The Territory: A Novel (17 page)

“Nothing’s changed, Josie, but I can’t stay away any longer.”

She felt the familiarity of a fight coming on. “I’ve tried to explain…”

He put a finger up to her lips and shook his head. “That’s not what I’m saying. I’m not passing judgment. I just miss you. I need to be around you. You make me smile, and I want to make you smile. You have this gigantic heart that’s locked up inside you that I want to open up.”

She took a step back. “Don’t speak in metaphors! What does that mean—I have a heart locked up? If I need to change, then give it to me in black and white.”

He laughed at her anger and pulled her back in again, kissed her to shut her up, then kissed her again, soft and long, his hands down her back pulling goose bumps up her arms. He finally kissed her forehead and cradled her face in his hands. She had a perfect heart, he told her, that needed sleep. Then, he drove off down the dusty road toward town.

EIGHT

After a shower in an open-air bath off the main dressing area, the Bishop sat for morning breakfast on the veranda. He watched as two light-skinned teenage girls laid out his clothes for the day in his room: white linen slacks and a light linen-blend white shirt, huarache sandals and a Cuban Exo cigar. He had stopped smoking ten years ago but found he missed the roll of the cigar between his fingers and the taste of the tobacco on his lips more than the act of smoking. So he had switched to carrying a fresh cigar with him throughout the day.

He watched the girls through the glass wall that separated his bedroom from the veranda, looking with pride as they snapped a fresh white sheet and tucked it under the mattress. They laughed and slipped quietly out, so unself-conscious, they never realized he had been watching.

He had overseen every detail of the construction of his estate, and he was proud of the outcome. The house was built five years ago to represent his family’s wealth and status, and it had achieved that goal. Reminiscent of an M. C. Escher print, the three-story white stucco home held mysterious passageways, arches, and twisting stairs. Hand-carved teak lintels and moldings had been waxed to an ancient sheen, giving the home a substantial old-world feel that he prized. Outside the home, terraced desert landscaping wrapped all sides of the house and created quiet retreats.

The Bishop reclined slightly in his chair and breathed deeply, forcing a calm exterior that he did not feel. The damp morning air was infused with what he thought of as the smells of earth: mesquite, creosote bush, and juniper. In the midst of family or business crisis—and in fact, they were often both—he retreated outdoors. The smells, the solitude, the heat and space gave him the calm he required to make the life-and-death decisions demanded of him daily. He looked across the sprawling desert and took deep breaths to control the rage that once again was threatening to overcome him. He imagined his father’s dead body, shot up beyond recognition by a man whom he had once loved as family. He wanted to destroy his cousin and every member of La Bestia: personally shove the knife through each beating heart. But he could not afford to react out of emotion or grief. Revenge was justified and expected, but revenge unplanned was inexcusable.

The Bishop’s influences in life were twofold. A mother whose entire being centered on perfection: her children were fastidiously clean, neurotically prepared for life’s little problems, and taught the manners of the upper class. And a father whose devotion to family and obsessive need to control had led to a dynasty feared and respected throughout Mexico. Hector Medrano gave his oldest son the nickname “the Bishop” on his twenty-fourth birthday. As the Bishop, Marco ruled the family business, organizing the leaders of the narcotics, firearms, and money-laundering divisions to carry out the missions that his own father had given him: Control the drug routes through the northern states of Mexico. A simple idea but an incredibly complex task.

The media perpetuated the myth of the Bishop as a ruthless killer with no respect for life, a fact those close to him understood was untrue, pure myth. The killings were just a necessary part of his business, no different from a priest assigning penance, a boss firing dead weight, or the
presidente
firebombing a cocaine factory: all necessary parts of the bigger picture to be undertaken with integrity and fortitude.

The Bishop smiled at the young woman who had appeared to place a carafe of fresh coffee on the table. She wore her hair in long, oiled cornrows that hung behind her back, and had a perfect chocolate-colored complexion. She stole a look at him, smiled in return, and then left, her head lowered in deference.

The Bishop watched her walk away and thought of the arrogant policewoman who had interrogated his cousin through marriage, Miguel Ángel Gutiérrez, in the American jail. After the interview with the police chief, Gutiérrez talked with an attorney provided by La Bestia. The Bishop paid a large sum of money to the rival attorney to receive the confidential details of the meeting. The attorney claimed the woman called Gutiérrez a pedophile, said he would rot in her filthy jail with the perverts and degenerates until he gave up information about the business. She had taken on a cause bigger than her abilities.

The Medranos had been collecting information on the Artemis law enforcement agencies for years as they planned and set up transportation across the border. Chief Gray had been a target of concern. He opened the manila file folder that sat on the table beside the carafe. He picked up a black-and-white photo of an attractive female dressed in a police uniform. She was in her early thirties with long hair pulled back in a tight ponytail. She was looking off in the distance, her expression proud and brooding, gauging the world through a personal lens of justice; right and wrong were hers to decide, and for that he both despised and admired her.

A second photo showed her leaning into a man bent over a car hood with his hands in cuffs behind his back. She grasped his T-shirt in a bunch with one hand, her other hand planted on the hood, and talked to him with her lips close to his ear as a larger male officer stood behind her, looking away from the scene.

The last photo was a head shot, telephoto from straight on, as she looked just to the right of the shot. She was the rare woman who wore her sexuality unself-consciously. She was stunning. Her complexion was like cream, her cheeks pronounced, almost gaunt, adding to the severity of her expression.

The Americans would use threats and intimidation, torture if necessary, to gain information about the business. He would not allow his own traitorous blood to jeopardize his family. The Bishop looked over the knee-high stone wall that surrounded the veranda, across the lap pool, and into the great Chihuahua Desert. He vowed to do whatever was necessary to bring his cousin home within the week. He would see justice served by himself, not by the Americans. Not by this woman. It was no longer business. It had become personal.
I will enjoy every detail of her death,
he thought.

*   *   *

Josie stopped at the bakery on the way to work that morning and bought a dozen chocolate iced doughnuts and a half gallon of milk for her and Lou and Otto. She smiled at Lou and placed three doughnuts on a napkin beside her computer. Lou thanked her, and Josie smiled all the way up the stairs to the office. She had just heard the weatherman on Lou’s radio announce that the monthlong heat wave was about to give way to eighty-five-degree temperatures for a few days. The rain had not materialized, but at least the heat had broken. Josie looked at her watch as she logged on to her computer. She had four hours to enjoy a good day before her mother ruined it.

Her first order of business was to study a packet of photos of missing persons mailed to her every two weeks from a Mexican human rights group supported by the U.S. Consulate in Mexico. Over the past six months, an average of thirty-three kidnappings each month took place along the border, most of them along the migrant routes. A host of cottage industry kidnapping schemes had spread throughout Mexico and into the United States, most recently into Phoenix. Thousands of virtual kidnappings were made every day; an unsuspecting parent receives a phone call demanding money be wired to an account before their family member, heard screaming in the background, is killed. The parent is too terrified to check into the claim and pays the ransom before realizing their family member is fine. The cell phone call, made from Mexico, is not traceable and goes undetected.

Another racket, express kidnappings, were popular in bigger cities. A person hails a taxi, the driver picks them up, drives a block, picks up two additional men who force the passenger to withdraw money from ATM machines all over town. The person is typically then robbed and left on the street with nothing.

But in Josie’s mind, parents were the easiest target of all. She and Sheriff Martínez had led a series of town meetings on Situational Awareness to make parents more aware of their surroundings and dangers their children could be in. Josie was always surprised by how unaware most parents were of their environment, especially in terms of their kids’ safety. She was certain it would be an unhealthy obsession with her when she became a parent. Although she wouldn’t let herself give up on the idea of having kids, there were days when the dangers of raising a child seemed to outweigh the joys.

Josie looked through the stack of black-and-white photos of dozens of Mexican and American children, most smiling into the camera from family and school pictures, unaware of the horror they were about to endure.

She set the pictures aside after one photograph started to blend into another. She read through Marta’s report from the previous night. Marta had interviewed three local drug informants about the continuing violence between La Bestia and the Medrano cartel. The general consensus was that La Bestia had moved into Piedra Labrada, where the Medranos already operated, in order to focus on a transportation route directly through Artemis.

Josie glanced up from the report and saw that Otto had silently settled in. He was sitting at his computer reading e-mail and eating a doughnut. She interrupted him and filled him in on the details from Marta’s conversations.

“The international border crossing between Presidio and Ojinaga is the least used in all of Texas. And Artemis is another thirty minutes beyond the crossing. We’ve got desert all around us. No big cities to blend into. This area doesn’t even make sense as a route,” she said.

Otto shrugged. “Maybe that’s the draw. No one expects it. Maybe the Beast thought the same thing. They could ease in on this little podunk town, and Medrano wouldn’t notice. Didn’t turn out so good, though.”

She nodded. “I could see it if Medrano wasn’t already a presence. But why go to battle with one of the largest crime syndicates in Mexico? There are plenty other border towns to blend into.”

“I don’t think these guys are into blending in. Maybe they want it known they’re making a serious run on Medrano. They see Piedra Labrada and Artemis as the place to do it. We’re controllable in their eyes.”

Josie stood and paced the office. “We need to camp out on the watchtower for a few nights. Watch traffic just outside the city.”

Otto nodded, sitting up in his seat.

“Until we figure out who is coming into Artemis, we can’t know their motivation. We have to figure it out to get the connection to Red.”

“I agree.”

“And we have to know what they want with Artemis. We cannot allow them to win, not one round,” Josie said.

“We’ll get interdiction clued in to Interstate 10. That’s got to be where they head once they get across the border. They’re taking farm roads across the desert and up to the interstate. I’ll make contact with each of the surrounding counties and let them know to involve us on any gun or narcotic stops that may involve Medrano or La Bestia.”

Josie and Otto spent the next hour on the phone with the Marfa Sector Border Patrol and the Department of Public Safety Narcotics Division and Interdiction discussing their suspicions. The interdiction team was trained to look for specific signs that often signaled illegal activity: illegal crossings, drug trafficking, and so forth. BP said they would take the watchtower that night, and Josie agreed to man it the next night, on Saturday. Interdiction said they would have an undercover car watching Interstate 10, the closest interstate to Artemis. After setting up the logistics, Josie called Sheriff Martínez and asked to meet him before lunch. She sent Otto to Red’s house to gather every last piece of paper, label where it came from in the house, and put it in a box for Dillon, who had agreed to sift through it all.

Josie heard the good-natured banter between the sheriff and Lou from downstairs and then the heavy booted footsteps of a large man clumping up the wooden stairs to the office.

Martínez rapped on the open door with his knuckles and entered. Josie was already carrying them both mugs of black coffee from the coffeemaker. She placed the cups on the conference table, and they small-talked the weather and the Astros, a favorite conversation topic of the sheriff’s, before getting down to business.

“Have you talked to Deputy Bloster about Red Goff’s death?” Josie asked.

“I have. He came in the evening after he found out about it. He’d just left Red’s house after running into you and Otto.”

“What was his response?” she asked.

“He was angry. Thought our office should have taken the call even though he knew we didn’t have anyone available to take it. He thought you should have handed it over. I told him it was a conflict of interest, and he finally let it go. I told him to cool his jets and stay away from the investigation. I take it that hasn’t happened.”

She slid the Gunners’ policy manual toward him. “Take a look at the section titled ‘Friends and Foes.’ We’re on the Foes list. Bloster is a member of an organization that lists his own boss as the enemy. I haven’t figured out exactly what that means yet.”

Martínez barely glanced at the manual. “Bloster told me about it. Said it was nothing more than a list of people who might feel hostile toward their organization.”