Ground Truth (19 page)

Chapter 33

July 7

12:30 a.m.

HOO-WAH, HOO-wah, hoo-wah.

Jack’s eyes popped open. For several seconds he was totally disoriented, lying in a heap on the asphalt. His jaw throbbed, and his back ached like hell. He felt along his jawbone and ran his tongue around his teeth. Nothing broken. As the siren’s wail diminished, he gingerly pushed himself up until he was on his hands and knees, then on his feet. He staggered when a sharp pain pierced his right ribs.

The three punks were gone. He looked around for Debra.
Oh God, they have her!
He looked down the street toward the restaurant and then in the other direction. The street was empty. He had to do something.

From the alley behind him came a distant scream—cut off abruptly. He ran into the alley. No way into the buildings on either side. Had they turned into the next street or crossed into the alley on the other side? He pressed his forehead hard.
Damn, his head hurt.
He had to get this right. Kidnapping a woman, they’d stay in the alleys.

He came to a door on his right, but the trash in front of it was undisturbed. The next door was padlocked. There, to his left, a door with no lock. He looked up. Shattered upper windows. Abandoned. A thug’s hideout. He slowly pulled the handle and entered a long, empty storeroom.

To his right, inside a glass-fronted office, one of the attackers sat in a chair, legs spread wide in front of him, whimpering, hand covering his mouth. The big man Jack had fought sat on the edge of the desk, clapping a steady beat. Both men had their backs to him, and Jack edged closer to the glass.

Debra was on her back on the floor. The smallest of the three men was on top of her trying to pry her legs apart, his trousers and underwear around one ankle. He ripped open her shirt. One breast came out of her bra. She tried to knee him, but he had her pinned.

Jack looked around for something to use as a weapon. Nothing. He flung the office door open and exploded across the room, driving his shoulder into the man on top of Debra, knocking him into shelves that collapsed, dumping dozens of cans on him. Jack hauled the man’s head back and pounded his neck, knocking him senseless. Jack threw him to one side and saw a man lurch out of the room, holding his crotch, eager to escape.

The man with the fat gut lunged away from the desk and came at Jack with a knife held low in his right hand. Jack ripped a broken shelf post loose and brought it down like an ax on the man’s right shoulder. He yelled, and his arm dropped. The knife clattered to the floor. Jack was on him, beating his head with both fists, driving him to the floor, landing on top of him. With an agonized roar, the man under him landed a roundhouse hook on Jack’s kidney. He felt the thud of the blow, but his rage blocked the pain. He threw his full weight into an uppercut to the man’s jaw, snapping his head back.

Then Debra was beside him. “Stop. Stop it, Jack. He’s done.” Hands still tied behind her back, her eyes pleaded with him to stop. He looked down at the unmoving hulk sprawled on his back, arms spread wide.

He pulled Debra’s bra back into place and freed her hands. She collapsed against his chest with a groan, arms hanging at her sides.

The punk who’d tried to rape her hadn’t moved, and Jack heard no sounds from the storeroom. They were safe, at least for the moment.

“He stabbed you in the back,” she said. “I thought you were dead.”

“I feel a burning back there, but I wasn’t stabbed.”

She slipped her arms around his waist to feel for herself. “There’s a slash in your jacket. Turn around so I can see.”

He turned and felt her lift his shirt.

“I can’t believe this. He did stab you but it didn’t penetrate. You owe your life to ‘Fort Worth.’”

“What?”

“That’s what’s spelled out in brass rivets on the back of your belt. His blade hit the “H” so hard it popped off. The knife tip must have skipped across your ribs at an angle.” When he turned back, she gave him a weak smile. “God, that was close.”

The crease in his ribs stung, but knowing it wasn’t serious made him feel better. He asked, “How did you get away from that guy who grabbed you from behind?”

“I flipped him over my shoulder and played hacky-sack with his head.”

“The last thing I saw, he was rolled up like an armadillo. I’ve never seen feet move as fast as yours.”

“When you went down, I came to help, but one of them whacked me from behind so hard I passed out.” She held out her hand. It was trembling. “In two minutes, I pumped more adrenaline than in a whole karate tournament.”

“You saved my life.”

“We’re even. Out there on the street I didn’t have time to be afraid. But when they got me in here on the floor, I was terrified. They were really pissed. If you hadn’t found me when you did . . .”

“If the sound of police sirens hadn’t somehow gotten inside my head, I might still be out cold.”

He pulled her to his chest and stroked her hair.

“What about these two?” she asked, looking disgusted.

“We have to leave them here. Otherwise, one of us would have to guard them while the other looks for a cop. That’s a loser.”

She looked at the two bleeding, inert bodies. “At least we did more damage to them than they did to us.”

He found enough wire and cord around the office to tie both men to a metal railing. “This will keep them from following us.”

He opened the door into the alley and looked both ways. Seeing no one, they ran toward his rental car. At the last corner he flattened against the wall and looked around it. No one near the car, but the hood yawned open, and the driver’s side window had been smashed. The door hung open a few inches. He ran to the car.

“Battery’s gone.” He peered inside. “CD player too. If they broke into the trunk and took the toxic waste samples we’re screwed.”

The trunk was almost closed but it had been pried open. When he lifted the cover, a faint but distinctive odor wafted out, and he smiled in relief. “The smell in the trunk is left over from when I was carrying these samples in my socks. But the thieves thought it was coming from the bucket. That’s why they left it.” He grabbed the bucket’s handle. “We have to get out of sight fast.”

But how?
No car. No public transportation. He couldn’t call a cab and stand around waiting for it. He looked up and down the street, and then pointed to the lights of the commercial section he’d driven through a few blocks down the street. “That way. We’ll find a place to hole up.”

They stopped at a small
farmacia
to buy bandages and antiseptic. The pharmacist looked over their soiled clothes and raised one eyebrow, but filled their order without comment. Jack reached for his wallet and came up empty. “That thug ripped it off while I was out cold.” Turning his back to other customers, he unzipped his money belt and took out a stack of five hundred peso notes. He paid the bill and put the rest in his pocket.

A few doors down the street, Debra stopped at an open-fronted clothing shop with racks of dresses, blouses, and men’s shirts.

“I’ll find something clean for us, but I’ll need some of that money. I left my purse in the hotel room.”

He handed her five hundred pesos and waited on the sidewalk, scanning every pedestrian and every car. He didn’t know what to look for but he had to spot anything he could.

She returned in less than five minutes with a paper bag full of her purchases.

“Not a great selection, but they’ll do.” Her tone was subdued. The shock of the attack had caught up with her. He felt the same. He’d never been attacked so violently, never fought for his life before.

“There are no all-night movies,” he said. “Hanging out in some restaurant or bar is too risky. Maybe we can find a hotel.”

They tried the only one in sight, a very rough looking place.

“This is opening week at Sunland Racetrack,” the desk clerk said. “You won’t find a vacancy in this part of town . . . unless La Boca has a room.” He winked and pointed. “Two blocks that way.”

La Boca was sandwiched between a dark warehouse and a grocery store closed for the night. Each quarter of its two-story façade was a different color: yellow and green below, blue and red above, like a faded quilt. The beat of salsa music thumped through the open door.

“This is such a dump even the Lonely Planet guidebook wouldn’t list it,” Debra said. She glanced at the metal bucket. “Just as well with that weird luggage of yours.”

The lobby was bare except for a reception counter on which a couple of dozen empty beer bottles stood. Next to it, the legs of a padded armchair splayed outward under the colossal bulk of the old woman who filled it. Beneath a rose-colored housedress, her great breasts rested comfortably on her upper thighs; her frizzy bleached hair rose in a cone above her skull. A half-knitted shawl lay across her chest and one arm of the chair. Eyes closed, she moved rosary beads through her fingers. To her left, a staircase angled up out of sight, its treads as worn as those in an ancient temple.

As he got closer to the woman he noticed the barrel of a pistol sticking out several inches from under the shawl, so he stepped to one side before tapping on the counter to get her attention.

Her fingers stopped. She looked at him as if he were selling something she definitely didn’t want. She tucked her chins into her chest in disapproval. Maybe she was surprised to see
gringos
looking for a room in this section of Juarez. Maybe it was because they looked like they’d been dragged behind a bus.

“Do you speak English?”

No response. She couldn’t or wouldn’t.

“Tiene usted un cuarto?
Do you have a room?”

“Por supuesto. Por cuantas horas?”

“She wants to know how many hours we’ll be here,” he said to Debra.

“I know. I understood her.”

“We should get out of here by six.” He looked back at the woman.
“Por la mañana, hasta las seis.”

“
Se paga ahora.”
The woman held out a pizza-sized palm in an unmistakable gesture.

“Cuanto?
” he asked.

“Quinientos pesos.”

He took five hundred pesos from his pocket and handed it over.
Forty dollars for this dump?
He wanted to know why it cost so much.
“Por que es tanto dinero?”

The woman shrugged, sending waves rippling across her breasts. She counted the money then smiled, flashing several silver triangles, and gave him a key attached to a brass ring a foot in diameter. She held out clean sheets and a somewhat gray towel.
“Numero veinte uno.”

“Is this place okay?” Debra whispered.

“We won’t be meeting any debutantes, but it has two things going for it. First, it has a vacancy. Second, no one will look for us here.”

“But she’s renting rooms by the hour so this must be—”

“You got it.”

Emerging onto the landing at the top of the stairs, they walked through a door and stood on a veranda that encircled an open-air courtyard at the second floor level. Below, men and women danced to salsa music coming from several speakers. In one corner, people were holding skewered hunks of red meat over a blazing pile of trash. The sweet smell of marijuana smoke filled his nose and brought back memories. It was like arriving late at a fraternity party.

Farther along the balcony in front of them, a woman was leaning over the railing shouting at someone below in the courtyard. A man sucking on a beer bottle was vigorously fucking her from behind. They squeezed past the energetic man and Jack unlocked room twenty-one.

“Here we are, ma’am, the honeymoon suite. Just call the concierge if you need anything.”

He followed Debra into the room. In addition to the swayback queen-size bed there were two scarred wooden chairs, a corner hand sink on a pedestal, and several large unframed posters of snow-capped volcanoes thumb-tacked to the walls. Hanging parallel to the wall to his left, a hammock was suspended from bolts in the ceiling. In his travels, he’d never before seen a hotel room with a hammock, but it wasn’t hard to picture its role.

He dropped his Levi jacket onto one of the chairs and helped Debra put the sheets on the bare mattress. He eased onto the bed and drew in a deep breath. “Damn long day.”

“Roll over on your left side so I can clean out the wound on your back. The blade of that guy’s knife has probably been places you don’t want to think about.” She opened the paper bag from the
farmacia,
took out a square of gauze and soaked it in hydrogen peroxide. “You’ll hardly feel a thing,” she said, dabbing the gauze on the shallow slice that ran across his lower ribcage.

It stung, but it didn’t matter. They’d survived the attack. They were safe—for now. In the morning they’d get back on the horse. At this moment, nothing mattered except closing his eyes. At the same time, with the thugs from Casa Lupo on the loose, the last thing he wanted to do was close his eyes.

Chapter 34

July 7

7:00 a.m.

HE FELT HER IN the bed with her back to him.

Hypersensitive to her closeness, he turned so his body curled around her backside. He remembered vividly the couple they’d squeezed past on their way to the room. In seconds, his penis was hard against her. Her fanny was warm but not nearly as hot as the small furnace he sensed ahead. He reached forward under her arm, cupping her breast in his hand. He lifted it, relishing the weight and tautness. He took her nipple between thumb and forefinger and gently squeezed it. She turned her face to him and he captured her mouth, expressing emotions that had grown ever since she’d walked into his suite in La Condesa.

The intensity he felt came from more than having survived near-death together. Along with lust, he felt overwhelming tenderness.

She eased backwards, drawing his penis deep inside her, moving very slowly back and forth, squeezing him. Suddenly, her hips started bucking out of control and he drove forward. His hand never left her breast as she moaned and spasmed seconds ahead of him.

He wakened suddenly and sat straight up. The sharp pain across his back instantly reminded him of the attack.
“Damn,”
he exclaimed with a grimace.

Debra, wearing a yellow sundress with a long skirt and sleeveless top covered in white daisies, came over, sat on the edge of the bed, and kissed the corners of his eyes. “I’ve been watching you for the last few minutes, thinking how much you’ve changed since San Francisco.”

Her beauty made him catch his breath—and brought back the fantasy he’d just had about her. “You look great.”

She smiled at the compliment. “It took a few minutes to pick the rest of the grit out of my hands and knees. The towel looks like a discard from the stock car races, so I used gauze and bottled water to scrub off. Then I air-dried before I changed into this stunning creation. So, how’s my patient?”

“My jaw aches, and I feel like I have a row of staples across my back. How about you?”

“Fine except that I’d fight a lion for breakfast. But first, let me look at that cut.” He rolled onto his side. “This bandage isn’t going to come off easily,” she said as she slowly peeled it away. “Good, no redness. The hydrogen peroxide did the trick.” She brought tape and a bandage, sat beside him on the bed, and carefully taped a new bandage in place.

She stood. “Time to take a look at your new wardrobe.” She handed him his new shirt, pale blue with prints of a variety of cacti, undoubtedly a mocking commentary on his usual dress. She gently kissed him again.

Wishing their lovemaking had been more than a dream, he said, “I want to know you for a very long time.”

She beamed. “Whatever that means, I like the sound of it. I must say, you’ve certainly wakened in a good mood.”

He nodded, but he was having trouble hanging onto that mood. He was shaken by how savagely he’d beaten the men in that storeroom. He’d always believed what Gandhi said: “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.” But when he’d seen Debra on the floor with that guy on top of her, adrenaline kicked in like a hurricane. Violence had been the only way to save her, but what worried him was that he’d lost it, couldn’t stop hitting the man. If Debra hadn’t intervened, he might have killed him.

“Yeah,” she said, “today’s pretty sure to be better than yesterday. Speaking of yesterday, there’s something you should know. Fighting off Mr. Smooth on the dance floor the other night, I felt real muscles under that fancy silk shirt. If you ever get into it with him, swing first.”

“We
will
get into it. Montana sent those thugs to kill us. There was no ‘Give us your money or your life.’ It was a hit.”

She frowned. “How could he get those guys into that alley so fast?”

“Maybe he had someone listening to calls on your hotel phone, or just staked out the Rialto in case you left. Either way, someone followed you to the Casa Lupo and saw me waiting on the sidewalk in front.”

Debra nodded. “Montana will find out they didn’t get us.” She paused and stared at him soberly. “Jack, they almost killed us. It’s time for a reality check. We need help.”

He swung his feet over the side of the bed and stood. “I’d
love
some help. Look, I’m no action hero. I’m a lawyer. But even if the samples are toxic, I can’t prove where they came from or prove chain of custody. I took them because I need to know what’s in those tanks and because they might persuade someone in authority to search the Palmer plant. But who? Alvarez touched the third rail and he’s toast. El Paso police and the FBI have no jurisdiction in Mexico. They’ve been scorched several times lately for crossing the border. And everyone says the Juarez police are corrupt. If I call them, they’ll invite me in for an interview, call Montana, and lock me up, maybe kill me. I’ve already warned Sinclair, but his goal is to keep that plant operating. I’ll think of something. I have to pry into Montana’s head. I need that edge.”

TEN MINUTES LATER, eager to leave La Boca and get started on their tasks, they retraced their steps along the interior balcony. The deserted courtyard below reeked with the smell of bleach. They stepped into the street, hot and humid, even though it was not much past seven a.m.

After several blocks, he found a vendor selling plastic-wrapped fried egg sandwiches and warm Cokes in bottles. They walked to a dusty park and sat at a metal mesh table with a bench facing a concrete war-horse ridden by a scowling Benito Juarez. He checked his cell phone, got an adequate signal, and called McDonald.

Mac talked nonstop at high speed, giving him a quick breakdown of the geology of the area, and ended by saying, “So you can see that the water supply there is incredibly vulnerable. If those samples you collected are highly toxic, they would be like injecting poison into an artery. Get them to Ed Rincon at UTEP.”

He’d expected bad news, but not this bad.

“Listen Mac, I don’t want to get you into trouble, so if anyone asks about our conversations, deny they happened. I’ll call you later.” He hung up and took a bite of his cold sandwich.

“Don’t leave me hanging,” Debra said. “What’s up?

“Because he’s a hydrologist McDonald looked first at water supply and demand. He found out that Ciudad Juarez and El Paso depend on water from a single aquifer. It has two parts, the Hueco
bolsón—bolsón
means basin—and the Mesilla
bolsón.
The huge
maquilas
that opened in Juarez suck up that water like thirsty camels, but the real drain comes from the hundreds of thousands of people who migrated here for jobs. To keep the boom going, local governments didn’t restrict water use at all until just a few years ago.”

“Back up for a moment,” Debra said. “I’ve heard of aquifers, but how do they work?”

“This one is like a giant sponge made of sand, gravel, and silt that accumulates water draining down from the surface—and it’s very susceptible to contamination. Only about the top fifteen percent of the water is drinkable. The water below that is too salty. Keep in mind that both these cities are in a desert, maybe seven inches of rain a year. And, as their populations grow, they pump more out of the aquifer than nature replaces. That’s called ‘mining,’ and it draws the salty water deep in the aquifer up to contaminate the fresh water closer to the surface. The water level in the Hueco
bolsón
has already dropped more than one hundred feet.”

Debra looked startled. “That’s appalling. What are they doing about it?”

“In El Paso, they’ve cut water consumption by half and opened the largest inland desalination plant in the world to make some of the salty water from the
bolsón
drinkable. That gives them temporary breathing room. The authorities also got tougher on disposing of waste that could contaminate water.”

He stopped and looked around. The park was busy now, and the air was rich with aromas of frying food. An annoying
beeb-beeb-beeb
came from a dump truck backing up. Several passersby paused and stared at them, then moved on. He was still watching for the one who might be about to make a hostile move on them.

“I’m guessing that Juarez hasn’t been that proactive,” Debra said.

He shook his head. “In Juarez, the population is exploding, and they’ve done very little to conserve water. There used to be a law that required hazardous waste created by
maquilas
to be sent back across the border into the U.S. for disposal. McDonald said that when that law expired, pressure in the right places kept it from being renewed. Now, that toxic waste stays in Mexico.”

“Sounds like a great source of business for Palmer Industries and its competitors,” she said.

“I’m sure they get some business, but the rumor is that some of the
maquilas
dump their toxic waste in remote backcountry in the middle of the night. In terms of what Montana is planning, that’s like comparing a hand grenade to a hydrogen bomb. He’s converting ordinary water wells into injection wells to pump extremely hazardous waste underground. In the past, wells that injected material between 4,000 and 8,000 feet deep were permitted in the U.S. The theory was that they were so deep the poison wouldn’t affect the ground water and also that they were safer than using landfill, ponds and tanks. In reality, oil and chemical companies used injection wells as a cheap way to put an expensive problem out of sight.”

“So if the wells on the Palmer site are that deep, there’s no problem, right?”

“But they aren’t that deep. McDonald said PEMEX drilled those wells down only a few hundred feet, just enough to draw water from the aquifer.”

She tossed the remnant of her sandwich to a crow hopping nearby. “So what happens when the toxins hit this aquifer?”

“If toxicity is high enough, even small amounts will destroy the entire aquifer, killing kids and old people first. Sometime after the aquifer is contaminated, the public—” He gestured at people cutting through the small park. “—will be the walking dead before they know what’s happening.”

“Dear God,” she said, “we have to stop it.”

“First step, we get a taxi back to El Paso and deliver the samples to UTEP to be tested. As soon as results are ready, we have them sent to McDonald.”

Now that he had a profile of the problem, his pain and fatigue fell away, replaced by urgency. Instead of spinning his wheels waiting for the results to come back, he’d use the time to investigate the mystery trucks whose trips Guzman had worked so hard to keep secret.

He jumped up. “Let’s go.”

While Debra rose to follow him, he raised his hand to signal, and a 1967 Mercury Monterey taxi swerved to a stop in front of them. As they climbed in, he looked back over his shoulder, distrusting every face in the park.