Juarez Square and Other Stories (22 page)

I place my finger on the scanner, then close my eyes so I can’t see the red light fade, then go dark forever.

* * *

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Turn the page to read the first chapter of
Soledad
, the first book in
The Dark Republic
series.

Soledad - Chapter 1

Motherfuck it, I’m done.

That’s what it’s come to, I decide, as I sit here in the dirt under the desert sky, clear and dark and full of winking stars.

Let Guzmán find someone else to do his dirty work. Let someone else be the foundation he builds his castle on. Let someone else be his slave.

I’ve had enough. I’m finished with Guzmán, finished with all the lies.

It’s a shitty world and people are the shittiest thing in it. And three years is a long time to wallow in that reality, seeing what others can’t, learning nothing except that human beings are self-serving, cruel, untrustworthy. They’ll screw you over without a second thought, beat you senseless over a scrap of bread. No, that’s being too generous. They’ll ruin you just because they can. Or maybe for fun. I once saw a man hack another man’s arm off with a machete to test the sharpness of his blade.

What a fine species we are.

And we lie. Jesus, how we lie. Before I ended up here, I never would have guessed how much. Men lie about how many women they’ve slept with. Women lie about loving their husbands. Children lie about stealing candy. Everyone lives in a constant state of bullshit-spinning. They lie about everything, all the time. To friends, to family, to strangers, to themselves. Especially to themselves.

People lie, they’re dangerous, and they can’t be trusted. And tonight, for the who-knows-how-many-eth time, that’s exactly what I’m supposed to go and prove.

“
¿
Estás lista ya?” I start at Lela’s voice behind me, asking me if I’m ready.

“Almost,” I answer without turning around. She’s asked me the same question every minute for the past quarter of an hour.

“They starting to eat, Soledad,” Lela says, switching to English, as if this will make me more reasonable. “Need to go now.”

“When I’m ready.” I feel the hierba slowly starting to creep up on me, tendrils growing through my mind. Lela’s voice starts to change, vibrating with a tangible frustration and urgency I hadn’t noticed a minute earlier. The hierba’s bitter taste lingers on my tongue. I take a mouthful of water from my bottle, swish it around, spit it onto the sandy dirt.

“That’s a waste,” Lela scolds. “You should no waste water in the desert.”

I turn and look up at her towering over me, her giant silhouette bathed in moonlight. Shaved head, muscled arms, and twin shotguns strapped over her shoulders. A vision from some nightmare.

I stand and brush the dirt off the back of my trousers. Around Lela’s neck her Virgin of Guadalupe pendant hangs by a frayed rope.

I point to the pendant. “You’re going to lose that thing if you don’t replace that rope pretty soon.”

Lela grabs my finger, her enormous hand making mine look like an infant’s. “You touch that, I kill you.”

There’s an almost undetectable quiver in the wrinkles around her eyes, the barest lilt in her voice. Everything around me is suddenly vivid, like a black and white image blinking into full color. I see more, hear more, feel more. The hierba has taken hold.

“You’re lying,” I say, pulling my finger out of her grip.

Lela smiles, her silver teeth gleaming. “You right, I lying.” Then she grabs me by the arm and jostles me toward camp. “And that means you ready. Vamos.”

* * *

Lela and I weave our way through the maze of tents. Children scurry about, kick up clouds of dusty West Texas dirt while their parents cook over campfires. Cast iron pots filled with beans and stews, large flat irons covered with tortillas. My mouth waters, stomach growls.

Lela seems to sense where my attention’s gone. She pauses next to one of the campfires, where a large, round-faced woman with long braids piles a fresh batch of tortillas into a basket.

“Buenas noches, señora,” Lela says. “
¿
La molesto con una tortilla?”

“Claro,” the woman answers. She smiles and hands a tortilla to Lela, who then passes it to me. The woman’s expression changes as she recognizes me. Fear glows from her face like the incandescent halo around a light bulb.
New to camp
, I think. The new arrivals are always wary of me. Guzmán’s bruja, the one they’d heard about, the witch who can look into someone’s eyes and see their soul.

Lela thanks the woman and we walk on.

“Want some?” I ask, tearing off a piece.

Lela shakes her head.

The warm tortilla fills my mouth with the taste of roasted corn.

“I’ve got all the gear ready for you,” a voice behind us says. I turn and see Rafa, grinning at me. He’s the very image of puberty, all elbows and knees, pimpled face, hands and feet that look too big for the skinny frame that’s stuck somewhere between boy and man.

“Muy bien,” I say, turning back around, trying to ignore the longing I see in his face. His adolescent lust, as awkward and obvious as a hard-on tentpoling his pants.

It’s your own fault, Sol
.

It’s not the smartest thing I’ve done, sleeping with Rafa, but there you are. Endless monotony can drive you to try any distraction.

He follows behind us like a dog with hopes of a treat.

As I swallow the last bit of tortilla, we turn a corner and the food tent comes into view. I stop and sigh.

Lela walks a few paces ahead, stops, and turns. “Come on,” she says, returning to my side. She places her hand on my shoulder and presses me forward, insistent. “Time for work.”

The food tent is the largest structure in camp, its towering peak propped up by an old telephone pole. Thick, taut ropes staked deep into the ground hold everything in place. They throw parties here during all the major holidays: Dia de los Reyes Magos, Dia de los Muertos, even some of the gringo ones like Thanksgiving and Fourth of July. Hundreds crowd under the tent, packed tight, drinking and dancing until dawn. Hundreds more spill out into the camp. You can’t get an hour’s worth of sleep for all the fucking noise.

“Wait here,” Lela tells me and walks ahead to the tent. She peeks inside the door flap and comes back. “He facing this way,” she says, pivoting her shoulders to show me the subject’s orientation. “The gringo with the colita.”

Lela and I move to the side of the tent, leaving Rafa behind. I pull back the flap that’s disguised to look like a fold in the tent’s canvas, then I slip inside. The narrow, concealed space between the outer and inner walls of the tent has a short ladder leading up to a small platform, the secret spot where I’ll spend the next couple hours, observing the visitor. I climb the ladder and step onto the platform, where there’s a small table and a three-legged stool. On top of the table sits a pair of headphones, and next to them a plate of steaming cabrito, tortillas, and a mug of water.

I lean over the outer edge of the platform and whisper to Lela’s shadow. “Gracias por la comida.”

I sit on the stool, my belly pressed against the table. There’s hardly any room to move, but I’ve long since grown accustomed to the cramped conditions. In front of me, there’s a wide pane of one-way glass. On my side, I can see everything going on inside the food tent. From the other side, diners see only what looks like a framed mural, a Diego Rivera replica depicting peasants with rifles, waving banners that read Tierra y Libertad. Land and freedom.

Inside the tent, I see a dozen of Guzmán’s men, mostly inner circle types. Shifty-eyed advisers and grizzled muscle men. They all wear the same loose-fitting garments: white cotton shirts discolored by desert dust and sand, camel brown pants. They’re a kind of uniform: the simple, functional garb of the desert-wandering rebel, little changed since the days of Pancho Villa, who led his bandit revolutionaries through this same godforsaken land some two and a half centuries ago.

Some of the men mill about, but most are already seated at the long wooden bench-style tables. Pepe the cook hovers around them, scooping large spoonfuls of beans from a small pot. His son, little Pepe, maybe six or seven, follows close behind handing out tortillas. The meal’s only just started. In a little while they’ll bring out some kind of meat, maybe a stew or cabrito. I’ve got maybe fifteen minutes before the hierba’s effect starts to peak, so I take some time to eat.

After I finish, I grab the headphones, cup them over my ears, and flip the switch. Good sound, not much static. I turn the knob through positions one through ten, testing each of the tiny microphones hidden in the tables.

I remove the headphones, turn around in the stool, reach down and tap Lela’s shoulder through the canvas outer wall. “Lista,” I whisper. Then the shadow of her head nods slightly, her signal to Rafa, who’s hanging around nearby, that the gear’s working fine and he can tell Guzmán’s men inside the tent that I’m ready to go.

I turn back around, put the headphones on again, and settle in to start the read.

The subject sits at a table, scoping everyone out, a half-eaten tortilla in his hand. Conspicuously gringo among the brown-skinned men, he’s tall and lean, his blond hair pulled back into a ponytail. Lela gave me the data dump on him earlier in the day. It was a story I’d heard countless times: he had the deal of a lifetime, a huge moneymaker, and to bring it to fruition all he needed was access to Guzmán’s manpower and resources. Blah blah blah, the deal would pay Guzmán back ten times over, guaranteed. They all use that word: guaranteed.
I guarantee it
, they say, as if the word actually had meaning. How many of these pitches have I heard? A hundred? Two hundred? More? Cattle ranching, narcotics production, natgas conversion plants, drone factories, fish farms in Galveston Bay, trade deals with the Chinese or the Brazilians. There seems to be an endless supply of these would-be big shots, these bullshitters and fast-talkers who come here to the desert, drooling at the chance to do business with Guzmán. Maybe one out of twenty has a legit deal.

Scrub brush, coyotes, and hustlers. In the West Texas desert, one finds these in abundance.

I watch and listen as Pepe serves the stew. Everyone is seated now, eating and chatting in the low, controlled tones of serious men. Blond ponytail attempts small talk with one of the bodyguards. He’s no dummy, blond ponytail. I can see that right away. He knows it’s bad manners to talk business before the meal’s finished. Most of the gringo hustlers make the mistake of going straight into their pitches.

I close my eyes for a moment, then open them. I feel the hierba’s effect peaking, so I lean forward and take a few deep breaths, relaxing my mind like Mama taught me to. I feel my awareness expand like a lens opened to its highest aperture, letting all the light in.

The first thing I sense is a deep skepticism emanating from Guzmán’s men. They don’t trust blond ponytail. Their suspicion hangs in the air, heavy and thick, a cloud of unseen smoke. I see all the tiny physical giveaways I normally wouldn’t notice, those things the brain files away as irrelevant, unworthy of the conscious mind’s attention: furtive movements of hands, small changes in body posture, minute facial tics. But with Mama’s training and the help of the hierba, I can see everything. Hear everything, too. Fear and nervousness, confidence and joy, love and hate. There’s nothing they can hide from me right now, not even the things they hide from themselves. Mama taught me to see it all.

Mama
. I try not to let the memories distract me.

There’s an unnatural strain in the men’s voices. I hear their distrust like someone else might notice an out of tune key on a piano, ringing untrue. I lose myself, seeing these men, hearing them, reading them like a book written in a language only I can understand. A book of lies and deception, one I wish I’d never opened.

I focus on blond ponytail. “Whitetail,” he says, drawing out the word into three syllables.
Waht-tay-el
. His Southeast Texas accent rings clear and unmistakable in my headphones. “Can’t hardly find whitetail deer no more. Last season we sat a week in a blind, and nothing. Stalked a week more, nothing. My granddaddy said before Secession, he got him eight-point bucks every season.”

When the man across the table ignores him, he turns to another sitting next to him. “How’s the deer hunting around these parts?”

Blond ponytail’s neighbor doesn’t look up from his bowl. He shrugs and says, “You’re eating coyote stew. What do you think?” Nods and chuckles from around the table. Blond ponytail forces a smile.

They finish the stew and Pepe brings the café de olla. The smell of roasted coffee beans and cinnamon fills my nostrils.

I watch and listen, concentrating on blond ponytail as he starts his pitch.

“I’ve been in the natgas business all my life.”

Lie
.

“My chemists get the highest gas conversion in all the Republic.”