Donkey Show, part two

Chapter Twenty Eight

Claudio, sitting on his couch with a cup of tea in his lap, couldn't see exactly where Onofre Crispín fit into the story. "You mean the police chief set you up with this guy?" he asked Harley.
Harley had his feet up on the coffee table, next to his bike helmet, and was sipping a Corona. "Exactly."
"This is the Juarez police chief who furnished you with the alibi for the drugs they caught you with in Mexico?"
"I guess you could say that."
"Tom. Are you getting the feeling that you're not really in control of this story?"
"I'd say that's a bit of an understatement."
"You mean you're getting jerked around."
Harley took the last swig of beer and put the empty bottle on the table. "More or less."
"You know why that is, Tom? Because everybody's got an agenda, except for you."
Harley covered his eyes with a hand and groaned, "Oh, not now."
They'd been friends and neighbors for four years, and Claudio never let a month go by without zeroing in what he viewed as Harley's character defect: his lack of focus. As Claudio saw it, Harley kept his ambitions to himself as a hedge against failure. He dabbled in a hundred things -- the bike racing, the languages, the impersonations -- so he wouldn't have to put himself on the line in any one area, especially his career. This way, if Harley came up short as a reporter (and he usually did) he had a built-in excuse. Reporting was merely a small piece of his life; it just happened to be the piece that paid his bills.
Claudio had stood up and was pacing between the wooden Indian and the window. "You can't just flirt with this story, the way you do with everything else," he said. "You have this way of gliding along, talking to the police chief and going to the Cowboys game with this maquiladora magnate, writing whatever Canfield tells you to write, blithely, as if it's all just an interesting life experience. A movie."
"But it is..."
"Right. But you should be directing it, not leaving it to everybody else. Action. You need to take action."
"Hold that thought," Harley said, standing up. He walked into the kitchen and opened another beer. He looked in the refrigerator for something to eat and settled on a half a can of chopped liver. "You got any crackers in here?" he yelled out to the living room.
"Next to the blender."
Harley came out with a mountain of liver on a plastic plate, surrounded by Ritz crackers. "So what's everybody's agenda?" he asked, returning to the couch.
"You know as well as I do," Claudio said. "Perry wants to move to a bigger paper, Canfield wants to get rich, DuChamps wants to get famous..."
"And how about Eddie Stevenson?"
Claudio shrugged. "Sex and drugs, from what I can tell."
Harley thought about that for a second and sipped his beer. "And how about me?"
"You tell me."
Harley stretched his long arms and looked up at the ceiling. "I'm going to have to chew on that one a while."
"Everybody has a very clear agenda except for you. It's as if you think it's beneath you. That's your problem with women, too," Claudio went on. "You want them to love you, but you spend half your waking hours with that stupid helmet on, just trying to scare them away, from what I can see."
"It doesn't help that they see me hanging out with the likes of you."
"True enough," Claudio said, looking a little hurt.
"I did get married though," Harley pointed out.
"Yeah, but you just married your best friend, and then divorced her when she got another job."
Harley piled a cracker high with chopped liver and guided it into his mouth. Down the street, he could hear the tamale man who came around every Saturday with his cart. He sounded a long steam whistle that cried like a dying train. Harley wondered for a moment how tamales would taste with a little liver on top. He looked around the apartment, at the stern wooden Indian standing in the corner, and the red and blue Navajo rug hanging above the couch, and at Claudio, who was hunched over his tea, running a hand through his long black hair, free now of its ponytail, thinking about something.
Claudio stood up and walked to a small desk by the wall, where he picked up a yellow legal pad and a couple of pens. "Why don't we sketch out just what you know about this story, and who your sources are. Maybe if we put our heads together, we can get ahead of the story a little."
"OK," Harley said.
"Good."
The two men went over the story from the beginning. Harley described how Canfield tied the maquiladora project to the drug reporting, and insisted on leading with the tigers.
"I can see where don Onofre Crispín might have been a little pissed about that," Claudio said, making a note. You might not have the greatest time at that football game tomorrow."
"Right."
Then Harley related Stevenson's version of the beating in Juarez. He told him about DuChamps' car getting stolen, and outlined his talk with Juarez Police Chief Roberto Muller, who maintained that Gustavo Jiménez was a "pussy cat." Finally, he detailed the attack at Ken Perry's house, including the information about the stolen Lexus with blood stains on the passenger seat.
"And you say the cops are holding back on this story, because they don't want to bring in the FBI?" Claudio asked.
"I wouldn't say they're holding back. They just want a clearer idea of things."
"Kind of like us," Claudio said with a smile. He took a sip of tea and then twisted his tongue around to clean something from a molar. "Where did you see Eddie Stevenson? Over at that apartment in the barrio?"
"No. He hasn't gone back there. He's staying with a woman over on Memphis, near Copia. Diana Clements."
"Elke's friend?"
"Could be."
"So," Claudio said, "he gets beaten up in Juarez, and then never goes home again?"
The room was getting darker. Harley stood up and reached for the light switch. "OK if I turn this on?" he asked.
"Let's catch the sunset," Claudio said. He raised the blinds, exposing a bruised sky over Juarez. "So," he continued, "Stevenson gets beaten up and never goes home again? That's what I'd call fishy."
"Estela's pregnant," Harley explained. "And he thinks she let herself get pregnant to trap him."
"So he's not going back to her unless she gets an abortion or something?"
"Now that he's with this other woman, I can't see him going back at all. In fact, he asked me to pick up his clothes. And now he's talking with lawyers about suing the paper."
"So now he's got a vested interest in Jiménez and the beating. If there's a hole in the story, he's going to want to cover it up." Claudio sounded disgusted. "Are you going to go over there and pick up his clothes?"
"Would you?" Harley asked.
"Certainly not as a friend. But I might as a reporter. I think it might be worth snooping around there a little."
"I was thinking the same thing," Harley said. "Stevenson told me this morning that Estela was angry at him. Then she mentioned something about her friends being angry too."
Claudio nodded gravely, and then whispered "Jesus!" He stood up and strode back into the kitchen. "Another beer?" he yelled.
"I'm still working on this one," Harley said, wondering why Claudio jumped up so suddenly.
He heard Claudio singing to himself in the kitchen, over the sound of running water. The singing sounded forced, and atonal.
Harley stood up and wandered into the kitchen. "What did I say in there to startle you so much?" he asked.
Claudio rinsed his cup and reached metal tongs into a big ceramic tea jar and took a pinch. "I realized that I know one of her friends," he said in a low voice. "And for all I know, he's probably involved. In fact, I'm pretty sure he is." He turned toward Harley. "I don't want to get him in the headlines -- though that's probably what he's after."
"This is a friend of yours?" Harley asked.
"A former student of mine."
"Who works for Jiménez?"
"I don't think so. But... How about if I talk to him? I bet I'll be able to get you the story about what really went on over in Juarez."
"How about if I talk to him," Harley said. You were just saying I needed to take control of the story. We can work it off the record."
"The trouble is, this guy wants attribution. Enough so that he could get himself into a big mess," Claudio said. "You just go ahead and report the story. And if I find out anything, I'll let you know."
"OK. You think you might know something by tomorrow night?"
"Good chance. But if you're in such a hurry, I think you're wasting precious time taking a plane ride with the maquiladora king."
"You still talk like an editor."
Claudio patted Harley on the shoulder as he headed toward the door. "I never stopped being one," he said.
Then his eyes widened and he shouted, "Down! Down!"
He tackled Harley and they both sprawled on the hardwood floor. Claudio started scrambling for the kitchen, shouting, "He's got a gun!" Harley lay back and wrapped his arms around his head. In the window, he saw the shadow of a figure wearing a black ski mask. He was hunched over, tinkering with a pistol. Harley simply stared at him while Claudio shrieked from the kitchen, "Get in here, hurry, get in here!"
The man seemed to be having trouble with the pistol and Harley, for some reason, felt safe. He heard Claudio crawling behind him. Then he felt Claudio's hands under his armpits, tugging at him, dragging him across the floor toward the kitchen. Then he saw the man in the ski mask point the gun and fire. POCK. He heard glass shatter and he felt nothing. Claudio was still pulling him, groaning. POCK. Another shot, then the sound of the footsteps racing down Prospect Street.
The two men lay for a moment on the kitchen floor. "You OK?" Harley asked.
"Yeah."
Harley climbed to his feet. "See if I can find him," he said, hurrying toward the door.
Claudio tackled him a second time. "Imbecil," he said in Spanish as they crashed to the floor. "Don't chase a guy with a gun.
Harley looked up and saw the wooden Indian staring strangely, as if it recognized the shooter. Then he noticed that the statue had a splintered bullet hole through the eye. "The Indian's a tuerto now," he thought, wondering if that linked the shooting to Gustavo Jiménez.
Then he ran out to his bike.


Chapter Twenty Nine

Rubén's Aunt Julita watched the visitor shifting his weight uneasily and looking away from the TV set. He studied the portrait of President Kennedy, and then the picture of the young Rubén, his hair long and frizzy, accepting the journalism award at Bowie High School.
"Can I get you more lemonade?" she asked him in Spanish, trying not to stare at his crooked nose.
Oscar Olmos placed a hand on top of his glass. "No gracias, Señora," he said, twisting his broad face into a smile.
"If you'll just relax, Rubéncito should turn up before long," Julita said. She suspected that this man, who said he worked for one of the captains of industry, was bringing Rubén a job offer. She didn't want him to leave. "I might be able to find a beer in the refrigerator," she said, standing up.
Oscar Olmos cocked his head to one side and cracked a downward smile, as if to say that a beer might taste good.
Julita limped out of the small living room into the kitchen. Olmos looked at his watch. 7:35 Juarez time, an hour earlier in El Paso. don Onofre wanted him back by 8:30 to run errands. But first Olmos had to get to Rubén and the two others to deliver the message. Leave town right away, or die. That was what he had to tell them, even though don Onofre didn't put it in exactly those words.
The aunt said she didn't know where Rubén was. Olmos, who never felt comfortable north of the border, didn't know how to proceed. He couldn't write down the message and leave it with her. Put things like that in writing, he knew, and you got in trouble. Especially north of the border. Plus, he couldn't see handing this woman a death threat for her nephew. He felt some sympathy for her. He could hear her moving around bottles and cans in the refrigerator, looking for a beer.
He leaned back in the easy chair and was surprised when it suddenly reclined, and a footstool popped up to lift his legs. He thrashed about for a couple seconds, trying to get back to earth, but managed only to push the seat back further. Now he was lying flat, with his feet as high as his head, maybe higher. There had to be some button to push, he figured, running his hands along the arms of the chair.
"That's more like it," Julita said as she returned. "Nice and easy." She poured a Coors Silver Bullet into a tall glass and placed it on a coaster next to the horizontal Olmos, who looked like a man about to get a tooth pulled.
"Rubén just loves that chair," Julita said. "Sometimes I think about moving it up into his room. That's where he spends most of his time. Studying. Doing his journalism. He could sit in the chair, relax, and read his newspapers. It might be good for his tension." She paused for a moment and looked at Olmos, who was trying to pour beer down into his mouth without spilling it. "He's a bit tense, you know," she went on. But so are many of the young people you meet these days. Especially the ambitious ones. And Rubén is certainly ambitious. What kind of industry did you say you were representing?"
"La maquiladora, Señora," Olmos said. He managed to swallow some beer and then caught himself grimacing. American beer was such piss.
"La maquiladora?" Julita was distressed. Surely they weren't recruiting Rubén to work at one of those long tables, putting together toasters or car parts! Her nephew was a man of letters, not a worker in a blue smock. Politely, but firmly, she would have to tell this man with such an unfortunate nose the truth about her nephew. She had to set him straight.
"Rubén," she said, "is a nervous boy. High strung. It's probably because he's so intelligent. You know he's been to the university, and was director of the newspaper there?"
Olmos nodded, wondering why she was telling him this.
"So," Julita said sternly. "Let's be clear. Let's call bread bread and wine wine."
"Of course," Olmos said. He saw a wooden lever sticking out of the armchair. Did he dare pull it?
"If you are looking for maquiladora workers, my nephew is not the appropriate person. Now... perhaps a managerial position inside one of the factories might be..."
Olmos reached down and yanked the lever and plopped back to the ground. The chair shook the table next to it, nearly tipping over the glass of beer. He reached over and steadied it.
The woman was still talking about her nephew.
Olmos made some positive noises and tried another drink of the watery American beer.
"Would you like to see his bedroom?" the woman asked.
"What!?"
"No, you must understand," she said, blushing, "his bedroom is his office. I thought that if you had a look there, you would see what a serious young man you're dealing with."
"Let's have a look," Olmos said agreeably. He stood up from the chair and drained his beer. Maybe he could leave some sort of message there.
He followed the woman as she limped up the narrow stairs. "I call it the 'gallinero'," she yelled back. "I think he sweats down to his bones up here. You'll see."
The heat in the room almost took Olmos' breath away. He looked around and saw piles of newspapers next to the bed and desk, and newspaper articles taped to the wall. No wonder she called it the hen house, he thought, wondering what sort of fanatic he was dealing with. "I tell him he needs a fan up here," Julita said, flattening the sheets on Rubén's narrow bed. "But with all these papers, well, you can imagine...It would be like a real hen house, with the feathers flying."
From down the stairway they heard the sound of a door opening, followed by Rubén's voice, shouting, "Tía!"
Julita and Olmos hushed.
"This is my aunt's place," they heard Rubén say in English. "You can just sit in that chair while I run up for the file. But watch it when you lean back."
A softer voice answered.
"Oh, sure," Rubén said. "You want to come up. No problem. It's a little messy, but..."
Olmos and Julita stood frozen in Rubén's stifling bedroom. "Come," she whispered. She pushed open the door and began walking down the steps, Olmos right behind her. "Rubencito?" she called down sweetly.
"Tía?" Rubén was climbing the steep stairs. A short bald man came up behind him.
After some confusion in the narrow stairway, Rubén and his companion, New York Globe reporter Byron Biggs, retreated down the steps to make room for Aunt Julita and her large visitor. Rubén, looking confused, politely shook hands with Olmos and introduced him, in Spanish, to the Globesman. Biggs, who didn't understand a word, appeared mesmerized by the Oaxacan's bent nose.
"Señor Olmos represents an industry in Juarez, Rubén," Julita said. "I told him that perhaps you would consider a managerial position, but that you were not one of those people who would put on a blue smock."
Rubén nodded blankly.
"I work for don Onofre Crispín," Olmos said. "Perhaps you know of him?"
Rubén snapped to life at the mention of Crispín's name. "Of course," he said, nodding.
"He wants to send along his warm regards, to you and your two companions, Simón and Gato, and to extend best wishes for your journey. You were leaving tomorrow, did I hear? Or was it tonight?"
"Leaving?" Julita said.
"Yes, yes," Rubén said affably. "Those plans are still to be ironed out. Señor Olmos, maybe you could take back a message to don Onofre Crispín." He placed a hand on the shoulder of the disoriented Byron Biggs and said, "This reporter from The New York Globe -- You're familiar with El Globe de Nueva York? The most important newspaper in the world? He's writing a front-page article about certain scandals that have occurred in Juarez, and I've told him that an interview with don Onofre was absolutely indispensable. That is, to put everything into perspective. So maybe you would be kind enough to tell don Onofre that this Señor Biggs and I will be coming by Monday, at an hour of his convenience?"


Chapter Thirty

As Claudio shouted at him to stop, Harley unlocked his bike and pulled the chain loose from the wrought-iron fence. "Action!" he yelled. Then he hopped on the Raleigh and raced down Prospect, strapping on his helmet with one hand.
It was dark. As he approached the overpass, he slowed down and looked into the bushes. He didn't see anyone. But as he rode over I-10 he saw a black spot on the west-bound lane. He stopped and looked. The ski mask. A truck ran over it with half of its 18 wheels, and deposited it 50 yards down the road, toward the Asarco smelter.
Harley rode on towards downtown, feeling a rush of adrenalin. He wasn't too worried about the gunman. The man had a chance to shoot him and shot the wooden Indian instead. Harley pictured himself swooping down from the bike and capturing the shooter, breaking the story wide open. He leaned left and turned onto Franklin. The usual hoboes were slumped against the mulberry trees outside the library. The gunman could be sitting among them, of course. But Harley figured that unless the man was very cool, he'd be hurrying back to his home base.
He continued east on Franklin, past the Santa Cruz bar and the boarding hotels. Drinkers milled about on the sidewalks, a couple of them wearing stocking caps, which Harley could never understand in 85-degree heat. They looked too drunk to be suspects. He zipped through an empty parking lot to Kansas. By this point, he was probably past the shooter. He turned right on Mills and rode back towards Pioneer Plaza.
Mills Street was more crowded, with swarms of Mexicans outside of the casa de cambio, the Arby's and McDonald's. Finding him now was a longshot, Harley knew. He dismounted and walked his bike along the sidewalk, gazing at the Saturday-evening crowd. He scanned the faces, some of them oval Mayans, with the receding foreheads and long Roman noses, looking like drawings of the Indians who met Cortes at Veracruz. Others had round Mestizo faces, like Fernando Valenzuela's.
As he took in the faces he saw the glint of a pair of steel-rimmed glasses. A young man with short brown hair was looking at him. The man abruptly turned around and hurried away. Harley followed him, pushing and prodding though the crowd with his bike. The man wore a green, paint-spattered tee-shirt, and carried a leather bag over his shoulder. Suddenly he ducked to his left into Kress's, a big old five-and-dime with minarets that made it like a mosque. Harley tried to catch up, but had to stop for a mother and father, who were leading a toddler by the hands.
Harley gazed into Kress's for a while. But it wasn't worth waiting at there: the store had doors on two streets.
His only chance, Harley decided, was to circle the area on bike, looking to get ahead of the guy and run into him on his way back. Figuring he would head into the barrio, or even Mexico, Harley pedaled south, past San Antonio street, into South El Paso. He rode up Mesa and back Stanton, past the used clothing stores and the pawn shops, and then he began weaving back and forth on the cross-streets, just hoping to run into something. This was Stevenson's neighborhood, virtually shadeless, probably 10 degrees hotter than his own Sunset Heights. The street corners smelled of sun-baked piss.
As he rode past Overland, he looked up at Stevenson's apartment. He could make out the form of Estela behind the window. It looked like she was ironing. Harley pulled on the brakes and scooted up the curb. Claudio suggested snooping around Stevenson's place, he thought, pressing the bell. Why not now?
He heard Estela's voice. "Quién?" He looked up and saw her leaning out the window, black hair falling in front of her eyes. She brushed it out of the way and saw him. "Ah!" she said, looking pleased. "El famoso Tomás Harley." She told him she'd be right down.




Chapter Thirty One

Estela hurried down to the front door wearing tight bluejeans and an untucked pink tee-shirt, embroidered with flowers. Her face looked much better than the last time, Harley thought. No sign of bruises around the eyes. As Harley navigated the bike up the narrow stairway, she warned him in her Chihuahuan Spanish that the apartment was a total mess -- "un desmadre." She was packing her things, getting ready to leave, she explained, when a couple of guests arrived.
"You're leaving El Paso?" Harley asked.
"I'm still not sure," Estela said, pushing open the door and stepping over a box. "Here, sit here, on the couch." She said she might stay with some "amigas" in El Paso, or else go back to Mexico. It depended on a few things.
Harley settled back on the couch and put his helmet on the coffee table. He heard a man's voice humming. "Is that someone in the bathroom?" he asked.
"One of my guests." Estela rolled her eyes. "When you have a place on this side of the river, people are always dropping by."
"Is this a friend from your home town?" Harley asked, trying to remember which town she came from.
"Sort of. A friend of a friend. And then there's another friend I don't like too well. But he's not here now."
Harley smelled marijuana, probably from the guy in the bathroom. Estela looked far too clear-eyed for smoking. She stared at his face, appreciatively, and then flashed him a brilliant smile. Harley smiled back and then looked down at the water pipe on the coffee table. He wondered whether to tell her he'd seen Stevenson. He looked up. She was still gazing at him, with her head cocked sideways.
"What is it?" Harley asked, feeling uneasy.
"You're very beautiful," Estela said. "You'd look like an Italian movie star, if you just dressed better." Harley blushed. "You'd look very sexy -- "muy sexy" -- with a cigarette in your hand, and a jacket over one shoulder."
"You should see me wearing my bicycle helmet," he said.
That one left her puzzled, and Harley didn't know how to follow it up. He could tell her she was very beautiful, of course, which was true. But he didn't want to lead her on. That wasn't what he came for. She was gazing at him now, smiling fondly, as if they were old friends.
"I saw Eddie this morning. And he's..."
"He's with that woman, isn't he?" Estela said contemptuously.
"Which woman?"
"You tell me."
"Diana?"
"Eso, Dee-ana."
"Did he tell you he was going there?"
"He didn't need to," she said with a dismissive wave of her hand. "When she came over here asking about him, I knew where he was headed. Maybe he was already there..."
"She came here?"
"Uh huh."
"So... Do you know what really happened in Juarez?"
"I don't know ... and it doesn't cost me any sleep."
She was trying hard not to act hurt by the news about Stevenson, Harley thought.
"No idea?"
Estela shrugged. "He was abusive, and people like that, they get abused. Go and see that woman, Deeana, in a few days. See if she has bruises... He's not gentle," she continued. "Not like you."
Harley ignored the compliment. "You're saying the beating in Juarez was retaliation for... his mistreatment of you?"
"Oh, you Gringos take everything by the letter! Who knows why it was done? Maybe nothing happened at all. Maybe it was the PRI." She sat still for a moment, looking stern. "Yes, it was probably the PRI."
Harley heard the shower go on. He looked at one of the Estela's boxes and saw a framed photograph of a skinny guy in a white undershirt, looking angry. "Who's that?" he asked, pointing at the photo.
Estela looked over. "Rubén," she said, as though Harley already knew him. "Eddie took that picture. Part of his border project."
"Maybe you can go stay with him," he suggested.
She shook her head. "He lives with his aunt... Maybe," she said, widening her eyes, "maybe I could stay with you. Just for a couple of days."
"Oh, I don't know," Harley said, stunned by the suggestion. "I mean, maybe you could..." He didn't know what to say. "I'm not staying at my apartment now," he said. "I'm at a hotel."
"You're sweet to offer," Estela said, standing up. "But I wouldn't want to stay in your place all by myself. I'd feel much... safer there with you." She walked into the bedroom, promising to return "en un momentito."
Harley wondered how to regain control of the interview. She had him flustered, and the idea of her moving into his apartment promised nothing but trouble. He tried to come up with polite phrasing to retract the offer. "I'm afraid we had a small misunderstanding," he was saying to himself in Spanish, when Estela emerged from the bedroom. She walked toward him, smiling, looking right at his eyes, and Harley noticed by the jigging under her shirt that she'd removed her bra.
She stood in front of him for a moment, smiling self-consciously, and then sat next to him. She reached for his hand, saying something about interpreting his life lines. Harley paid little attention to what she was saying; it sounded like readings from fortune cookies. But he enjoyed the warmth of her hand, her finger softly tracing his palm lines. Harley felt a stirring in his pants. No surprise there: His body always urged him on. Normal behavior in this situation, he knew, would be to grab her fingers, reach the other hand behind her neck, and then fall hungrily on top of her.
Harley's first response with women, though, was always to hit the brakes. He worked to curb his desire. He thought of Stevenson getting beaten in Juarez. He thought of dead fish.
Estela took his hand and placed it on the side of her neck and then shimmied closer to him and moved her face close to his. He looked at her. He could see the traces of brown in her mahogany eyes, like the grains in the dinner table in San Marcos. Reflected in her pupils he saw his own face, looking like a delivery man peering through a peep hole.
"Maybe we should talk about a few things," he said, backing away a little.
"Like what?"
"I don't know..." Harley didn't trust himself with women. He had this old-fashioned idea that if he had sex with a woman, he had to go steady with her, at least for a while. Most of the time, though, he was too shy to approach the women he was interested in, the Diana Clements of the world. So he didn't get much practice. This led to performance anxiety.
He was fine at kissing, though, and that was what he wanted from Estela. But how to limit it to kisses? And if they did have sex, would she insist on moving into his apartment? He looked at her eyes, big and brown, inviting him. Then he leaned forward and the eyes went out of focus and he brushed her lips with his, inhaling her hot breath that smelled of corn tortillas and some Mexican spice Harley never used. Epazote?
He felt a tent rising in his pants, and Estela put her hand on it, gently.
He pulled back, startled, and she let go of him, looking embarrassed. "I don't usually do that," she said in a low voice, looking down. "I just thought that... you were interested in me."
"I am," Harley said, trying to prop up her spirits.
Relieved, she smiled and leaned forward, and kissed him on the mouth, lightly at first. Then she shifted her weight so that her breast rested against his arm. She darted her tongue into his mouth and murmured.
Harley sat rigid on the couch with the woman draped over him, her tongue noisily exploring his mouth. This was moving much faster than he expected. He tried to come up with a justification for going with the flow. Why did he have to take everything so seriously, he wondered, as Estela -- apparently thinking she had a carte blanche -- sucked on his lower lip and rubbed her hand in slow circles along the inside of his thigh. Maybe, he considered, he could learn something valuable about the Jiménez case by becoming friendly with Estela.
She swung a leg around one of his and crawled up his body, pressing her breasts against his chest. She reached up with her mouth and began to nibble on his ear lobe.
Harley gingerly placed a hand on her hip. He moved it under her shirt, tracing the curve down to her narrow waist. Estela pulled back from him for a moment and smiled, letting him know that she appreciated his touch, no matter how tentative. Then she leaned forward again and slowly drew her tongue, flat and warm, across his temple and his eyebrow, and then down into his eye, flattening the folds of his eye lids and dallying, with gentle poking, at his tear duct. She switched to kisses, moving up his forehead and then, with one perfectly synchronized motion, she lifted her tee-shirt and plunged Harley's face between her breasts.
Harley held one big breast in both hands and kissed it gently. It was hot, and he tasted the salt of her sweat. Estela had her arms in the air, taking off her shirt. She threw it on the floor. Then she reached down and maneuvered a big brown nipple against his face. With her other hand, she moved the massage from his thigh to his crotch.
By this point, Harley, though still ambivalent about having sex with Estela, knew he was on the verge of losing control. He thought about dead fish again. Putrid dead fish at an outdoor market in Juarez. His mother's funeral, in the December rain in San Marcos. Pollution. Old car batteries bleeding chemicals into rivers. Rivers covered with industrial sludge. Globs of tar the size of softballs floating on the Cuyahoga River. The river burning.
Estela reached for his belt. She unbuckled it expertly with one hand and dug down into his pants. Harley shifted his weight, trying to dodge her hand before it was too late. But she tracked his movement. When she snaked her hand through the fly of his underpants and grabbed him, the images of burning rivers evaporated from his mind, replaced by the reality of a beautiful half-naked woman plundering him.
He lost control and it was over. She giggled and turned, just as the bathroom door opened and Gato walked out, bleary-eyed and amused. "Vaya," he said, walking toward them. For a moment Harley feared that he was going to find himself in a menage a trois -- with an extra guy. Estela, however, was in command. Pulling her hand from Harley's pants, she pointed to the bedroom and told Gato to wait there, for the time being. Then, even before he turned away, she rubbed her skin with the same hand and then ran her fingers through Harley's hair and tried to pull him toward her again.
Harley, his desire spent, resisted. He found himself wondering whether he'd be able to shower before heading back to the hotel. He looked ahead, as if in a trance.
"What's the matter?" Estela said in Spanish. "You don't like me?"
"I like you very much," Harley said, trying to be polite. "I'm just trying to figure out where we're going with this."
"Gringos," Estela pouted. "Always worrying about where they're going."
She's right, Harley considered. Why not just have fun together for a while? He leaned down toward her face and smiled at her, trying to revive her spirits. Then he rubbed noses with her and kissed her, trying to put passion into it. Drawing away from her, he asked, "How about taking a shower together?"


Chapter Thirty Two

Eddie Stevenson sat at the bar drinking Cutty Sarks on the rocks and watching the San Francisco Giants maul the expansion team from Florida. He'd had a rough morning with two lawyers, who had both asked him questions that weren't any of their business. He'd walked out on them and taken refuge at Paxson's, a bar up Mesa that had wooden rakes and plows hanging from the ceiling. Stevenson ate bowl after bowl of free popcorn and washed down the salt with sips of cold whisky. Suing the paper might not be as easy as he thought.
He wouldn't go back to Diana's place for a while. Give her time, he thought, to get over whatever was bothering her. Maybe he'd stop by Estela's place and pick up his dope and some clothes. Then he'd swing by Diana's place with a joint or two. He wouldn't carry his clothes in there right away. He could tell she was sensitive about those things. He'd leave the clothes in the trunk. But then they'd smoke a joint and build up some rapport, like that first night. And he'd gently steer the conversation towards cohabitation. He could hear Diana saying, with that raspy voice she had after smoking, "Well, you know, if you want to stay here for a few days, it's OK." And then he'd say, as if the idea came out of the blue, "Well, I don't want to impose or anything. I mean, we still have to learn a lot about each other and all. But I do have some clothes out in the car..."
Stevenson paid his bill -- 26 bucks! -- and left a dollar tip on the bar. He didn't realize how much whisky he'd drunk until he stumbled off the bar stool. He made his way out of the restaurant, struggling to keep his balance. When he pushed open the door and walked outside, the sunlight blinded him and the late-afternoon heat almost buckled his knees. He knew he was too drunk to drive. So he turned on the tape deck in his old Dodge and listened to J. Geils for a few songs, until the heat made him feel light-headed. He moved the car to a parking space in the shade. Then he lay down, with the tape still playing, and fell asleep.
When he woke up, it was dark, and the sweat on his shirt and the back of his head was beginning to chill him. He started the car and pulled into the Saturday evening traffic on Mesa. He didn't feel all that drunk. He worked his way all the way down Mesa past UTEP, screeched as he turned left onto Schuster. From there he drove east, practically on automatic pilot, past the mountain and Harley's hotel, to Diana Clements' duplex off Copia. Pulling in, he remembered that he planned to stop by Estela's place first. He'd do it later.
He walked up to Diana's door and tried to open it with his car key. After he scratched at it for a while, he pounded a fist on the door, and Diana answered. She was wearing red rubber gloves and a paisley headband. "I'm cleaning the toilet," she said, without inviting him in."
Stevenson just murmured something and brushed by her into the living room and flopped down on the couch. Following him, she bent low and looked into his eyes. "You're drunk!" she said.
"So what?" He tried to smile.
"It's criminal to drive in that condition. You could have killed somebody."
Stevenson opened his arms wide. "Come here," he said.
"The hell I will. You smell like a brewery." She puzzled for a second. "Or a distillery."
"Come here," he coaxed.
"No."
"Baby." He tried to say the word affectionately, but it came out more like a taunt.
Diana's eyes fired. "Don't you ever call me that again."
Stevenson looked at his feet, trying to win her pity.
"I have some news to give you before you go," Diana said, her gloved hands on her hips. "Somebody shot at Tom Harley this afternoon."
"Where'd you hear that?" Stevenson said, perking up.
"A friend."
"The one you were at the party with?"
"Uh huh."
"And where'd she hear it?"
"From Claudio. Tom was over at his apartment when the man shot at him."
"God." Stevenson sounded shocked. "Is Harley gay?"
"I wouldn't know."
"Jesus." Stevenson shook his head. "He didn't get hit, did he?"
"No."
"So who did it?"
"You tell me."
Stevenson looked forlornly at the floor, trying to focus his mind. He lay back on the couch, hoping that Diana, pitying him, would climb on top of him.
"I also learned something else about you," she said.
"What?"
"Is Estela pregnant?"
"No."
"No?"
"What's happening is, she's probably going around saying she's pregnant to make people think that I've like, ditched her."
"So she never told you she was pregnant?"
"Oh, she mentioned it a couple of times. You know, her period was late. But I didn't believe it. I mean, she just got herself pregnant to try to... I mean, she might have got herself pregnant to..."
"To what?"
"To trap me!"
Stevenson was fast losing hope that Diana would lie on top of him. She paced behind the coffee table, looking like a prosecuting attorney.
"Listen," she said, making a tent with her gloved fingertips, "I think it's time we cut our losses on this. I know it's partly my fault. I invited you over here, knowing that you were living with her. But I don't think it's working, and so..."
She looked from her fingers to Stevenson, who now had his eyes closed and was pretending to sleep.
"Get up!" she said.
He grunted and rolled to one side.
She leaned down and yelled in his ear. "Get up!"
He grunted again.
She reached down and grabbed his head to shake it. But Stevenson extended his arms, as if still sleeping, and yanked her on top of him.
Diana tried to pull herself loose. But he'd locked onto her tight. She kicked and tried to hammer with her fists. It was hard though, because he had her arms pinned to her side, and he softened the kicks by rolling on top of her. She tried to scream. He muffled it by planting a big whisky kiss on her mouth.
She bit his lower lip, hard, with her canines, cutting him. Stevenson grunted and punched her in the ribs. Then he pressed harder upon her and lay his scratchy face against hers. He still held his eyes closed, as if this were all happening in his sleep. His blood trickled down her face and onto the sofa.
They both breathed heavily, resting. A truce. Diana's ribs ached with each breath. She wondered if she could coax him off her, or if she'd need to use force. If he ever let go of her arm, there was a brass vase within her reach on the coffee table. She could crack him on the head with it. But what if she tried and didn't knock him out? Then he might kill her. Or even if she somehow managed to hurt him enough to get him out of the house, he could come back any time and kill her. He didn't seem like a killer. But he didn't seem like a rapist either. And that's what he was doing, in this cadaverous mode. Raping her. Or maybe it was just a very strange fight...
As his blood inched across her cheek and onto sofa, Diana considered that she could be overreacting. Maybe he was just fooling around. She found herself wondering how she'd wash the blood off the sofa.
Then she heard him snore lightly. This was her chance. She got herself into fighting mode by reminding herself about the punch in the ribs, and the chance that he could be a killer. She pushed one leg against the back of the sofa and managed to shift her weight underneath him, putting herself closer to the coffee table. Then she wriggled an arm free. He was snoring louder now and his head, no longer against hers, was face down on the pillow. His lip looked white where she's bitten it.
Stretching her left arm, she reached the brass vase and pulled the pansies out. She lifted it. Square on the bottom and round on top, it probably weighed a pound. From underneath him, it was almost impossible to hit him hard on the head, which was next to her right shoulder. Especially with her left hand. She traced the route with the vase and felt powerless. She needed to get out from under him. She put the vase back on the table and gently pushed his shoulder up. He grunted and rolled back on top of her.
Diana lost all patience. She screamed and pushed with all her might, lifting his body from her and then jumping from the couch. She reached for the vase and held it in her right hand as Stevenson opened his eyes.
"What's going on?" he mumbled.
"Out!" She gripped the vase in her hand like a softball, spilling water on the carpet. She was primed to dent his forehead with it.
"OK, OK, OK." Stevenson climbed to his feet and tried to say something to her.
"Out!"
"OK!" He hurried out the door and slammed it behind him.
Diana, her heart pounding, spun around, looking at the entire apartment, the adrenalin making her feel like a warrior. She saw Stevenson's keys on the couch, near the blood spot on the white cushion. She picked them up and walked to the door. When she opened it, Stevenson was standing there, looking penitent. Using the same hurling motion that she prepared for the vase, she threw the keys at him and shut the door.


Chapter Thirty Three

Estela turned the shower down to a trickle. Then, wet and soapy, she tried to shinny up Harley's legs and make love. Harley was ready to go along with it. He reached for her hips and pulled her up. But as she kissed his neck and slipped forward, he wondered about birth control. Then he remembered with a start that she was pregnant, according to Eddie Stevenson. He eased her back to the ground and said, "We probably shouldn't do anything without ... protection."
"It's OK," Estela said, kissing him above the breast, and adding a little bite. "I feel my period coming."
"Still. You never know."
She looked up at him, disappointed, and started to say something when she and Harley heard someone open the front door. A voice yelled, "Bueno?"
Estela shouted in Spanish. "Get in the bedroom and shut the door! I want privacy."
Harley heard a man muttering something. Then footsteps and the noise of the bedroom door, and muffled men's voices in the bedroom. He worried that Estela was being rude to her guests because of him. He turned off the water and started to dry himself off with the single towel, and then quickly offered it to Estela. "Maybe once we get dressed, we could invite them out of the bedroom," he said. "You don't have to lock up your guests for me."
She shook her head and pulled on her tee-shirt.
Harley reached for his underpants and jammed them into his back pocket. He opened the door and walked into the living room as Estela wound the blue towel into a turban on her head. He heard the voices in the bedroom. Maybe, he thought, he should just knock on the door and introduce himself. His Spanish was perfectly fluent. There was no reason to segregate him from the guests, now that Estela had her clothes on.
Harley was just about to knock on the bedroom door when he heard the front door opening behind him. In walked Eddie Stevenson, looking like a Mexican who'd collided into Operation Blockade. He had scratch marks on his face and a swollen lower lip, and his clothes looked dirty and slept in.
"Harleyman!" he yelled. "I shoulda known I'd find you here."
He was drunk.
The photographer weaved across the room, toward Estela. She sat on the couch looking like a grim Nephraditi, her posture rigid, chin jutting angrily, and the blue turban tilted back.
"Estelita," he said soothingly, sitting beside her.
She wouldn't look at him.
He took her hand. "Look at me, baby," he said.
She pulled back her hand.
"Harleyman," he said. "Translate for me, will you? My Spanish is shit when I have a coupla drinks. Tell her I'm uh..." Then he switched into Spanish. "Como estás, baby? Quépaso?"
Harley heard quiet giggling from the bedroom. He saw a leather knapsack on the coffee table, next to his bike helmet, and noticed the waterpipe was missing. The guests were smoking, he figured, and listening to this soap opera in the living room. He wondered if Stevenson would look at him and notice that his hair was wet. He reached over to the coffee table for his helmet, and strapped it on.
"Look at my lip, Estelita," Stevenson was saying. "I got punched." He looked up at Harley. "How do you say 'lip', anyway? Lipio?"
"labio."
"Oh yeah. like cunt lips... But you're not a big fan of poontang, are you?" He flashed a grin. "Don' worry," he said to Harley, who looked uneasy. "She doesn't understand shit."
"Jes I do," Estela said angrily in English. Then she switched to Spanish. "Leave, Eduardo. And take all your boxes."
Stevenson swung around, focusing for the first time on the apartment. He looked at the boxes of his things piled neatly in the corner, next to Harley's bike. And then at Harley, towering over him. And finally at Estela, who was adjusting her turban with both hands.
"Did you just take a shower?" he asked Estela.
"Como?"
He turned to Harley. "Did she just take a shower? Or did you..." Then he answered his own question. "You must of just got here."
The phone rang.
Estela rushed to answer it. "Bueno?" She listened, said "One momento, please," and handed it to Stevenson.
He took the phone and settled on the couch, as if he'd never left. It was a freelancing assignment, and he sounded nearly sober as he talked about shipping schedules and rendezvous points in Juarez.
Harley grabbed his bike and started to point it toward the door. But Estela placed a hand on his arm. "Stay," she whispered. "I don't want to be here alone with him."
"You have your friends in the bedroom," Harley said in Spanish, opening the door.
Estela glanced toward the bedroom and then looked back at him blankly.
Harley realized he sounded callous and slowed up for a second. "Listen," he said, smiling, "this was really fun. I'll call you up tomorrow, OK?"
Estela nodded, and he hurried down the steps before she could kiss him within sight of Stevenson.
He was at the door to the street when he heard Stevenson stumbling down the stairs, following him. "Hey, wait up! Harley!"
The photographer nearly tripped over the ledge at the door and dropped two of the three boxes he was carrying on the sidewalk, creating a loud clatter. "If she put my bong in this..." Stevenson said, looking inside one of the boxes. Then, forgetting about it, he looked up and smiled, stretching his puffy lower lip. "Hey Harley," he said, looking up. "N.Y.G!"
"What's that?" Harley just wanted to get on his bike and leave.
"New York Globe. I'm shooting for 'em on Monday."
"You're kidding. Which story?"
"Jiménez, I guess," Stevenson said, looking puzzled. "I didn't even ask."
"Do you think they know that you're, sort of, involved?"
"Probably... Doesn't matter." Stevenson sounded defensive. "You're involved, and you're writing about it... I got to make a living."
"You're not going back to the paper?"
Stevenson shrugged, and started to pick up the boxes and carry them to his white Dodge. "Depends..."
"Depends on what?"
"On you know, the suit. I went to lawyers... Ah, I don't want to talk about it."
Harley climbed on his bike and turned it north.
"Hey, wait a minute," Stevenson said. "Who shot at you today?"
"Where'd you hear that?"
"Fuckin ahhh, whatshisname. Claudio."
"Huh?"
"Yeah, I went over there to give him his Saturday blow job, and he said you'd already been there, and somebody took a shot at you." Stevenson cackled.
Harley wondered how Stevenson heard about it. But he wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of asking again.
"Who did it?" Stevenson wasn't kidding now.
"Probably the same people who beat you up."
Stevenson climbed into his car and reached for his keys. "They have empty rooms at that hotel of yours?" he asked. "Or you staying at Claudio's now?"
Harley blinked. Now he understood Stevenson's line about poontang. He reached up and touched his hair; it was nearly dry. He felt like saying something to defend his manhood but held back.
"They probably have rooms at the hotel. But if you're suing the paper, I doubt they'll pay your bill... You're not staying at Diana's?"
"Fuck no." Stevenson fired the ignition. The engine roared, and he revved it up before letting it settle into a rough idle. He pointed to his lip. "See that? She fucking bit me. The animal."
Harley swung onto his bike and waved, pedaling ahead of Stevenson on Stanton.
Stevenson revved the engine again and pulled up next to the bike. "Harleyman!" he shouted. "You got your undies hanging out your back pocket!"
He took off, leaving Harley in a cloud of exhaust. Harley reached back and shoved the underwear deeper into his pocket. Then he pedaled north and east, toward Diana Clements' apartment on Memphis Street.


Chapter Thirty Four

Onofre Crispín's invitation, it turned out, was not to fly to Dallas, but simply to watch the Cowboys game on his rear-projection TV at his pink Juarez estate. Trouble was, Crispín had the TV schedule wrong: the Cowboys were playing a Sunday-night game in Phoenix, which gave the maquiladora magnate an entire afternoon to kill with the visiting American journalist. "It's a good thing you wore tennis shoes," Crispín said, eyeing Harley's large feet. "I don't think mine would fit you."
Harley had played a some squash in college, and he figured racquetball was about the same: quick wrist strokes and dance out of the way of the ball. Wearing one of Crispín's spare sweat suits, which rode up his wrists and calves, Harley wound up and hit the ball hard and low. It slammed against the wall right about where the squash line would be and rocketed back to Crispín, who muffed the return. "Muuuuy bien, muy bien," he said. "You have great potential, Tom."
They rallied, Crispín whaling at the ball, and Harley trying to figure out all the angles of the court, how to play it off the back wall, how to kiss the side wall high, and drop it down in front. He didn't know the rules, but figured he had to hit the front wall at least once with each shot. When Harley asked how to keep score, Crispín eagerly offered to start a game.
"OK," Harley said. "But isn't there a line you have to hit the ball over?"
"No. So long as it doesn't touch the floor."
"You mean you can hit it as low as you want?" Harley clobbered a backhand that hit the wall three inches up and skittered back along the floor. "Like that?"
Crispín laughed nervously. "Yes. That's a good shot."
"Oh."
After a few minutes, Crispín started to keep score. But Harley didn't pay much attention.
He thought about Diana Clements. When he arrived at her door, with his bike, she didn't want to let him into her apartment. She seemed scared. Eventually, she unfastened the chain and invited him in. She showed him the couch pillow stained red with blood. "I bit him," she said.
"He told me."
"He wouldn't let me go, and so I just bit him."
Harley nodded. He sat down on the sofa at the farthest corner from the blood stain. "He told me you bit him, and I figured he must have done something to you. That's why I came over, to see..."
Diana interrupted. "I'm glad you're here. You want a cup of coffee?" She pronounced it 'cawfee,' reminding him again of a gangster moll. As she boiled the water and poured the grounds into a paper funnel, Harley settled in at the kitchen table.
They drank coffee and talked like old friends who had lost their way, and then found it. Diana told him about her relationship with Raymond, and the move to El Paso, and how he left her for another woman at her office. She told him how lonely she was, and how she met her friend Elke.
"I saw you with her that night," Harley said, "and I figured you were lesbians."
"I was a project of hers," Diana said matter-of-factly. "It didn't happen. But I'd like to think we're still friends."
Harley wanted to ask her why in the world she ever picked Stevenson over him, and how she got into the fight with Stevenson. But he couldn't figure out how to pose the questions. So he told her about himself, how he got married to his best friend and then divorced her, and then settled in for a decade of bike-riding and impersonating, with a little bit of newspaper work to pay the bills. Then he told her about his afternoon with Claudio, and the masked man at the window with a gun.
As he talked -- Diana sipping her coffee and looking at him above the rim of a white polar bear mug -- it occurred to Harley that she probably thought he was Claudio's boyfriend. Stevenson did, and he'd heard about the shooting from her. He considered telling her about Estela, but held back. Then, impulsively, he reached across the table and grabbed her hand. She pulled it back instinctively. "Sorry," she said. "I thought you were going to try and read my fortune."
"I have a hard enough time trying to put the past together," he said. "Not to mention the present."
Harley went on to describe his adventure with the Mexican police. He tried to make it funny, even mentioning the joint. But he could see her eyelids were getting heavy. He looked at his watch and said he had to go, mentioning the trip the next morning with Onofre Crispín.
Diana perked up. "The Onofre Crispín of Grupo Espejo?" she asked.
Harley nodded.
"Just the two of you, flying to the Cowboys game?"
"I think."
She smiled and shook her head, as if Harley were the luckiest guy in the world. She talked for a while about the Grupo Espejo stock, how the prospect of Nafta was driving it up. Harley didn't understand much about stocks and wasn't much interested in them. He didn't see why investors would be bidding up Crispín's company just because of Nafta. Diana explained that it was a "speculative bubble." Investors, she said, were dumping money into any new Mexican stocks, hoping that each one would be the next Mexican miracle, the next TelMex. But, she added, Mexicans generally bought on the rumor and sold on the fact, which meant there'd probably be a sell-off right around the time the Senate passed Nafta...
Now it was Harley's eyelids that were getting heavy.
"Hey!" Diana grabbed his shoulder and shook him. "She was wide-eyed and flushed, and Harley, looking at her, could think only of sex. "When you're with Crispín tomorrow," she said, "ask him who his investors are. There are lots of rumors about them."
"Right," Harley said.

* * *

The two men had their first real conversation in the locker room, after Harley had won three games of racquetball.
Crispín was lying on a rubdown table, a white towel draped over his midsection, and his enormous flat-nosed chauffeur, who had picked up Harley at the Mountain Inn, was giving him a massage. Crispín was in a dark mood. Speaking English, asked Harley how the newspaper was proceeding with the Jiménez story.
"We're just following the news as it happens," Harley said.
"What news? What do you mean, 'as it happens'? There was one incident, a regrettable incident. What else is there?"
Harley realized to his horror that he'd forgotten to call the editors after the shooting at Claudio's house. Ignoring Crispín, he rubbed his eyes with both hands focused his mind on saving his job.
"WHAT ELSE IS THERE?" Crispín asked.
Maybe Harley could call Ken Perry from Crispín's place, and explain... what? That he'd been hunting down the shooter for the last 18 hours?
He lowered his hands. "Do you have a phone?" he asked Crispín.
"Of course I do," Crispín snapped. "Now tell me how you see this story developing."
"Oh, I don't know," Harley said. "Diplomatic news. How the Mexican government responds to things. What they do with Jiménez. That sort of thing."
"And did it ever occur to you -- I'm sure it has -- that this incident was organized... How do you say, placed on the escenario...?
"Staged," Harley said, buttoning his white Oxford shirt.
"Precisely. That this incident was staged by people with a political agenda? And that you are being manipulated?"
"Which people would that be?"
"Anyone who is opposed to the economic modernization of Mexico."
"And who would that be?"
"Use your head!" Crispín shouted, startling Harley. "Trade unionists. Students. Communists. You're a journalist. Dig. Find out!"
"But not Jiménez?"
Crispín told Olmos to run his fingers harder, right along the vertebrae. "Make it crack," he said in Spanish. Then he switched to English and talked to Harley as if to a struggling student. "Based on what I read, this Jiménez has a prospering drug business. Now why in the world would he be interested in blocking Nafta?"
"You mean that Nafta will benefit drug lords?"
"I DO NOT! You are twisting my words."
"More commerce, more traffic," Harley went on. "Isn't that what you're implying? That as 'comerciantes', the drug lords are interested in tearing down trade barriers?"
"I say nothing of the kind."
"Do you know Jiménez?" Harley asked.
Crispín shook his head. "Never met him."


Chapter Thirty Five

The gray-haired woman in a blue polyester dress invited Claudio into a hot apartment smelling of PineSol and shouted upstairs: "Rubencitooo, está el profesor Claudiooo." Then, limping, she led him into a living room arranged around a shrine to the Virgin of Guadalupe, and asked him he wanted a glass of limeade.
"Si, gracias," Claudio said, sitting down on a corner of a sofa.
Rubén thumped down the stairs and hurried into the living room. "Hey man," he said to Claudio. He was wearing a sleeveless undershirt, big tufts of hair flaring from his underarms. Looking somewhere over Claudio's right shoulder, he reached out and offered an awkward handshake, and then climbed into a big easy chair and reclined, so that his knees blocked the view of his face.
"Good news, man," he said, before Claudio had a chance to talk. "I'm doing some work for The New York Globe."
"You're kidding."
"No. The reporter's down here, and I'm going to be like, his guide in Juarez."
"His Lazarillo, huh?" Claudio said, using the Spanish word for a blind man's boy.
Rubén thought about that one for a second, as Tía Julita brought in a tray with three glasses of limeade. "You mean I'm like, rising from the dead or something, like Lazaro?"
"No, I don't think you fell that far," Claudio said. Then, for the woman's benefit, he switched to the formal Spanish he learned from his father, a Mexico City professor. "I came by to see if you've made any progress on that story you were working on."
"Which story?"
"The one that's been in the paper."
"Oh." Rubén sat forward to take a sip of limeade, then leaned back again. "Mmmmm. Not much," he said.
"He's been doing a lot of work on it, though," said Aunt Julita. "Right, Rubén?"
Rubén didn't answer.
"I ask because I had, let's say, an intrusive visitor last night, and I thought you might be able..."
"Rubén has visitors," Julita said. "Every day more of them. I tell him, 'Rubén, you must treat them with decorum. Invite them in, introduce them to me, offer them something to drink.' The simple things, you know, Profesor Claudio."
"Exactly, Tía," Rubén said. "So was this visitor especially rude or something?" he asked, smiling past his knee.
"I thought he might be someone you know."
"I doubt that."
Julita piped up. "Maybe..."
"Tía," Rubén said. "Why don't you bring us some of those cookies you have."
"Con mucho gusto," Julita said. She took Claudio's empty glass and hobbled off into the kitchen.
"A man shot through my window last night," Claudio said, returning to English. "Tom Harley was there."
"Jesus," Rubén muttered.
"I figure it was one of the guys who beat up Stevenson. Now you've had five days to work on that story. You're too good of a reporter," he said, appealing to Rubén's pride, "not to know who did it."
"You see the guy?"
"He was wearing a mask."
"They didn't catch him?"
"No."
Rubén was quiet, thinking. They could hear Julita in the kitchen cracking ice from trays. "Anybody get hurt?" he asked.
"No. Come on, Rubén. Tell me who these guys are."
"OK," Rubén said, sighing. "I came up with a few things. People in Juarez are saying it's a couple of guys who work for Jiménez. They run some sort of operation out by Anapra. You know, just across the border from Sunland Park."
"So is Jiménez behind it?"
"I'm not sure."
"What are they after?"
"I don't know. You get a lot of like, different stories over there. But some people think they're trying to get Jiménez arrested, so they can move up the organization."
"What are their names?"
"Ah... All I hear are their aliases."
"And?"
"And what?"
"The aliases, what are they?"
"Gato and Perro, or something like that... I've been pretty busy, with this New York Globe deal, and I haven't really be able to follow this up... Did you call the cops about that guy last night?"
"Of course I did. The guy shot a gun, Rubén."
"And what'd they say? The cops?"
"Not much. They dusted the window ledge for finger prints, and they tried to pry a slug out of a statue I have. They'll be doing forensics, I guess."
"They asked a lot of questions, I guess."
"Some."
"Did you tell them about me?"
"What about you?"
"I don't know. I just thought that since we talked about the case and I'm following it pretty close and have a file on it and all, I don't know... And that reporter Farley..."
"Harley."
"Whatever. Is he going to write a story on it?"
"Maybe. I don't know. He took off after the guy, and I haven't seen him since."
"Took off after him?" Rubén sounded surprised.
Julita returned with a fresh glass of limeade for Claudio and a plate of Fig Newtons.
"Gracias," Claudio said, taking two cookies.
"No hay de qué."
As Rubén reached for cookies, Claudio took a wild stab. "Is Gato the one with the wire-rimmed glasses?"
"No, that's Si... No, I think that's the other one, according to what I've heard."
"You started to say his name."
"Well I've heard his name is... Seymour. But that's just talk."
Claudio considered it. He looked at Julita, who was gazing out the window, ignoring the English conversation. "Don't be absurd," he said without raising his voice. "No one in Mexico is called Seymour. You know these two guys, and you're a lot more involved than you're telling me."
"Hey come on," Rubén said, not protesting too much.
"You think they're staying on this side of the border?"
"Probably not."
"But it's hard to cross, with this blockade."
"Maybe they have green cards..."
Claudio thought about that, sipping his limeade. He considered asking Rubén's aunt about the two men. But Aunt Julia, seeing that the conversation was continuing in English, stood up and excused herself, and made her way back toward the kitchen.
Claudio again appealed to Rubén's pride. "You know," he said, "I still keep a copy around of that big story you did, on the whole drug network. It's still a wonderful piece, if you can just nail down some of the reporting."
"Yeah," Rubén said, perking up. "That's what we're going to do this week."
"We?"
"Byron Biggs and me. The New York Globe guy."
"He's doing the big drug story?"
"He thinks he's doing Operation Blockade..."
"But you're going to lead the blind man to the drug story."
"Yeah. We got an interview tomorrow with Onofre Crispín."
Claudio looked puzzled. "How's he fit into it?"
"The money laundering. Don't you remember?"
"Oh, yeah." Claudio recalled Rubén's drug chart on the front page of Semana, with all the arrows going from one box to another. Crispín must have been one of the links between drug traffickers and American banks or corporations. "And are you going to brief the Globe reporter on this?"
"A little."
"You've got to watch it Rubén, or he might think you and your theory are kind of ... wacko," Claudio said, wondering just how sane Rubén was. "Those Globe reporters are pretty conservative."
"Right," Rubén said.
"I mean, I doubt this reporter's hardly going to appreciate getting manipulated into your story."
"He will when he sees he could win the Pulitzer!"
Claudio nibbled on a cookie and listened to the Tejana music coming up through the floor, from Manuela's boutique downstairs. The woman was singing something about "Mi Amor del Otro Lado," my love from the other side, a fitting song for this apartment, just two blocks from the Santa Fe Bridge to Juarez. He thought about Rubén's mysterious love life, which was probably just as feverish and fantastic as his drug reporting. He sucked on a piece of ice from his empty glass. It was hot in this apartment. He figured it had to be broiling upstairs in Rubén's garret. "How about if we take a look at some of your reporting?" he asked.
"OK," Rubén said, without budging from the easy chair. Then his smile flashed from behind his knee. "And guess who's shooting the pictures?"
"Not Eddie Stevenson."
"Yup." Rubén was leaning sideways on the easy chair, smiling ear to ear.
"You're shitting me."
"The guy needs work."
"Since when do you care about him? I thought he hit Estela in the face. You said he was a drunk and a drug addict."
"Yeah. But he's a damn good photographer..."
"The Globe reporter will fire you both when he finds out," Claudio predicted. "They can't hire a photographer who's involved in a story. Remember what conflicts of interest are, Rubén?"
"Yeah, I remember," Rubén said, pulling a wooden lever and climbing out of the chair. "They're hiring him for Operation Blockade. If they don't want to use him for the drug story, that's fine."


Chapter Thirty Six

"Mexican caviar," pronounced Onofre Crispín.
Harley moved his head closer to the plate of what looked like gray, short-grained rice, and sniffed. "Smells like garlic. And olive oil," he said.
"Escamole." Crispín enunciated the word slowly. "Would you like to try some, before I tell you what it is?"
"Go ahead and tell me. I've eaten roasted grasshoppers before, and iguana." Harley sniffed it again. "Fact is, garlic and olive oil make just about anything taste good."
The two men sat at a stone table in Crispín's garden, in the shade of a trellised roof woven with grape ivy. A couple of exotic water birds, bigger than flamingos, with funny haircuts, huddled nearby, under a small willow tree. Crispín poured tequila from a jar into shot glasses.
"This is sipping tequila, 100-percent agave," he said. "No lemons, no salt. None of that nonsense. You drink this like a fine Scotch whisky or cognac. Take a sip and then try the escamole." Then he called to the servant. "Teresa. Las tortillas blancas, para el escamole!"
Harley focused on Crispín's Spanish. The man wasn't from Chihuahua. That much was clear. He had a high voice, a little cloying, with just the hint of a defect in the R's, almost as if Tom Brokaw were speaking Spanish. Harley recalled that when he lost a couple of tough points in racquetball, Crispín shouted, "Me cago en la puta madre." Spaniards talked about shitting on whore mothers, but not Mexicans. The man probably had spent some time in Spain. Or maybe it was just a conceit.
Harley took a sip of the tequila. Rich and warming, it practically slid down his throat. "Uuuu, that is special," he said.
Crispín grinned and took a long pull of his own, draining most of the glass. "Now try this," he said, pointing to the escamole. Harley reached with a small spoon for three or four of the grains. He rolled them around in his mouth, tasting the garlic and that other spice, the one he tasted in Estela's mouth. Epazote? Then he chewed gently. The grains seemed to flex between his teeth, before succumbing with tiny pops.
"Ants eggs," Crispín said.
"Really?" Harley tried to take it in stride. He swallowed them, then quickly took another sip of tequila. "I figured it was some sort of egg, when you called it Mexican caviar."
"Of course, we have real caviar, if you'd prefer..."
"No, no," Harley said, reaching with the spoon for more escamole. "This is just the ticket."
Harley mentioned that he enjoyed the racquetball, but soon regretted bringing it up. Crispín, his pride wounded, complained of an aching Achilles tendon and a loose string in his racquet. Then he claimed that Americans focused far too much on winning and losing.
"I would have been perfectly happy," Harley said, "if you hadn't even taught me how to keep score."
"Tall men like you," Crispín said, looking at him knowingly, "they can act unconcerned, devil-may-care, even dress a bit sloppy. It's a affectation we short man cannot afford. But," he went on, "deep down you are intensely competitive. When you saw I was favoring my left foot, you immediately sent all shots to that side. Do not deny it," he said sternly, as Harley shook his head. "Winning is nothing to be ashamed of... Though you won't really know you can beat me until I play with a good racquet and a healthy foot."
The two men went on to chat about the Dallas Cowboys. Emptying his tequila glass and refilling it, Crispín said he'd been a fan since the '70s, when he went to college at S.M.U.
That led Harley to ask him about his family background, his studies, and how he came to be the maquiladora king of Juarez. Crispín, sipping at his tequila, answered each question at length, as though he were being interviewed for a major magazine profile -- this while Harley sat politely, nodding, picking at the ants eggs occasionally, but taking no notes.
Looking to the left of the willow tree, beyond the spiked cast-iron gate, Harley could see Mt. Franklin, looking blue in the distance, slanting down into El Paso. Scenic Drive was a faint gray line along the skirt of the mountain, with an American flag at its highest point. It looked like a dot. Just a 10-minute bike ride east from that flag was Diana Clements' duplex on Memphis Street. Harley felt like cruising over there and drinking some 'cawfee' with her. He pictured the coffee and chat leading to sex, which reminded him of Estela. He wondered if the shower with her constituted some sort of commitment.
He looked at Crispín, who was telling him about going on a "road show" with his investment bankers, and how they drank a $2,000 bottle of Bordeaux in Paris. Tasted like Welsh's, with just a little vinegar, Crispín said, laughing. The French waiter hadn’t understood the joke. Crispín explained to Harley that the Espejo stock "hiccuped" after an anti-Nafta announcement by Ross Perot. "We're going to be bigger than Grupo Carso," he said.
Harley had no idea what he was talking about.
He did recall Diana telling him to ask Crispín something about his partners.
Crispín went on about his childhood in Monterrey, and his relations with Carlos Salinas' cousins. He kept licking his lips, as if they were chapped. "Carlitos was always in Mexico City," he said. "His father worked in the government. But we saw each other sometimes when they came to Monterrey." Harley nodded, doubting it was true. "I'm actually closer to his brother, Raul," Crispín said. "He's the businessman of the family, el empresario. That's the way their papa set it up. Carlos would handle the politics, Raul would take care of business."
"Sounds like Michael and Sonny Corleone," Harley said.
"Huh?"
"Oh, just a movie."
Crispín emptied another glass of tequila, and refilled it. "You don't want any more?" he asked, waving the jar in the direction of Harley's glass.
"Thanks. In a minute." Harley could hear the liquor starting to tangle up Crispín's tongue, which always happened earlier when speaking foreign languages. Harley knew this from experience.
"Are you married?" he asked Crispín.
"Divorced," the Mexican said, smiling. "There are too many lovely women in the world for a man to be tied down to one."
The usual bragging, Harley thought. He switched into his Chihuahuan Spanish and asked Crispín who President Salinas was going to pick to replace him, a decision that was due in a month or two.
Crispín, who had the tequila glass at his lips, held it motionless and stared at Harley. "Was that you talking?" he asked in Spanish, licking his lips again.
"Of course it was me," Harley said, sticking with the same accent.
Crispín studied Harley, and then glanced to both sides, as if he expected to see another Mexican talking. "But you have the voice of a... a campesino!"
"It's my Chihuahuan accent."
"But Americans shouldn't speak like that." Crispín still talked as if he was dealing with a ghost.
"It's something I picked up."
"Well I'd drop it," Crispín said, snapping out of his reverie, "unless you want to join the circus -- or make a living picking onions."
"So who's going to be the next president?" Harley asked, imitating the voice of Chief Muller.
Crispín looked at him, stunned. "So you do voices," he said softly.
"It's just a pastime," Harley said, returning to his own voice, a little embarrassed to be showing off so much. "Who's it going to be? Colosio?"
"Probably," Crispín said, "though he's not a good choice."
"Why."
Crispín drank half a glass of tequila, savoring it for a moment. "He's too romantic. He thinks he can be everything to everybody, a little like President Clinton. What we need is a hard man with clear ideas -- a pragmatist who's not afraid to make enemies."
"But people like that don't win elections easily..."
"They don't have to in Mexico! Here," he said, pushing the jar toward Harley. "You're hardly drinking at all."
Harley poured a few drops into his glass.
"You sound as though you don't believe in elections," he said.
"I don't." Crispín looked at him defiantly. "Not here." He licked his lips, and then blotted them with a napkin.
"But the police chief said you were Panista. And I thought the whole platform of the PAN was honest elections."
"Chief Muller is a Panista, and he tends to think all reasonable people agree with him. That's naive. The fact is, if we are going to turn Mexico into a modern country, we first modernize the economy. Then we can worry about elections." Crispín grabbed a white tortilla and piled some escamole on it. Then he wrapped it into a tube and jammed half of it into his mouth. "Power determines politics," he said, chewing. "It's not the other way around."
"The drug dealers have power..." Harley said.
"Yes they do."
"So how do you deal with them?"
"I knew you'd get to this line of questions, sooner or later."
Harley smiled.
"Well, I don't have to worry about them," Crispín said, "because I'm not in politics."
"But you've got power. And you say that power precedes politics."
Crispín finished his escamole burrito and wiped his mouth. "Teresa," he shouted. "Más tequila!"
Harley, who had finished only one shot of tequila, calculated that Crispín had drunk nearly a pint. If he was going to grill him, now was the time.
Crispín, however, started talking on his own. "The narcos are capitalists, simply responding to an immense market over there." He waved toward El Paso. "Now as a society, we can turn them into devils, the way you do, at your paper, and go to war with them. That becomes very bloody very fast. Or we can be pragmatists."
"That is," Harley asked, "do business with them?"
"I do not mean that!"
"But deal with them pragmatically..."
"Exactly. Come to certain agreements, modus vivendi, you know. Avoid fatal collisions, train wrecks."
"So how do you come to these agreements with someone like Gustavo Jiménez? Sit here in this garden, with tequila and escamole, and work things out?"
"I told you I don't know him."
The servant arrived with a fresh jar of the golden tequila, covered with a white cotton cloth. Harley began to wonder how he'd get home if his host passed out. He supposed he'd have to find the man with the bent nose, Olmos, and beg a ride, at least to the bridge.
"So you deal with Jiménez through intermediaries? Your investment partners? Or people like the police chief?"
Crispín shrugged and wet his lips, as if the question were too foolish to answer. He poured more tequila into his glass, spilling some on the table.
Harley persisted. "So how do you avoid these... train wrecks?"
"Listen," Crispín said, slurring more. "You've got a garden. Your neighbor has a garden. You don't trample all over his garden, and he won't trample all over yours. Live and let live. And you might even let him build a path through your garden, if it's in his way -- and to keep him from stepping all over your Belgian endives, or whatever you happen to be growing. You know," he added, "with the modernization of agriculture, we actually have some Mexicans growing Belgian endives? It's a very promising export market. Labor intensive. They're going to make a killing with Nafta."
"You were saying, you might let them build a path through your garden?"
"Oh yes, yes. This tequila is very good, isn't it? Like a good, single malt scotch whisky. Or even better."
"And if you let them cut a path through your turf, what do they do for you?"
"They don't shoot me!" Crispín laughed loudly. "Or take me to some absurd car wash and beat the piss out of me."
"So you're hostage to them."
"No, no, no," he said, still smiling. "I was just joking."
"So you have a business relationship."
"Relax, relax, for the love of God. You're young, you're ambitious, a magician with your voices, for God's sake," Crispín said, looking at him fondly. "I was just trying to tell you a few things about power in Mexico, to educate you. And all of a sudden you're trying to get me to say that I'm in bed with these drug dealers. That's not what I meant. And if I see that even implied again in your paper, I'll..."
"What do you call these eggs?" Harley asked. "Escamole? I like squeezing them one at a time between my canines, and feeling that tiny pop."
"Exactly, exactly," Crispín said, cheering up. "But if you eat them one by one, you'll take all day. Here," he said, tossing a tortilla to Harley. "Wrap a pile of it in that."
Harley wrapped escamole into a burrito. "So how do you deal with them?" he asked.
"With whom?"
"People like Jiménez."
"Holy God! Listen. I'm not saying I do. But I don't pursue them. I don't take part in hostile, unproductive political rhetoric."
"You mentioned something about beating you up in a car wash? Is that where they beat up Stevenson?"
"Yes," Crispín said flatly.
"Yes?"
"Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes," Crispín said, looking now like a sad old man. It was as if the tequila, which had him so excited a few minutes before, had vacated his head and settled in his stomach.
"In a car wash?" Harley said it in English, just to make sure.
"Yes, over by Anapra." Crispín stuck with Spanish.
"Who were they?"
"Boys, boys," said Crispín, pronouncing "muchachos" wistfully, as if he ached. "Young men who want to turn back the modernization of Mexico, God knows why."
"Do they work for Jiménez?"
Crispín shrugged. "Maybe, maybe not. It's not of importance... It's like the man who tried to kill President Reagan. I think I remember reading once that he worked in a record store. Or was that the one who killed the Beatle? No matter. Let's say he worked in a record store. Is the record store connected to the shooting? No. His work is how he makes money. The shooting is what he does to satisfy his ... his passion. His madness. But he must be stopped."
That sounded to Harley as though these muchachos worked for Jiménez. He wanted to ask Crispín about them. He wanted their names, the name of the car wash. He wanted to know how Crispín learned about this. But he worried that irritating questions would derail the interview. He recalled that he hadn't told Crispín about the shootings in El Paso, at Perry's house, and at Claudio's. Maybe if he provided Crispín with intelligence, the two of them could piece it all together.
"You know," he said, "a couple of nights ago, two men with guns attacked the home of my editor."
"Ay, noooo. Is it going to be in the paper?"
"Eventually."
"Puta madre," he said in a soft voice. "They're killing Mexico."
"And then last night, a man shot at me, through a window. But missed."
Crispín looked somberly at Harley. Then, trying to smile, he reached for the jar of tequila. "Come!" he said. "Fill your glass."


Chapter Thirty Seven

The vacuum cleaner stopped and popped open. A red light announced the bag was full. Diana Clements, still wearing the faded blue silk bathrobe she'd had on all day, looked in the closet for a refill, but found only an empty box. She swore quietly. She'd worked her way through the bedroom, which still smelled of Eddie Stevenson and his dope. But the machine quit right before she reached the spot where Eddie spilled the ashtray. That gray spot with its burnt match heads was the whole reason for vacuuming in the first place.
Diana pulled the bag out of the vacuum cleaner and carried it to the kitchen wastebasket. Then she reached in with her fingers, past the rubber opening, which reminded her of a diaphragm, into the pile of dirt. She pulled out a gob with her finger and thumb, tearing the diaphragm a little on the way out. It felt like peat moss.
Dinnertime. And instead of eating, she was unloading dirt -- and still wearing a bathrobe. Diana felt lonelier than she'd ever been in El Paso, which was saying a lot. Her three days with Eddie Stevenson left her shaken and alone. She needed to talk to someone, but had nobody. Elke was off in New Mexico with her latest "project." And even when Elke was around, she wasn't much interested in talking about men.
Pulling more and more dirt out of the vacuum bag and dropping it into the scrap basket, Diana wondered if she was getting herself into trouble with Tom Harley, if he was a liar. She knew Eddie was a liar right off, but found it charming, for some strange reason. Part of his shtick. He was like one of the neighborhood kids in Brooklyn, she thought when she met him, a little tougher and quicker than the Sun-Belt crowd. Ruder too, she supposed. That's the price you paid to find a live wire in the El Paso, a place where people invariably answer questions with, "Yeah, I guess..." Stevenson was more likely to say "Fuck no," which Diana found refreshing, for about a day. She shuddered, remembering that death grip on the couch. Her ribs still hurt from his punches. If she got involved with Harley, there would be no talking about Eddie Stevenson, she vowed. None.
With the vacuum bag about half full, she put it back in the machine and turned it on. It sounded OK. But when she ran it over the gray spot on the carpet, it didn't work. The machine smelled of burning rubber. She turned it off and put it away, not even bothering to open it and inspect the damage.
She turned on the TV, and saw the Cowboys, in their silver and blue uniforms. Funny, Harley said it was an afternoon game... Then an announcer mentioned something about the weather in Phoenix, not Dallas. Could Harley have been lying about something as meaningless as a football game? Or maybe he didn't go to the game at all.
Diana picked up the phone and called the Mountain Inn. Harley answered on the second ring.
"You said you were going to the Cowboys game," she said, without even saying 'Hi'."
"We played racquetball instead, and ate some ant caviar.
"I just turned on the TV," Diana said, "and I saw the Cowboys playing in Phoenix."
"Who's winning?"
"Have you been drinking?" she asked.
"Golden single-malt tequila with ants eggs."
With time, Diana got the story from Harley, about the escamole and Onofre Crispín's racquetball court, with the TV set in the wall, and his hulking servant with the smushed nose.
Diana, relaxing, told Harley about sitting at home all morning reading financial prospectuses, and about the meltdown in her vacuum cleaner. She steered clear of the word diaphragm and kept quiet about the ashes on the carpet. She wasn't going to discuss Stevenson, no matter how relaxed she felt with this guy.
"I was sitting there with him, eating those ants eggs and talking about the drug business," Harley was saying. "And I could make out Scenic Drive in the distance. And I thought, if I could just ride over to Diana's house, it would be about 10 minutes."
"And what would you do when you got here?"
"You tell me."
"Not watch the football game."
"And not fix your vacuum cleaner," Harley said.
"So what would you want to do over here?" she asked.
"Hmmm. I don't know. Maybe do my Ronald Reagan imitation for a minute or two... You're not a Republican are you?"
"Independent. Let's hear your Ronald Reagan imitation."
"You want me to come over?"
Diana paused and nibbled her fingernail, tasting the dirt from the vacuum bag. "I don't think so. Not tonight."
"You try to avoid evening encounters, don't you?" Harley said.
"Usually."
"Me too. Takes some of the tension out of things. Remember the first time we met, at lunch?"
"Uh huh."
"I had this very strong desire to invite you upstairs for a nooner."
"Oh God, what a word."
"I even asked you if you'd seen 'High Noon.' Remember?"
Diana laughed. "Talk about oblique!"
"I was going to ask you if you'd read any Arthur Koestler."
"He's the one who wrote Darkness at Noon?"
"Right."
She giggled. "I think you have to work on your communication skills."
"That's what I'm doing now," Harley said. "You want to have breakfast tomorrow? At the Paso del Norte?"
"OK. Eight?"
"How about 7:30? I think I'll be running around on this drug story. Actually," he added, "maybe you can help me out."

* * *

The clock radio on the Perrys' bedside table read 12:31 a.m. when the phone rang. "Shit," Ken mumbled, figuring it must be a problem with the newspaper presses. Delays, which cost money, riled the corporate bosses in St. Louis much more than botched stories and misspelled headlines.
As the phone rang again, Karen Perry pushed her husband's back. "Answer it!"
"Hello."
"Mr. Perry?"
"Yeah."
"Sorry to bother you so late. This is Rick Jarvis from the Journal. I'm working a story on that attack at your house the other night. Wondering if you see any connections to the Stevenson beating?"
"Jesus Christ," Perry said. "You wait 'til we go to press. Is that the idea?"
"Uh huh. More or less."
Perry wasn't inclined to help the Journal scoop his paper on the attack at his own house. If ever there was a story he owned, this was it. "Listen, Rick. No comment, OK?"
"OK. How about just verifying some facts for me?"
"No, I don't think so." Perry lay back on the pillow and sighed. He looked over at his wife, who's up on one elbow, mouthing the words: "The Journal?" He nodded.
"Listen, I know this is a little awkward for you," Jarvis went on. "But it's not in your interest for our article to be inaccurate. So if you could just help..."
"Forget it!" Ken said.
"The Chamber of Commerce President says there's no evidence tying drugs to maquiladoras or Jiménez to the attack on Stevenson."
"Which industry's he defending, maquiladoras or drugs?" Perry asked.
"What's that?"
"Forget it."
"How about the shooting Saturday night at the Olivares apartment on Prospect Street?"
"The what?"
"I have here the police record, saying that a masked man fired two shots into the apartment of Claudio Olivares on Saturday at..."
"Hey come on, Rick. You know that Claudio's a former employee of ours. But I think it's a stretch to connect his ... misfortunes with all of the other events."
Jarvis waited for more.
"Claudio didn't get hurt, did he?" Perry felt dumb asking the question, admitting he didn't know.
"No," Jarvis said.
Perry then set out to undermine the Journal story. "Sounds like you're on a little bit of a wild goose chase," he said. "It's a fact there was a shooting in my neighborhood the other night. But it was at my neighbor's house. The shot went through Gladys Cummings' window. That must be in the police report. Now it's a wild stretch for you to connect that to the Stevenson beating."
"But according to the police record, you made that connection yourself."
"I just asked them to look into it. But I don't really believe it."
"Uh huh," Jarvis said.
"And the shooting at Claudio's house," Perry went on. "I mean Claudio hasn't worked at our paper for what? Two years? It would be the height of irresponsibility to try to tie that to any of this other business."
"When you say 'other business,' you mean the Jiménez-sponsored attacks on your photographer and the attack at your house."
"No I don't mean the attack at my house. There was no attack at my house."
"Oh, excuse me," Jarvis said. "It's just that you said 'other business,' as if it was all connected."
"It isn't. But given what you have in the police record, I can see how you might tie..." Perry cut himself off, depriving Jarvis of a quote.
"You might tie..." Jarvis said, anxious to get the rest of the sentence.
"Forget it." Perry looked at his wife, who was lying on her back, looking straight up at the ceiling. "But to connect something with Claudio to this is just absurd, flat out absurd."
"Had you heard about the shooting at Olivares house?"
"No comment."
"But you knew that Tom Harley was there?"
Ken swore silently. "No comment."
"But the fact that he was there makes the connection a little less far-fetched, wouldn't you say?"
"No comment," Perry said. Then he slammed down the phone and shouted "JESUS H. CHRIST!"
The noise woke up Timmy, who started crying. Karen dragged herself out of bed to comfort the four-year-old, while Ken telephoned The Mountain Inn.
A minute later, he was on the phone with a groggy Harley, threatening to fire him.
"I took off after the guy," Harley explained, "and spent all day yesterday in Juarez, trying to track him down."
"You find him?"
"It's two guys, connected to the Jiménez empire, who run their own business at Anapra, near Sunland Park."
"You have their names?"
"Not yet."
"What kind of business are they in?"
Harley paused and thought about it for a second. "Drugs."
"So you can't exactly look 'em up in the Yellow Pages," Perry said, heavy with sarcasm.
They have a front business," Harley said, recalling Crispín's words. "It's a car wash. I'll find them."
"You'd goddamn better, Harley. We're getting shut out on our own story today, thanks to you. You better hit a home run tomorrow."
"Right," Harley said.


Chapter Thirty Eight

"So it turns out I was getting to know the wrong reporter." Onofre Crispín, dressed in his kimono, was speaking Spanish on the cellular phone. He had the El Paso Journal opened on the worm-eaten oak table in his breakfast room, and was scanning the drug story. "Do you know this Rick Jarvis?" he asked, wetting his lips.
Chief Muller said he didn't, adding that details such as bylines didn't make much difference.
"In Mexico," Crispín said, referring to the nation's capital, "they're sweating every detail. I told you, I've already had two calls this morning, one from Gobernación, one from Commerce. They say the president is ready to get involved himself. He thinks this could kill Nafta."
"Did you tell them to arrest Jiménez?" Muller asked.
"He's in my summer house!"
"They don't need to broadcast that."
"Well, arresting him still wouldn't do any good!"
"It would appease the Americans..."
"But the cabrón has a big mouth," Crispín said. He lifted an empty demitasse to his lip, trying to coax one more drop of espresso from it.
"He'll keep quiet if you make it clear that it was just temporary -- and in the best interests of Mexico."
"He's no patriot."
"Well then, in his own best interests."
Crispín mulled it over for a second. "What am I listening to you for?" he asked. "You set me up with the wrong reporter. His car was never stolen."
"Hmmm," Muller said.
"If this goes on, we'll have Representative Gephardt down here by the week's end, looking into human rights."
"Is that what the story says?"
"I'll read it to you," Crispín said, turning back to the front page. "The headline says, "El Paso Journalists Under Siege."
He began reading in English:

"Gunmen with possible links to reputed Juarez drug lord Gustavo Jiménez launched weekend attacks on an editor and a reporter of the El Paso Tribune, a newspaper that has been calling for Jiménez's arrest. No one was injured in either attack, and the gunmen remain at large.
The first attack came Friday evening, as two assailants charged out from under a bush, firing at least one gun in the direction of Tribune Editor Kenneth Perry, his wife and four-year-old son. A bullet crashed through the window of a neighboring house, belonging to Gladys Cummings, of Camino Alegre Drive, in Coronado.
The following day, a man identifying himself only as "Comandante Enrique" called the Journal and claimed credit for the attack. Speaking Spanish, he said that Jiménez, reputed to be a leading drug trafficker in Juarez, "ordered an attack against the home of Ken Perry, which was carried out at approximately 8 p.m."
The same day, a single gunman wearing a black mask fired two shots into the Sunset Heights apartment of Claudio Olivares, a former Tribune assistant city editor.
The apparent target of the shooting was Olivares' guest, Tribune reporter Tom Harley. Last week, the Tribune charged that Jiménez had abducted and beaten staff photographer Edward Stevenson, and had sent back a death threat to Harley, the paper's lead drug reporter, calling him "dead meat."
The assailant fled the scene on foot, heading south on Prospect Street, pursued by Harley on bicycle, according to El Paso police. Olivares refused to comment on the attack. Harley was unavailable for comment. Tribune Editor Perry said it was "a wild stretch ... to connect this to the Stevenson beating."
However, according to the police, the Tribune editor urged El Paso Police detectives to investigate links between the gunmen and Gustavo Jiménez. "He told us, 'You're blind if you can't see that Jiménez is behind this'," said Police Sgt. Raymond Buendía, who rushed to the Perry home following the Friday shooting.
According to Buendía, the two assailants, men in their twenties, ran away from the Perry home and quickly stole a silver Lexus, which they drove downtown, abandoning it at the corner of Mesa Street and Paisano Drive, near the Varuta Casa de Cambio.
"We found blood on one of the seats," said Buendía, who speculates that one of the assailants suffered a small cut while hiding under the bushes at the Perry house. He said police have no records of any 'Comandante Enrique'.
The motives for the attacks remain unclear. Jiménez, 55, known as a flamboyant figure around Juarez, has long denied reports of connections to the fast-growing border drug business.
In an interview with La Jornada Juarense last June, he maintained that he his investments were limited to a cellular phone concession and a new hotel, El Xanadu, on Avenida Insurgentes.
But in a front-page story ten days ago, the Tribune, citing unnamed sources, named Jiménez as the lead figure in a vast Juarez drug cartel.
Further, it speculated that Jiménez stood to profit from a $1 billion maquiladora development, Vision 2000, to be built by Juarez maquiladora magnate Onofre Crispín.
Three days following the article, Tribune photographer Stevenson charged that he was abducted by a group of men, including Gustavo Jiménez.
In lurid coverage since then, the Tribune has pushed for Jiménez's arrest. Signed front-page editorials have charged Mexican government officials with complicity in the drug trade.
Wednesday morning, Jiménez fled Juarez, heading south in a blue Porsche, according to Juarez news accounts.
Appearing on local news last Thursday, Perry predicted that Mexican government inaction in the face of charges against Jiménez would feed opposition to the North American Free Trade Agreement, which is scheduled for a vote in Congress in six weeks.
Lawyers in El Paso say privately that Stevenson has been making inquiries about a possible law suit against the Tribune. Perry had no comment.
Already, Nafta opponents, including House Majority Leader Richard Gephardt (D-Mo) and AFL-CIO President Lane Kirkland, have charged that corruption and human rights abuses in Mexico undermine continental free trade.
A spokesman for Gephardt said Friday that the incidents in Juarez are "worrisome" and "merit our close attention."
But Nafta supporters are skeptical of the entire story. "There's not one shred of evidence tying the Mexican government to Jiménez, drugs to maquiladoras, or Jiménez to the beating in Juarez," said El Paso Chamber of Commerce President David Bayard.
"Unfortunately," he added, "the Tribune is just out trying to make a name for itself -- and is willing to sacrifice Nafta to that end."
Tribune editor Perry questioned whether Bayard was "defending the drug traffickers."


"That's it," Crispín said grimly. "Now, I want you to set up a dragnet, if need be, and arrest those two hoodlums."
"But they're in El Paso..."
"Don't you have relations with the police over there?"
"Bad ones."
"Figure out some way to arrest them," Crispín ordered. "Or I'll do it myself."


Chapter Thirty Nine

Pulling Rubén along, Byron Biggs had already interviewed four or five cops and done about 15 or 20 man-in-the-streets along Avenida Malecón. And it was only 8:30 in the morning. Stevenson had shot three rolls of Tri-X. He had a pages of names written down in his pocket notebook, along with descriptions of subjects. But most of them were the same. Mustache, eyes squinting in sun, medallion around neck, tee-shirt.
"How about a little breakfast?" Stevenson suggested, as they passed a café smelling of chorizo.
Biggs looked at his watch.
"Get a taco to go," Rubén said, interpreting the gesture. "We got El Paso interviews starting in an hour. And then we're back here at two for Crispín."
Stevenson stopped at the café, which had a stainless steel counter to serve the street traffic, and ordered three tacos al pastor.
As he ate, he watched Rubén and the reporter at work. Rubén, looking like a scarecrow in khakis and a tweed sport coat that hung nearly to his knees, didn't stop talking. They stood on the corner of 16 de Septiembre, the smoky rush hour traffic roaring past them, Rubén pointing, gesturing, and then cupping his hands and shouting in the guy's ear. Biggs nodded, wrote down a word or two in his notebook, and nodded some more. Stevenson wondered if the reporter realized he was listening to a madman.
Stevenson hadn't had a chance yet to talk with Rubén about the attack in Juarez. He wanted to tell him that it was OK, no big deal. He still didn't know exactly why Rubén and his friends did it, but it had the potential to make him a lot of money. Even if the suit didn't get to court, there was a good chance he could get good money with a settlement -- but not if all the connections between himself and Rubén and Estela came to light.
He had to talk to Rubén. But the guy never stopped moving. And the few times he'd talked to Stevenson, he never looked him in the eye, just flitted around. Maybe Biggs would eventually take him aside, tell him to calm down. To shut the fuck up.
They went on with more interviews, more pictures, and all the Mexicans repeated the same lines: "It's an insult to our country. We do the work nobody over there wants to do. Texas was stolen from us."
Rubén translated and the Globe reporter scribbled madly, as if fascinated by the insights.
One Mexican -- "black mustache, silver chain, missing front tooth," Stevenson noted -- mentioned that since the border was so tough to cross, he'd just have to move away from it, maybe to Chicago or Houston. Biggs thought that was terrific, and he told Stevenson to shoot the guy from a hundred angles. "Maybe we'll use some of this for a magazine piece," he said.
Later, they piled into Biggs' rented Taurus, Rubén in the jump seat, Stevenson and his gear in back, and they crawled back toward El Paso on the Santa Fe Bridge. The line was slow, and Biggs looked at his watch every fifteen or twenty seconds.
"So, like I was saying," Rubén said, "you got all these connections between the drug industry and the ... the legal industry here. The drug lords got money, and they launder that money in the hotels, the racetracks, the maquiladora parks. That's what you're beginning to see over here." He gestured back toward Juarez. "Now, when they want to clean up and throw the drug people in jail, they're not going to be able to, because the drug lords, they're all like, joint venture partners with big business. You know what I mean?"
Biggs nodded absently. He was looking at a tiny boy with a clown's smile painted on his face, knocking on windows to sell tiny four-packs of green Chiclets. "Shouldn't that kid be in school?" he asked.
"Just keep your window shut," Stevenson said. "He won't bother you."
"You understand what I'm telling you about the drug business?" Rubén asked.
"Yeah," Biggs said. "But that's not the story I'm here to do."
"But you saw the Journal's story today? About those attacks?"
"I read it. But I don't know what to make of it." Biggs thought for a second. "You know, I subscribe to these papers in Houston, get them a couple days late. You never really know whether to take their stories seriously, because they're so damn inconsistent. It's impossible to tell what's serious and what's hype."
"That's a fact," Rubén said, shaking his head, one journalist to another. "But you can ask some of these people about it. Like Crispín. The guy we're going to be talking with this afternoon? Ask him."
"OK, OK." Biggs sounded weary. He lowered the rear view mirror to look at Stevenson, who was lounging in the back seat, framing a shot of the two flags at the apex of the bridge and the river below, its cement channel looking like a sewage canal. The line of green Border Patrol vans, deployed every two hundred yards, stretched east, all the way to Socorro and San Elizario.
"What do you think about Rubén's theories?" Biggs asked. "Ed?"
"Huh?" Stevenson put down the camera.
"Do you think those men who beat you up had ties to General Motors?"
"Ah, I don't know."
"But what do you think?"
Stevenson looked at Biggs, who was eyeing him in the rear-view mirror. He looked at the back of Rubén's curly head, which was uncharacteristically still. "I'll tell you what I think," he said. "First and foremost, I'd say they were incredible assholes."
Rubén's head didn't move.
"That's a safe bet," said Biggs, as he inched the car forward. "But do you think they're connected to the leaders of global finance and industry?"
"I don't know."
"What about Gustavo Jiménez? What was he like?"
"A jerk. A phony. I could tell he spoke English as well as you or me, or Rubén, at least. But he used this phony accent, sort of effeminate. The thing that I remember most about the guy was a real strong odor. A real bad case of B.O., I'd say."
Rubén shifted his weight in his seat, and moved his nose toward his armpit.
"Of course I didn't have that much chance to get to know him that well," Stevenson added, "since I was getting beat up and mock-executed most of the time."
"How did you know it was Jiménez?" Biggs asked.
"You're not going to write any of this, are you? I mean, I'm not giving interviews."
"Why not?"
"Personal reasons."
"OK, off the record. Why do you think he had you beaten up?"
"Ahhh, I don't know. Probably wanted to get his name in the newspaper."

* * *

Canfield's voice thundered through the newsroom. "Of course it's a story," he said to an assistant city editor. "The way you see it, if somebody gets shot at, it's probably not a story. No, we just sit on shootings, especially if they involve one of us. Let the other paper deal with that..."
As he spoke, the city editor glanced at Harley, who sat hunched over his desk, talking on the phone, trying to ignore a steady stream of abuse.
Harley had gleaned a few details on the case from Diana Clements, over breakfast, and he was discussing it with Claudio. "Stevenson told her it was more complicated than it looked," Harley said. "He mentioned something about problems with Estela and her friends."
"Their aliases are Gato and Perro," Claudio told him.
"And they work at a car wash?"
"Yes."
"And how about your guy?" Harley asked.
"I think we can leave him out of it, for the time being."
"But what's he say?"
Harley looked up at Canfield, who was now hovering over his cubicle, his big belly jiggling, pretending to shoot the reporter. "Hey, if it doesn't hurt real bad, it's probably not worth writing about," he announced to everyone else in the newsroom.
A few people chuckled.
Harley pointed to the phone, asking Canfield to be quiet.
"... with the power politics of the drug family," Claudio's was saying.
"What's that? I was interrupted."
"That these kids, Gato and Perro, are apparently trying to get Jiménez arrested, so they can move up in the organization."
Harley looked over at Canfield, who was now cowering in the next cubicle, a phone in his hand, imitating him. The city editor shuffled back to his terminal when he saw Ken Perry stalk in, a copy of the Journal folded under his arm.
"So Jiménez isn't even behind this thing?" Harley asked.
"Probably not, though I can't really be sure," Claudio said. "This source of mine isn't exactly disinterested in the case."
"You'd be helping me a lot if you told me who this guy is. I'm under a little pressure here to come up with something, pretty soon."
"All right, all right."
They agreed to meet in 10 minutes to search out the car wash together.

* * *

Tough times for Simón and Gato. Estela kicked them out of the apartment, and came close to smashing Simón in the head with Eddie Stevenson's bong. After they scurried outside, Simón discovered that she'd taken his gun. Broke and unarmed, they looked to Rubén for help. They stopped by his aunt's place and gave him the key to the Lavarama. He could sneak over there, they told him, and scrape a few grams of cocaine from the bodega shelves, enough to give them some walk-around money.
They waited all night for him in Pioneer Plaza. But Rubén never showed up.
Gato and Simón walked back toward Juarez the next day on the Santa Fe Bridge. That's when they saw Rubén, and it looked like he was betraying them. He was sitting the front seat of a Ford Taurus headed the other way. A bald guy was driving, and the photographer they'd beaten up was fiddling around with a camera in the back seat.
The bald man, Simón and Gato figured, was some sort of American cop, and the three of them were on their way back from the Lavarama, probably carrying the cocaine Simón and Gato were counting on. No doubt they had fingerprints to link the Lavarama to the raids in El Paso, and the stolen Lexus.
As they walked along the sidewalk, separated from the cars by a tunnel of cyclone fencing, Simón reached a hand up to Gato's head and grabbed a handful of curly hair. He pulled hard, without saying a word.
"Ay buey!" Gato said, pushing back.
"I told you not to give Rubén the key," Simón said quietly. He let go of Gato's hair.
"You did not."
Simón didn't answer.
Deep in thought, the two men passed the twin flags at the top of the bridge, and began the descent into Mexico. They passed the customs booth and crossed Avenida Malecon.
"Where now?" Gato asked.
"Home. When tested by the outside world," Simón recited mystically, "one finds that the home is the source of one's strength."
Gato rolled his eyes.
"But first," Simón said, "we need to find some wheels."


Chapter Forty

The boy with the popsicle cart said they missed the owners of the Lavarama by about 20 minutes. Harley felt a little relieved. He had mixed feelings about confronting drug runners, especially in a dusty slum like this one. He bought a couple of tamarindo popsicles and gave one to Claudio. "So did they leave on foot?" he asked in his Chihuahuan Spanish.
"In a car, a big car." The little boy with fuzzy hair that stood straight up pointed down the same dirt road that brought Claudio and Harley to the gate of the Lavarama.
Harley looked at the door, a big sheet of steel, closed with a padlock and chain. The brick wall around the car wash was about 9 feet up, he figured, with a row of broken bottles embedded in cement along the top. He didn't feel like sacrificing his hands to climb over it.
"Think it's worth it to chase after them?" he asked Claudio in English.
Claudio shrugged. He looked like a GQ version of a Third-World journalist, wearing wrap-around sunglasses, a white linen shirt with a pleats down the front, and faded blue jeans, very tight. Ponytail. Leaning against his Jeep, he looked up at the wall around the Lavarama, and then at the popsicle boy. "It probably makes more sense to do some reporting around here," he said.
Harley tried to listen while Claudio interrogated the boy. But he had a hard time getting his mind off his breakfast with Diana Clements. It was awkward at first. Neither of them knew where to start. Harley didn't want to ask her about Stevenson right away; that would be rude. So they both took a long time studying the menu, and then ordered the same thing: buttermilk pancakes with cappuccinos. "If you want orange juice or anything, this is all on the paper," Harley said.
"You mean I'm a source?"
"Sort of."
She didn't look too happy about that. She twirled a finger in hair, nervously, and looked at all the businessmen at other tables, reading their Wall Street Journals and USA Todays. This gave Harley a chance to look at her. The brown eyes had little specks of gold in them. He remembered noticing them that first day. It looked like she used a little make up to accent her high cheekbones, which were a nice feature. Her lipstick was bright red, a little too red, Harley thought. And her nose was long and thin, with a Mediterranean slope to it.
The waitress came and they ordered, Harley focusing on Diana's accent.
"Are you from Brooklyn?" he asked. "Or Queens?"
"Both," she said, laughing. "My family moved to Carroll Gardens when I was eight."
"And you stuck around New York until you came here?"
With that, Diana launched into the story of her unhappy life with Raymond. She talked about meeting him at N.Y.U., and arguing all the time. About the noises he made when he ate his cereal, his slurps when he drank orange juice, and the way he looked at other women, undressing them with his eyes. But she stayed with him, and moved in with him when they went to B-School together at Stony Brook.
The pancakes arrived. Harley began eating as Diana talked. He looked at her, careful to chew quietly, and listened to the story of a woman who apparently left dozens of close friends and all of her family to follow a complete jerk to El Paso. He kept nodding, frowning with concern, asking questions about Raymond, wondering what it would feel like to run his tongue along that little gap between her front teeth.
Then he noticed she was asking him a question. "Were you ever married?"
"Me? Oh, once," he said, smiling. He told her in a couple quick sentences about his short marriage to Cheryl. "She's married now, with kids, in Corpus Christi."
"Oh. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have asked."
"I'm glad you did," Harley said, smiling. "Now I won't feel like such a jerk asking you about Eddie Stevenson."
"Oh." She looked like a child facing a plate of Brussels sprouts. "I vowed I wasn't going to talk to you about him."
"I don't care about you and him. I just want to know what he told you about what went on in Juarez."
"But that's not why we're having breakfast, right? That's not why you invited me?"
Harley put up both palms and assured her it wasn't.
"You know," Diana said. "I don't think we should sleep together for a while -- I mean, if you were thinking about... us, that way. There's just too much going on right now."
Harley was shocked that she'd bring it up. "I know what you mean," he said, his heart racing.
Later that morning, as he listened to Claudio peppering the popsicle boy with questions in his academic Spanish, Harley wondered if Diana meant that sex between the two of them was only a question of when. That was how he interpreted it at breakfast. But as he replayed the conversation in his head, he wondered if she was holding him off with an indefinite no.
"So one of them fired a gun out of the car wash," Claudio asked, "and hit someone?"
The popsicle boy nodded gravely.
"Would that have been Gato or Perro?"
The boy smiled, showing a row of tiny teeth brown with decay. "There's no 'perro'," he said. "It's Gato and Simón!"
"And which one fired the gun?"
"That would be Simón," the boy said. "Gato never hurts anyone." He said that after the gun shot, angry neighbors banged on the door of the car wash and told Gato and Simón to leave.
Harley tried to nail down the chronology. "Did the men come and pound on the door on Tuesday?" he asked.
The boy rolled his eyes up, thinking, and said, "Yes. Tuesday."
"Are you sure it wasn't Wednesday?" Harley asked.
"It very well might have been Wednesday," the boy conceded. "It was several days ago."
"And what were the police asking Alfredito about?"
The boy shrugged. He was listening to a woman's voice, calling, "Santiaaaaaago!"
"Did you hear about a beating that occurred here?"
He shook his head.
"Santiago, donde andas!"
"Aqui, mama."
A pregnant woman in her early 20s came around the corner with a baby in her arms.
"Santiago, no molestes a esos senores!"
"Mama, son clientes."
"Ven aquí, m'hijo." She swooped in and gathered her son by the shoulders. Saying "con permiso" to the two reporters, she hurried away, dragging the popsicle cart behind her.

* * *

With Simón at the wheel and Gato fooling with the radio, the old stolen Impala crossed Juarez, from the slums at Anapra to the avenue of junkyards, or Yunques, near the airport.
They hadn’t picked up any drugs at the Lavarama; as soon as they opened the door, one of their only steady customers, a barber named Luis, pulled his dirt-caked white Rambler up to the entrance and said he'd been waiting a week for a car wash. Simón started to say they were still closed, but Gato motioned the car in. "We need the money," he said, telling Simón to scour the bodega while he washed the car. But while Gato began to pour buckets of water on the Rambler, the barber followed Simón into the office and sat down on the corner of the metal desk, right where the photographer sat while they beat him. In fact, one of his cameras was hanging above Luis's head, on a nail.
"You need a haircut," Luis told Simón.
"Not today," Simón said, standing by the door to the bodega.
"You have to be more careful with that pistola of yours," the barber said. "People around here are talking about shooting you."
Simón opened knapsack and pulled out a pair of khakis. "Hey listen," he said, unbuttoning his shorts, "move out of here. I need some privacy."
The barber didn't pay any attention. "What kind of camera is this?" he said, standing up. He grabbed Stevenson's Leika and inspected it. "A rangefinder," he said, using the English word. "What a relic! Why would you ever use one of these?"
"You don't think it's worth anything?" Simón asked, awakening to the camera as an asset. He zipped up his khakis and began pulling on a belt.
"Maybe the lens. But not the machine. I didn't even know the Germans made cameras."
"Well put it back there and clear out. I've got to mop the floor in here."
At that moment, Gato poked his head in. "That will be 20 new pesos," he said.
"Twenty pesos! That's two haircuts."
"I waxed it."
"Come on. You haven't been working two minutes," the barber said, reaching to hang the camera on the wall.
"It's quick-drying wax."
Gato looked at Simón, who was pointing at the bodega. He still hadn't had a chance to open the door.
The barber peeled an old 20,000-peso bill from his pocket and handed it reluctantly to Gato. "No tip for you," he grumbled.
Just then, a blue police cruiser pulled into the Lavarama, blocking the Impala. Gato ran toward the car, yelling, "Move out, move out!"
The policeman flashed a metallic smile. "Where have you boys been?" he asked. "People have been looking all over for you."
"Pull out," Gato said. "We've got to get this Rambler out. We're closed."
Simón climbed into the Impala and gunned the engine. But the cop didn't budge. "There's an order out for your apprehension, connected to a shooting in the neighborhood," he said, still smiling.
Gato reached into his pocket and pulled out the 20 new pesos. "Here, take this," he said.
The policeman held the bill between his thumb and forefinger, as if it were a dead mouse. "It's very small," he said.
"It's all I've got."
Simón revved up the Impala.
"New car?" the policeman asked, pushing the bill into his shirt pocket.
"Listen. We have to move," Gato said.
"I'll consider it a down payment."
The cop backed out, followed by the Rambler, still wet and streaked with dirt. Simón pulled out in the Impala. Gato ran along behind him. He locked the gate and jumped in.
An hour later, both of them hungry and broke, and looking to unload the Impala. They stopped at two used car lots and asked. No one wanted a '62 Impala without keys. They moved on to junk yards. Gato convinced a dealer to take a look at the spare tire, which was probably worth a few pesos. But they couldn't open the trunk.
"How about the radio?" Gato asked.
The dealer leaned in and took one look at the AM radio. "Forget it," he said. "I'll take the battery, though."
"But if you take the battery, we'll have to leave the car."
"That's a fact," the dealer admitted.
As they approached the airport, Simón saw a police cruiser parked sideways across the avenue. He hit the brakes. "We're fried," he said.
But the policeman didn't pay attention to him, and looked instead toward the airport. As honking cars piled up behind them, Simón and Gato realized the blockade wasn't targeted at them. Gato climbed out of the Impala and walked up to the cruiser. "What's going on?" he asked.
"They're flying in a prisoner, and taking him to the prison," the cop said, gesturing toward the state pen across the street, the Centro de Rehabilitación Social, or CeReSo.
Gato barely needed to ask who the prisoner was, as a convoy of police cars began to wind out the drive of the airport and onto the highway. "Gustavo Jiménez?" he said.
"Claro," the cop said. "Who else?"

Chapter Forty One

While maneuvering the Taurus around the I-10 spaghetti bowl and onto the Cordova Bridge, Byron Biggs lectured Rubén on what he called "the elements" of his immigration story. He had quotes from the Border Patrol chief, and a political quote from Washington. Those were key elements. He had a Mexican government response, and plenty of quotes from would-be Mexican immigrants. He had the El Paso Chamber of Commerce on the record and an angry quote from La Raza. He had immigration statistics. Those were useful elements too. Biggs agreed with Rubén that a quote from a Mexican businessman could fit into the story. But as elements went, it was pretty small. So why travel all the way to an exclusive neighborhood in Juarez, with a photographer, just to interview this Oscar Crispín?
"Onofre," Rubén said.
"Whatever. I could be back at the hotel writing this story by now."
"True," Rubén said, "you could be writing a story with lots of these elements in it, and then catch your 5 p.m. to Houston. But I've been reading your stuff Byron," he said, trying out Biggs' first name, "and -- no offense -- you could use an impact story or two, for sure."
"Just what I need," Biggs snapped, "a heavy hitter like you to help turn my career around. Make yourself useful, why don't you?" He handed him the tape recorder. "Make sure there's a blank tape in there, and the batteries are OK."
"OK," Rubén said, stripping the cellophane off a new cassette. "Hey, if I see the interview's not really getting anywhere, OK if I jump in?"
"That's out of the question," Biggs said.
"All right, all right."
Stevenson sat in the back, enjoying Rubén's show. He and Rubén actually had some fun over lunch, joking around about Biggs, what a hard ass he was. Without getting into specifics, they'd also reached an agreement about the beating in Juarez. Rubén said he was sorry about it, indirectly admitting that he had a hand in it. And Stevenson let him know that the beating, while painful, had a financial upside for him. The result was that neither of them would be undercutting each other's story, since they each had a stake in it -- though Stevenson still couldn't figure out exactly how Rubén was planning to cash in.
"The one thing that bugs me," Stevenson said as Rubén grabbed the lunch check, "is that I left my camera over there. A Leika. You know the German cameras? My brother gave it to me."
"Oh yeah," Rubén said. "It's still hanging on the wall." He fished into his pocket for a key. "Here," he said, throwing it on the table. "Why don't you go there and pick it up? I'd go myself, but I'm going to be too busy the next couple of days."
"I wouldn't want to run into those guys again," Stevenson said, leaving the key on the table.
"Oh no, they're over here. Don't worry about them." Rubén went on to give Stevenson directions to the Lavarama, drawing a little map on a napkin. He told him to go before noon. "And if you find something in the bodega, right next to the office, I'd say 'help yourself'," he said. "Those freaks owe it to you."

* * *

"So it appears they sent the army to arrest him," Chief Muller said. "Knocked down the door with a bazooka."
"Jesus!" Crispín filled a tiny shot glass with golden tequila and downed a shot. "Any news reports on it yet?"
The chief shook his head. "They're calling a press conference in Mexico" -- he looked at his watch -- "in an hour. The attorney general."
Crispín poured a couple of drops into the shot glass and raised it to his nose, then returned it to the oak table. "You think they'll ask whose house he was in, in the mountains?"
"Sure they'll ask," Muller said. "The question is whether the government will say."
Crispín's head glistened with sweat and he kept licking his chapped lips and then rubbing them together. He spoke with two undersecretaries early in the morning -- friends of his -- and at that point it seemed that pressure to arrest Jiménez was cooling down. After all, they knew he'd be more likely to talk loudly from jail than in hiding. And he might say things that could embarrass the government and derail Nafta. But later they got word, probably a call from the Mexican consul in El Paso, about the front-page story in the Journal. That's when the President sent the army to the mountain chalet, near Copper Canyon.
"In the capital," Crispín said, "I don't think they fully appreciate the delicate balance here, the alliances we must construct, in order to achieve modernization."
"Come off it!" Chief Muller said. "They have plenty of those alliances in Mexico City. You sound like you're on the witness stand, for God's sake. It's the Gringos," he adds, "who don't understand that delicate balance you're talking about."
Crispín nodded dumbly and looked at his watch. The New York Globe reporter was coming in a half hour, apparently in the company of one of the hell-raisers from the car wash, if Olmos was to be believed. Crispín hadn't even told the police chief about his bodyguard's foray into El Paso.
"You think Jiménez will talk?" Crispín asked.
"Not if he's well looked after, and knows that he'll be released as soon as it's politically feasible."
"Do what you can to communicate that to him."
"Fine," the police chief said, standing up. "But there's one other problem. I would imagine that in the capital, and in Washington, they expect these attacks on American journalists to end now that Jiménez is under arrest. But what happens if the attacks continue?"
"It's up to us," Crispín said grimly, "to make sure they don't."

* * *

"See that restaurant?" Harley pointed to a little café with checkered tablecloths. "That's where I was eating when I got the call to write the drug-maquiladora story."
"A journalistic landmark," Claudio said. "Let's get something to eat."
The men were returning from police headquarters. They didn't find Chief Muller there. But to their surprise, they came across a lieutenant who supplied them with information about Simón and Gato: full names, date and place of birth. There were no charges against them, but the police wanted to question them about a shooting in the Colonia 20 de Noviembre. "Any connections to Gustavo Jiménez?" Harley asked.
"None that we know of," the lieutenant said. "But -- not for publication, eh? -- we should be learning a lot about Jiménez in the next day or two."
Harley had no idea why they'd be learning so much in the next day or two. But now he had his story for the day. From three hours of reporting, Harley had quotes, anecdotes, and history, enough material about two maniacs named Gato and Simón for a good 20-inch news story.
He wished Claudio would let him in on his secret source for the story. It had to be some kind of love interest for him to be so stubborn about it. A far bigger complication was that all the reporting pointed to a passive Jiménez. In fact, the drug lord appeared to be a victim of the two car-washing marauders. Harley doubted that Canfield will let him recast Jiménez, no matter what the reporting showed. He'll have to finesse it with the writing.
Both men order fried bass. Claudio asked for a Dos Equis; Harley, mineral water, with lemon.
"Les traigo pan o tortillas?" the waiter asked.
"Tortillas."
"So..." Claudio said, dipping a tortilla chip in a bowl of green sauce. "I forgot to mention. Estela called me yesterday, looking for you."
"Estela?"
"Stevenson's girlfriend."
"I know, I know. I'm just surprised she called... looking for me."
Claudio smiled and nibbled on the chip. "She made it sound as if you had a date or something."
"No," Harley said. "She's just looking for a place to stay. I think she's getting kicked out of that apartment on Overland Street."
"Oh." Claudio looked skeptical. "Well, I'd watch it with her. I think she's some sort of link between Eddie Stevenson and our new friends Gato and Simón."
Harley thought about that for a moment, but then began working on a lead for his story. Based on his interviews, he had a connection between Jiménez and the boys from the Lavarama. He wished they'd been able to find Alfredito, the car wash employee. He might have been able to link Jiménez to the beating, or the shootings in El Paso. But nobody had seen him for a few days. At least that's what they said.
"You think Jiménez plays much of a part in this story?" Harley finally asked.
Claudio pursed his lips. "He's sort of like the donkey in the donkey show. You ever been to one?"
Harley shook his head. "When I first heard a taxista say 'donkey show', I thought he was talking about Don Quixote in French."
The waiter brought the beer and the mineral water, along with a sliced lime on a butter plate.
"You know how it works?" Claudio asked, after the waiter departed. "They start out by telling people about this lurid sex show with a donkey. Then they take people to the regular strip clubs, where they overcharge them for the drinks and give the taxista a piece of the take. The Gringos say, 'Where's the donkey?' and the taxista takes them to another club, saying 'más tarde, más tarde. It doesn't start until later." By four or five in the morning, the Gringos are so drunk that they wouldn't even recognize the donkey if it showed up. And I'm not sure it ever does."
The waiter deposited the two fish on the table.
Harley spun the salt shaker between his fingers, thinking. "Well, I'm going to have to find some way to keep the donkey in the show," he said. "Canfield'll shit if I turn away from Jiménez now."
"You shouldn't have any problem writing him into the story," Claudio said. "It won't be the first time."


Chapter Forty Two

Simón turned the big blue Impala off the blacktop and down the dirt driveway leading to penitentiary. In the parking lot, a Mexican TV reporter was already doing his stand-up, with the big cinder-block prison behind him. Technicians were busy pulling TV equipment out of a van while two dozen other reporters and photographers lined up at the door.
"Let's get in with them," Simón said, reaching behind the steering column to disconnect the ignition.
"Dressed like this?" Gato pointed to his bare legs.
"Since when do you worry about clothes?"
"But they'll only be letting in the journalists."
Simón was already out of the car, hurrying to get in line.
Gato watched him hustle up to the building, his tee-shirt tucked into his khakis, making him look neater than most of the other journalists. It was a mystery to Gato how his partner's pants held their crease in a knapsack. Digging through Simón's clothes, looking for another pair of long pants, he came upon the book by Dr. Rivapalacios and pulled it out. He opened to a chapter called "Mentors: Friends You Need." On the margin of the first page, Gato saw three names in Simón's neat block writing: Gato, Rubén, don Gustavo. A thick line ran through his own name, which hurt his feelings a little, and another through Rubén's. Gato looked over to the line of journalists and saw that Simón, smiling and talking to one of the cameramen, had butted to the front of the line. He obviously was eager to talk to his mentor.

* * *

Eddie Stevenson had never seen anyone mug so shamelessly for the camera. They were sitting in the garden, under a lattice woven with ivy: Biggs and Rubén in small cast-iron chairs, and Crispín in a bigger one, the tape recorder on the table. While he talked with Biggs and ignored Rubén, Crispín kept a steady eye on Stevenson's camera and maintained his face at a three-quarter angle. He had some white powder on his head, probably to keep it from shining.
The interview was worthless, as far as Stevenson could tell. Biggs asked the usual questions about immigration, whether it was a political safety valve for Mexico, whether differences over Operation Blockade could derail Nafta. And Crispín, always looking at the photographer, said that yes, it was important, but that no, Nafta was simply too big and too important to be sunk. "Nafta's a win-win proposition," he said a number of times. Biggs nodded and Rubén just sat there looking frustrated, an interpreter with no interpreting to do. After about 20 minutes, Crispín offered the journalists some iced tea along with Ritz crackers and a bowl of what looked like day-old oatmeal. He called it "Mexican caviar," and asked them to guess what it was.
Rubén, sensing that the business side of the interview was drawing to a close, piped up in English. "What do you say about reports that Gustavo Jiménez has ties to the maquiladora industry?"
Biggs rolled his eyes and put a spoonful of escamole on a cracker, and took a small bite.
"Those are pernicious rumors, Crispín said sternly, keeping his nose at a 45-degree angle from the camera. "They are initiated by opportunistic and irresponsible media in El Paso, and have no grounding in the truth."
Biggs coughed and lifted a napkin to his mouth. Then he took a long drink of iced tea. "What is that?" he asked, coming up for air.
"You don't like it?" Crispín was so concerned he forgot for a moment about the camera. "It's just something that we call escamole. We don't need to go into it..."
"It's ants eggs," Stevenson said. "I had it one time at the Paso del Norte. It's kind of squishy..."
Biggs jumped to his feet, bumping into the stone table, and asked about the bathroom. A maid led him into the house.
Stevenson kept taking pictures as Rubén leaned over the table and spoke with Crispín in Spanish. Stevenson couldn't hear what they were saying, but was surprised to see the maquiladora magnate listening so closely to Rubén, of all people. Crispín was nodding grimly. Maybe he believed Rubén was a second Globe reporter, Stevenson thought, taking another picture. Hearing the click of the camera, Crispín looked up again, nodded one more time, and then hurried into the pink mansion, apparently to see how Byron Biggs was getting on.

* * *

If Diana invited her in, she couldn't very well tell her to leave those boxes outside. Somebody might steal them. So she told Estela to pile the boxes right inside the doorway, just so they'd be safe while she visited.
Estela, wearing a black San Jose Sharks tee-shirt, smiled and said, "Claro que si," and began moving the boxes into the duplex.
Diana didn't understand Spanish that well, but she could make out that Estela was looking for Eddie. Or maybe she was saying the boxes belonged to Eddie...
She asked Estela if she wanted some coffee.
"Como?" Estela said, already making herself comfortable on the couch.
"Do you want café?"
"Claro que si, gracias."
"You take it with sugar?"
"Con azucar? Si. Dos, por favor." Estela looked back and flashed a brilliant smile, and then furrowed her brow and appeared to add something serious. "Me botaron hoy del departamento."
Diana didn't have a clue. Something about a department. She wondered how Estela got the idea that she understood so much Spanish. They hardly spoke when she went looking for Eddie Stevenson. But Diana noticed that Mexicans often assumed she spoke Spanish, maybe because she looked Mexican, or because unlike many Anglos in El Paso, she didn't wave her hands frantically and shake her head when spoken to in Spanish.
Diana had an Italian grandmother and a Portuguese grandfather, who spoke to each other in their native languages for fifty years of marriage. Diana remembered visiting her them in Queens, after her family had moved to Brooklyn. She was probably 13 at the time, and just beginning to recognize what a resource these old Europeans were. As they had their soup, she listened to them, her grandmother's waltzing Italian and her grandfather answering in what sounded at times like Russian. She gathered her nerve and finally asked for the bread, saying, "Eu quero um pedacinho de pao." Her grandfather leaned over and kissed her on both cheeks, calling her "minha preciosa." Her grandmother glared at her, as if she'd been betrayed, and wordlessly shoved the bread plate across the table.
After that, Diana stopped experimenting. But she figured that with the Italian and the Portuguese, along with all the Spanish she'd heard on subways and restaurants, she had about half of the Spanish language scattered in her head. Now, she thought, carrying a cup of coffee to Estela, it was time to draw it out.
But how to begin? "You speak English, don't you?" she asked Estela, as she sat down.
"Jes," Estela nodded, and put her thumb and forefinger a half inch apart. "Pero muy poco."
"But you understand it."
"Claro."
"Why did you come here?"
Estela pulled a slip of paper out of her back pocket. It was the address and phone number Diana left with her when she was looking for Stevenson. "I haf no otter..." She gave up. "No tenía donde dormir." She made a gesture of throwing something out a window. "Me botaron del departamento."
"You want to sleep here?"
Estela shrugged. "Si."
"No, no, no."
Estela slumped in the couch, disconsolate.
"I'm sorry. Maybe I can help you find Eddie."
"I don like Eduardo. Es abusivo."
Diana felt a surge of sympathy for this refugee with her boxes and corny hockey tee-shirt, this fellow victim of the abusivo Eddie Stevenson. "OK," she said. "You can stay one night. Un noche. But tomorrow you'll have to find someplace else. Do you understand."
Estela nodded eagerly. "Mañana busco a Tomás. Sabes donde está?"
Diana shook her head. She hardly knew any Mexicans, none named Tomás. She looked at Estela, who appeared happy now, holding her coffee mug with two hands. Estela smiled, showing a row of the straightest, whitest teeth Diana had ever seen. "You can sleep here on the couch," she said. "You want some dinner?"
"Tal vez más tarde," Estela said. "Es temprano."
She wanted to eat later. Diana wondered what they'd talk about all evening. She didn't want to discuss Eddie Stevenson or the Juarez drug lords. What she really wanted was to call up Tom Harley and talk to him about lots of things, tell him about her grandparents, her job, ask him if he liked Cary Grant movies and Blue Velvet. Tell him that maybe they wouldn't have to wait so long before having sex. But she couldn't make that call with Estela in the room.
Estela rose and walked to the doorway, where she picked up one of the boxes and brought it back to the living room. "Me siento desnuda sin los aretes," she said, opening the box.
"Aretes?"
Estela pointed to her ear and said, "Yewelry for here."
"Oh, earrings."
"Si. Aretes."
She dug through the box with one hand, pushing aside tee-shirts and a pink nightgown, a bra, underwear. She began to unload her things onto the coffee table. Two Cosmopolitan magazines in Spanish, more clothes, a pair of white Reeboks. "Uuuuy!" she said, pulling out Stevenson's sooty water pipe. "Esto lo voy a tirar."
Diana wasn't listening. She was looking at a Phillies cigar box, with the lid pulled back, showing a gray metal tube. "What's this?" she asked, reaching for it.
"Ah, eso," Estela said. She casually opened the cigar box and pulled out a pistol, saying something about friends leaving it with her. Squinting one eye, she pointed it out the window.
"Put it down!" shouted Diana.
"No pasa nada. No está cargada," Estela said.
Diana didn't care if it was loaded or not. She wanted the gun out of her house. "Put it down!" she commanded, knowing better than to wrestle for it.
"Mira," Estela said. She pulled the trigger and it produced an empty click. "Ves?" She pulled it again and BAM! The shot echoed loudly as a shower of white ceiling dust fell to the carpet.


Chapter Forty Three

When Harley wrestled with leads, it seemed he could hear every conversation in the newsroom. Rosie, the receptionist, told someone on the phone that Ken Perry was meeting with Chamber of Commerce directors. Two cubicles over, Harley could hear DuChamps, still bragging on the phone about his immigration expose, calling it "a sweet hit."
Harley tried a new lead: "From a car wash in dusty Anapra to the verdant gardens of Coronado, two modern-day Mexican desperados are trying to shoot holes in Nafta -- with a pistol..." No, he thought. Too corny, and Canfield will want Jiménez in the lead.
Harley heard the city editor grumbling about an IBM story on the wire. "No wonder their stock's in the goddamn toilet!"
Harley tried not to listen and wrote another lead: "When the gun shots coming from a Juarez car wash found a human target a week ago, angry neighbors said "enough." Little did they know that they were merely chasing the shooters across the river, to El Paso, where drug-related..." No, no, no. Way too long. He wrote another: "Eleven-year-old Jose Luis Gordillo knew something fishy was going on when police came to the car wash and dragged away his friend Alfredito..." Too indirect.
Harley stood up and headed to the snack bar for a quick Hawaiian Punch, or maybe something with caffeine.
Canfield yelled to him. "Harley! When you going to have that drug story written?"
"In an hour," he answered.
Canfield looked at his watch. "Seven twelve," he said, writing the numbers on a yellow Post-it and sticking it on his monitor. "It's in my cue by 7:12, written to 21 inches and no goddamn holes in it."
"Right," Harley said.
He bought a high-caffeine JOLT! cola, returned to his cubicle and wrote the story.


Two low-level drug dealers with ties to reputed Juarez cocaine king Gustavo Jiménez are carrying out the wave of terror against this newspaper's employees, a Tribune investigation has revealed.
Working from a car wash in the dusty slum of Anapra, just across the Rio Grande from Sunland Park, the two men in their '20s, known as Gato and Simón, have targeted the Tribune as part of a bizarre strategy to climb to power in the drug world, according to sources close to the men.
Emboldened by the upcoming U.S. Senate vote on Nafta, they apparently hope that the wave of embarrassing news, generated by the Juarez beating of a Tribune photographer and two subsequent shootings in El Paso, will force the Mexican government to make valuable concessions to them -- that the Mexicans, in effect, will pay them to stop the violence.
A State Judicial Police source in Juarez confirmed that the two young traffickers "could very well be attempting to hold Nafta hostage," with their barrage of violence, which began last Monday with the beating of Tribune photographer Ed Stevenson, and continued with errant gunfire attacks in El Paso on a Tribune editor and reporter.
It is still not clear how much influence reputed drug lord Gustavo Jiménez exerts on his two lieutenants. Following the beating of Stevenson and the subsequent rash of publicity -- including numerous calls by this paper for his arrest -- Jiménez fled Juarez heading south, and hasn't been heard from since. Well-connected sources in Juarez speculate that he's residing near the Copper Canyon, in Chihuahua's Tarahumara Mountains.
According to neighbors in the sprawling slum of Anapra, young men known simply as Gato and Simón ran until last week a cocaine and marijuana distribution business for Jiménez from a car wash called La Lavarama.
It was presumably at the Lavarama where Tribune photographer Stevenson was abducted and beaten a week ago. Municipal Police picked up a 12-year-old car-washer, Alfredo Magon Paez, last Wednesday for questioning about the beating. Later that afternoon, following angry threats from neighbors, both Gato and Simón abandoned the car wash, presumably crossing the river -- armed -- into El Paso.
El Paso Police did not locate them. But following a Friday night shooting near the Coronado home of Tribune Editor Ken Perry, a silver Lexus stolen in the neighborhood was abandoned at the corner of Mesa Street and Paisano Drive in South El Paso.
"We think they probably holed up for a day or two in the barrio," said Police Sgt. Raymond Buendía. He speculated that the ongoing Operation Blockade prevented them from crossing the border at will. "If I had to guess," he added, "they probably went back to Juarez for money."
El Paso Police have blood samples from one of the men and numerous fingerprints from the interior of the Lexus. The investigation, said Buendía, "is ongoing."
The two suspects did not return to the Lavarama until yesterday morning, appearing briefly in a blue Chevrolet Impala. Neighbors said they spent 15 minutes at the car wash, apparently to pick something up. They washed one car, for which they collected 20 new pesos.
Later, they talked briefly with a State Judicial Policeman -- whose name is unknown to the neighbors -- and took off in the Chevrolet, heading west. Police officials in Juarez confirmed that a search for the two men is underway, for "questioning concerning a number of matters."
Of the two men, neighbors said that Simón was the more violent. A well-dressed man of about 24, he often shot a pistol into the adobe wall of the Lavarama. And he was known to beat the young car-washers. A day after the Stevenson beating, one of his shots apparently went over the wall and hit the forearm of a teenaged boy two blocks away.
Following that incident, an armed contingent of neighbors complained to the police and even knocked on the door of the Lavarama, calling on the two men to leave.
Neighbors, who did not reveal names for fear of retaliation, said that the car wash business was a flimsy front, and that dirty cars were routinely turned away. "The only cars that got decent washes," said one neighbor, a woman who lives a block away, "were the police cruisers."
Neighbors, she said, assumed the Police were providing protection for the drug activities. State Judicial Police officials admit that such cozy deals are all too common, but add that they're cracking down on them.
Police in Juarez say they have no evidence linking the car wash to drugs or the empire of Gustavo Jiménez. Yet a source who knows both Gato and Simón confirmed yesterday that the Lavarama was a drug distribution outlet, with a storeroom next to the office serving as a cocaine and marijuana warehouse.
He also said that Stevenson was beaten there, and that one of his cameras still hangs on the office wall.
He speculated that the two men were eager to "muddy the waters" of the drug business by launching high-profile attacks on the Tribune's employees. "This would create a climate," he said, "in which they could rise in the drug business."



Harley sent the story to Canfield's cue at 7:09. Then he pretended to relax and read the newspaper. But he kept an eye on Canfield, expecting the city editor to explode any second with a torrent of angry questions.
Surprisingly, Canfield lumbered over to Harley's desk with a smile. "Not bad, Harley. You did some reporting," he said. "Good to see." But, he lowered his voice and added, "You got to tell me who that source is at the end, the one who knows 'em."
Harley could kick himself for adding those paragraphs from Claudio's source. "I can't tell you," he said.
"Sure you can. You got to."
"One of my sources talked to him. But he wouldn't tell me who he was or what his name was."
"So that's all hearsay," Canfield said, shaking his head. "We can't use it."
Harley found it hard to believe that the editor who wrote tigers and harems into the original story was having qualms about Claudio's source, especially since Claudio's source was real. Maybe Canfield raised his standards for stronger stories. "How about this," Harley said. "We just change the one source to plural, and take out the direct quote. Because more than one person told me about that camera hanging on the office wall. One of the kids who got beaten up by Simón told me that too. A popsicle vendor."
"OK," Canfield said, nodding. "Rework those last three grafs and send 'em back to me. In a hurry."


Chapter Forty Four

Eddie Stevenson shipped the six rolls of film to New York and then drove back to the Mountain Inn and raided the minibar. He drank the two little Absolut vodkas mixed with Squirt before he noticed the red message light blinking on his phone. He called and heard a message from yet another lawyer who didn’t want his case. No explanations.
Probably because the victim's Anglo, Stevenson thought. He heard a caller on Rush Limbaugh talking about how white Anglos were the only powerless minority, and now it was starting to make sense to him. If he were Mexican, those ambulance-chasing lawyers would be crawling over each other for his case. He opened the minibar and picks out a Gilbey's gin and mixed it with the last drops of Squirt and melted ice. If he were Mexican, Stevenson thought as he polished off the drink, Estela would never have dropped him in the first place.
He opened a bottle of Johnny Walker Black, then thought better of it. He screwed on the top, grabbed another Scotch and a Don Pedro brandy and jammed the three bottles into his jeans pocket. He was out the door and halfway down the hotel corridor, the bottles jingling against his keys, before he remembered that he was the one who dropped Estela. But that's because her Mexican friend set the dogs on him, figuratively speaking. None of it would have happened if he'd been Mexican.
The sun hung low in the sky, just over the Franklins, but the temperature was still in the 90s. The old Dodge felt like a furnace. Stevenson lowered both front windows and took off. He climbed up Shuster and turned east, thinking about stopping at Diana Clements house. Then he remembered their contretemps. She probably wouldn't have freaked out so much -- would have been more tolerant -- if he were Mexican. Stevenson pulled south onto Copia and headed downhill towards the barrio.
Going home. Stevenson cheered up. Why didn't he consider it before? What was he doing this past week? He thought about curling up with Estela, getting her to put on that silky nightgown with nothing underneath, and then drinking some white wine and smoking a couple bowls in his bong. Listen to some music with her. Ask her what she'd been up to, and then listen to her funky mixture of Chihuahua and Cielo Vista Mall. Then maybe she'd unzip his pants. Or maybe they'll talk a little bit first. Stevenson raced under I-10 and turned right on Paisano, tires squealing. He thought about translating a Grateful Dead line for her: "What a long, strange trip it's been." He worked at it. Largo raro viaje. No, noun first. Viaje largo raro. Of course, he'd have to explain the double meaning of "trip" for her. Lots of things she didn't understand. She probably didn't even know who Rush Limbaugh was.
He turned onto El Paso Street and parked in front of El Encanto, a little clothing store where they always had salsa playing. Climbing out of the car, Stevenson felt something wet running down his leg. He reached into his pocket and pulled out an empty bottle of Johnny Walker Black. Cursing, he threw it toward a trash can. It missed and skittered along the pavement without breaking.
He crossed the street, smelling the whisky and feeling it trickle down to his sock. He'd have to wash up right away, he thought, climbing the stairs of the apartment building. Estela wouldn't want him smelling like some of the bums out on the street. He reached for his key thinking the first thing he'd do is give Estela a hard, passionate kiss, maybe even give her a little bite. He really missed her.
He opened the door to a deserted apartment, with nothing but a pile of refuse, old hangers and cracked Tupperware dishes sitting on the buckled living room floor. Stevenson checked the refrigerator for his pot. But it was unplugged and empty, except for ice trays and an old box of Arm & Hammer. He found a rag under the kitchen sink and wiped the trail of whisky off his leg. Then, disconsolate, he walked back his Dodge and, for lack of anything better to do, drove across the Stanton Street Bridge to Mexico.

* * *

"I was about an inch away from telling him all about you," Claudio said. "Because I suspect you're behind a big part of the story."
Rubén smiled. "No way, man. I'm working this one as a journalist."
"A journalist who still doesn't have a clue about conflicts of interest."
"I'm conflict free, man." Rubén drained his can of Mountain Dew and sucked out the last few drops. "Conflict averse."
They were sitting in the courtyard garden outside Claudio's apartment, next to a dry fountain. Rubén had showed up still wearing the oversized tweed jacket, a reminder of his day working for The New York Globe. He'd brought along a six-pack of Dew and a day's worth of stories to tell.
"So anyway," he told Claudio, punching open a fresh soda, "I get this feeling, this strong feeling, that our friend Crispín is calling a hit on Simón and Gato."
"Based on what?"
"He thinks they're getting in the way of Nafta, and his projects."
"No, no," Claudio said. "Your feeling. What's that based on? Something Crispín said?"
"No, more the way he acted, the way he looked around."
Claudio looked dubious. He reached for a Mountain Dew, opened it and took a sip. Grimacing, he said, "This stuff's like syrup, Rubén!"
"If you don't like it, leave it for me," said Rubén, sounding offended.
"No, I'll stick with it." He took another sip. "Listen," he said. "You get into problems because sometimes you base things on certain 'feelings' you have, intuitions. And a lot of them have to do with conspiracies. There was a time, back in the '70s, when everybody believed in conspiracies. You know, the Kennedy assassination, the big business interests in the Vietnam war, business manipulating the networks, the news, the elections..."
Rubén nodded. "Ex-act-ly," he said.
"But for journalism, you need hard evidence."
"That's right," Rubén said, still nodding.
"And all you have is feelings."
"Oh, no, man. He wants to kill those guys. He sent over a hit man to my aunt's house a few days ago, looking for them."
"A hit man?"
"Well, a thug, for sure."
"How do you know he came from Crispín?"
"He told me so. You should have seen this guy's nose, man. Totally flat!" Rubén smushed his nose with his thumb. "Like that."
"Uh huh." Claudio took a deep breath. "Rubén, I think it's interesting that Crispín sent a man to El Paso to ask questions. That would be a good story all by itself, if you could prove the guy really was coming from Crispín -- and if you weren't directly involved in the whole thing."
"I'm not!" Rubén protested.
"OK, OK. But you still don't have anything close to a murder tip."
"Oh yes I do," Rubén smiled, knowingly.
"Well, you're getting catty with me about your sourcing," Claudio said, putting down his soda on the edge of the fountain. "But let's assume that you do have hard evidence. You've got a moral obligation to warn those kids about it. Sometimes, Rubén, I get the feeling you'd let somebody get hurt if it would make a better story."
"Hey man," Rubén said, still smiling. "What were you saying about feelings? You can't trust them."


Chapter Forty Five

Even before Harley stepped through the doorway, Diana wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him down for a longish kiss on the mouth. "I wanted to get that first kiss behind me," she said as Harley gathered himself, looking first at her, and then at the chunks of plaster and white dust on the floor, and the boxes piled along the wall. He tried to make sense of the destruction and the kiss. Maybe Eddie Stevenson had come back with a gun, and Diana was trying to nail down her relation with Harley in anticipation of some kind of... He couldn't figure it out. But she was standing close to him in her tight bluejean shorts and white Mexican blouse, her hair pulled up with a barrette. Her smell recalled something from his childhood.
Harley bent down to kiss her, first on the back of the neck, where he nibbled around the edge of a mole, inhaling deeply, and then past her ear, breathing into it, moving along her jawline, and finally to her mouth, where he had it in mind to run his tongue along that groove between her two front teeth. But she was breathing hard and her tongue, just as busy as his, got in the way. No matter. There'd be plenty of time to practice, he thought happily, finally recognizing the scent of firecrackers.
Then he heard the toilet flush.
Diana pulled away from him. "I've got a guest," she said with an embarassed smile, pointing to the boxes.
"Did he come with a gun?"
"No, it's not..."
The bathroom door opened and Estela walked out. "Hola Tomás," she said. Seeing that Diana had a hand on his arm, she kept her distance, waving with just the tips of her fingers and sitting down on the couch.
"So you're Tomás!" Diana said.
"I guess that's what she calls me."
"She said she wanted to stay with Tomás, and I didn't know she was talking about you."
Harley blushed and looked at Estela, who was following the conversation from her perch on the couch. He smiled at her and then asked Diana, "What happened to the ceiling?"
"Un pequeño accidente," Estela said.
"Yes, un accidente," Diana said, with what sounded to Harley like a touch of Portuguese. Without moving from the doorway, she described the incident with the gun, telling him how it made her feel almost ill to see it, and how she had this feeling that it would go off, and then it exploded and her ears were still ringing. She put the gun in the back of the toilet, she said, in the water, where that pink floater thing was. Seemed like the safest place for it. "Can you believe what one little bullet did to the ceiling?" she asked.
Harley nodded as she talked, looking at her gleaming eyes, squinting as she described the explosion, those little specks of gold on the brown irises. Could she be Portuguese?
He felt bad. After that session in her apartment, he'd promised Estela he'd call, and he hadn't. And he pursued Diana without telling either woman about the other one. Now he was just about to be caught.
Diana stopped talking and the women were quiet for a moment, waiting for Harley to weigh in.
"Are you... Do you have some Portuguese in your background?" he asked Diana.
She beamed. "My grandfather. How did you know?"
"Those little golden specks in your eyes."
"You're kidding!"
"No. I could hear it in the way you pronounced 'accidente'."
"Oh," she laughed.
Harley glanced at Estela, looking forlorn, and he felt miserable. He walked toward her and asked her, in his Chihuahuan Spanish, what was new. She told him how she was kicked out of her apartment, and the only address she had was Diana's. She was hoping, she said quietly, that she would find him through Diana, and stay with him for maybe a couple of days. But she didn't want to impose.
Harley struggled for something to say. "Those friends who were staying with you, you couldn't stay with them?"
Estela dismissed them with a wave of her hand. "They don't have anyplace to stay at all," she said.
He thought of her wet-haired friend coming out of the bathroom, gaping at Estela half-naked on the couch, and then ducking into the bedroom to eavesdrop and smoke dope. He remembered the giggles, and the bong disappearing from the coffee table, replaced by a leather knapsack. He pictured the same leather knapsack on the guy he was chasing through Kress's, and it all snapped together: Estela was harboring Gato and Simón.
Now, as she sat patiently waiting for him to offer her a place to stay, Harley's mind raced to put together the rest of the puzzle. Stevenson said that her friends were pissed off at him. That meant Gato and Simón. But why would they be angry at him? And was one of them Claudio's secret source? If so, why would Claudio go through the motions of reporting in Juarez?
Diana was crouched by the stereo, putting on a CD. "You like Milton Nascimento?" she asked.
Harley nodded vaguely as Estela said, "Nascimiento? No lo conozco."
"Sit down, why don't you?" Diana said, as the Brazilian music filled the house. Harley looked at her. She was radiant. She knew nothing about Simón or Gato, nothing about Estela's brief tangle with Harley. The bullet in the ceiling and the gun in the toilet? They probably just made the evening more memorable.
The gun. Harley wondered if it was the same one. It had to be. But what was she doing with it? Was she working for Simón and Gato? Did they send her over here? Was she following their orders when she tried to seduce him? He looked at her, leaning back on the sofa with a long brown arm stretched out along the top, beating a hand in time to the music.
"Es triste, la musica, verdad?" she said to Diana.
Diana nodded. It's sad, she said, but "muy bella," pronouncing both Ls. "Why don't you sit down?" she said again to Harley, gesturing toward a canvas director's chair.
Harley sat on a corner of the coffee table. He was thinking he should call the police.
He wanted to talk to Diana, alone, to figure out what to do. "Did you say you put the gun in the toilet?" he asked her.
She nodded. "In the back, behind the floater."
"OK if I take a look?"
"Sure."
"Would you come with me?"
"To the bathroom?"
"To look at the gun," he said, telling her with his eyes that there was more to it than that.
"All right," Diana said, looking flustered. She asked Estela if she wanted a beer, and Estela said, "No, muy amable, pero otro cafecito, si."
"Un momentito," Diana said, following Harley into the powder room. She closed the door behind her quietly and then stood up on tiptoes and kissed him, arching her back to rub up against him. "This is a little rude," she said, smiling, as she pulled back.
"Listen," Harley whispered. "That gun she has is the same one that they used to shoot at me. And at my editor's house. I'm sure of it."
"Huh?"
"And those two guys who were doing all this? They were staying with her!"
"Come on!"
"Shhhh!" He put a finger to his mouth. "I'm not kidding."
She stepped over to the toilet. "Well, do you want to see the gun?"
"No. It doesn't matter."
"So you're saying she's a part of this? That it's some kind of plot?"
Harley nodded.
"And she came over here because..."
"I don't know." Harley reached over and flushed the toilet, to make noise, before realizing how improper it might sound.
"I think you're more than a little bit paranoid," Diana said, raising her voice to be heard.
"And then, when I was over there reporting, she tried to seduce me," he added, trying to bolster his case.
"And did she succeed?" Diana smiled.
"Halfway."
"Well, I can't blame her for that. Or you either, for that matter."
The water stopped running into the toilet and it was quiet again. He turned on the tap, and then decided to wash his hands.
"I was wondering if we should call the police," he said, working up a lather.
"Come off it. This is just a theory of yours, right?"
"More than that. Everything fits." He rinsed his hands and reached for a towel.
"And if they pick her up," Diana said, "what do you think she's going to say about you? Aren't you a little tired of being in the news?"
"Geez, I hadn't thought of that."
They walked out together and saw that Estela had disappeared from the couch. Then her Chihuahuan voice came from the kitchen, asking where Diana kept the coffee filters.

* * *

The call came at half-time of Monday Night Football. Onofre Crispín muted the TV and picked up the phone.
"Onofre." It's Chief Muller. "Jiménez is cooperating."
"Good," Crispín said. "That means he's not as stupid as I feared."
"He said the two men will be at the car wash tomorrow morning. He's sent them there."
"Both of them?"
"I think so."
"According to my intelligence, only one of them will be there."
"Oh... In any case, I'll send out forces to apprehend them," the chief said.
"Don't do that."
"Don't?"
"Don't send them until noon."
"But they might miss them!"
"Are you thick?" Crispín shouted into the phone. "Send them at noon. Not before."
"Oh," Muller said. "I see."
"Very good," Crispín said, softening. "And that's good news about Jiménez, cooperating."
"As you say, he's no idiot."
"Terrific." Crispín manufactured a smile, as if he were on videophone. "And Roberto, when do we play another round of racquetball?"
"Not for a while," Muller said. "I have a feeling it's going to be busy here for a few days."

* * *

The Juarez cab driver tilted his watch toward the lighted stage, so he could see it. "They bring the donkey in about 15 minutes," he said. "Half hour at the most late."
"You're full of shit," said Eddie Stevenson, looking at yet another stripper writhing around a brass pole.
"The cab driver ordered two more shots of tequila. "These ones on me," he said.
"Yeah, with my money." Stevenson had trouble focusing on the dancer. He'd seen so many, they were all starting to look alike. Most of them spent a lot of time showing their butts and keep their tops on until the very end. There was one, a couple clubs back, a blonde with a nice little body, who smiled at Stevenson and he smiled back. The cab driver brought her to the table for a drink, and she sat in Stevenson's lap, letting him reach under her shirt and play around with her breasts for a while. That was nice, though Stevenson didn't like the cab driver watching. She invited him back to her place. But that was when Stevenson still believed there'd be a donkey show, and he turned her down.
He lifted his wrist to look at the time and saw that his watch was gone. No big deal. He patted his pocket. The wallet was still there, and his keys. He thought about his car. It was parked, in a lot. Better just to leave it there. He felt something else jingling. He reached into the pocket and pulled out the two keys Rubén gave him. He'd forgotten about them. Maybe he'd have this cab driver take him over to the carwash, pick up the Leika. Do something useful.
"What time you got," he shouted across the table.
"Como?" The cab driver was staring at the dancer, a heavy girl with round hips, big tufts of pubic hairs sticking out from both sides of her g-string.
Stevenson pointed to his bare wrist. "Time!"
The dancer must have heard him, because she came to the edge of the stage, leaned over and wiggled her butt in the cab driver's face, nearly touching his gray mustache. She reached a finger back there and lifted the g-string a few inches, giving him a look. He smiled, enjoying himself. When she made her way back to the brass pole, he looked at Stevenson. "You wanna invite her for a drink?"
"What time you got!" Stevenson shouted.
"Oh." He looked at his watch. "Four Twenty Five. Donkey should be here in, ten, fifteen minutes more."
"Fuck you." Stevenson downed a shot of tequila and immediately regretted it. He stood up wavering and rushed to the bathroom, knocking down a couple of chairs on his way.


Chapter Forty Six

DRUG LORD ARRESTED, the Tribune headline read, with the subhead, Trib Coverage Prods Real Reform in Mexico. By Hank DuChamps.
Standing at his cubicle, Harley raced through the first paragraphs of the story, and then read the self-congratulatory front-page editorial. The Salinas administration, Ken Perry wrote, deserved credit for heeding the sound advice of its sternest critics, including the Tribune. Indeed, the arrest of Gustavo Jiménez marked the triumph of an effective journalistic campaign for truth and justice, values all too often forgotten amid breathless tabloid coverage of celebrities' love lives and diseases. Now that Salinas had taken firm action, Perry said, it was clear that Mexico was a serious and worthy partner for North American free trade.
It wasn't until Harley turned to the jump, where he saw a chopped-down version of his own article, that Canfield yelled to him, "You missed the story Harley."
Harley nodded. "Looks like I did."
"It came across A.P. We had DuChamps put it together. We called your hotel, your apartment. We even called your friend Claudio." He paused for a second, to let that one sink in. "Couldn't find you."
"Sorry about that," Harley said.
But Canfield wouldn't let go. "They send the fucking, goddamn army to arrest the guy, carry him from the airport in a convoy, might as well have been the Macy's parade. The AP's there, The Dallas Morning News is there. And you're over in Juarez, snooping around, with your good friend Claudio, and you miss it. Maybe you can explain that to me."
The entire newsroom hushed, waiting for Harley's answer.
"I don't think Jiménez has anything to do with the story we were covering," he responded in a low voice.
"BULLSHIT!"
"He wasn't even there when they beat up Stevenson."
"THAT'S A LIE!"
"I'm going to prove it to you."
"It better be good, Harley," Canfield said in a low growl. "You got a shitload of catching up to do."

* * *

Gato said he wasn't going back to the Lavarama, no matter how much money don Gustavo offered. "Drop me off at my sister's place," he told Simón.
"You didn't talk to him. You don't know how sincere he was."
"That's right, I don't know how sincere he was." Gato was still lying where he'd slept, in the front seat of the Impala. "The man's a crook," he said, rubbing the back of his neck with both hands. "You know where my sister lives? Behind El Gigante? Drop me off there."
Simón sat up on the edge of the back seat and looked down at Gato. "Twenty thousand dollars," he said, stressing each syllable. "Do you know what that is?"
"I know exactly what it is," Gato said. "It's three magic words that Don Gustavo said to you. And those three words are so powerful that you're willing to get yourself killed for them, even if there's no connection between those words and a pile of money."
Simón repeated what he'd said the night before, that don Gustavo had access to all his money in jail. The man was already making himself at home, setting up shop. The jailkeepers called him "don Gustavo," and he gave them big tips, in dollars.
Simón saw it. After the press left, Jiménez invited Simón into his quarters for a talk. He showed him his new cellular phone. "I like to stay in touch," he said. Then he sent out a jailkeeper for shrimp cocktail and a bottle of white Spanish wine. Rioja. And a case of Swiss chocolate. Sitting on the edge of his bed, Don Gustavo predicted they'd free him a few weeks after the Nafta passed. But they might hold him until the end of Salinas' term, at the end of '94. "You have to learn to accept these inconveniences," he said philosophically. "It's part of the business."
That was when he offered Simón $20,000 to pick up some documents at the Lavarama. The deed, he said, had the name of his brother-in-law on it. He didn't want police to find it, or his brother-in-law could wind up in jail too. "And we don't want that," Jiménez had said gravely. "He's got children, and a good wife."
"So all we have to do is pick up the papers," Simón told Gato. "It's a test, as I see it. Once we pass that test, he'll give us more responsibilities, more money. He says that now more than ever he needs friends like us."
"Did you talk to him about me?" Gato asked, uneasy at the thought.
"Not exactly. Not in detail."
"Good."
"I mean, I didn't tell him you used the product, or anything."
"Terrific. Just drop me off at my sister's."
"But this is what we've been working for!"
Gato moved his head back and forth, cracking his neck, and then sat up. He raked his hand through his thick black hair and looked out the window at the junkyard, where they had parked the night before. A rooster poked his head into a rusty old oven. Gato heard ranchera music. "Simón," he said, "did you notice how much don Gustavo paid the jailkeeper to go for the wine and shrimp cocktail? And the chocolate?"
"A hundred dollars," said Simón, nodding. "I saw it."
"Then why doesn't he pay the same person two hundred dollars, or three hundred dollars, to go pick up the deed at the Lavarama? Why pay us twenty thousand?"
"Don't you understand anything?" Simón said. "He's asking us to be partners!"
"Hmmm," Gato said, shaking his head. "If you drop me off at my sister's, you can get some breakfast there. She makes good menudo."


Chapter Forty Seven

It was foolish to take the Jeep Cherokee, Olmos had argued. People around that car wash had seen him in it before, when he was first trying to track down those lunatics.
"Then park far away and walk!" Onofre Crispín had said, without looking away from the TV. "Some exercise would do you good... Say what you will," he added. "You're not taking the El Dorado."
Olmos now maneuvered the Jeep through downtown Juarez, past the concrete cathedral and the outdoor market, and then onto the bumpy dirt roads of the colonias. He shifted into four-wheel drive. The two men in the back seat kept quiet. Olmos looked at them in the rear-view mirror, the older one with the blue GM baseball cap, looking out the window; the younger one, who looked like his son, with his black hair slicked back like a young Pedro Infante, calmly picking his nose. Olmos didn't even remember their names. It was better that way.
He pulled the Jeep into an ally a few blocks uphill from the car wash. Lots of radios were playing, dogs barking. Even through his flattened nose, Olmos could smell pig shit.
He turned around. Both men were looking right at him, but at his nose instead of his eyes. "It's just down this hill, on the left," Olmos said.
They nodded.
"Any questions?"
They both shook their heads. The younger one reached up and picked his nose again, this time with his thumb, to make it look as though he was scratching. "You going to be here?" he asked.
"No. I'm leaving."
"Then how do we get out of here?"
"Take a bus. Or walk."
Both men nodded again, as if they expected nothing more. Then they climbed out of the Jeep. The old one waved at Crispín as he turned around and headed back.

* * *

Rubén aimed at the sheet-steel door of the Lavarama and pushed the red button, to test it out. But the throw-away camera he bought at Kress's didn't seem to work. The button went down halfway, and then tilted, as if something was holding it up on one side.
"Shit," Rubén said. He looked at his watch. 8:35. There might be time to go downtown, buy another camera, and get back. He came on a little van -- un pesero -- that worked these slums. If it was turning around at Anapra, he could probably catch it a block up the road.
He saw two men walked toward the Lavarama, one with a baseball cap, the other with his hair greased back. Trying to look like Jean Claude Van Damme, Rubén thought. "You guys know if the pesero back to town comes by that road up there?" he asked in Spanish, pointing up the hill.
They both shrugged.
"I bought this camera," Rubén explained, "and this little red button seems jammed."
The older man didn't seem at all interested. But the young one reached for the camera. "Let me see that thing," he said. Rubén handed the black and yellow camera to him and the man grabbed it with two hands. With the lens pointing up, he pressed the red button hard. It didn't budge. "This is disposable?" he asked.
"Uh huh," Rubén said.
"There's no way to buy more film and reload it?"
"Watch you don't get your thumb on the lens," Rubén said. "See?"
"Come on!" the older man said, tugging at his companion's shirt.
The young man leaned over the machine and moved his thumb and the camera clicked. "There!" he said triumphantly, and handed it back.
"Thanks," Rubén said. "Hey, if you come out in the picture, I'll send you a copy."
"Don't worry about it," the Mexican Van Damme said as his old friend pulled him away by the arm.

* * *

The map Rubén drew for him on the napkin had a few landmarks on it -- an elementary school, a Baptist church, a general store -- but no street names. "The streets don't have names, man," he told Stevenson, while he drew it up. "Fact, they aren't really streets. More like paths."
Now Stevenson held that napkin in his hand, and he could swear the taxi was taking him past the same school for the third time. Feeling nauseous, he asked the cab driver to turn around. Even his Leika wasn't worth this much hassle.
"If I take you back, that's another twenty dollars," the cabby said. "You already owe me fourtee."
"fourteen?"
Cuarenta. four oh."
"What for?"
"The mess you make in my cab!" the driver said, turning around and pointing to a wet spot of vomit on the back seat. The old man appeared just as exhausted as Stevenson. His skin was yellow, the bags under his eyes almost black. Stevenson felt sorry for him for a couple seconds, and then remembered that the cabbie had already stiffed him for $120 and a watch.
He looked out the window and glimpsed a white brick building with a tin roof and a sign: Iglesia Bautista. "There!" he said, recognizing the Baptist Church. "Now turn right!"
The cabbie turned and almost ran into a metal door with the word 'Lavarama' painted in red. He told the cabbie not to stop there. He didn't want to attract attention. Instead, he had the taxi drive a couple blocks down the same dirt road. They argued for a minute about money. But when Stevenson pulled out his wallet and showed him he was flat broke, the cab driver showed some compassion.
"You don't want me to wait here?"
"No, go ahead."
"This barrio is no good. Es bien peligroso."
"Get lost."
The cab driver put the car in reverse and tried to kid with Stevenson. "Esa guera," he said, referring to the blonde stripper, "Quería tu cuerpo. She really wanted your body, fren."
"Well," Stevenson said, getting out and slamming the door, "at least she got my watch."
The cab took off, leaving behind a long tunnel of dust, and Stevenson walked toward the Lavarama. He was hot and nervous, and his shirt smelled like vinegar. The sun bothered his hangover eyes. He reached into his shirt pocket and was surprised to find his Raybans in their case, undisturbed by a night trailing the Donkey Show. He put them on and felt better.
The Lavarama was a block ahead. He saw a kid there with a popsicle stand, and a couple of men standing by the corner, licking red popsicles. An innocent enough scene, Stevenson thought, trying to relax. He wished the cab driver hadn't told him the neighborhood was so dangerous. Now he worried about cholos with switchblades behind every building he passed. He pictured himself walking into the Lavarama and running right into the same guys who beat him up. Or maybe cops who would charge him with drug-dealing. He wondered how the paper would cover the story if it happened a second time. Probably ignore it. He could hear Canfield saying: "If it happens once, Stevenson, you're a victim. If it happens again, you're an asshole."
As Stevenson approached the Lavarama, he noticed the two men licking popsicles were looking at him. He walked right past the door, pretending to be heading somewhere else. His heart was racing. He nodded at the group by the popsicle stand, but kept his mouth shut. He was safer, he thought, if they didn't know he was a Gringo. Estela always said that he looked like a Mexican, with his dark hair and mustache, until he opened his mouth. On this return trip to the Lavarama, Stevenson would keep his mouth shut.
Judging from the sun in his face, he was walking due east. The border was probably only a few hundred yards away. He'd feel safer once he reached it, even if there was no border crossing. He imagined some sort of bazaar along the border, with women selling tacos and strings of chorizo.
He looked to his right and saw the Cristo Rey mountain, with the statue of Jesus on top. That was where Chihuahua, New Mexico and Texas met. If it was south of him, that meant he was approaching the land border into New Mexico. That would be easier to cross than the river. Stevenson had taken hundreds of pictures of Mexicans crawling through holes in the fence. As he walked east, the blue Franklin Mountains rose ahead of him, calling him home after an endless night in Juarez. He'd forget about the camera and cross the border.
A few minutes after passing the Lavarama, Stevenson began to feel foolish. This wasn't such a dangerous neighborhood. He waved to a couple of old ladies in white dresses, who were talking and sprinkling water on the dirt road, trying to keep the dust down. They smiled and waved back, and one of them said something in Spanish.
They can't even tell I'm a Gringo, Stevenson thought, feeling more confident with each step. Now things were getting more congested. The buildings were closer together and more single men hung around in the road, looking for some kind of action. Then, after an abandoned warehouse with faded Salinas posters on its walls, he saw the border: a long, desolate stretch of cyclone fencing; behind it, green Border Patrol vans waited, one every hundred yards, their snouts pointing at Mexico.
Operation Blockade, Stevenson thought. He wished he hadn't left his car downtown. He patted his pocket. The wallet was still there, with his driver's license. But he couldn't very well duck through a hole in the fence waving his ID. They'd probably arrest him. Plus, he couldn't see any holes in the fence. Just a lot of Mexicans milling around, looking angry, and those vans waiting to catch them.
A couple of Mexicans came up to him smiling. "Te vas?" one of them asked.
"Huh?"
"Cruzas?"
They thought he was Mexican, and wanted to know if he was crossing. Stevenson didn't want to open his mouth, for fear of exposing himself as a Gringo.
"No, no," he said, pointing to the ground. He wanted to say, "Me quedo," to let them know he was staying. But he knew his accent would betray him. Estela said he spoke like an American, even when he said "Sí" and "No."
And these guys heard it. They started laughing, showing their bad teeth, saying things about Gringo and lana -- slang for money. Stevenson turned away from them and walked fast toward the Lavarama, saying "shit, shit, shit" with each step.


Chapter Forty Eight

The young man's finger was bleeding. He'd grabbed one of those broken bottles while climbing over the wall and sliced the finger right below the first knuckle. The two men sat in the dark bodega, hidden behind a couple of oil drums. The older man ripped a strip of cloth from his shirt and wrapped it around the cut. "There," he said. "I told you to wear gloves."
"It smells good in here," said the Mexican Van Damme, paying no attention to his wound. "Like a pharmacy." He stood up and ran a finger on his uncut hand along a metal shelf. Then he smelled the finger and touched his tongue to it. "Cocaína," he said.
"Claro," whispered the older man. "You knew the people we're ... meeting here are in that business."
Energized, the young Van Damme explored the shelves with both hands. "Look!" he said, "Here's a bag, with lots of it!"
"Shhhh!"
The young man reached inside the baggie with the forefinger of his good hand. Then he pulled it out and snorted from his fingertip, and dug down for more.
"Stay away from that!" the older man whispered.
Young Van Damme ignored him. "This stuff is pure," he marveled.
"Shhhh!"

* * *

By the time Stevenson reached the Lavarama, the popsicle stand was gone, the dirt road deserted. He looked left and right before pulling Rubén's two keys out of his pocket. He tried to push one of them into the padlock, and his hand shook so badly he had to lift his leg and steady his hand against a thigh. Stevenson figured his nerves were jangled from the all-nighter in Juarez and the hangover. He pushed the key in. It didn't work. He looked up and down the street again. Was it normal for a street like this to be so empty? Stevenson worried for a moment that this was some sort of trap. He inserted the second key and the padlock jumped open.
Relieved, he pushed open the creaking metal door and walked into the Lavarama. He took in the empty lot, and saw nothing but a cement trough, now dry, and a table in the sun with a pyramid of motor-oil cans on it. Stevenson remembered none of this from his ordeal a week ago. Strange, he thought, that anybody would run a car wash in a neighborhood of nothing but dirt. Stranger yet, he was taking refuge, of sorts, in a place where he was abducted and tortured. He reached back and closed the door and bolted it with an iron rod. He saw the walls were covered at the top with the broken bottles embedded in cement. Now he felt safe. Maybe he could call a cab from here. Just wait here in the little cement office until he heard the horn honk, then have the cab take him all the way to El Paso.
He walked toward the office, where Rubén said the Leika was hanging. Looking ahead, he saw footprints in the dirt, and a couple drops of blood. He froze. Then he figured the blood had to be his own, from the week before, and he smiled at himself for panicking. He was surprised the blood still looked so red after a week. But maybe, he thought, the same dry desert air that kept mummies from disintegrating also preserved blood. He considered it as he opened the door to the office. No, that didn't make sense: Desert air preserved mummy skin, but not blood.

* * *

They could see better now that their eyes were used to the dark. They heard the door open, and the young man ducked behind one of the barrels. He'd taken 15 or 20 snorts of the cocaine and was feeling confident that he could shoot with his left hand. He was going to have to; he couldn't expect his uncle to take on both of them.
They listened. One man seemed to be standing in the doorway, mumbling to himself. The wooden door between the bodega and the office was cracked open, and through the crack they could see a man's shadow. The uncle tapped him on the wrist and mouthed the question: "One or two?"
He shrugged. Then he listened. The shadow wasn't moving. The mumbling continued, almost like an old lady with the rosary. The young man nervously dug into the baggie again and then tried to inhale the powder without making noise.

* * *

Coming with a camera was a silly idea. Rubén couldn't linger for long outside the Lavarama door. It would look suspicious. And he might get picked up by police, who were on the look-out for Gato and Simón. So he strolled around the neighborhood, the throw-away camera hanging from his wrist.
Rubén had planted a few seeds. First, he gave Stevenson the key to the Lavarama and told him to pick up the Leika. Later that afternoon, when he had a couple minutes alone with Onofre Crispín, he told him that Simón and Gato would show up at the car wash.
So far, no sign of Stevenson, and nobody from the Crispín camp. One more turn around the neighborhood, Rubén was thinking as he approached the Lavarama, and he'd head back to El Paso. But he saw the padlock was off, and the door was bolted from the inside. Rubén looked up and down the road for Stevenson's old Dodge. He didn't see it. Maybe Simón and Gato had stopped by.
Most likely, nothing would happen. If it was Stevenson, good chance he'd just pick up his camera and go home. Rubén waited on the corner, a few yards from the door. Maybe he could hitch a ride back to El Paso with the photographer, he thought. He wandered up one of the dirt roads, looking for the Dodge.

* * *

The office smelled of Pinesol. On the wall was a giant Bardahl poster of a half naked woman covered with engine lubricant. She looked like Estela. The same heavy breasts, the hip bones that stood out wide, almost like handles. This one had blue eyes though, and a little pug nose, nothing like Estela's "Indian schnozz," as Stevenson called it. Her nose had always been one of his favorite features. But whenever he looked at her face and said, "Indian schnozz," she acted hurt. He thought she didn't like to be called an Indian. "But if you live in this country, especially in the west, they're either going to call you a Mexican or an Indian," he'd told her more than once. "It's a matter of choosing your poison." Of course, he never knew how much of his English she understood. And, as it turned out, it wasn't the Indian part that bothered her. They didn't clear that one up until their last week together, after she told him to take it slower one night, that her schnozz hurt.
He'd have to get back together with Estela, Stevenson thought, still looking at the Bardahl woman. What was he doing fondling whores in Juarez when he had a woman like that in El Paso?
He looked at the rest of the office wall. The Leika wasn't there. He muttered a curse and walked to the metal desk. Maybe it was in one of the drawers.

* * *

They heard him pulling open drawers, still talking to himself, or humming. It was only one man. That much was pretty clear.
With the gun in his left hand, his finger on the trigger, the young man pointed toward the door and looked at his uncle. He mouthed the word "Now?"
The uncle brought his finger and his thumb together, as if to say, "un momentito."

* * *

Stevenson found the camera in the bottom desk drawer. It looked good as new. Now, if he could just find a phone to call for a cab... Not a prayer. Looking at the floor, he noticed dusty footprints leading to a wooden door. He remembered Rubén telling him something about picking up some drugs. Maybe that's where they were. Of course, Stevenson wasn't dumb enough to walk through a Mexican barrio carrying drugs. But still, he might find something to enjoy while at the car wash. He took two steps toward the door and started to pull it open when he connected the footsteps with the fresh blood outside. He gasped and turned around, reaching for the office door, just as a man bolted out of the dark bodega and fired two shots in his back. Eddie Stevenson lunged one step and crumpled to the floor, right under the poster of the Bardahl woman.

* * *

Rubén heard the shots. He had to fight back an impulse to bang on the Lavarama door. He saw the popsicle boy wheeling his cart away from the car wash, fast, getting away from trouble. And a woman who was washing a window up the street ducked inside her house.
Rubén snapped a picture of the door, for lack of any other subjects. Then he looked around for a place to hide. He walked around the corner.

* * *

The older man sat down at the metal desk and carefully wiped the pistol with his frayed shirt. Then, still holding it by his shirt tail, he carried it outside and laid it in the dry trough. He reached into his pocket for a knife, and used it to open one of the cans of motor oil sitting on the table. Then he poured the golden oil on the gun and tossed the empty can over the Lavarama wall.
He walked back toward the office, scuffing at the footprints in the dirt. Inside, he bent over Stevenson's body. He untied the dead man's black Reeboks and pulled them off. He put one next to his own black leather shoe. Too small. "Enrique!" he whispered.
Enrique stuck his head out of the bodega, his nose white with powder. "What?"
"Put these on." He threw him the Reeboks.
The young man leaned over and picked them up. "They stink!" he said.
"Put them on."
Enrique took off his own Converses and loosened the Reebok laces. Then he looked inside one of the shoes. "What was this man's name?" he asked, gesturing toward Stevenson.
"Simón."
"But Pérez or González, something Mexican, no?"
The uncle was getting impatient. "I don't know his family name. Put on the shoes."
"But look." Enrique showed him the tongue of the Reebok, with E. Stevenson written in black ink.
"He must have stolen them from a Gringo," the uncle said. "It doesn't matter. Put them on."
As Enrique put on the shoes, his uncle fetched the cocaine from the bodega. He dug a finger into it and pulled out some powder. Then he leaned over Stevenson and shoved the powder up the dead man's nose. He repeated the operation with the other nostril. Then he took Stevenson's right hand and put his forefinger in the bag, covering it with cocaine. He closed the baggie, rolling it into the shape of a burrito, and jammed it into the photographer's pants pocket.
"Hey!" Enrique protested.
"Quiet. We're leaving."
"What do I do with my shoes?" Enrique asked.
"Shhh. We'll carry them out and then dispose of them."
"But these Reeboks are too small."
"Scrunch your toes."

* * *

Rubén walked up the block, away from the Lavarama. He saw a blue police cruiser drive by. He waited a minute or two and ventured back. Looking down the road, toward the border, he saw two men walking, already a block away. They were the ones who helped with his camera. He wondered if they could be the gunmen. Probably not, but he snapped a picture of them anyway. Funny, he thought, for the flash to go off in this blinding desert light. He inspected the machine, looking for some way to deactivate it. He didn't want his pictures to be overexposed.
He saw another police cruiser coming toward him. Or maybe it was the same one. He walked up the block to get out of harm's way, the camera dangling from his wrist.


Chapter Forty Nine

Harley had just reached the dirt roads and was beginning his search for the Lavarama when he glanced in the rear-view mirror and saw a police cruiser racing toward him, lights flashing. He touched the brakes, expecting the worst, but the cruiser rocketed by at about 70, throwing a blanket of dirt and pebbles onto his windshield. Harley put on the wipers just as a second cruiser zipped by, honking, and dumped more dirt on his car. He looked back and saw more cruisers coming.
Traffic was knotted outside the Lavarama. A half dozens cruisers were lined up along the car wash wall, blocking one lane. And at the intersection of two dirt roads, soldiers were climbing out of a dark green army truck, with a camouflaged tent on top. Other cops still looking for parking places honked and yelled out their windows to clear the road.
Since Harley was last in line, he was able to back up and find a parking place a few blocks up hill from the car wash. He walked down towards the honking, shading his eyes with a hand. At the car-wash gate, a stern-faced soldier carrying a machine gun stopped him. "No hay paso," he said.
Harley dropped into his Chihuahua accent and asked what was going on.
The soldier looked at him, confused. "Perdón, Señor, are you with the DIF?" he asked in Spanish.
Harley figured that had to be some branch of the police. He toyed with the idea of saying yes, but decided against it. "I'm with the press," he said.
"Keep out, then," the soldier snapped. He had a long nose and sloped chin, like the Mayan bas reliefs at Palenque.
"What's going on?" Harley asked.
The soldier looked straight ahead and didn't answer.
"Come on. I could have told you I was with the DIF, and you'd be saluting me."
The soldier looked right and left to make sure no one was watching him. "There's been a murder," he said.
"Who's dead?"
"A narco."
"And did they catch the killer?"
A group of officers walked out the door, joking about something. The soldier saluted. Then he looked at Harley and nodded. "They have them both inside."
"Two killers?"
"The killer and the dead man."
"Oh." Harley nodded. He could see policemen peering into a small cinderblock building. He wondered which one was dead, Gato or Simón. Maybe one murdered the other. Or maybe they both killed Claudio's source. But if that were the case, they'd probably have arrested two killers.
Harley heard a siren. Then he saw an ambulance come tearing around the corner, throwing up a cloud of dust. It triple parked, and a couple of medics rushed past him carrying a rolled up stretcher.
It must have been a set up, Harley thought, for all these cops to be here just in time for a killing. Most likely, Jiménez ratted on his underlings to get out of jail.
Harley was wondering how he could uncover the story when a small wiry man carrying a throw-away camera approached the soldier and asked what was going on. He called the soldier "tu," and the soldier, stonefaced, didn't respond.
"They have a dead narco and a killer in there," Harley said in his Chihuahuan Spanish.
The small man looked up at him with wide eyes.
"Which narco?" he asked in Spanish.
Harley shrugged. "They won't say."
"Are you with the press?"
"Si. El Paso Tribune."
"So you speak English?"
Harley nodded.
"Me too," the man said. "I'm with The New York Globe."
More foot traffic poured past, and a crowd of policemen and soldiers gathered at the doorway to the Lavarama office. The men with the stretcher were having trouble getting through. The soldier told the two journalists to back away from the gate.
Harley stepped back and looked at Rubén. With his black tee shirt, dirty brown pants and sneakers, he hardly looked like Globesman.
"Photographer," Rubén said, lifting his camera toward Harley's face.
"With that thing?"
"They smash so many cameras over here, it's the only choice."
Harley had seen this person before and tried to remember where. He was about to ask when he saw a black Grand Marquis rolling toward them, flanked by a couple of cops on motorcycles. Right behind them came a caravan of trucks and vans, stirring up more dirt.
The Grand Marquis pulled to a stop, and Chief Muller stepped out, his pink German face squinting in the sun. He saw Harley and waved nervously, and then looked back at the entire Juarez press corps. People were pulling movie cameras from vans and hurrying toward the car wash gate.
Muller worked his way through the mass of reporters gathered at the gate and called for their attention. Harley wondered why the chief didn't remove his black wool jacket, or at least loosen his tie. It seemed to dig three or four inches into his neck.
A few still photographers, including Rubén, clicked cameras in Muller's face. And the TV cameramen yelled for them to sit down.
An aide whispered into Muller's ear, and he nodded. Then the chief said in his ornate Spanish, "Ladies and gentlemen of the press. We're here to announce both bad news and good. The bad news is that the scourge of violence continues to afflict Ciudad Juarez, and has claimed yet another life." He paused and wiped his brow. Harley felt like reaching over and loosening the guy's tie for him. "The good news," Muller went on, "is that the victim appears to be one of the leading drug traficantes in our city, and his murderer is in our custody."
"Who are they?" Rubén yelled.
Muller raised his palm.
"We're not going to release the name of the victim, until we have positive identification," he said.
"Who's the murderer?" Rubén asked.
"If you'll just have the goodness to wait a moment," Muller said. "As you are well aware, the State Judicial Police have been subject to considerable criticism, most of it coming from outside our country. But with the arrest yesterday of suspected..."
An aide hurried up to Muller and whispered something into his ear. Muller's face turned from red to white, and he mopped his forehead again.
He looked back toward the bodega. Three or four policemen were pulling a young man out the door. His mouth was bleeding and one lens of his steel-rimmed glasses was shattered. His hands were cuffed behind him, and the policemen were tugging at his arms and kicking at his legs, calling him "cabrón."
"That's Simón Garza!" Rubén yelled. "Are you charging him with murder?"
"If you'll just permit me a minute," Chief Muller said.
The policemen dragged Simón right past Harley and the other reporters. A couple of them yelled questions to him, asking if he killed anyone, or if he was connected to Gustavo Jiménez.
Simón shook his head and forced a smile, showing a row of broken teeth, just as the cops threw him into a police van and slammed shut the door.
Harley turned back and looked at Muller. An aide whispered to him. The Globe photographer was perched about two feet away from them, aiming his throw-away camera at their faces. Cameras like that didn't even work at such close range, Harley thought, wondering if the man knew anything about photography.
As the police van carried away Simón, the Juarez reporters murmured that if Simón was the killer, the victim must be man known as Gato. They were confirming this to each other, when Rubén yelled: THEY'RE SAYING THE DEAD MAN'S AN AMERICAN! He rushed past the gate and across the Lavarama lot, and the rest of the press corps followed, including Harley.
Soldiers blocked them at the office door. But Harley, standing a good head taller than everyone else, could see inside. He saw a poster of a half naked woman smeared with motor oil. Below her, policemen were hunched over a body. Harley could see only the dead man's blue jeans and bare feet.
The Mexican reporters asked him what he could see.
"Nothing yet," Harley said. "Just his shoeless feet."
Then one of the policemen stood up and Harley got a glimpse of Eddie Stevenson's face. "Oh my God," he said in English.
The reporters asked him what he'd seen. But Harley just shook his head.
Behind them, Chief Muller asked for their attention. The press corps turned around, focusing its cameras on the police chief.
Rubén then broke past the soldiers in the door, rushed to the corpse and snapped a flash photo.
"Alto!" a policeman shouted. Two soldiers grabbed him by the arms and lifted him out of the bodega. One of them reached for the throw-away camera.
"Leave him alone!" shouted Muller, and they released him.
"The dead man," Muller said, "is Edward Stevenson, an American citizen with apparent ties to the drug industry in Juarez. He was found with cocaine both in his body and in his possession.
The reporters murmured.
Harley felt lightheaded. He walked slowly away from the press corps, towards the wall of the car lot. He sat down on the edge of a dry trough and put his head in his hands. He tried to pray for Eddie Stevenson. It had been years since Harley had prayed, and he didn't know exactly how to start. "Dear God," he said to himself. Then what? "Please let Stevenson..."
But he couldn't stop wondering what Stevenson was doing at the Lavarama, and why he got killed. He tried to remember the last time he saw Stevenson. It was right after that embarrassing episode with Estela, when Stevenson came in drunk and Harley hurried out, hoping the photographer wouldn't notice his wet hair. But then Stevenson got a phone call, and he sat down, making himself at home and started to talk about a photo assignment in Juarez. The NYG, Stevenson said. Harley could see his smile and hear that laugh. The New York Globe. But if he was shooting for the Globe... Harley looked up and saw the little photographer hurrying out of the car wash, as if he could read Harley's mind, the throw-away camera hanging from his wrist.
Meantime, the rest of the press contingent was walking toward him, en masse, to ask questions, hoping the tall Gringo could tell them something about the dead Gringo.
They gathered around Harley, training their cameras on him, and asking about Stevenson. Before Harley could answer, one young woman pointed into the trough and yelled, "LOOK!" The press quickly shifted the cameras from Harley and focused on a snub-nosed pistol lying in a puddle of golden motor oil.


Chapter Fifty

Ken Perry didn't want to run with the Stevenson story. "This has nothing to do with the first attack over there," he told the small group gathered in his office. "Stevenson was into some dirty business."
"True," Canfield said. "But we can't pretend we don't have a photographer who was shot over there. Are we going to run this story as a goddamn obit? Or an international brief?
"But he was on leave..."
"FOR CHRIST'S SAKE, KEN!"
"OK," Perry said. "But I don't want more Nafta-bashing. This has nothing to do with Nafta. And I don't want any talk about Mexican corruption, unless we have some evidence. People are using that kind of talk to attack Nafta."
"My God, you seem to have some pretty strong feelings about Nafta, all of a sudden," the city editor said, shaking his head.
"It's probably the most important issue for this community since, uh..."
"The Mexican American War?" DuChamps piped up from his perch next to Harley on the sofa.
"Bottle it, DuChamps," Canfield said.
Harley just watched. Nobody gives a shit, he thought. Eddie Stevenson had turned from a person into a story in a matter of hours. And not even a very good story, the way Ken Perry was talking.
Perry wanted to the focus shifted from Mexico-U.S. drug traffickers and politics to a tragic story about drug dependency, a blight that threatened every home and business in El Paso, even the Trib... Perry would write a front-page editorial, mourning the paper's loss and announcing a new Ed Stevenson Memorial Fund, which would contribute to El Paso's drug rehab centers. And DuChamps would put together a front-page "hearts-and-flowers" story about Eddie Stevenson's quiet call for help.
"Quiet call for help?" DuChamps asked.
"This is the kind of story, Hank," Perry explained, "where you want to go into the guy's life, and you try to figure out exactly what was... exactly what were his problems, and how, in his own quiet way he was..."
"DuChamps," Canfield interrupted, "you paint a portrait of a fuck-up. We'll edit in the pathos here."
Perry grunted and started to stand up from his desk, signaling the end of the meeting.
"Wait a minute," Harley said. "Don't we have to look into the murder? Find out who killed him, and why?"
"We don't want to wash much of our own laundry here," Perry said, "or spend a lot of time contradicting our previous coverage. That was good stuff. It put Jiménez into jail. Let's just deal with this as a tragedy. Anyway," he added, pointing to the TV, "they say the guy already confessed. You translated it for us."
"But they torture people to give confessions. Give them a few minutes, they'd get a confession from you or me."
"Listen, hey. We're not going into the politics here."
"Torture is politics?"
"It's Nafta politics," Perry said sternly. "And anyway, we have absolutely no proof of torture."
"But it doesn't mean we have to accept their confessions at face..."
"Listen Harley," Canfield said. "I was going to give you a day off. You've been through a lot. But if you want to solve the murder mystery, go ahead. It's all yours."

* * *

Rubén showed Claudio the pictures, laying them out on the coffee table. "See, there's Stevenson's face," he said. "It's a little blurry. I was moving fast, 'cause the cops, you know..."
"My God!" Claudio said. He picked up the photo and studied it. Stevenson with his eyes half closed, dull as the fish at Furr's. "Now you say the same man who shot at us here was the one who did this?"
"No! Don't you get it? He was framed."
"OK. Sorry. It's going to take me a while to get all this straight."
"Listen," Rubén said. "You always said I had a good story on the ties between drugs and industry around here, but that I needed one big fact to tie it all together. This is it! Onofre Crispín ordered this killing. He did it because these two pendejos, Gato and Simón, were fucking up his whole..." He searched for the word. "His whole enterprise, man!"
"Did you talk to the Globe reporter about this?"
"He's already back in Houston," said Rubén, looking disgusted. "He's not interested."
"You mean he's not interested in your conspiracy theory."
"He's not even interested in the murder story. Says its too complicated, because Stevenson was like, working for him yesterday, and the editors would ask all sorts of questions. I told him I had these pictures and he said, save them. He might use them in some magazine piece in a month or something." Rubén shook his head. "Guy's a pendejo."
"OK," Claudio said, standing up and beginning to pace. "What evidence do you have that Crispín ordered someone to kill Stevenson?"
"To kill Simón."
"Simón?"
"Whoever killed Stevenson thought he was killing Simón."
"How do you know that?"
"They knew Simón was going over there. All these cops were circling, waiting for him. He got there and I swear, five minutes later, they had these green -- what do you call them? -- Personnel carriers with solders."
"So it sounds like they wanted to arrest him, not kill him."
"The government wanted to arrest him, but Crispín wanted him dead. Don't you get it?"
"And what evidence do you have, besides this "feeling" you talk about, that Crispín wanted him dead?"
"Man, sometimes I don't think you even want to understand! I don't know why I bother..." Rubén looked at the floor and shook his head.
Claudio, anxious to learn more, tried to be more accommodating. "So you say you heard the gunshots before Simón got there."
"Right," Rubén said. "Probably a half hour before he got there."
"So you'd be a useful witness for your friend..."
"Source. He's my source."
"Right. You'd be a useful witness. But they'd probably ask you what you were doing hanging around there all morning...That could get a little awkward."
Rubén thought about that for a moment. "So what do I do about the story?" he asked.
Claudio picked up the pictures and started flipping through them. "I'd say first things first," he said. "According to you, an innocent man is in jail charged with murder. I'd figure out who committed the murder -- and I'm not saying who plotted it, or who paid for it. If you find the triggerman, you might be able to draw a straighter line to the people behind it." Claudio lifted one of the photos and scrutinized it. "Is there something special about the car wash door?"
"You can see it's unlocked," Rubén said. "That was after the shots, but before Simón arrived."
"And how about this one?" Claudio held up a photo of a blurry face, a man with wide eyes, black hair slicked back, and nothing but blue sky behind him.
"That was a guy who fixed the camera for me."
"Out there?"
"Uh huh." Rubén was still thinking about nailing Crispín. "I was reading someplace that cell phones are easy to listen to. I mean the signals are all over the place. Do you think there's a way that we could somehow, like, tap into Crispín's line?"
"Rubén, you're not going to crack this case with technology," Claudio said, still flipping through the pictures. "You're going to do it by finding people. And specifically, the killer." He held up another picture. "Who are there guys?"
"That's the same guy that fixed my camera, with his old man, I think. Walking down the street."
"What's he have in his hand?" Claudio asked, holding the picture up to the light. "Looks like a pair of shoes."

* * *

Harley had trouble getting started on the murder story. He didn't know who to call, and he had trouble keeping his eye off DuChamps, who was prowling the newsroom asking women about Eddie Stevenson. He was asking if Stevenson's reputation as a Don Juan was justified. Was Stevenson, in his quiet way, calling for help? Most of the women resisted his personal questions, telling him to cut it out. But as DuChamps' tour brought him closer to Harley's desk, Irma Tayler, a heavy-set copy editor who wore her hair in a thick, gray braid, pulled him aside and volunteered that she'd slept with Stevenson.
This surprised DuChamps. "Did he... Would you say that he was looking for help in some way?"
"What kind of help?"
"I don't know. Was he lost in some way?"
"Hank." She put a wide hand on his arm and smiled. "Eddie wasn't lost. He was horny."
DuChamps laughed nervously and struggled to come up with another question.
Harley called him over and asked if he'd talked to Estela.
"She's not answering the phone," DuChamps said.
"I think I know where she is," Harley said. Then, against his better judgment, he directed DuChamps toward the duplex on Copia Street.
DuChamps hurried out, crossing paths with a smiling Canfield, who was strolling to Harley's cubicle, signaling a T for Time out.
"I got to call you off your murder investigation for a few minutes," he said. "You ever write a stock story?"
Harley nodded, though he couldn't remember any.
"I need a quick hit on the Grupo Espejo. The stock's up eight points today, to 40. Find out why, and where it's going to go."
"You want me to tell you whether to sell?" Harley said. "Or will you wait for the story?"
"Funny man, Harley," Canfield said, walking back to his desk.


Chapter Fifty One


"She left the gun in the toilet," Diana told Harley. "I checked when I came back from work." She said that she gave Estela $10 for a taxi, and that Estela had finally lugged her boxes to a friend's house, somewhere in the barrio.
The two of them were lying on the couch, still dressed, arms intertwined, Stan Getz on the stereo playing bossa nova. Harley's legs stretched over the edge of the couch, and one foot gently tapped a ficus tree in the corner. Yellow leaves fluttered to the ground.
"If you and I end up spending much time here," Diana said, giving him a little kiss on the upper lip, "I better put silk plants in that corner."
Harley pulled back his legs a little.
They avoided talking about Eddie Stevenson. Harley brought it up when he arrived and Diana said she'd heard about it at work. When Harley told her he was there, at the scene, Diana said, "I don't want to talk about it, OK?" Then she kissed him long and hard and guided him to the couch.
So what could they talk about? Everything Harley thought of had something to do with the murder.
He tried to distract himself with sex. He reached slowly up her back with his right hand and fiddled around with the snap on her bra. He was never any good with these things. She was looking at him, bemused. He rolled back to free up his left hand. Then he worked at it with both hands for a while, getting nowhere. He kissed her. "Maybe if you have one of those acetylene torches..." he said.
She reached back with one hand and unsnapped it. "I hope you're better with zippers," she whispered, snuggling up to him.
"Not much," he said.
Diana pulled back and looked at him as she pulled her bra out from under her blouse. "What do you mean by that?"
"Oh I don't know." He was remembering his embarrassing time with Estela. "I'm just sort of ... maladroit."
"Is that French for a klutz?" She was unbuttoning her blouse now.
"Uh huh," he said, staring at her fingers.
The phone rang. Diana sighed and answered it. Then she handed it to Harley. "It's for you."
It was DuChamps, drunk and emotional. "Thank God I found you," he said. "You and Eddie, you were tight, weren't you?"
"Well..." Harley said.
"I mean. Nobody cares, nobody gives a fucking shhhhit. If you or me get killed, that Canfield, he thinks we're just ffffucking... weasels or something."
"How'd you get my number here, Hank?"
"Claudio."
Harley looked at Diana, hovering over him with her blouse unbuttoned. "Listen," he said to DuChamps, trying to get him off the line.
But DuChamps was describing his afternoon of reporting. Apparently, he'd pulled up at Diana's duplex just as Estela was putting her boxes into a cab. He tried to get her to send the cab away, but ended up following the cab all the way to the barrio, to this old woman's house. Turned out she was Rubén's aunt.
"Who's Rubén?" Harley asked.
"He's my source, man!"
Harley looked up Diana, who was making knowing gestures, as if this Rubén was some kind of celebrity.
"Your source?" he asked DuChamps.
DuChamps ignored him. He was going on about Rubén's aunt, who apparently mistook him for an official from the maquiladora industry. "She was telling me that Rubén was some kind of prize-winning periodista, a ffffucking Woodward and, you know, rolled into one. As if I'm going to hire the guy."
Things were clicking in Harley's mind. "What's this Rubén look like?" he asked.
"A scrawny little dirt bag."
"Was he shooting pictures in Juarez for The New York Globe?
"Nooo. He was translating."
"Jesus," Harley said.
DuChamps was crying now. "You know, that story I wrote, the hearts and flowers piece. It was fucking sad."
"I'll bet it was," Harley said.
"Not a bad clip though," DuChamps added with a sniffle.
"Hey," Harley said. "Why do you think Rubén's aunt thought you were from the maquilas?"
"What do I know? She said some other guy had been looking for him. A guy with a funny-looking nose."

* * *

Harley always enjoyed reaching under women's clothes and taking off blouses. But the removal of the rest of the clothes seemed a little bit grim to him, as if both people were preparing for some sort of job, getting down to business. He started to take off his shirt and then thought about Stevenson. When Harley had fastened these buttons, Eddie Stevenson was still alive, probably buttoning his own shirt. And at this moment, as Harley was stripping, Stevenson was probably lying naked on a slab in a Juarez morgue, his shirt in some evidence bag, with two bullet holes in it.
Harley didn't feel like getting naked. He looked at his hand and saw it was trembling.
"What's the matter?" Diana asked. She reached for his hand with both of hers and held it tight. Then she pressed it against a breast. "You nervous?"
"Sort of."
"You can't get it out of your head, can you?"
"What?"
"Eddie."
"Off and on."
She kissed the end of his nose and looked at his eyes, up close, for long moment. "How about if we just try to eat some dinner?"
Harley nodded. "That's a good idea."
She pulled on her blouse and buttoned it halfway up and walked into the kitchen. "Want a beer?" she called out.
"What kind you got?"
She popped her head out of the kitchen, smiling. "That's a very rude question."
"I just thought you might have more than one kind..."
"Sure you did... " She came back from the kitchen and handed him a cold bottle of Dos Equis. "What do you want, fetuccini alfredo or chicken Dijon?"
"You're kidding, right?"
"What?"
"TV dinners?"
"What are you, some kind of snob?"

* * *

Harley didn't mind the chicken. It tasted like something he might eat at the ballpark. He washed it down with beer and tried to piece things together. Rubén was gay. It was obvious, now that he thought about it, the way he talked and dangled that camera from his wrist. He and Claudio were lovers, and Claudio was trying to help him out in the journalism business. That was why Claudio mentioned, right before Simón shot the wooden Indian, that his friend was anxious for headlines. Harley didn't want to pry into their relationship. But if this Rubén was in Juarez the day before with Stevenson, he was worth talking to. And he must have known something to show up at the Lavarama with that camera.
And what was Olmos up to at Rubén's house? He certainly wasn't offering him a job in the maquila. More likely he was tracking down Simón and Gato. And that would explain how Crispín knew about them when he and Harley talked... Was that only two days ago?
When they'd finished eating, Diana volunteered that she'd learned some things from Estela. She agreed to talk about it, but wanted Harley to promise that he didn't come over just to interview her. Harley promised. Then he asked her what she knew about Rubén.
"Estela talks about him constantly."
"And you knew he was at the murder scene?"
"No. When we talked, Eddie hadn't been... He was still alive. But Rubén was there when they beat him up."
"Estela told you all this?"
"Sure she did. She said Rubén has some kind of crush on her, but she thinks he's gay."
"Yeah, he's Claudio's lover," Harley said, glad to have something to add.
Diana pointed to a stack of frozen entrees. "Want more?"
"What? Oh, no, thanks."
"So anyway," she continued, "Estela says Rubén is going to be a famous journalist some day. She says he's brilliant. But he hates Eddie." She took a deep breath. "Or hated him, I guess."
"Does she think Rubén set it all up?"
"Well, Eddie... was still alive when we were talking. This was last night, after you left, and a little bit this morning. By the time I got home from work she was gone."
"Did she tell you that Simón and Gato were staying with her?"
"Yeah. Apparently one of them was really a creep. She said she took the gun away from him. She was afraid he might use it."
"He already had, sort of." Harley drained his Dos Equis.
"Want another one?"
"Not yet, thanks."
She stood up and reached across the table for his plate, giving him a good look down her open blouse. She put both plates in the sink and opened the refrigerator. "Dessert?" She pulled out a tin tray of Sarah Lee butterscotch brownies.
"Maybe I'll have that other beer now."
"With a brownie?"
Harley shook his head. "So did she say why those two guys were staying with her? Did Rubén put them up there?"
"She didn't say." She opened a beer and put it on the table, then sat down and took a bite of a brownie.
"But you know," Harley said, "that time I was over there with her? One of the guys, I guess it was Gato, was taking a shower. He came out of the bathroom when we were there... on the couch. I got a pretty good look at him."
Diana smiled. "She told me about that."
"About what?"
"About you and her that afternoon. She said you were so nice and gentle. Inocente." She pronounced the word with a touch of Portuguese.
"She give you any details?"
Diana smiled again. "Some."
"You two sure did a lot of talking..."
"She's a talker."
"And you could understand her Spanish?"
Diana told Harley about her grandparents, speaking Italian and Portuguese at the dinner table in Queens. Then she told him about this guy at work, Adam Pereira, whose father, it turned out, was from the same little town in Portugal as her grandfather. One time, she said, she and Adam tried to talk Portuguese with each other, but it didn't work.
"I talked to that guy today," Harley said, "about Grupo Espejo."
"Oh yeah?" Diana's eyes lit up, and Harley wondered if she had a crush on Adam Pereira.
"The stock went up from $32 to $40 today," he said. "I think my city editor owns some of it."
Diana nodded. "Everybody's wondering how long to hold onto it."
Harley wondered whether she had Espejo stock, but didn't want to start talking about money. "You know something funny?" he said. "The guy who runs that company sent over one of his men last week to Rubén's house. I think he was looking for Gato and Simón."
Diana walked over to Harley, sat in his lap and wrapped her arms around his neck. "So you're thinking that he was looking to kill them, and got Eddie by mistake?"
Harley hesitated. "Not exactly. But that's a pretty interesting theory."


Chapter Fifty Two

"So it's sort of a dirty little rumor around the firm," Diana was saying, "that Onofre Crispín's a front for Mexican drug money. I never really gave it much thought until tonight." They were lying naked on the bed, casually touching each other, but much more focused on the story. They hadn't even gotten down to the business of making love.
Harley looked at the bedside clock. 10:47. Late, but not too late to make calls while working on a murder story. "Should we start with Claudio?" he said.
She nodded avidly.
He reached for the phone book on the floor and looked under O for Olivares. "What do I say if Rubén answers?" he asked, finding Claudio's number and dialing.
"Ask him why he was over there with a camera."
The line was busy. Harley tried again. Still busy. "We might just have to go over there, if he doesn't get off the phone," he said. "Who now?"
"Jiménez. Didn't you say he had a cellular?"
"That's what they say. But I don't have the number."
"How about the Globe reporter," Diana suggested.
"OK."
Harley called information. "You don't mind the long distance calls?"
Diana stroked a hand down his shoulder and along his arm. "I'll send the bills to your paper."
The phone rang three times in Houston, and Byron Biggs answered, "Yeah," as if he expected an editor.
It occurred to Harley that the guy was probably closing his own story on the murder, and wouldn't want to talk to a competing newspaper. But he plowed ahead, introducing himself and asking about Stevenson.
"I'm afraid I'm not going to be able to say anything about it," Biggs said, apologetically. "You understand, it's a sticky situation for the newspaper, given his apparent... tie to the Globe. Anyway, I'm not covering it. It's Mexico City's story now."
"I'm just trying to figure out who killed him," Harley said.
"Was he... a friend of yours?" Biggs asked softly.
"Not exactly."
Biggs offered to talk off the record. And when Harley agreed, the Globesman described the reporting day in Juarez, starting with the man-in-the-street interviews Monday morning. "The photographer didn't talk much. I picture him hanging back, looking for something to eat." After that they went back to El Paso, he said, got stuck in a long line at the bridge. "I don't remember Stevenson talking too much. It was the other guy who did all the talking."
Rubén. Harley had forgotten about him. "What was he talking about?" he asked.
"Oh, he wanted me to write this big conspiracy story, about drugs and industry and money-laundering. You name it. He had all these ideas... A bright guy, really. You could tell. But what an imagination."
"Did any of it make sense?"
"Not for ... my paper," Biggs said, tactfully avoiding comparisons.
"So that was it? A morning of immigration reporting in Juarez?"
"Yeah. For all practical purposes. We did make one more trip to Juarez in the afternoon. Big waste of time. We went and saw this maquiladora baron."
"Crispín?"
"That's right. He didn't have one thing to say about immigration."
"But you went, because Rubén had set it up."
"Exactly. This Onofre was in the middle of his conspiracy theories."
"Let me guess," Harley said. "Crispín gave you tequila and ants eggs."
Biggs sounded ill. "Is that some kind of a custom over there?"

* * *

Claudio tightened the sash on his black silk bathrobe and hurried into his bedroom. "It's a little depressing," he shouted, opening a drawer, "that even with a sexy headline, only seven people bothered to take a free newspaper in the first three hours. Attests to an illiterate student body. I managed to round up one thousand, four hundred and ninety-three of them. You should have seen me racing around." He came out holding a copy of the community college newspaper, Semana. "I saved one, as a curiosity," he said to Harley and Diana, who sat on the couch, across from the one-eyed Indian.
He laid the paper on the coffee table. BORDER INDUSTRY LAWNDERS DRUG MONEY, read the headline. Under it was a chart with lots of names in boxes, all of them connected with arrows. Harley saw Gustavo Jiménez in one box, connected to the Cali cartel. Another arrow linked him to Grupo Espejo. And from there, a quiver of arrows, pointing to General Motors, Texas Interstate Bank, H. Ross Perot, and others.
"If the community college ever tried to discipline me for this," Claudio was saying, "I was planning to use that misspelled "lawnders" as proof that I had nothing to do with it. It was the first time in my life that I actually thanked God for every misspelling."
"Take a look at that," Harley said to Diana, pointing to a Dunwoody & Briggs box on the chart.
"God, they would have sued in about five minutes!" Diana said, seeing that only Grupo Espejo and Gustavo Jiménez stood between her firm and the Cali Cartel.
"Truth is the ultimate defense," Claudio said, "though I doubt the college would have spent much money defending Rubén and me."
Harley picked up the paper and read the story while Claudio told Diana about Rubén's visit that afternoon. "As he has it, Onofre Crispín hired a hitman to kill Simón and Gato, and he got the wrong guy. I tell him, 'Where's your evidence?' and he says to me, 'Don't you get it?'"
"He must have known something was up, to be hanging around there with a camera," Diana said.
"Oh, no doubt about that... Would you like a cup of tea?"
"No thanks," she said. "It's late."
"I have Sleepytime."
She shook her head.
"So anyway," Claudio said, "Rubén has his story and these pictures, and he can't get The New York Globe interested in the story. So he says to me that he's going to start calling the TV news magazines. You know, Hard Copy, Dateline. I wouldn't be surprised if he gets a few of them down here."
"I'd like to see Connie Chung sitting down with Onofre Crispín," Harley said, closing the paper and handing it to Diana, "eating those ants eggs."
"It could happen," Claudio said. "Though I imagine a jailhouse interview with Gustavo Jiménez would get better Neilson ratings. That's who you should talk to, Tom."
"I don't have his number."
"I'd look hard for it," Claudio said, sounding like a professor. "I don't think your friend the police chief is going to spell it out for you."

* * *

Harley and Diana walked out onto Prospect Street, where the Horizon was parked. A dog barked, then another. The twinkling lights of Mexico stretched out to the Juarez Mountains, and the two of them stood on the steps, looking. Diana reached an arm around Harley's waist, drew close to him and asked what he was thinking about.
"Oh, I don't know," he said, thinking that Stevenson was lying cold under one of those lights, and his killer was hiding somewhere near another one, and that the Lavarama was a little too far north to see from here, but that he could probably see it from the Sun Bowl, assuming he wanted to see it. Which he didn't.
"Come on," Diana said, pulling him toward the car.
"Wait a minute." Harley sat on the steps, and gently pulled her down beside him. It was getting cool, and Diana, in skimpy shorts and barefeet, snuggled up to him for warmth.
"Vamos falar portugues," Harley said.
"You never told me you spoke Portuguese!"
"Tem muitas coisas que nao te disse."
"Huh?"
"There's a lot of things I haven't told you."
"Yeah, I can think of a few."
"Like what?"
"Like... That you really want me."
"Desejo voce."
"In English."
Harley paused. He could hear the murmur of the traffic on I-10, and he thought of all those people driving between L.A. and Houston, and later saying, "Yeah, I've been through El Paso, but it was sort of dark..."
Diana whispered to him, "You sometimes like to hide behind all your voices and languages, don't you?"
"Probably. That's what my ex-wife says." He turned toward her. She was looking up at him, the streetlight reflected in her eyes.
"Talk to me," she whispered. And he wondered if she whispered the same words to Eddie Stevenson.
He looked at her mouth, that gap between her front teeth. "You ever heard of Vince Lombardi?" he asked.
"The name," she said, looking puzzled. "Why?"
"Forget it."
He bent down and kissed her softly. "Why did you pick him over me?" he asked.
She pulled back. "Vince Lombardi?"
"Stevenson."
"Oh." She collected herself. "He pursued me... You didn't. He said he wanted me, the very first night."
Harley nodded, looking at her eyes, trying to figure her out.
"And you still haven't," she said.
"Haven't what?"
"Said you want me."
"In English, that is," he quibbled.
"In English."
"I want you," he said, grabbing her by the arm.
She smiled, looking relieved, and started to pull him toward the car. But he tugged back. "Come on up," he said. "I almost forgot I live here."

* * *

Sex wasn't much fun on the night of a murder.
They went at it, sideways, in the Murphy bed, listening to Gal Costa. Neither, it seemed, wanted to be the first to say stop. Finally, Diana took Harley's hand and guided it between her legs, and the whole ordeal was over in about a minute.
They rested. Harley looked around the apartment. The breeze from the overhead fan blew dust balls across the bare oak floor. Outside, beyond the top of the courtyard palm, he could still see Juarez.
Diana climbed off the bed and hurried naked into the bathroom. Harley got up and turned over the tape, to something by Cesaria Evora.
Diana shouted from the bathroom: "Tom, do you do Onofre Crispín's voice?"
"You mean do I imitate it?"
"Yeah."
Harley imitated Crispín's Monterrey accent, talking about football: "Lo que les falta a los Cowboys es un linebacker duro de verdad, tipo Butkus."
"Is that the way he talks?" She came out of the bathroom and jumped onto the bed, looking pleased with herself.
"More or less," Harley said.
"Then do I have an idea for you."


Chapter Fifty Three

Diana slipped out around three, saying the Murphy bed was killing her back. Harley tossed and turned the rest of the night, practicing the voice of Onofre Crispín and fretting over his sexual performance. If he had been more passionate, maybe she would have stayed. But of course, the Stevenson thing was a distraction...
He was in the shower at 7 when an idea came to him. Still dripping, he was on the phone to the Houston home of Byron Biggs, asking the Globe reporter if he had a tape of the interview with Crispín.
"Yeah," Biggs said, sounding suspicious.
"Think you could send it to me?"
"Iiii don't know."
"How about if you make a copy, and send that to me?"
Biggs didn't want to.
"Listen," Harley said, appealing to emotion. "I'm trying to figure out who killed my colleague."
"And you think Crispín might be behind it?"
"It's kind of complicated."
Biggs finally agreed to send it to him. "But I don't want you to cite The New York Globe in any way. Is that a deal?"
"Deal," Harley said. "And could you FedEx it?"
Next he called Billy Sanchez, the Tribune's chief photographer, who was already at work. "One question, Billy," he said.
"Shoot."
"When Stevenson was on that last assignment in Juarez, taking pictures of Jiménez's hotel, that was for The Baltimore Sun, right?"
"Right. The Baltimore Sun."
"And did you have to explain to the Sun what happened, and why there weren't any pictures?"
"I called them," Sanchez said. "But I never could find the guy who ordered up the pictures. Some kind of screw up. Like un malentendido, you know, Harley?"
"Uh huh..."
Harley was on a roll. A new lover, for the first time in longer than he wanted to remember. And a big story coming together, his first ever. This was the life he'd dreamed of as a history major back in Austin. Of course, back then he'd planned on being a foreign correspondent by this point in his life. But Juarez was foreign, wasn't it? He made himself a pot of espresso and put on an Oscar D'Leon tape. Harley felt energized for a minute or two.
Then doubts started to seep in. He wondered if Diana was just using him. Just a few days earlier, she'd been sleeping with Stevenson, and now he was dead. And her scheme to lasso Crispín and Jiménez, wasn't it dangerous, and deceitful?
The coffee boiled over. Harley, still brooding, poured some burnt coffee into a mug, stirred in sugar, and then walked outside to read the newspaper. "In the end," DuChamps wrote, "Eddie Stevenson died as he lived: alone, surrounded by his mounting troubles, calling softly for help in a voice that no one heard."
Give me a break, Harley thought.
He read on. "The Tribune photographer, 37, who was on leave from the paper to iron out his addiction troubles, was found murdered Tuesday at a notorious Juarez drug warehouse. Stevenson had cocaine in his pocket and traces of it around his nose, said Juarez police, who later arrested a suspected drug dealer, Simón Garza, charging him with the murder.
"Our hearts go out to Eddie Stevenson and his family," said Tribune editor Ken Perry, who added that the Tribune would redouble its efforts to battle drug addiction (See Editorial, page one)."
Harley skimmed the rest of the story. DuChamps didn't even mention the beating in Juarez until after the jump, near the end of the story. And he didn't point out that the murder and beating both took place at the Lavarama.
Perry had to be under massive pressure to be wimping out on the story like this, Harley thought. Maybe the corporate people in St. Louis heard rumors of an advertising boycott, and told him to turn around on Nafta.
Whatever the reason, Harley decided he wasn't going to lie down for them. He'd been doing that, one way or another, for 10 years..
The phone rang upstairs. Harley raced into the building and vaulted up the steps three at a time.
"Hello?"
"Did you make the call yet?" It was Diana.
"Not yet."
"Chicken."
"No. I made some other calls." He told her about the FedEx package he'd be getting from Houston, and the news about The Baltimore Sun.
"So maybe the Sun didn't order the pictures," Diana said. "What's the big deal?"
"It means that maybe someone called, saying he was from the Sun, with the idea of getting Stevenson over in Juarez. I'm thinking of Rubén."
Diana chewed on that one for a while. "But even if you tie a lot of this to Rubén, it's not a big deal, is it? He's not exactly a big shot."
"Probably not. But he could be the string that ties together some big shots."
"Well then, why don't you get busy and call them."
"Where are you, at work?"
"Uh huh. The market opens at 7:30."
"How's Espejo doing today?"
"It's not trading yet," Diana said. "But I'm betting it'll keep going up for a while. At least until you write your story."

* * *

Gato's sister didn't have a phone. But they took messages for her at a little store around the corner. Wednesday morning, a little boy from the store knocked on her door, saying there was a call for her brother.
Gato pulled on a pair of his baggy shorts and hustled to the phone. He'd already heard about the Stevenson killing and Simón's arrest. The radios in the neighborhood talked of little else. Now, he figured, Simón was either dead or escaped.
He nodded politely to the señora behind the counter and reached for the phone. "Bueno?"
"Hombre!" It was Simón.
"Where are you?"
"El CeReSo." He sounded excited. "On don Gustavo's cellular."
"You're with him?"
"Yes. I'm sort of like his assistant. He got them to bring me up here yesterday. He's got a whole... compound in here, with a cook, and a couple of women who come into his room. Today we're having quesadillas de camaron and chicken mole, with some kind of white wine from France..."
"Did you kill the photographer?" Gato asked.
"Of course not."
"Oh, I thought..."
"No. He was dead when I got there..." Simón didn't want to elaborate. "So anyway," he said, "don Gustavo understands me very well, and he appreciates the work I -- I mean we -- have been doing..."
"You told him about me?"
"Of course. We're his allies. When we get out of here, probably after la Nafta gets passed, you and I are going to be his lieutenants, he says."
"You're lisping."
"Oh yes, that. They broke some of my teeth yesterday. But remember how I always tell you not to take the product? Well, don Gustavo says that it works very well as a local anesthetic. And it does! And now I'm coming up with more good ideas than ever. Don Gustavo says he'll bring in a dentist today, or maybe tomorrow, who will give me some new teeth that I won't even have to brush."
"If you didn't kill him, who did?" Gato asked.
"Who? You mean the photographer? Don Gustavo says he knows. But he hasn't told me yet. We're only getting to know each other. But you know what, Gato?"
"Tell me."
"He also reads Dr. Rivapalacios! He's even read works I haven't found yet. That's why I called. I was wondering if you could buy five or six books and bring them over here."
"Go there? Me?"
"Yes, I'd send out one of these jailers who buys the wine and the chocolate, but I think they're illiterate."
"I'm not going near there," Gato said.
"No, come! You should meet don Gustavo. He says you could even move in here, if you want..."
Gato borrowed a pen and a piece of paper from the woman behind the counter and wrote down the names of the books. "I'll send a boy over there to drop them off," he told Simón.
"Very well," Simón said, sounding disappointed. "But soon I want you to see for yourself, Gato. We've made it!"

* * *

Harley drove the Horizon over to the Mountain Inn, to check out. En route he worked on the Crispín voice. He listened to it in his mind and then repeated, listened and repeated. That's how he learned voices, from the Ed Sullivan he mastered as a kid, to Nixon, Carter, Clinton. Harley usually added a stuffed nose to his new voices, which fogged over some of the weak points.
He checked out of the hotel and drove home. He didn't want to make these calls from the office. Apart from any ethical issues, people were always shouting in the newsroom, which could destroy the effect.
Back in the apartment, he started to write out a script, but threw it away. It was always better to have the voice alive in the head, and to improvise. Scripts would tie him down, and he might freak out if he had to depart from it. That happened once in one of his college routines at Austin. He was working with a Ronald Reagan script he'd been practicing, and then somebody shouted a question, and Harley was halfway through answering it when he realized that he'd switched to Nixon. The crowd liked it just the same. But he couldn't afford such a screw up now.
First, Chief Muller. Harley could do it in his own voice, but he wanted to practice his Crispín, see if it worked on Muller. If it didn't, nothing lost. He'd just tell the chief he was kidding, and Muller will write him off as one weird Gringo. He dialed the number, mumbling to himself as Crispín.
Muller's secretary answered.
"Muuuuy buenos días. Jefe Muller, por favor," Harley said in the voice of Crispín with a stuffed nose.
"Como no, licenciado. Un momento." Harley heard her saying that Licenciado Onofre Crispín was on the line.
"Buenos días, don Onofre," Chief Muller said.
Harley froze for a second, trying to remember Muller's first name.
"Onofre?" the chief asked. "Usted está?"
"Good morning, Chief," Harley said in Crispín's self-important Spanish. He was planning simply to ask Muller for Gustavo Jiménez's phone number in jail. But at the last moment, he decided to try something far riskier. "Chief," he said, somberly, "I've got a confession to make."
"What's that, hombre? Do you have a cold?"
"It's the change in the weather," Harley explained, even though the heat had been unrelenting.
"The change?"
Harley plowed ahead. "I don't know exactly how to tell you this, but forces under my control were responsible for the unfortunate shooting at that car wash yesterday morning."
"Are you on your cellular?"
"Claro," Harley said, startled by the question.
"I have no idea why you're making this call to me now. It's highly irregular for you to use any phone, much less the cellular, for communications of any importance. If you should need to talk to me, we will have to do it face to face."
Harley considered breaking into his own voice, and telling the chief he was just kidding. But this was too serious. Worse, the next time the chief saw Crispín, he would confront him about this. Crispín would deny making the call, and then he'd remember that Harley did voices.
The chief continued to scold him for using the cellular. But Harley took charge. "ENOUGH, MULLER! I SHIT ON THE MILK!" That was one of the Spanish expressions he'd heard Crispín use. "Listen," he said, lowering his voice a decibel. "I have work to do, things to arrange. I'm going to be out of touch for two days. Incomunicado. Do you understand?"
"Si, Onofre," Muller said, back on his heels.
"What I need from you now is a phone number at the CeReSo for that pendejo Jiménez."
"But I gave it to you last night."
"I LOST IT! I SHIT ON THE MOTHER!"
"Fine, fine," Muller said, in full retreat. He gave him a cellular number and added meekly, "You're not going to say anything sensitive over the cellular are you?"
Harley unleashed his Crispín chuckle. "Heh, heh heh. Don't you worry about it." He remembered Muller's first name and added, "We'll be talking, Roberto."


Chapter Fifty Four

Time to call Gustavo Jiménez. Harley couldn't afford to wait, or the real Crispín might talk to Chief Muller and figure out what Harley was up to. Sitting in his tiny dining room with a pen and paper ready, he started dialing the cellular number. Then he hung up and called Diana. He had to confer with somebody before taking this leap.
"What'd you find out?" Diana asked, nearly breathless.
"I just talked to the chief. I haven't called the other guy yet."
"Oh."
But Harley explained that he used the Crispín voice, and made the confession.
"And the chief wasn't even surprised?"
"No. He just told me not to use the cellular for sensitive calls."
Diana whispered. "That means Crispín's in on it. Right?"
"Practically."
"Oh my God!"
"What?"
"It's just... just that it's a big story. And now you're going to call Jiménez?"
"Uh huh. Right now."
"Oh Jesus."
"How's Espejo doing today?" Harley asked.
"It's up three."
"OK. We'll be talking."
He considered calling Claudio for some advice. But he knew Claudio would object to this reporting with false voices. At this point, Harley didn't need any interference.
He said a few sentences to himself in Crispín-talk. Then he took a deep breath and dialed the cellular number.
"Buenooo?" It was a young man's voice.
"Gustavo?"
"I'll get him right away."
Harley heard the young man asking where don Gustavo was, and someone else, a woman, saying he was in the bathroom. What kind of jail was this?
"He's indisposed now," the young man said. "Would you do me the favor of leaving your number, and he'll call you back."
"Onofre Crispín here," Harley said. "I must speak with him now."
The man relayed Crispín's name and the woman told him to carry the phone to don Gustavo.
"In the bathroom?" He sounded reluctant.
"Claro," she said.
Next thing Harley knew, a more mature voice was saying, "Muy buenos días, Onofre."
"Gustavo?"
"A tus ordenes."
"Gustavo," Harley said with his stuffed nose. "I have bad news for you. You'll recall that assurances were made to you about a timely release from jail. That will no longer be possible. I've spoken with authorities at the highest position, who have told me that all deals are off."
"What are you saying to me, mano?" Jiménez sounded stunned.
"What's more, all financial obligations between you and me are now considered history. Done for. Eliminated."
"What the devil are you talking about, hijo de la chingada!" Jiménez said, coming to life.
"You've betrayed me. I'm not paying you one peso."
"Hijo de la chingada!"
"I SHIT ON YOUR MOTHER, THE WHORE!" Harley shouted into the phone, and then hung up.
He looked at his hand and saw it was shaking. He paced back and forth, from the bathroom to the kitchen, replaying the conversation in his head, trying to come to terms with what he'd learned. In a while, he'd have to call Jiménez again, in his own voice. But he had to wait, at least a half hour, or don Gustavo might see through it.
Harley sat down at the phone and called Diana. She was out, the receptionist said. Does he want her voice mail?
"Out?"
"She had to leave in a hurry, about 10 minutes ago. She said she'd be back in an hour."
Harley left a message on her voice mail that everything went as planned, or even better. Then, willing to put up with some judgment to get some advice, he walked downstairs and knocked on Claudio's door.
Claudio was on his way out, wearing his tight blue jeans and a black tee shirt, and carrying a folder of graded papers in one hand. But when Harley told him what he was up to, Claudio motioned him inside the apartment and shut the door.
"I'm sorry I don't have time to offer you any tea," he said.
Harley said it didn't matter. Then he told Claudio about his calls to Muller and Jiménez.
"And they both think they talked to Crispín?" asked Claudio, wide-eyed.
Harley nodded, feeling a little proud.
"That means you've lied to them."
"Sort of."
"There's no 'sort of' about it. You've got to call them both, right now, and say that it was a prank, and apologize."
"And how about the information I've learned?"
"You've got to learn it some other way."
"But Claudio, these guys are criminals. The FBI uses all sorts of tricks and scams to catch criminals."
"True. And the FBI bugged Martin Luther King's hotel rooms." Claudio sat down on the corner of the couch. "Journalists have a bad enough name in this country as it is. If we start calling people and lying about who we are, no one will ever trust us."
Harley thought about that. It was true enough. But he couldn't see himself calling back Gustavo Jiménez and apologizing.
"So," said Claudio, breaking the silence. "You say that the police chief wasn't surprised when he heard that Crispín ordered the murder."
"Not at all."
"And Jiménez appeared to have some sort of financial dealings with Crispín?"
"Definitely." Harley wondered if it was time yet to call back the drug lord.
"That means Rubén's right," Claudio said slowly, looked dazzled. "This would be one hell of a story if you could nail it down."
"I was thinking, maybe I'll call Jiménez now. See if I can go over and see him."
"Call him in your real voice, you mean?"
"Yeah."
"Terrific."
Claudio hurried off to his class, and Harley climbed the stairs to make his phone call.

* * *

The news arrived from Washington that President Clinton, after vacillating for months, was finally determined to push hard for Nafta. He would stump around the country and call in all his political chits to get the trade agreement through Congress, even if it meant a nasty fight with the unions. Mexican stocks were rocketing on the news. And Grupo Espejo, the sexiest new stock on the market, had shot up $5, to $45. Canfield, listening to the stock news through one ear of his Walkman, was beside himself. He paced back and forth across the newsroom, The Wall Street Journal rolled up tight in one hand. "Where the fuck's Harley?" he asked DuChamps.
DuChamps, bent over his terminal, twisting his long blond hair around one finger, said he didn't know.
"I want a follow up story on Espejo," Canfield said. "It's a goddamned local success story."
DuChamps agreed.
"Holy shit," Canfield said, listening to the radio. "It's up to 47. Hey DuChamps," he said, walking back to his terminal. "Not that it's any of my business, but why don't you get a fucking hair cut?"

* * *

When Harley called Gustavo Jiménez, the drug dealer didn't even wait for a question. "Come over to El CeReSo," he said. "I want to have a talk with you."
Harley felt a surge of panic and considered hanging up. He wondered whether the drug lord had seen through his game. If so, he was a lot safer staying in El Paso.
"How about if we talk by phone?" he suggested, speaking with a Gringo accent -- something he hated to do. "My car's not working too well..."
"I don't say anything important on the phone," Jiménez said. "Come, now, and you'll get your story. Hurry." And he hung up.
Harley strolled into the bathroom and thought things through on the toilet. He could always just bag it. That would be an ethical option, since he set the stage for this interview with a lie. No one had to know that he turned down an exclusive interview with Gustavo Jiménez. The editors wanted to bury the story now anyway...
The phone rang, and Harley hurried off the toilet.
"What's going on?" It was Diana.
"Not much."
"What do you mean 'not much'?"
Harley corrected himself. "I mean everything's going according to the plan. Jiménez has called me over there for an interview."
"When?"
"Now." He thought about it a second, and added, "You want to come with me?"
She laughed. "Can you imagine? Hi, I'm a reporter, and this here's my stockbroker... Then I'd butt in, 'I was wondering if you think now might be the time to unload Grupo Espejo. I was looking at the chart, and the fundamentals appear a bit squishy'..."
Harley was far too wound up to laugh. "You don't want to come?"
"I have to work. The market's going nuts. Especially the Mexican stocks."
"So you think Jiménez has a piece of Grupo Espejo?" he asked.
"That's what it sounds like."
"And what's that worth?"
"Depends how much he has. But let's see... The stock was issued at $10, and they raised half a billion dollars, selling 40 million shares. The original investors probably have 10 million shares... Now you don't know how much of that Jiménez has, if any. That's what you'll have to ask him in the interview... Maybe you can get a separate interview with his accountant. Or his broker."
"I thought you guys were his brokers."
"No. We work for Onofre Crispín."
"Oh yeah. Got them confused for a minute. So how much is that 10 million shares worth now?"
Diana paused, checking something. "It just went up another buck," she said. "To 48. That'd be 480 million. It could be half a billion by the end of the day, the way the market's going."
"Geez, I'd sell," Harley said.
"Knowing what you know, I think a lot of people would."
Harley remembered his pending interview and felt a sense of dread. "You sure you don't want to come with me?"
"Can't. Do you think you'll run your story tomorrow?"
"Probably," Harley said. "For sure if he gives me the interview."
They signed off, and Harley, carrying his miniature tape recorder and a thin reporter's pad, walked slowly to the car. Opening the door of the Horizon, it occurred to him that he should call Canfield. They'd flip if he did a jailhouse exclusive with Gustavo Jiménez without taking along a photographer. But by going alone, he could turn around if he felt threatened, or just ditch the story altogether. Harley wanted to keep all options open.
He turned the key of the Horizon and nothing happened. Just a tiny click.
He saw the headlights were on, and he turned them off. He looked in his wallet for his Triple A card, but he couldn't afford to wait around for a jump. He hurried upstairs and put the tape recorder, the pen and notebook into a green knapsack. Then he rolled up his right pant leg and carried his yellow bike down the stairs.


Chapter Fifty Five

Gustavo Jiménez told Harley to stick around for lunch. The drug lord, tall and gaunt, with deep creases in his face and a missing front tooth, looked over at Simón, who was standing by the door. "Isn't it huachinango a la veracruzana today?"
"Si don Gustavo."
"Huachinango?" Harley didn't know the word.
"Red snapper," Jiménez said in surprisingly good English.
"Oh, they call that 'parguito' in Venezuela," Harley continued in Spanish, using his Gringo accent.
Jiménez nodded. "In Colombia too." Then he smiled for the first time, turning those long creases in his face sideways. "Important detail, no, reportero? Reputed drug lord admits he's eaten fish with Colombians.
Fifteen minutes into the interview, and that was the first mention of drugs.
When Harley arrived at the jail, flushed from his ten-mile bike ride, and nervous, a guard greeted him by name and led him past the security apparatus, up two flights of stairs and down a long gray corridor. He finally knocked on a wooden door, and Simón opened it. Harley was about to say that this was the wrong room, that his interview was with Gustavo Jiménez, but Simón was smiling with his wounded mouth and saying, "Pásale, pásale," and Harley walked in. The door closed behind him.
It was a big, high-ceiling room with a couple of barred windows high up. The floor was concrete, except for a faded blue rug in the middle. The only furnishings were a big rectangular table made of boards, a couple of folding chairs, a boom box in the corner with a pile of CDs, and a cellular phone lying on top of them. There was a battered green couch by the wall.
When Harley first saw him, Gustavo Jiménez was lying on the couch, hands under his head, looking at the ceiling. "Pásale, Tomás Harley, famoso reportero del prestigioso El Paso Tribune," he said in the chanting voice of a Mexican priest. Then he swung around slowly and sat up. He looked at Harley for the first time, and Harley was surprised to see those wrinkles and the missing tooth, the sparse hair on top of his head. Harley couldn't tell which eye was glass. Jiménez wore his blue jeans too high, and when he stood up to shake hands with Harley, his tight belt dug into a stomach that was thin and flabby at the same time. He didn't look like a man with a harem. More like Don Quixote, Harley thought, after his run-in with the windmill.
They sat on folding chairs and exchanged small talk. Jiménez apologized for the furnishings. He didn't know how long he'd be staying, he said, implying that with more time, he'd dress up the room in style. He said he'd been staying with friends down near Copper Canyon, and that this arrest was very inconvenient and embarrassing, but that such things happened during certain political "seasons." He mentioned that many foolish things had been written and said about him and that he hoped, with this interview, to "set the record straight."
Harley sat and listened, his green knapsack on his lap. He had the idea that Jiménez, at some point, was simply going to spill the story to him. In the meantime, it seemed improper to take out the notebook and tape recorder and start asking tough questions. The two men were still getting acquainted.
Following Jiménez's quip about the huachinango, Harley asked his first question. "Isn't that man over there," looking toward Simón, "the one charged with the murder of Eddie Stevenson yesterday?"
Jiménez leaned forward and nodded gravely. "Yes he is. That was a tragedy, and you and your colleagues at the Tribune have my most sincere sympathy." He pointed to Harley's knapsack. "Don't you want to write this down? Or do you have one of those phenomenal memories that can play back every conversation in exact detail?"
Harley dug into his knapsack and pulled out the notebook. Then he ran his hand around the bottom, looking for a pen. He couldn't find one.
"Simón," Jiménez barked. "Una pluma para el señor Harley."
Simón hurried over to Harley with a Bic in hand. Harley looked up at him and believed he could see the same eyes that peered through the ski mask at Claudio's window that night. As Simón stood by Jiménez, waiting for another order, Harley heard him sniffing. This leads him to wonder if Simón was doing coke. Of course, the sniffling might have something to do with that ugly mouth wound he had. Harley considered asking him, point blank, if he was the one who took a shot at him. Maybe laugh a little and tell him he hit the wooden Indian instead, right in the eye. Break the ice. Maybe even talk about tuertos. But Simón walked back to the door, sniffing, and Harley left the question unasked. He didn't want the interview to focus too much on Simón. Jiménez was the link to Crispín.
"Do you mind if I use this?" Harley asked the drug lord, pulling out his tiny tape recorder.
"How about if we do it the old-fashioned way: I talk, you write," Jiménez said, looking a little uneasy. His right eye seemed to spin askew for a second.
"OK."
Harley looked over at Simón, who was sitting in one of the chairs, reading a book. Was he going to hang around? Jiménez seemed to be reading his thoughts. "Simón," he said, "put on a CD. That one by Agustin Lara. Then take a walk."
"So you're not locked in here?" Harley asked.
Jiménez stared at him, his eyes in concert again, as though the question were preposterous.
The violins started up and Agustin Lara sang about some long-ago nights in Acapulco with "María Bonita, María del alma..."
Simón departed with his book, carefully shutting the door behind him. And Harley was alone with Gustavo Jiménez. "According to my sources," he said, "you are an important primary investor in Grupo Espejo. Is that true?"
Jiménez stared straight ahead for several seconds and then nodded slowly. "Without me," he said, "Grupo Espejo doesn't exist."
"How much money do you have in it?"
"How much did I put into it? Or how much is it worth now? Or how much will I get out of it? You have to ask more specific questions."
"How much did you put into it?"
"Not much. About thirty million dollars, not including commissions, licenses, filing fees. Money the Gringo bankers collect."
"You invested this money directly?"
"Through Onofre Crispín. My partner."
"So you put up $30 million, and Crispín put up the rest?"
"Don't be absurd," Jiménez said, chuckling. "Crispín is a pauper. I put up $30 million and some associates of mine put up the rest. Crispín? He might have contributed enough to pay for the postage stamps. Maybe the fax paper."
"Your associates?"
"Business associates. Men of means," Jiménez said.
"The ones who eat 'parguito'?"
Jiménez leaned back and smiled again, showing the gap in his teeth. "Very cleverly worded, your question, Señor Harley.
Harley waited for the answer.
"Let's assume I say yes, my associates are men who enjoy a good parguito with their midday meal, and they use that word to describe it. Would you write simply that the associates of Gustavo Jiménez hail from 'parguito-eating' lands? Or would you draw a line straight to the Medellin and Cali cartels?"
"You tell me," Harley said, beginning to enjoy himself.
"I am going to say, quite simply, that my associates are a very cosmopolitan group of investors. Some of them, it's true, call it "parguito," some call it "pargón." Some of them probably call it "huachinango," others speak with accents like yours, and call it 'red snapper'."
Harley wished he could show off his real Spanish for Jiménez, but stifled his ego. "So the total investment of your group," he asked, in the same ugly Spanish, "is $100 million?"
"Half of that," Jiménez said dismissively. "Some Gringos put up the rest."
"Which Gringos?"
"God knows."
"And how did you make your money? How did you get to be so rich?"
"Construction," Jiménez said. "Commerce. Some well placed investments. I have a good sense for the markets." He touched his long, angular nose. "In fact, I just put in a sell order for my Espejo holding this morning, not long before you called."
Was he be hinting that he knew what Harley was up to?
"The stock was just climbing too high, on Nafta speculation," Jiménez said. "I invest on solid business principles. I don't gamble on politics. It's politics, after all, that has me living here, for the time being."
"So how do you go about selling such an investment?" Harley said. "Do you just call a broker?"
"I call Onofre Crispín." Jiménez spit out the name and looked away from Harley, as though his eyes might betray a secret.
"But he can't buy it from you," Harley said. "You said he's a pauper."
"He is. But he can find other investors at the price I gave him. Twenty five dollars a share."
"You're selling at half price?"
"I'm betting it will be a lot lower than that before too long."
Harley laughed. "But you have inside information."
Jiménez stood and pulled up his blue jeans. Harley feared for a second that he was calling the interview to a close. But he simply retreated to the couch and lay down. "You have much to learn, Tomás Harley," he said, looking up at the ceiling. "There is no such thing in Mexico as inside information. There is simply good information. Everything else is the chatter of pendejos, if you'll excuse my expression."
Harley changed his tack. "Do you know who killed the radio journalist two months ago?"
"Not an idea in the world. Probably his lover.
"And do you know who killed Ed Stevenson?"
Jiménez pursed his lips and paused a few seconds. "As far as I know," he said, "it was this fellow who answers my telephone."

* * *

Espejo shares climbed to $52 by lunch time. Onofre Crispín made some calls and learned that heavy buying in Guadalajara, probably by friends of Jiménez, was driving up the price. Crispín ordered a lunch of smoked salmon quesadillas and guava juice and sat down in his dining room to read the Mexico City papers. Only the liberal La Jornada put the Stevenson murder on page one. And even there, it was only a small headline, advertising the story inside. And the story itself was harmless. It tied Stevenson to the drug business and didn't even mention maquiladoras, much less Onofre Crispín.
Relieved, Crispín called up Chief Muller, to ask about the murder investigation. "Did you find any fingerprints on the pistol?" he asked.
"Heh heh," the chief answered. "Not yet, Onofre. You're not on your cellular are you?"
"I never call you on the cellular."
"Good, good. That's the idea... I thought you were going to be incommunicado for three or four days."
"What's that?"
"You said you were going to be out of touch for a while."
"That must have been somebody else," Crispín snapped. "What other evidence do you have in the investigation?"
"None to speak of, except for the confession. You're just lucky that this Garza stumbled in there at the right time, followed by the entire media," the chief added. "Otherwise there would be loads of evidence."
"What do you mean that I'm lucky?"
"That those forces under your control, you know, the ones that were there earlier... I don't have to go into this."
"What forces under my control? What the devil are you talking about!"
"You know, what you told me earlier. But listen, we don't have to go into this now. Forgive me for bringing it up." The chief changed the subject. "It sounds as though your cold is much better."
"My cold?" Crispín puzzled over that as the servant brought in a steaming plate of quesadillas arranged neatly around a puddle of guacamole, with tostada chips sticking out of it.
"Never mind," the chief said. "Often one is hoarse in the morning, and then it goes away by midday."
"But I didn't talk to you this morning."
"Good, Onofre. That's the right approach. Very good."
"But we didn't talk!"
"I agree entirely. It's done for. It never happened."
"I SHIT ON THE MOTHER MULLER! Did you talk to someone claiming to be me this morning?"
"That's what it must have been," Muller said, playing along. "Someone claiming to be you."
"And what did he tell you?"
"We don't need to..."
"I SHIT ON THE HOST MULLER. TALK!"
Muller began to sense that Crispín wasn't kidding. "He just... he claimed a bit of responsibility for the murder..."
"FUCK!"
"...and he said you would be incommunicado for a while..."
"JESUCRISTO!"
"...and, let's see. And he asked for Gustavo Jiménez's cellphone."
Onofre Crispín lifted his lunch plate with his right hand and heaved it against the dining room wall. The pieces of plate tinkled to the ground as green dots of guacamole rained down on the worm-eaten convent table.


Chapter Fifty Six

Gustavo Jiménez wasn't on coke, that much was certain. For the last half hour, he'd been lying on the couch, answering questions slowly, much of the time with his eyes closed. Harley had enough questions to go on forever, but now worried that his source might fall asleep on him. He also had trouble keeping Jiménez on the subject of drugs and Grupo Espejo. The drug lord quickly drifted away from Harley's questions and spent lots of time sketching out an apocalyptic future for Mexico. He predicted civil war and political killings. He said that even as Mexican trade negotiators were nailing down the free trade accord, a rebel army was growing in the south. Harley found it hard to believe. "We have never had a political transition in Mexico without war and assassinations," Jiménez said, his eyes closed. "This marriage with the United States will breed more of the same." Listening to the fading voice, it occurred to Harley that Jiménez might be on heroin.
The door banged open and Simón Garza entered carrying a tray with plates of red snapper, each fish flanked by rice and quartered limes. In his other hand, he held a bottle of chilled white wine, the water beading on the glass.
That seemed to be Harley's cue. "Thank you very much for the interview," he said, standing up. He put his reporter's notebook in his back pocket and looked around for his knapsack.
Gustavo Jiménez rose from the sofa, but didn't bother shaking hands with Harley. Instead, he walked to the table, squeezed a bit of lime on one of the fish and took a pinch with his fingers. "This isn't a la veracruzana," he said, tasting it. "This is al ajillo."
"Adiós!" Harley said, raising his voice over the music, and waving. No one seemed to be paying attention to him.
The phone rang and Simón picked it up.
Harley wanted to leave, but he felt funny slipping out without saying goodbye to Jiménez.
Simón handed the phone to the drug lord, who said, "Buenoooo."
Harley stood by the door, feeling gangly and out of place. He heard a familiar voice shouting from the receiver. Jiménez, holding the cellphone away from his ear, looked at him with an intensity Harley hadn't seen.
Harley reached for the doorknob and twisted. The door opened and he slipped out. He hurried down the concrete corridor, expecting any second to hear shouting voices, or to see Simón Garza chasing him. But he heard only the echo of his own footsteps, nearly running. He found the stairwell and began to hop down the steps three at a time. An alarm rang and Harley stopped. It was a high-pitched bell, clanging. He'd climbed down two floors, one to go. But he waited. He opened the door from the stairwell and peaked into the second floor. It was the same as the fourth, a concrete corridor lighted by neon, and echoing with the ringing alarm. Just ten feet from the stairwell he saw an open door. It was a closet with mops, broom and buckets and a big stack of rough Mexican toilet paper.
Harley decided to hide out there for a while. He stepped in. The alarm stopped, but kept ringing in his head. He could hear footsteps on the floor above him, and more in the stairwell. He pictured Simón chasing him, shouting with that wounded mouth, catching him and banging his head against the wall, dragging him back to the newly energized Gustavo Jiménez... But even in a Mexican jail, they wouldn't let accused murderers track down journalists, would they?
Harley remembered his time in the Juarez police station. Then he thought he might be facing long years in custody. Now, from the janitor's closet, the future looked shorter and more violent. Perhaps, Harley thought, he could just walk out. They had no reason to arrest him, unless the Mexicans enforced tough laws on funny phone calls.
Harley walked out of the closet and down the final flight of steps. Everything seemed back to normal. He walked to the glass booth and returned his plastic badge that said "visita". He filled in the hour of his departure: 2:13 p.m. The guard smiled at him.
"What was that alarm?" Harley asked.
"Probably someone fooling with the fire alarm," the guard said. "It happens all the time.
He walked outside into the sunlight, feeling relieved. But his stomach tightened when he saw four prison guards leaning against the two cars in the visitors section of the parking lot. Harley slipped in the other direction, past some bushes, to the prison sign, where his bike was locked. He unhitched it and wound the chain around his seat. He reached behind himself to adjust the knapsack, but it wasn't there. He forgot it. And the helmet too.
He still had the notebook in his pocket. If he rode the sidewalk back to the driveway, the way he came, he'd pass right in front of those prison guards. The only other choice was to brave it across 200 yards of prickly, tire-popping desert to the airport highway.
Harley rode by the guards, giving them a wave.
"Hey!" one of them yelled. The others made some noise, but none gave chase. Looking in his rearview mirror, Harley saw two of them hurrying back into El CeReSo. The other two stand still and watched.
Now the question was whether to ride all the way home or to lock his bike somewhere and take an airport cab. Harley pedaled across the highway and glanced in his rearview mirror. Those two guards were still looking at him. He turned left and pedaled past the airport, back toward El Paso.
He stood up on the bike and pushed hard, passing cars on the right. He clicked into high gear. He raced past junkyards and the dog track. Ahead he could see the Franklin Mountains, promising refuge.
He was certain that Jiménez or Crispín had sent someone to find him. Or maybe they'd pick him up at the bridge. The stakes were too high to ignore. Harley calculated the numbers as he rode. If they put in $50 million, it was worth $250 million now, or a little more. They could lose a quarter of a billion dollars, he thought, if they let him return to El Paso and write his story.
He was making his way into the city. He passed the Xtasia discotheque and a row of restaurants that all advertised their dollar rates. One of them sold pitchers of margaritas for $5 -- a good deal, if it was ever safe to return to Juarez. Another two miles, he figured, and he'll be at the border. He could swing left, into the centro, and cross at the downtown bridge. There he'd be close enough to lock his bike somewhere and walk, losing himself among the tourists. But the downtown was also full of cops. Harley veered right, toward the Free Bridge, where most of the maquiladora trucks crossed.
He looked in the mirror and saw a cement truck and a Jeep. No cops. He kept riding, along a rare tree-lined avenue, past a statue of Abraham Lincoln. He checked the mirror again. The jeep was right behind him. Still no cops. Then Harley stole another look at the Jeep and caught his breath when he saw a familiar flattened nose.
Olmos saw him, and he gestured for him to pull over. Harley kept pedaling flat out. Olmos revved up and pulled the Jeep even with him. He lowered one of the electric windows and yelled in Spanish. "Pull over! I just want to talk with you."
Harley pretended not to hear. Five more blocks and he'd be at the bridge, where he knew the Jeep would get hung up in a 20-minute line. Olmos pulled the Jeep closer to Harley and started to angle him off the road. Harley banked right and turned, his tires skidding on gravel. This put him on a residential street, with little houses and garages, and wrought-iron fences. Behind him, he heard Olmos hit the brakes. Harley turned left, onto a smaller street. He didn't know where he was. But he figured he could get to the bridge by bobbing and weaving on these side streets. That street came to a dead end, and Harley jogged right and then left again. He hit another dead end and took a left. He had to be about three blocks from the border now. He rode toward a big avenue with lots of trucks. The traffic was still moving, he saw, which meant it couldn't be too close to the border. He began to worry that he'd turned himself around and was heading back towards the airport. But as he approached the street, he saw El Paso's Border Highway, just a couple hundred yards ahead. Now he knew where he was. This was Juarez's own border highway, leading to the maquiladoras.
Harley simply had to jog left for 150 yards, and he'd be on the bridge. But to get there he had to cross four lanes of truck traffic. He looked left and right, like a fan at a tennis match, waiting for a hole in the traffic. When the stop light at the intersection turned red, the trucks heading toward the bridge would back up, he saw, and he might be able to weave his bike between them -- if he could get past the line of eastbound traffic. He looked in his rearview mirror. No sign of Olmos. The light turned red and the traffic in the El Paso-bound lanes promptly backed up. Harley, gazing to his left, waited for four eastbound trucks to pass.
He didn't see when a Jeep, traveling against traffic on the left shoulder of the street, cut him off from the right, brushing against his front tire and nearly spilling him to the ground.
By the time Harley regained his balance, Oscar Olmos had a firm grip on the handlebars. "I have to talk to you, Señor," he said, sounding more like a servant than a henchman.
The Oaxacan pulled the bike back into the residential street. Harley followed. Olmos wore a blue Dallas Cowboys polo shirt, which showed off his biceps. He guided the bike gingerly and had trouble keeping it in a straight line. Finally he picked it up and carried it. Turning around, he flashed a smile. "You were going 45 kilometers per hour on Avenida de la Raza, Señor. On a level grade."
Trying to establish some rapport, Harley thought.
Olmos put down the bike and leaned it carefully against a thick mesquite tree. Then, like an Aztec courier, he delivered a memorized message. "Señor," he said, "my boss sends his greetings and he compliments you on your command of the Spanish language. He says you are an excellent journalist and he would like to meet you, at an hour of your convenience, to see if there are efforts at which the two of you can collaborate. He realizes that you are extremely busy today, and he sent me to offer you preliminary terms."
Olmos paused, waiting for the American to respond.
"Preliminary terms?" Harley asked.
Olmos reached into his back pocket and pulled out a thick, folded envelope. He handed it to Harley, who accepted it before he realized what it contained. "This is a down payment," Olmos said. "As I said, don Onofre Crispín respects you greatly, and would like to work closely with you on a series of articles detailing the exact nature of relations between our two countries. Such a series, he says, would benefit both countries, fomenting mutual understanding at a crucial time in our history."
Harley held the envelope at arms length.
"I have a telephone in the car," Olmos said. "And if you would like, don Onofre can confirm his offer to you. But he says that a face-to-face meeting is preferable, especially considering" -- he coughed, politely -- "your recent adventures on the telephone."
"I can't accept money from him," Harley said, still speaking in the Gringo accent he used with Jiménez.
Olmos ignored him. "The down payment is fifteen thousand dollars. It is not much, don Onofre says, only a sign of good faith. The balance, reaching a total of one million dollars, will be paid in installments as you, working closely with don Onofre, successfully complete your journalistic series."
"One million dollars?" Harley was stunned. "I can't accept that."
"The balance is nine hundred eighty-five thousand dollars."
"What happens if I say no?"
Olmos stared at him blankly for a moment. "I have been instructed to make sure you say yes."
Harley dropped the envelope. It thudded on the cracked sidewalk. "No," he said.
Olmos reached down and picked it up. He dropped his ceremonial tone and spoke like a boxer. "This is your ticket out of Mexico," he said, calling Harley by the informal "tu."
"And if I don't take it?"
"You go with me back to casa Crispín."
"And if I take it?"
"You ride your little toy back to Gringolandia."
Harley took the envelope and jammed it into his pocket. Without saying another word, he mounted his bike and pedaled toward the bridge.


Chapter Fifty Seven

Mexican Police on the phone, talking Spanish. It had to be something about Harley, Canfield thought as he handed the phone to Rudi Torres. But it turned out that Juarez Police had recovered two Tribune cars, Stevenson's old Dodge and DuChamps' Grand Am. Canfield lumbered over to DuChamps' cubicle to deliver the good news.
He was stunned to see his favorite reporter with a crew cut, exposing ears that stick straight out and scrawny neck. "What the hell did you do to yourself?" he asked. "You look like a goddamned turkey neck now."
"You've been telling me to get a haircut for months," DuChamps said.
"Yeah, but I was just getting used to it."
"I made a bet with myself," the reporter said. "By the time my hair grows out, I'll be..." He caught himself and shut up.
"Working at The Dallas Morning News," Canfield finished the sentence for him. "Well you better let it grow out a little before you start your interviewing. You look like a goddamn vulture now... Oh, and by the way, DuChamps, they got your car for you in Juarez. You can go pick it up now, if you want."
DuChamps let loose a war whoop that echoed through the newsroom.
"You can thank Stevenson for that," Canfield told him after he quieted down. "He doesn't get himself killed, you don't get your car back. You going to the funeral Friday?"
"I thought we all had to."
"I just wanted to make sure you won't be taking a personal day, going to Dallas or someplace."
Harley's phone rang, and Canfield picked it up. A woman with a strong East-coast accent asked for Harley. "You wouldn't be Diana Clements, would you?" the city editor asked, looking at Harley's terminal. "He's already got his computer covered with messages from you... That's right. Let's assume he'll call you if he ever comes to work."
He hung up and made his way back to his terminal. The Stevenson story was turning out to be a problem for him. Ken Perry, now acting like a charter member of the Chamber of Commerce, was blocking any serious coverage of drugs or official corruption in Mexico. He insisted that he didn't want to undermine the paper's previous coverage of the Jiménez. "That stuff could get us a Pulitzer," he said. "But we have to end it with the jailing of the drug lord. The judges love results."
Meanwhile, though, the Journal was running hard with the story. Rick Jarvis located a cabdriver in Juarez who detailed the photographer's last night of bar crawling. Apparently, the cab still reeked from Stevenson's vomit. Great detail, Canfield thought. Jarvis named some of the strip clubs they visited, and went so far as to describe a blonde who sat on Stevenson's lap while he fondled her. Canfield, his curiosity piqued, wondered how much Juarez strippers charged for lap dances.
It irked Canfield that Tribune staffers seemed to have talked to Jarvis for his story. He quoted "colleagues" who recalled a smelly water pipe Stevenson had in his apartment. They said he was "burned out" at work. They told Jarvis about his Mexican girlfriend, Stella, and hinted that she lined him up with the drug dealer who killed him. Canfield suspected Harley was the blabber. And he was going to give him hell about it, if he ever came to work.
Canfield called up the stock market ticker on his terminal and punched in ESPO. Grupo Espejo rose to $53 and then dropped $4 at the end of the day. He kicked himself for not selling at lunch time, when it was at 52 3/8. Then again, if Clinton twisted enough arms to get Nafta through, the stock might go up to $70.
Canfield jumped when he heard Ken Perry's voice by his ear. "The stock's a real firecracker, isn't it?" the editor said, looking over Canfield's shoulder.
"I'm thinking about a follow-up story," Canfield said, trying to explain the numbers on his screen.
"Since when do you assign business stories?"
"This is more than a straight business story. Why, it's tied into Nafta..."
Perry smiled and patted him on the shoulder. "Come on into the office. We have to do the front-page meeting."
Just as the two of them walked into the corner office, Harley stepped out of the elevator with his bike. He looked gaunt and dusty. His armpits had salt rings around them and his short hair, lacquered with dried sweat, stood straight up. What really caught Canfield's attention, though, were his wide eyes. He'd never seen them so round.
"Lemme guess," the city editor said, as Harley entered the newsroom. "You went dirt biking and saw a ghost."
"I talked to Jiménez," Harley blurted. "He confirmed that Espejo's running with drug money. And I think Crispín had something to do with Stevenson's murder."
"Whoa, whoa, hold on a minute there, Harley," Canfield said. "Come into the office here, and we'll take it a little slower."
Harley sat on the couch next to Canfield, facing Perry at his desk, and he ran through the whole story. He told them how he'd been cultivating Crispín, how he even stuck with him on a Sunday and ate ants eggs. The editors were impressed. He told them about Rubén and his role as a go-between, and how he suspected that Crispín ordered a hitman to eliminate Simón, and that the killer shot Stevenson by mistake. "We don't have enough to run with that one yet. That could take a while." Finally, without discussing the phoney phone calls to Chief Muller and Jiménez, he went through the interview with the drug lord, telling the editors how many of the points were backed up by other sources.
He mentioned, as an afterthought, that Stevenson's accused killer was working as a jailhouse butler for Jiménez.
At the end, Perry shook his head, dumbfounded. "Tom, I'm going to be frank," he said. "I didn't know you had it in you."
"Neither did he, did you Harley?" said the city editor.
Harley smiled.
"But I think we should wait a day," Canfield went on. "If we're going to do this story, we want to do it right. First of all, we don't have any art, because Harley here insisted on going..."
Harley interrupted. "There's one more thing I forgot to mention." He stood up and reached into his pocket, and pulled out the thick envelope. He pushed one long finger into the top of it and ripped it open. Then he dumped the pile of one-hundred dollar bills on Perry's immaculate desk. "This is $15,000," he said. "At least, that's what I've been told." He explained how Olmos cut him off with the Jeep and coerced him into accepting it as a down payment on a $1 million bribe. "I had to accept this money to get back home in one piece."
Perry let loose a low whistle and as Canfield rocked back on the couch, looking stunned.
"My problem," Harley said, "is that if we don't run this story tomorrow, Crispín's going to think he has a deal."
"He's not going to think anything of the kind," Perry said, slapping his palm down on the desk and sending a couple of the bills fluttering to the floor, "because we're running the goddamned story as big as we've ever run any story since I've been at this paper." He glowered at Canfield. "And I can't believe that you would even consider holding back this story. It leads me to wonder what sort of interests you have outside this newsroom."
"We all have interests outside the newsroom," Canfield responded quietly.
"Well, Harley here just turned down a million dollars," Perry said. "I think we could learn something from his example."
"I don't mean to quibble," Canfield said, glancing at Harley and looking at the pile of money on Perry's desk. "But Harley turned down the promise of a million dollars, which isn't exactly the same thing."
"You're dealing with harder assets, aren't you?" Perry said.
"Let's not dwell on it," Canfield answered, looking depressed.
The three men were silent for moment, all of them looking at the money. "Hey," Harley piped up. "How about it we put down the $15,000 as Onofre Crispín's contribution to the Ed Stevenson Drug Prevention fund?"
"That's my editorial," Perry said, happy to be calling the shots.

* * *

It wasn't an easy story to write. Harley was still tinkering with a lead when his phone rang. Diana, already home from work, was anxious to know if he got the story.
"Yeah, I got it," he said, rearranging his lead as he talked. "It got pretty hairy over there."
"But you're running with the story, on Espejo?"
"Uh huh." Harley pushed down one lead with the cursor, and started another.
"And the story is that Espejo's backed by drug money?" She sounded very excited.
"I'm not supposed to talk about it. But, yeah. That's part of it. There's the whole business about the murder, too. But that's tomorrow's story. I got to find Rubén and some other people for that..."
Diana pressed for more on his interview with Jiménez.
"He seemed like he was on heroin or something," Harley said. "I thought he was falling asleep on me." Maybe, he thought, if he led with a scene of Jiménez lying on his couch, waiting for his huachinango...
"Let's celebrate," Diana said.
"OK."
Harley typed: "Juarez drug lord Gustavo Jiménez gives new meaning to the word 'cell phone'." No. Too glib.
"You're busy, aren't you?" Diana said.
"Wait a minute." His other line was ringing. He put Diana on hold, and answered. It was Claudio.
"Hey Claudio," he said. "I got to find Rubén."
"That's what I'm calling about," Claudio said. "I got a message from him, saying he was leaving to join some kind of revolution in Chiapas.
"Chiapas?"
"And Estela's going with him."
"Funny," Harley said. "Gustavo Jiménez was just talking about the same thing."
Harley hung up just as the freshly shorn DuChamps arrived in the newsroom, looking alarmed.
"What's the matter," Canfield asked. "You didn't get your car back?"
"I get it back," DuChamps said, raking his fingers over his scalp. "There's this shag rug glued to the dashboard, and a tiny little steering wheel, about six inches wide. The muffler's gone. Gone! And it's got these new back tires that are just huge. I feel like I'm driving a sled."
"It doesn't have a pair of big furry dice hanging from the mirror, does it?" Harley asked.
"How'd you know?"

* * *

Diana poured Harley another glass of Veuve Cliquot and lay back on the couch. "Maybe if we had a fire burning," she said, "or a bear rug on the floor..."
Harley sipped his champagne, deep in thought. "So, anyway," he said, "I called Crispín for a response. And he acted all... betrayed, hurt. Made me feel like a real jerk."
"Did he ask you about the fifteen thousand?" Diana asked.
"He pretended he never offered me anything," Harley said. "The guy's not dumb. He said his driver, Olmos, was just supposed to offer me work as some sort of writer. He said the job paid well."
"So he expected you to quit the paper and work as a writer for him?"
"Oh, no. I wouldn't be worth anything to him if I quit my job at the paper."
"Oh... I see." Diana got up and put on a CD. Ella Fitzgerald singing "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered." As she walked back, she untucked her white silk blouse and unfastened the top three buttons.
Harley wasn't paying attention.
"What's wrong?" she asked, stroking a hand down the side of his face. "You don't feel like celebrating?"
"So Claudio was telling me I should apologize for using those voices," he said. "And I sort of apologized to Crispín. I mean I said I was sorry about the misunderstanding. But it was closer to a lie than a misunderstanding. Know what I mean?"
"I think you're a little hard on yourself." Diana sat sideways across his lap and held his face in her hands. "Why don't you just relax, and celebrate?"
"Celebrate what? I'm still in the middle of this thing. There's the whole murder story, that I'm not even close to nailing down yet. For all I know, Jiménez was feeding me some sort of a line. And then I have no idea how Crispín and Jiménez are going to respond to this story I've written. I might have to move back into that hotel."
"Or here." She leaned over and kissed him between the eyes.
Harley shrugged. "I mean, they might lose hundreds of millions of dollars tomorrow. What do you think the stock'll do when the story comes out?"
Diana smiled. "We're talking free fall."
"Well. That makes my stomach crawl... Did you hear that?"
"What?"
"My stomach just went 'boiiiing'."
"Listen," she said, "there's something I should probably tell you."
Harley listened.
"I told you how when Raymond left, I felt sort of trapped here, because I didn't have enough money to leave?"
"Uh huh."
"Well that's been sort of... gnawing at me. Not that I still want to leave. But you know, feeling sort of poor."
"I sometimes feel the same way," Harley said.
"And you weren't tempted to take that million dollars?"
"Not for a minute. I mean, the whole value of money is that it makes you free. But you're not free if you sell yourself to somebody like that. Plus," he added, "I doubt I would have seen any money. He just wanted to kill the story."
"Oh," Diana nodded. "Anyway, I was feeling kind of poor, and I took a position in Espejo, because I heard these rumors that all this money from Guadalajara was into it, and that it was going to go way up. I bought in at $10."
"And did you sell today?"
"Uh huh. At fifty three."
"So you made five hundred thirty percent."
"More or less. Then I ran around borrowing money. I even borrowed some from Raymond. I hadn't talked to him in months. Gave him 10 percent for a two-week loan."
Harley nodded slowly, not liking what he was hearing.
"And then, with all that I bought options on Espejo stock, so that I'll make money with each dollar that it falls."
"Did you hear it this time?" Harley asked, looking ill.
"What?"
"My stomach just did it again."
"This all makes you nervous, doesn't it?" Diana asked, opening her brown eyes wide in Harley's face, giving him a good look at those golden specks.
"I don't know if 'nervous' is the right word," Harley said. "If you don't mind my asking, how much money do you stand to make from all this?"
"I could clear a three quarters of a million."
"Jesus." He sipped some champagne and swished it around in his mouth. "And a good chunk of that is due to information you got through me, right?"
She nodded.
Harley took in a deep breath and let it out. "Here's what I think you should do. Take all the profits you made from my information, and donate them to the Eddie Stevenson fund."
Diana kissed him on the forehead and then pulled back to look in his eyes. "You're kidding," she said. "Right?"

The End

Copyright Stephen Baker Media, 2009