Tequila Sunset (25 page)

“Am I in trouble?” Rodriguez said. “Because I don’t think I’ve done anything.”

“No, you haven’t done anything,” Robinson replied. “Why don’t you go ahead and have a seat? Mind if we sit down?”

“Go ahead.”

Robinson sat on the couch with Rodriguez and Cristina took a chair. Now Rodriguez couldn’t look at both of them without turning his head, and so he fixed his attention on Robinson. He licked his upper lip.

They would start with the easy questions. Robinson took out
his notebook even though he didn’t need it and made a show of flipping the pages. “Mr. Rodriguez,” he said, “are you familiar with a young man by the name of Felipe Morales?”

Cristina saw Rodriguez’s lip twitch at the mention of Flip’s name and the man’s eyes went immediately dark. “Yeah, I know him,” Rodriguez said. “He’s the son of my girlfriend, Silvia Morales.”

“Mr. Morales works for you, doesn’t he?”

“He does. Listen, if he—”

“Hold up a minute, Mr. Rodriguez. Let me ask the questions for right now.”

“Okay.”

“Mr. Rodriguez, you’re aware that Mr. Morales is a convicted felon, are you not?”

“Yes. He was in prison until a little while ago.”

“Do you know what he was in for?”

“I don’t know the details.”

“That’s okay, it doesn’t matter. But did you know that while he was in prison he joined a gang called Barrio Azteca?”

Cristina saw an eyebrow rise for just an instant. Rodriguez hadn’t known.

“I knew he was in a gang. I didn’t know he was an Azteca.”

“Well, he was. He is. Gang membership in Barrio Azteca is for life.”

“I’ve never been involved with any gangs.”

“I know, Mr. Rodriguez, don’t worry. Now, I have to ask you: has Mr. Morales or anyone else approached you about doing something for the gang? Anything at all. A little favor?”

Rodriguez glanced at Cristina. “No,” he said.

“I think maybe you’re lying, Mr. Rodriguez.”

“I’m not lying. Nobody told me anything.”

“What if I said that I knew for a fact that you were approached by a man by the name of José Martinez? That he offered you money to do a favor for him?”

Rodriguez made fists and shifted his position on the couch. He was only half-turned to Robinson now. Cristina had seen the same body language a hundred times in the interview room.

“Mr. Rodriguez?”

“Okay, someone came to me and offered me money. I don’t know what for. And I didn’t ask! I don’t want anything to do with any gangs.”

“But you didn’t fire Morales,” Cristina said.

“No, I didn’t fire him. I hired him because of Silvia. She would want to know why I fired him and I couldn’t tell her the truth: that her son is still a crook.”

“Mr. Rodriguez, we have a pretty good idea what José Martinez wants with you,” Robinson said. “And we know you’re a solid citizen. That’s why we’re here. We need to ask you for something.”

“Like what?”

“We need you to reach out to Morales,” Cristina said. “Tell him that you’ve changed your mind about earning a little extra cash. He’ll put you in touch with José Martinez and Martinez will ask you to do what he wants you to do.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Because we want to put Martinez away,” Robinson said. “We can do it without your help, but it would be a whole lot easier if we could get your cooperation.”

“I don’t want to get involved in that.”

“Please, Mr. Rodriguez,” Cristina said. “I know it seems like a lot to ask, but it’s really very simple. I doubt your contact with José Martinez would extend beyond one meeting. And if we could get you to wear a wire at that meeting, it’ll mean that much more evidence to use against him.”

“A wire?!?” Rodriguez exclaimed. “You want me to wear a microphone? These thugs
kill people
. What will they do to me if they find out I’m helping the police spy on them?”

“You’d be under our protection the whole time,” Robinson said.

“No! Absolutely no!” Rodriguez came off the couch and gestured emphatically with his hands. “I work very hard to stay out of situations like this and I’m not going to get into one now. I’m sorry.”

Robinson stood up. “Mr. Rodriguez, just give us a chance.”

“No. I’m sorry. No. Now I have to ask you to leave. Please.”

Cristina and Robinson let Rodriguez herd them to the door. She wanted to say more, but she knew it would fall on deaf ears. Even Robinson had nothing to say. Rodriguez got the door open and almost pushed them out.

“Please don’t come back,” Rodriguez said, and then he closed the door.

TEN

T
HE BIG ROOM WAS QUIET AND ALL THE DESKS
empty. Matías and Paco retired to the conference room and Matías waited while Paco struggled to load images from a flash drive to the room’s computer. The projector was on, showing a huge blue square where pictures should have been.

“Fucking thing!” Paco cursed. “How does this work?”

“Do you want me to show you?”

“No, damn it, I can do it myself.”

Lopez had put Matías and Paco together after Matías’ meeting with Romero. Matías was told it was because they wanted to reduce his workload, but Matías thought perhaps they wanted another man fluent in the Azteca situation if something should befall him. He did not blame them, and in truth he enjoyed having someone he could share his knowledge with. Paco was anxious to know everything and Matías was willing to tell all.

In the end the change had affected the amount of work Matías had to do himself. He was able to go home earlier, knowing Paco was there to pick up the slack. Some of the little things Matías would have handled himself he passed on. It was good.

Another few minutes of wrangling and the blue square changed to a picture of the computer’s desktop. Paco fiddled with the cursor until the right window opened. He clicked and the frame expanded to fill the whole screen.

The photographs were in high-definition color, a series of busy
street scenes that were instantly identifiable as Ciudad Juárez. Matías could almost narrow the images down to a single street just from what he could see, and at the center of the snapshots, two men he knew equally well.

“There’s José Martinez,” Paco declared. “I don’t know the other guy.”

“Víctor Barrios,” Matías said. “Víctor is one of Guerra’s
capos
. He meets with José Martinez a lot.”

“How often is a lot?”

“Once every ten days or so. José slips across the border, has lunch or dinner with Víctor, and then heads back to the States. Víctor likes the ladies, so he and José party together.”

“I have a lot of pictures here with the two of them.”

“Any audio?”

“No. You can see they’re eating on the street. It’s too noisy to pick anything up, even with the new microphones.”

Matías frowned. “Show me something I haven’t seen before.”

“Okay. How about this?”

They were looking at a substantial warehouse from street level, trucks in motion all around, with others loading in the background. José was caught through the chain-link fence talking with a man Matías did not recognize. There were several of these, and the series concluded with José shaking the man’s hand.

“Where is this place?”

“A shipping depot off Vial Juan Gabriel. On the same day José met with Guerra’s man, he went here. Talked to this guy for a long time.”

“No audio there, either?”

“Sorry.”

Matías pounded the arm of his chair. “It’s no good if we don’t know what he’s talking about! It’s all about those damned trucks!”

“What should we do?” Paco asked.

“I’m thinking on it.”

Paco clicked through more photos showing the depot at large, the entrance and the armed guards. The men with their shotguns paid no mind when José passed through them, as if they knew him by sight, and perhaps they did.

“The first thing we have to do is increase surveillance on the depot,” Matías said at last. “And we need to find out the name of the man José talked to. Once we have that information, we can start digging through his life: who he is, where he lives, how much he makes. Does this place show up in any reports as a known way-station for drugs? Are the cartels using it? Do we have any information at all that would allow us to make a raid?”

“I’m working on it. Tomorrow I’ll start calling around and we’ll get this depot covered. José wants trucks? We can let him have some trucks.”

“That’s good,” Matías said.

“What about Guerra?”

“Guerra will put his head out,” Matías said. “Sooner or later he has to step into this and then we’ll have him. We’ll have all of them.”

Matías got up. It was late, but he wasn’t tired. He could make his calls right now, wake up some people and put them to work, but he had to be home for Elvira.

Paco clasped him by the shoulder. “It’s going to work, isn’t it?”

“If it doesn’t, then you had better start sharpening your own pencil. There’s always lots of paperwork to be done, and we’ll be doing it together.”

ELEVEN

M
ATÍAS KNEW SOMETHING WAS WRONG AS
soon as he turned the key in the door. There was a sense of stillness on the other side that bled through the wood into the hallway. When he opened the door it was dark, all the lights out.

He didn’t call out. He stepped inside and closed the door quietly, thinking for a moment that maybe Elvira was sleeping, having gone to bed early. Once she would have waited up for him to all hours, but things had changed.

There was no sound. She was not sleeping.

Matías switched on the living room lights and went down the hall to the bedroom. He put on the lights in there and saw the bed was empty, still made. The closet door was half-open.

In the closet he saw the missing clothes, the empty spaces on the shoe rack where she’d taken away her favorite pairs. His things were undisturbed.

She had left no note in the kitchen or anywhere else in the apartment. She was simply gone.

They had a bottle of brandy from Spain that they had barely touched in the year since it was given to them as a present. Matías found the right glass in the cabinet and poured himself two fingers. He sat on the couch in the empty living room and stared at the picture on the opposite wall. The brandy burnt, but it had a fruity taste he had never noticed before. He would have mentioned this to Elvira.

After an hour he brought out his phone and called her number. It rang five times and went to voicemail. “It’s Matías,” he said. “I’m not angry. Please, just call me when you get this message.”

He put his jacket and tie away and rolled up his shirtsleeves. He took off his shoes and put his sockfeet on the coffee table while he had another glass of brandy. It was close to eleven o’clock and she did not call back.

“It’s Matías again,” he told her voicemail. “If you get this you can call me anytime, no matter how late. I’m going to stay up until I hear from you.”

It was not his drink, but another brandy would be good. He did not want to be drunk when she called, so Matías put it away. He rummaged in the freezer for something to thaw out and eat and settled on a pasta meal that only needed a few minutes in the microwave. When it was ready he ate at the kitchen table not looking at anything, waiting for the phone to ring.

Midnight came and went. The energy he felt at the office with Paco had faded, but he knew he would not be able to sleep even if he tried. He did not like watching television very much and all the shows at this hour were pointless and stupid. There was a mystery novel in the bedroom that he’d been trying to finish for a month. Reading it now helped a little, though he immediately forgot everything he read as soon as he turned each page.

It was two o’clock in the morning when his phone vibrated and then chimed. He put down the book and cleared his throat and answered. “
Bueno
,” he said.

“Matías,” said Elvira. Her voice sounded far away, Matías thought, but then it could just be his imagination. “Matías, I’m sorry.”

“Where did you go?” Matías asked.

“I’m in Monterrey with my sister.”

Matías closed his eyes. He had been to Elvira’s sister’s home several times and stayed in the spare bedroom, which was made up
like a sun-dappled field of yellow flowers. Imagining Elvira there made her feel closer. “Why did you leave?”

“It’s not you, Matías. It was never you.”

“I’m glad.”

“I can’t be in Juárez right now. I arranged for a leave of absence from work.”

“And then you flew to Monterrey. How long have you been planning this?”

“Not long. Or maybe that’s not true. I knew as soon as that night that I had to leave, only I didn’t want to go without you.”

“You know I can’t go.”

“I’ve thought about that. You can go. You said yourself that they want you to keep a low profile. Why not take some time off and come away with me? You have it coming to you, so why keep saving it? You can use it now.”

Matías thought of his meeting with Paco, of the things they discussed, of what would happen. Trying to explain all of this to Elvira was pointless; she wouldn’t want to hear it, but he would have to do it anyway.

“Matías, are you there?”

“I’m here.”

“Will you come?”

Matías felt a pain inside. “No.”

“Why not?”

“Because I have work to do here. If I go now…”

“If you go now someone else can deal with it.”

“I wish I could make you understand, Elvira.”

“So you won’t come. Even though I’m asking you.”

“I would if I could, but I can’t,” Matías said. “That’s all you need to know: that I can’t. The work
won’t
be done without me. They need me here.”

“I need you!”

Matías sighed. “I have to get up early tomorrow, Elvira.”

“You’re hanging up on me?”

“There’s nothing to be gained by continuing this discussion. You’ve told me what you want, I’ve told you what I can do. We could go on forever like this. I’m happy to know that you’re safe somewhere. That’s the most important thing.”