Desert Angel (17 page)

The man scooped ice into a short glass and filled it with brown soda from the bar hose. Set it on the napkin and made a sign with two fingers.

Momo got the money from his wallet. “You seen him?”

The bartender sighed. “I don’t see anybody.”

“Hey, I know,” Momo said, “but a job’s pretty hard to come by. He’s ready to move here. San Diego costs too much.”

The man casually looked from side to side, to see whether anybody was paying attention. The couple were focused on each other and the nearest man was facing away toward the end of the bar, watching TV news. Satisfied, the bartender picked up the sheet. “I wouldn’t leave San Diego for this dump,” he said.

“Yeah, well, job hunting.” After taking a long pull, Momo offered the Coke to Angel.

She wanted to try it but shook her head.

“So you seen him.”

“Guys like this usually looking for something besides work.”

“He likes the ladies.” Momo smiled like what-you-gonna-do?

The bartender remained silent.

“Yeah, well, thanks. We’ll keep looking.”

The bartender turned away to serve the woman holding up her empty glass.

Momo picked up the picture sheet and left with Angel.

Back in the truck, he was excited. “I think the guy’s seen him. He called it right about looking for women.”

“Maybe,” Angel said, “but that probably fits a lot of guys. What do you do when you go in there?”

“Have a couple of beers after work. Some weekends when I stay down here. I got a buddy who works same shifts as me.”

“You pick up girls?”

This time Momo was careful about his answer. “Uh-uh,” he said. “We’re just relaxing. Women in here are older. Regulars, like.”

Angel watched him to see if he was telling the truth.

A knock on the pickup window startled both of them. A scrawny kid with bad teeth and a dirty green T-shirt that said
KICK TRICKS
stood on the curb looking in.

Momo turned the key and powered the window down.

“Saw you leave,” the kid said. “Buy me a forty, I give you money?”

Angel didn’t understand.

“I probably can’t,” Momo said. “This place won’t sell out-the-door stuff in the daytime. Could get you some smoke, you do us a favor.”

The kid looked at him. Waited.

“An eighth if you help us find this guy,” he said, reaching over Angel to show Scotty’s picture.

The boy took the picture. Studied it. “Who’s he?”

Neither Angel nor Momo responded.

“Where is he?” The kid handed the picture back through the window. “What I gotta do?”

“You check all over town. Any place a guy might hang.” Momo gave the boy his cell number. “Call me or meet us back here at five. You find him, see what he’s driving, the bag’s yours. You don’t, you get to roll one.”

“Deal,” the kid said. “Got a copy?”

Momo handed over a folded one from his shirt pocket, and the kid skated away.

“Why’d you do that?” Angel asked.

“More eyes,” Momo said, starting the truck.

“You can’t be carrying dope with all the highway stops!” Angel said. Driving to Brawley she had seen traffic stalled, cars lined up on the northbound lane while green-uniformed agents with dogs searched each vehicle for drugs.

“Naw, I don’t hold it, but we got some where I stay. On the road to El Centro. We’ll go pick up a little bit, see if there’s any place else around there worth looking at.”

25

The traffic was heavy on the two-lane in each direction, the highway bordered by irrigated fields with occasional abandoned vegetable stands. No businesses, no motels. In the distance, maybe a mile ahead, Angel could see tall metal stacks and white steam rising.

“That’s the sugar plant,” Momo said, “and this is my place.” He turned right on a sandy dirt road toward a clump of stunted trees mixed among four or five trailers. “Company rents these cheap,” he explained. “Four of us to a box and do our own cooking. I can make truck payments and still give money to the family.”

He pulled to a stop and waited for the pickup’s dust cloud to settle. “You wait here,” he told Angel. “Not sure who’s home and who’s dressed.”

*   *   *

T
HEY SPENT
the rest of the afternoon exploring nearby towns like Calipatria, which had a fancy hotel twelve miles from Brawley but was probably too expensive and a little too far away from Salt Shores. They went northeast as far as Niland, where the land east of them gave way to the bleakest of deserts.

“Place called the Slabs over there a few miles,” Momo said, pointing toward the desolation. “A whole town of squatters, cardboard shacks, mobile homes. Weird place. He could stay there but I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t. Too far away.”

Driving, they could see for miles as they wound along deteriorating pavement on skinny back roads between irrigated fields. They crossed a couple of muddy ditches that signs called rivers. Passed clusters of trailers, or strings of shacky apartments. Puny settlements set between the two-lane and the fields that housed migrant workers. Angel checked the trucks but didn’t see anything that seemed shiny or recently bought. The whole area was nearly treeless, flat, almost empty, and there were few places not instantly visible.

Back in Brawley they took a right on D Street and angled toward the city center. Off a side street a couple of blocks in, Angel spotted a cluster of pickups and motorcycles parked in front of a square cinder-block building. When she pointed it out to Momo, he frowned.

“I’m not sure about that place,” he said, turning and slowing to look it over. It was dark gray with
BAR
stenciled above the metal door in orange letters. The glass brick window might have let light penetrate but you couldn’t see through it.

“Maybe we could just check it quick,” Angel said. “Scotty’s kind of place, like, off the main drag.”

“Stay behind me till I see what’s going on,” Momo told her.

Inside was almost dark and they walked past the small pay phone cubby and stopped until their eyes adjusted. After a moment she felt him reach back and grip her arm. “Sleeves,” he whispered.

Angel didn’t know what he meant but didn’t ask. She was distracted by the ten or twelve men she could now see who had turned to face them, most with shaved heads, tattooed arms, beater T-shirts. A half dozen sat on tall stools along a bar backlit by a hazy yellow glow seeping through rows of bottles. The others had stopped what they were doing around a pool table in the corner to her right. No one spoke.

Momo hesitated.

Angel reflexively reached for his hand, began slowly backing up.

“You see the sign?”

Angel couldn’t tell who said that. She was squinting from bar to pool table, looking for Scotty.

“Says we don’t serve border monkeys.” A stocky man with a huge belt buckle stood and walked toward them.

“Yeah, well, we don—”

The man threw his beer mug and hit Momo in the chest before he could finish his sentence. Picked up a chair as he continued toward them.

Now Momo was backing up, sliding his feet, trying not to step on Angel and trip her. “Hey! We don’t want no trouble.” The pain made his voice tight. He held his chest with one hand and Angel’s arm with the other as he edged toward the entrance.

Angel was checking behind them, making sure the path to the door was clear.

The man with the chair drew even with them, reached past Momo, and grabbed for her free arm.

Angel evaded his move and kicked him in the shin.

The man swore and raised the chair but Momo had turned and was pulling her to the door, banging it open, stumbling into the sunlight.

They scurried down the sidewalk, blinded by the brightness, and ducked into a neighboring portico where Momo continued to drag Angel with him, opening the glass door to an office and shoving her inside. She watched him as he returned to the edge of the entranceway and sneaked a look back toward the bar. After a moment he rejoined her, his face a mix of relief and pain.

The sound of a guy clearing his voice startled them and they wheeled to see a gray-haired man sitting at a desk, holding a phone away from his ear, call interrupted. “You in a hurry for car insurance?” he asked them.

They shook their heads and left, sprinting for the truck.

“What was that about?” Angel asked, once they were back on Main.

“Some Anglos … we’re real close to the Mexican border here. They got a bad attitude. Guess that was one of their bars. Most places aren’t like that.”

He drove a few blocks to the Brawley central plaza, took a left, and made a sharp turn into a parking space between two cars.

Angel, who had never driven a car, was amazed how he could talk, listen, steer, and work the pedals all at the same time.

When he shut off the engine, he rested his head on the steering wheel and shut his eyes. “Maybe this isn’t such a good idea,” he said, not looking at her.

Angel sat smelling the dust from the truck floor mixed with his sweat and the beer from the front of his shirt. She was sick of riding around. Scared to look in another bar. This wasn’t going to work. Not the way she’d imagined it. Her plan felt childish, a little girl’s idea. No, she’d have to stay here, stay on the streets to have any chance. She thought about Norma, hoping that Scotty was somewhere around here and not back in Salt Shores, where he was a danger to everyone she knew and liked. “Let me see your chest,” she said. The words surprised her. Shocked her, really, but she needed to make something better. Wanted to make Momo’s pain go away.

He shook his head.

Momo’s cell rang and he looked his phone over for damage before answering. While Angel watched Momo’s face, she felt in her shoulder bag for the phone TJ had given her. It was there in Rita’s little purse along with the charger and her two dollars’ change from the thrift store. She took it out and turned it on. It lit, slow but alive. Never had her own phone before. TJ had programmed it with his and Goot’s numbers, but how did someone call her? She pushed different buttons but got no useful information. Would it ever do her any good? Momo’s grimace brought her attention back, but she stayed quiet while he put the phone in his shirt pocket.

“People found the car Matteo was driving. Up in the arroyos near Joshua Tree. Sand and brush on it so it wouldn’t be seen from the air.”

“How’d they find it up there?”

“Scouting routes.”

Angel didn’t get it.

“People walk over the border. ’Bout a hunnerd miles from Mexicali to Indio. Stay east of the Salton you can sometimes miss the patrols.”

“What about Matteo?” Angel asked.

“No sign,” Momo said, looking away, out the windshield at the small bandstand in the center of the park. A young man sat on the steps playing a guitar. “Matteo’d never run away. He was about to graduate, become a citizen. The guy disappeared him.”

Angel felt a pain in her own chest like the words knifed her. She had managed to put Matteo out of her mind and now she knew why. Tío, Abuela. They’d helped her and this was their reward.

“Who called?” she asked, thinking about Tío and Abuela.

“Ramón,” Momo said. “He says to get my ass up home and stay away from this guy.”

Angel nodded. She was thinking the same thing. She had to do the rest of this alone.

She handed her phone to Momo. “How do I find out my phone number?” she asked.

Momo took it, scowled. “Hey, your battery’s really low. Don’t you never charge this thing?”

Angel looked at him. She thought she had, just this morning.

Momo, disgusted, pressed the menu button. “Here, look.” He brought up her information. “I should get your number,” he said, but his phone rang again, interrupting him. While he answered, Angel looked to the bandstand, where some skinny boys in dreads had joined the guitar player and were passing a cigarette.

“Didn’t find him,” Momo said, reaching to start the truck.

“The skate kid?”

Momo nodded.

“Call him back.”

Momo pursed his lips but did as she asked, redialed and handed Angel his phone.

“Hey, it’s me. The girl,” Angel said when the kid answered. “What happened?”

She nodded as she listened. “Yeah, okay, keep looking and if Nick—his name’s Nick?—sees him again, tell him to call me.”

She ignored Momo trying to wave her off. “Yeah, keep going, you get the eighth now,” Angel said. “Where we met. Probably an hour.”

Momo was trying to take the phone from her but she pushed him away.

“Take my number.” Angel rechecked her own number and read it off. “Anything happens, call me.” When she was done she turned to face Momo’s grimace.

“Vincente’s right,” he practically yelled. “You’re nuts and nobody can help you.”

When she gave Momo’s phone back, his eyes were blazing. “You got like a death wish?”

Angel didn’t answer, held her hand out to him.

“No way,” he said, shaking his head, face still colored with anger.

She kept her hand out, staring him in the eyes.

“I tole you, no.”

“You have to go home,” she said. “You’ve been great. Super. Really, thanks … but I have to stay here and look. I’ll call Rita or TJ later and get a ride back.”

Momo continued to shake his head, looking from one side to the other as if the corners of his truck or the trees bordering the plaza might hold a secret to reasoning with her. “Like the sheriff’s your taxi? You can’t…” he started, but gave up as he looked at her face. “Rita’s going to kill me,” he said, handing over the baggie of smoke. “Does she know your phone number?”

Angel nodded, stuck the baggie in her shoulder tote.

“Give it to me, too,” Momo said.

Angel said the number three more times, memorizing it herself.

Momo programmed it, looked up when he was done, and noticed her hand still out. “What?”

“Picture.”

“He’ll find
you
first.”

Angel didn’t argue.

Momo gave in.

26

Angel stood under a shade tree, watching Momo take a right on Main, heading back to Rita’s. She followed the truck’s progress as it passed the far side of the Brawley plaza and disappeared behind commercial buildings. Weakness took her by surprise and she leaned against the tree. In the last few minutes she’d been so scared, then so clear and strong, but now her resolution drained like bathwater. She liked Momo. She had strong feelings for Rita. Why hadn’t she gone with him?