Tularosa: A Kevin Kerney Novel (Kevin Kerney Novels) (22 page)

When he finished, he looked at Duffy. He had never killed a man before. It was not pleasant. He couldn't tell Isabel about this, he thought. She would have him lighting candles for Duffy's soul for the rest of his life. He wondered what Captain Brannon would think. He decided she would not like it at all. One dead man at his feet, no leads on Lieutenant Kerney, and he was chained to a frigging bed with no way to get help. He could not risk discovery as an imposter. He worked on a story he could use with De Leon It took a long time before the two cooks ushered De Leon and Carlos to his cot. De Leon took in the scene without comment.

His face was harsh. Carlos, arms folded across his chest, adjusted his false teeth with his thumb and said nothing. The two cooks stayed back, out of De Leon range.

"Explain," De Leon finally said to Eddie.

"I cannot. I awoke to find Duffy kneeling at the side of my bed. He spoke in English. He was angry about something. He had a knife. He attacked me."

"You understood nothing?" Enrique queried. His eyes searched Eddie's face.

"He said your name several times," Eddie answered. "I think he blamed me for getting him in trouble with you."

"How did the attack take place?"

"He tried to cut my throat. I threw up my arm to ward off the blade. I could not move away because of the chain. He cut my arm." De Leon turned to the pudgy-faced cook.

"Was the hunchback chained?"

"Yes, patron. I only released Duffy from his bed, as I do every morning." De Leon nodded and returned his attention to Eddie.

"You killed him very neatly, jorobado."

"I did not know what I was doing. I am sorry, patron." De Leon gave him a skeptical look and pointed at the body.

"You are not listening. You gouge Duffy's eye, shatter his Adam's apple, break his neck. These are not the skills of a beggar."

"It was by accident, senor." Eddie whined. "Truly. I only fought to defend myself. I was much frightened. I could not escape him. My finger poked his eye as I tried to push him away. I think maybe my elbow hit him in the throat as we struggled. We fell. I was almost off the bed, lying against him as he tried to stab me again. His neck twisted under my weight. I heard the snap. He did not move, and then the old man came to see what had happened." De Leon returned his attention to the cook.

"Did you find Duffy where he now rests?" The old man looked at the body.

"Yes, patron. Exactly."

"Where did the butcher knife come from?" The old man blushed.

"He stole it from the kitchen. I was unobservant." He wrung the towel he clutched in shaky hands.

"Go back to work," De Leon ordered the cooks. The men scurried out of sight.

"Carlos, give me your opinion."

"It is possible. An awkward struggle, perhaps."

"You are not convinced?"

"The jorobado has strong arms and a thick chest. He fought for his life. Perhaps it gave him added power."

"Perhaps," De Leon reflected.

"Let me see the wound. Carlos, unbind it." Eddie raised his arm so

Carlos could untie the bloody towel. De Leon waited for Carlos to roll up the sleeve and wipe away some of the blood.

"It is a deep cut to the bone," Carlos reported.

"Duffy damaged him."

"Very well," De Leon said in a less caustic tone. "Call for the doctor to come and then remove Duffy's body." Carlos nodded, adjusted his upper plate, stepped over the corpse, and left to do his chore.

"Were you not wounded, I would have you replace Duffy in the kitchen," De Leon said, "to learn a lesson. As it is, you will stay chained to the bed until the doctor tells me whether or not you will require more extensive care."

"What will you do with me, Don Enrique?" De Leon sighed and prodded the body with the toe of his shoe.

"Duffy is no great loss. He was not going to be with us much longer anyway. I do not tolerate those who lie or steal from me. Duffy did both. Have you lied to me, Eduardo?"

"No, Don Enrique."

"Very well. I will accept your story for now and pay for your care."

"I will work for you tonight," Eddie proposed. He had to get unchained.

"I will work with one arm, if necessary, patron. I will repay your kindness with loyalty and labor." De Leon chuckled in amazement.

"Were you a whole man, Eduardo, I would have much better work for you to do. Your tenacity is strong. If the doctor agrees, you may work tonight."

"Thank you."

De Leon gave him one last searching look and left. The subservient expression on Eddie's face vanished. He was getting tired of kissing De Leon ass. The man was nothing but a gangster. More than ever, Eddie wanted to get back to the United States. Carlos dragged Duffy's body away, and the cooks brought clean bed linens. They moved Eddie to Duffy's cot, secured him with the leg iron, and changed the bloodstained sheets, muttering to each other about the loss of Duffy's help in the kitchen and the unfair burden it placed upon them. The doctor arrived promptly. He was a harried looking man about thirty who talked to himself during the examination.

Round-shouldered, wearing a rumpled suit, he had a narrow face, and his nostrils flared above a wide upper lip. He asked no questions about the knifing and deferred to Eddie's request to stay fully clothed. He cut the shirt sleeve away, studied the wound, and pronounced it nonlethal. He told Eddie he might lose some mobility in the arm if it wasn't quickly repaired. Eddie asked how long he could wait for the surgery.

"I would be reluctant to see you delay for more than two days," the doctor answered.

"It would be best to fix the damage now so that the scarring will be minimized."

"How long would it take?"

"One night in the hospital." Eddie could not risk going to the hospital.

"I have promised Don Enrique I will work tonight. It is a matter of honor that I do so."

"Carlos said you were a tough jorobado." He raised a finger and shook it under Eddie's nose.

"Do not use the arm. I will disinfect and tape the gash, bind it, and give you a painkiller. I will fashion a sling for you and tell Carlos to bring you to the hospital tomorrow morning." He opened his bag and began removing his medical supplies.

"Thank you."

"Do you fear the hospital?" the doctor asked, swabbing away the coagulated blood. So often, especially with the poor, it was hard to overcome a patient's apprehension of modern medicine.

"No. I wish to show the patron that I am trustworthy."

The doctor nodded his head. "That is an important quality if you wish to work for Senor De Leon. Prove yourself and he will reward you well." He worked quickly to close the gash.

"The wound is away from the arteries. You are lucky."

"So far," Eddie allowed, wincing.

Armed with a list of low-grade snitches grudgingly provided by a customs agent who wasn't about to turn over his most valuable confidential informants to a cop he didn't know, Kerney got to work. El Paso filled barren hills stubbed up against the Rio Grande, and spread like a bloated octopus into the Chihuahuan desert north of Mexico. The city was hot, the traffic miserable, and the jumble of housing developments, barrios, and miles of strip malls depressing. Kerney found Cruz Abeyta in his pawnshop, a seedy establishment filled mostly with stolen televisions, stereos, power tools, and weapons. Abeyta wore a Grateful Dead T-shirt, and a bandanna around his head to hold back his long hair.

About forty years old, Cruz sported a two-day beard and had prison tattoos on both arms. Abeyta smiled at the fifty-dollar bill, and a gold front tooth with a star flashed at Kerney. He picked the money from Kerney's fingers.

"What do you need, man?"

"Information. I need to find someone to move some merchandise south."

"Ain't my specialty, man," Cruz replied.

"You must have friends in the trade," Kerney prodded.

"For fifty dollars, I'll give you a name."

"Fair enough." With the name and address of Eduardo Lopez in his shirt pocket, Kerney left and drove to a barrio on the outskirts of the city. A fronterizo enclave of illegal Mexican and Central American refugees, the barrio was a string of tar-paper shacks along a dirt road, with no electricity, no sewers, and one community well. The place teemed with barefoot children, mangy dogs, and women with malnourished faces. Few young men were in sight. Kerney found his way to Lopez's shanty, conspicuous by the presence of a half-ton Chevy truck adorned with running lights. Lopez was buff-waxing the truck by hand under a tattered picnic canopy held up by scrap lumber. Fifty dollars made him stop for a chat.

"I can deliver anything you want," he told Kerney. Lopez was short, about five feet five, and had jet black hair greased down and combed straight back.

"In or out of Mexico," he added.

"That's good to know," Kerney said. "But I need a buyer first."

"What kind of merchandise?" Lopez asked, licking his lips.

"Artifacts."

"Indian pots? That sort of stuff?"

"Close enough." Lopez gave him a cunning look.

"That kind of information is worth more than fifty bucks."

"If I make a deal, you can make the delivery," Kerney proposed.

"That's cool. Talk to Miguel Amal. He owns a curio shop downtown." By eight o'clock at night, Kerney was dejected, hungry, and tired. His attempt to move up the smuggler's food chain had resulted in being passed from one small fish to another, at a total cost of four hundred dollars. And he was no closer to getting the name of a major player than he had been when he started out. On a boulevard driving back into the core of the city, Kerney stopped at a Mexican diner for something to eat. There were enough working-class cars in the parking lot to predict the food would be at least decent. Outside the building, an old adobe home painted white, was a row of newspaper vending machines. He popped some coins in a slot, pulled out the El Paso paper, and glanced at the adjacent machine.

The headline story, in Spanish, was about the Zapatista revolutionaries in the Mexican state of Chiapas. He bought a copy just for the hell of it. Over dinner, he skimmed the El Paso paper and set it aside. The Spanish paper, a left-wing weekly, was published in Juarez. The article on rebels in the state of Chiapas was well written and sympathetic to the cause. The featured columnist, a woman named Rose Moya, presented the third in a series of articles on government corruption and the Mafiosios in Juarez. With a lot of bite, facts, and allegations the lady tore into the Juarez drug lords, smugglers, and malfeasant city officials. Maybe Rose Moya was somebody he should talk to, Kerney thought. He tucked the paper under his arm and paid the bill. It would have to wait until the morning. It was midmorning when Kerney stood at the bridge that connected El Paso to Juarez. He had five thousand dollars of his own money, wired from the bank in Santa Fe, in his pocket. It was the sum total of his wealth.

The Rio Grande, a sluggish brown stream, smelled of effluent and industrial waste. On each side of the river, chain-link fences defined the border. Vehicles on the bridge were backed up at the checkpoints, and pedestrians moving in both directions pushed through the gates along the walkways. Kerney entered the procession and joined the tangled stream of people and cars along Juarez's Lerdo Street. The boulevard, lined with dental clinics, cut-rate pharmacies, bars, liquor stores, and tourist shops, was a conduit for day-trippers from the north looking for bargains or entertainment. The sidewalks were congested with hookers, street vendors, and musicians mixed in with tourists. A large plastic tooth hung suspended over the door of a dental office and neon signs blinked furiously along the strip. Cars in the street, jammed bumper to bumper in both directions, lurched in and out of traffic lanes, horns blaring and drivers cursing. Kerney got a taxi and gave the driver the address for the newspaper.

The offices for the newspaper were on the Plaza Cervantine, a tiny square with a gold bust of the Spanish poet as its centerpiece. The buildings surrounding the plaza housed artist studios, workshops, apartments above, and an experimental theater that put on plays in a renovated cafeteria. The building for the newspaper had a number of passageways that took Kerney to a patio cafe in a central courtyard and up a flight of wooden stairs to a suite of offices that opened on a balcony. The door was open, and Kerney entered to find an unoccupied room filled with books stacked haphazardly in piles on every available space. The walls were plastered with art and film posters. An enlarged photograph of Pancho Villa on horseback was tacked to a side door. Against one wall a desktop computer was running, the screen-saver pattern flashing a colored starburst on the monitor. A messy desk with a phone and ashtray filled with cigarette butts completed the decor. Kerney called out in Spanish, and a very pretty woman opened the side door and looked out. She held a teapot in her hand. Her hair, cut just to the bottom of her ears and close to her neck, draped down to the top of her left eye. Her eyes, brown, speculative, and direct, were provocative. At the corner other right eye was a small mole. Her full lips did not smile. She wore a pink top with a scarf over a long skirt and black hose.

"Yes?" the woman said, in English. Kerney switched languages.

"I'm looking for Rose Moya."

"One moment." She stepped back and closed the door. After a minute, the woman reappeared carrying a coffee cup in her hand. She paused to examine the man before moving to the computer table. He was tall and rather good-looking in a cowboy sort of way.

"Why do you want to see Rose?" the woman asked as she put the cup on the computer table.

"I would like to speak to her about the series on corruption."

"You've read them?" Her tone was skeptical.

"Only the most recent one," Kerney admitted.