHUCOS,
”he said.

The so-called experts weren't getting us anywhere. So we decided to form an emergency strategy committee, my grandpa and I. These were dire times, all right. We called a meeting at his house. Gabe and the priest were invited, too. The kid had as much invested in finding any of those gangbangers as we did. There was no doubt in our minds that the Palominos and the Villanuevas had had something to do with the disappearances of our loved ones. But we knew no one could prove anything. More important, no one could find them.

But, jeez. When I saw Regina's nephew it nearly scared me. That boy was wasting away. And yet he didn't act sickly or fragile. On the contrary,
leaning against the sink, hands in his pockets, thumbs out, listening, he looked damn near intimidating. A lean, mean retaliation machine. Ready for anything, was how I assessed the teenager's stance. And yet when he spoke, his voice was still gentle. “Mr. Betancourt, ¿Cómo ha estado?” he said when he came in, taking my hand in both of his bandaged ones.

The hands, that was something else altogether. “His palms bleed,” Juan Bosco said, pulling me aside when I had asked Gabo again and still got no answer.

“Are you sure?” I asked. “Did you check them out yourself?” J.B. nodded.

Dag.

All Catholic kids go through a phase of desiring holiness. I had been a little like that myself, once upon a time, before adolescence. There was a time between the years my mother forced me to be an altarboy and when I actually went to Mass every day on my own. I think it was a month in seventh grade. You know, it's when you're afraid that what the priests are telling you about your thoughts and dreams is all true and you're going to hell for being a degenerate. Once I got in high school, hell didn't seem so bad a future prospect and I got over it.

But a stigmata?

“Are you sure?” I asked Juan Bosco again, who nodded but said no more.

J.B. had come around since the days when he only cared about the longtime residents who supported the parish in Cabuche. “My superiors advised me to keep out of political issues in the States. But I don't think like that anymore. Had I not gone into the seminary what would my life have been like scrambling around to feed a family of my own?” he said. Sometimes growers or foremen chased him off the premises when he went to see how the workers were doing. One grower pulled out a rifle. He even fired it hopefully in the air. But the priest had not turned around to see. A day or so later, J.B. went back. He and a member of his church or two who always went with him, not only to check that workers were not being abused and were actually getting their pay, but to offer whatever help they could. How little it might be. From the use of a telephone back at the parish office to call family back home to getting medical attention for a worker, if needed.

“HOW LONG HAS YOUR PAPá BEEN MISSING NOW, CARNALITO?
”my abuelo Milton asked Gabe.

“Ten and a half months, Don Abuelo,” the boy replied.

That long? I thought. I noticed the priest look at Gabe like he hadn't realized how much time had passed, either. Juan Bosco was wearing his collar but not a jacket since it was a hot day for fall. He shook his head. Then he asked me, “And your esposa?”

“My ex-wife,” I corrected him. “Nearly a month now.”

“And still no leads?” J.B. said. My abuelo and I both shook our heads.

I didn't know why, but looking at Gabe and thinking of my own broken family, suddenly I felt like crying. Men don't cry, my grandfather would have said. I had always been told that by him, the colonel, the priests in school, back when they gave you a good whack for looking at them cross-eyed. Everywhere and from everyone you had to take it like a man. The colonel busted me in the jaw so hard one time I thought they were gonna have to reset it. I surely did not cry at my father's funeral. But I had cried at the birth of my daughter, tears of joy. I wasn't at mi'jo's birth because Crucita had a Cesarean and fathers weren't allowed back then. I touched my throat; it was tight. Maybe I was just coming down with something.

“INNOCENT GENTE DISAPPEARING INTO THIN AIR,
”el Abuelo Milton said.
“THAT'S UNACCEPTABLE.
”Then, reaching into his back pocket, he struggled to pull out something. He laid a huge-ass gun on the table.

“Hey, Abuelo,” I said, pushing back my chair.

“Do you think that will be necessary?” the priest asked.

“WE ONLY NEED IT FOR PROTECTION,
”el viejo said.

Protection was a double-edged sword, I thought. Ironically, everyone claimed to want protection or give protection, no matter whose side they were on and who they had to hurt to accomplish either aim. But as for my old grandfather, the question as to who he wanted to protect was a moot point. Blind in the day and nearly deaf all the time, he was more of a hazard than anything else. I most definitely did not want him driving around like Mr. Magoo. As for how tough he was, well, his bark was much louder than a denture bite. I stood up and sat him down. “Cál-mate, Abuelo,” I said, patting the old man's shoulder. “We get it. The weakest link.”

The very next day, sans my grandpa, “the committee” started going to the basketball court in Santa Teresa after school. Regina's nephew had quit his job. She didn't know anything about it, he said, or about what we were up to. “This is the most important thing now,” he told us.

We had put two and two together as to why Gabe had always found
Jesse at the school. He must have been making his rounds peddling his merchandise to kids. Juan Bosco, Gabe, and I went there three times before Jesse Arellano showed up on foot. But show up at last he did. The wiry gangbanger did not have his car anymore since the cops confiscated it. When he saw us, he was all grins, like a dumb fool. That's when I realized that the wild look in his bug-eyed ojotes was due to nothing short of him being high. It was a wonder he recognized us.

“What's up, eses?” Jesse laughed, then spit.

I spit, too.

Jesse put his hands out to have Gabe throw the ball to him. “Come on, let's see what you got,” he said.

For a second, I half wished I'd brought along my grandfather's Colt .
45
. But where would that get us? We had decided to leave both el Abuelo Milton and his gun at home for everyone's safety. “Just stay by the phone,” I told the old man by way of making sure he didn't feel left out.

“DON'T WORRY ABOUT ME,
”he said.
“YOU JUST FIND THAT WEAK LINK AND OPEN YOURSELF UP A CAN OF WUP-ASS LIKE I TAUGHT YOU WHEN YOU WERE KNEE-HIGH,
”my abuelo said, stomping his foot.
“BACK IN MY DAY, I WASN'T AFRAID OF NOBODY. AND I'M STILL NOT.
”

The main objective was to find Crucita and Gabe's dad or at least track down those who knew what happened to them. So I kept calm. At first, we pretended we were only there shooting hoops. The punk probably knew better but we were all biding our time at that point. “What's wrong with your hands, man?” the gangbanger asked Gabe.

“Nothing,” Gabe replied, but it was pretty obvious that it pained him to grip the ball.

“ ‘The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere/The ceremony of innocence is drowned.’ ” I quoted Yeats's poem “The Second Coming” out loud, snatching the ball right out of the little creep's grip and passing it to Juan Bosco. The priest couldn't play worth shit and dropped the ball. Gabe snatched it up and made a basket. After a few hoops had been shot, the priest stopped, out of breath, and called time-out. “Let me ask you,” Juan Bosco said to Jesse, cutting the crap, “where can we find El Toro?”

“What do you want with him, you sick fuck?” the punk asked. He looked over at Gabe suspiciously. “I always knew you two were perverts.”

J.B. and I scarcely knew what was happening when Gabe suddenly pounced on the Palomino like a cougar. I swear that kid leaped about five feet. “Stop! Let him go!” Juan Bosco begged the kid as we both tried to
pull the boys apart. By the time we succeeded, bandaged hands and all, Gabe had done a job on Jesse's face. The kid walked away, arms crossed, each bandaged hand tucked under an armpit, as we picked Jesse up.

J.B. put the request another way, handing Jesse a handkerchief, which the punk didn't accept. “What will it take for you to tell us where we can find El Toro?”

“You know how much it takes, pendejos,” Jesse replied, rubbing his fingers together. He wiped the blood off with his shirtsleeves. “How much you two perverts got on you, anyway?” Turning to me: “Or you? You think you all that 'cause you a teacher? I got a brother who's a teacher, man. He went to college and everything. Sheet. He don't make in my baby finger all month what I can earn in a week, a day even.” The punk had gotten even more wound up with Gabe's attack. He strode right up to my face, which in his case, meant my chest. “You wanna piece of El Toro? You think he got your wife? Well, he ain't the only one!” He laughed like un loco, clapping his hands loud.

J.B. stretched his arm out in front of me to stop me from smacking the living daylights out of that punk. At that moment, I didn't care if I killed him then and there, but the priest was right.

“Vámonos,” the gangbanger said, with a come-on wave. “I'll take all three of you to him right now.” Then, swinging around, he looked over at Gabe, who only glared at him from a distance. “But it's gonna cost you, you wannabe-priest pervert.”

It was Juan Bosco who reached in his back pocket and pulled out his wallet. He took out two crisp one-hundred-dollar bills and held them up. Jesse waved his hand and laughed like the offer was absurd. Undeterred, the priest pulled off his watch. “Mira,” he said, waving it in front of him. “I got this in Italy. It's solid gold. Take it. Just take the money and the watch and tell us where your brother is right now. We'll all go together … in my car. It's right there.” He pointed to his carcarcha.

The punk stared for a second, as if debating if that was as good an offer as he was about to get. Then he grabbed the watch and bills from the priest. “Sheet. You think I won't take you perverts to him? That fucker ain't my brother, anyway.”

J.B. was a little sharper than I gave him credit for. That was the watch Gabe had bought him as a souvenir from the mercado in J-Town. He had told us it didn't even run anymore.

REGINA