The rules of wolfe, p.6
The Rules of Wolfe, page 6
Alone in the cabin, the Boss weeps for the first time since childhood. Weeps for his little brother. For all his dead brothers. For himself. For the lonely isolation he must henceforth endure to the end of his life.
And weeps the more furiously for his deep shame at such reprehensible self-pity.
6
Eddie and Miranda
The sun is clear of the hills when Eddie eases out of the flow of traffic on the federal highway and onto a frontage road and then into a large service plaza. He pulls up to a gasoline pump at one of the dozen islands and sits there with the engine idling as he scans the parking lot and the vehicles at the other pumps. His burn wound now stinging only a little under the scarf bandage.
As they were bumping along the trail in the dark it had occurred to him that the Escalade is carrying a tracker. He’d cursed himself for a dope for not having thought of that before. But then what difference would it have made if he had? They could not have gotten away except in the Escalade, and all the Company’s other vehicles were certain to be rigged with trackers too. He knows something of such devices—they are among the commodities in which his family traffics. He reflects on the ironic possibility that the unit in the Escalade was shipped into Mexico by his own kin. It would be so well hidden he’d be wasting precious time in searching for it.
The bright side, he tells himself, is that nobody intercepted them when they got to the highway. Which means that Segundo hasn’t been found yet, and may not be for a while longer, and that would be ideal. Or it could mean he’s only just been found and they’re now in the process of getting a fix on the Escalade. Or they already have a fix and are heading this way at this very minute.
It’s only another few miles to the turnoff to the Obregón airport, and although the Escalade is low on fuel they easily have enough to get them there. But it’s a rule that you can never know how a plan will go, so it’s best to be prepared in case it goes bad. Right now, the only preparation Eddie can think of is a full tank of gas.
Miranda too is peering all around. What are we looking for? she says.
Anything that doesn’t seem right. Anybody who looks suspicious.
Hey man, everybody out there looks suspicious.
Yeah, he says. You know how to pump gas?
Oh hell no, it’s way too complicated.
He ignores her sarcasm and shuts off the engine. Then slips the pistol under his shirt and says for her to fill the tank while he calls Evaristo.
Dear God, I pray I am able do this, she says as she gets out.
The plaza building is divided into a restaurant and a convenience store. There is a bank of telephone booths along the rear wall of the store, and after he gives the girl at the register a deposit to activate the gas pump, he finds a booth with a directory and looks up the number for Evaristo Sotomayor’s charter aircraft company and is relieved to find a home number for him too. He’d been afraid he might have only a cell. Evaristo is a longtime friend from school days in Brownsville. He learned to fly a plane before he was legally old enough to drive a car, and he’d been out of high school only a year when he got his Mexican commercial license in Matamoros and then went to work at a charter business in Ciudad Obregón that was co-owned by a cousin. Five months later the cousin was killed in a crash landing and Evaristo became the co-owner. He still has kin in Matamoros and has visited a few times and on each return got together with Eddie for a beer or two. But they haven’t seen each other now in almost a year. He’s the only person not in the Company whom Eddie knows anywhere in Mexico except for Mexico City and Tamaulipas state.
He calls the office first and the woman who answers tells him Evaristo isn’t there. No, he isn’t out on a flight, and she doesn’t know if he’s at home. Eddie thanks her, then tries the home number. An answering machine tells him to leave a message. Damn, what if he’s not home? The machine beeps and he says, “Oye, Risto,” and then pauses, unsure how to proceed, not wanting to record anything the wrong people might hear. Better to decide what to say and then call back. He’s about to hang up when the receiver clicks and Evaristo’s voice says, “Bueno?”
“Risto. Eddie Wolfe here. Long time, mano.”
“Eddie? . . . Oh, fuck, if I’d known it was you . . . whoa . . . you on a cell?”
“Landline. Why? What’s going on?” Damn, Eddie thinks, if he knows . . .
“What’s going on? The word’s out on you all over hell is what’s going on. Every charter in town’s been warned. I don’t know what you did—and don’t tell me, don’t, I do not want to know—but the word’s out, mano. Anybody helps you is fucked. Completamente chingado! Christ, I’m sweating gasoline just talking—”
“Just over the line, Risto, all I’m asking. Ten grand, American.”
“Fuck no! You’re outta your goddamn mind dicking around with those people! Lo siento, Eddie, but no way, man. Forget it.”
“Fifteen grand, I got it right—”
The line’s dead.
Son of a bitch. He keeps the receiver to his ear, telling himself to stay cool, think a minute. Think.
Something’s not right.
They found Segundo and put the word out on you, threatened anybody who helps you. Why bother with that if they’ve got you on a tracker and know where you are? Why didn’t they nail you at the highway? Could be they didn’t find Segundo soon enough. But they’ve got people all over this town and could have a dozen guys on top of you this minute.
So where are they?
He hangs up the phone and ambles to the front window and sees that the gas dispenser is back in the cradle of the pump next to the Escalade. Behind the tinted glass she’s probably tapping her foot and wondering what’s taking him so long.
He goes to the cashier and buys a bag of shelled peanuts and gets his change for the gasoline and makes a casual inspection of the people in the store. Nobody looks suspect, though that’s no assurance. He goes outside and stands on the walkway and runs his gaze over the other vehicles as he munches peanuts.
They wouldn’t sit here and watch you, he thinks. They wouldn’t wait to do it somewhere less public. They’d pop you here and now, fuck the witnesses.
But they haven’t done it.
Because . . . they’re not here.
Because . . . they don’t know you’re here.
Because . . . there’s no tracker in the Escalade. Or . . . there is, but it’s not working.
But no question whatsoever that everybody’s got the Escalade’s description and plate number.
Switch the plates or get another set of wheels? Plates is easier and there are a lot of black SUVs on the road. But not that many Escalades. And what if there is a tracker and it starts working again?
Best switch to another vehicle lickity-goddamn-split.
But not here. Parking lot’s way too open to view and he anyway lacks the door-lock and hotwire tools. Do it in town.
It occurs to him that their major identifying traits are the blue of his eyes and her bruised one. Make sure she keeps those shades on.
He goes back inside and buys a pair of sunglasses for himself and a state road map, some plastic-wrapped pastries, and two takeout cups of coffee. Then notices the prepaid cell phones on the shelf beside the register, and without dwelling on a reason for it he buys two of them.
When he gets back to the Escalade he opens the driver’s door, saying, I’ve got some bad news and some—
She’s not there.
He sets the purchases on the seat and touches the pistol under his shirt and looks around the lot and sees no sign of her.
Her zipped-up tote bag is still on the seat.
He returns to the store and surveys the place but doesn’t see her. Then enters the restaurant through the indoor entrance and looks around. Not there either.
He doubles back into the store. When did they grab her? Where would—?
He spots her coming out of the women’s restroom. She doesn’t notice him as she heads for the door.
God damn it! Why couldn’t she wait till . . .
Easy does it, bubba, he tells himself. Be cool. She has to get your permission to take a piss? Good to be alert, my man, but not so fucking jumpy.
He lets out a long breath and follows her out to the Escalade.
p
They meld into the heavy traffic bearing toward the city.
We can forget the airport, Eddie says. They’ll have people all over it. Same for the trains, buses, everything. It’ll be like that at every airfield and depot from here to the border. We can’t even stay on this highway. They’ll have guys at every toll station. Don’t stand a chance at a toll station.
They can do that? Miranda says.
Yes.
They can have people everywhere?
Just about. And we can’t know where they don’t. He gives her a quick look. Hey, listen. We know what they can do. They don’t know what we can do.
Right, she says. Her smile frail.
He hands her the map and tells her to mark all the toll stations north of Obregón. She opens it on her lap and starts circling the stations with a ballpoint from the console. She sees how close they are to the Sea of Cortéz and that there is a ferry at Guaymas. She says maybe they should cross over to Baja California.
He’s already considered that and says it’s a bad idea. The Company will have people at every port and marina. Even if we could cross, he says, we’d be on a peninsula. Fewer ways out. They’ll cut off the north end and down at the mouth of the Gulf. Forget Baja. It’d be stupid.
Excuse me, she says, it was only a suggestion. And I’m not stupid.
I know that, he says.
A few seconds pass. You’re right, though, she says. Forget Baja.
East? The Sierra Madres are in the way. He came to Sinaloa through those mountains, and the guys he was with said the Sierras are just as rough from one end to the other. The few roads that completely cross them are crooked as snakes and very slow going. Rockfall obstructions everywhere and sometimes blocking a road entirely. There are curves that run along the very edges of the cliffs. The slopes are littered with rusted and burned-up hulks of cars, trucks, buses. There aren’t many stretches without little white crosses marking the sites of fatal accidents. The real stopper, though, is that the Company has marijuana and poppy fields and processing labs all over those ranges through a chain of seven states and keeps a close watch on those roads.
We get spotted up there, Eddie says, we’d have nowhere to even try to run. Forget cutting through the Sierras.
He asks how far they are from the border, and she places a paper matchstick on the map’s mileage scale and then uses the match to calculate the distance. A hair over three hundred miles.
“As the crow flies. Too bad we ain’t crows.”
“Cómo?” she says with a frown at his use of English, and he repeats himself in Spanish.
She studies the map, the expanding desert north of Ciudad Obregón. There is no metropolis ahead of them but Hermosillo, the state capital. The only other towns of size between them and the border—and very much smaller than the capital—are Guaymas, a hundred miles south of Hermosillo, and Caborca, 150 miles to its north. On the border itself is Nogales, ten times larger than the town of the same name on the U.S. side. That’s it for actual towns. The rest of Sonora is open desert encompassing widely scattered pueblos and villages, traversed by few paved roads other than the federal highway but by a wide web of dirt roads so little traveled they do not even have identifying numbers.
Eddie knows the Sinas will have lookouts at the federal highway’s major intersections and exits, but they can’t cover those backcountry tracks. As he sees it, the trick is to make it through Guaymas and into the desert. If they can get on those desert trails, they can make it to the border.
To where on the border? she asks.
Yeah, he says, that’s the question.
She again consults the map. Nogales? The highway from Caborca connects with a highway going to Nogales. But no, she says, there’s a toll station and no easy route around it. Forget that highway. There’s another good road that goes up that way, but not directly into Nogales. There are two branching roads to it.
She holds the map up so he can take quick looks at it as he drives.
No, he says, there’s no exit off either one. If they watch those, they’ll have us. Forget Nogales.
He taps his finger on two places, one in smaller print than the other. There and there. Our only choices.
She peers closely and tells him the smaller one is called Sasabe and looks like no more than a village. The other is Sonoyta, a small town. From Caborca they can go to either place. Sonoyta’s a little farther but the road to it is paved. The only way to Sasabe is a dirt road.
We’ll decide in Caborca, he says.
The Company will have people watching for them everywhere along the border, but even though he has never been to this part of the country Eddie knows a few things about border towns and the smuggling of people. Hordes of migrants who want to cross to the United States—chickens, they’re called by the traffickers who take them over—make their way to those towns every week. And in all those places are agents who can arrange for their crossing, the so-called coyotes, though the term is as often applied to the guides who lead them across. That’s how it will be in Sasabe or Sonoyta, whichever they decide on. Flocks of migrants and plenty of coyotes ready to serve them.
We can hide among all those strangers, Eddie tells her, while we look for some guide who’ll be happy to take two more customers into his group. Then over the line we go.
Very good, she says with a nod. As if some thorny problem has been fully resolved.
But he knows they’re getting way ahead of themselves. They are only at the south periphery of Ciudad Obregón and it’s a long way to the border.
It’s a long way to the other side of Ciudad Obregón.
p
At the outskirts of town Eddie spies a hardware store in a small plaza and makes a quick turn into the lot. He finds a parking spot near the store and backs into it.
Hope you know how to drive, he says.
For Christ’s sake, kid, I wasn’t living with the Indians before I met you.
He tells her to get in the driver’s seat and keep the engine running and be ready to get them the hell out of there fast if it comes to that.
He returns with a plastic shopping bag containing screwdrivers of different sizes and two sets of electrical wires with spring clamps at either end. They are all the tools he needs to avail himself of almost any motor vehicle. She clambers back into the passenger seat and he turns off the distraction of the music. And they drive into Obregón.
7
Eddie and Miranda
The highway serves as a north-south thoroughfare through the city, and as on every Saturday market day Obregón’s traffic is thick and slow. Through a sequence of odd timing, they don’t come to their first red traffic light until they’re midway into town, but they catch every red light thereafter.
Eddie curses at each of these stops, where the Escalade is immobile and easier for the surrounding world to scrutinize. With hundreds of eyes on the lookout for this vehicle, it feels to him as conspicuous as a circus wagon with flashing lights. He keeps checking all the mirrors, though he has no idea how he would recognize Sinas men except by intuition. He takes little comfort from Miranda’s belief that the bastards will have a hard time spotting them in this heavy traffic. All the other cars are like camouflage, she points out, and theirs is not the only black SUV among them.
He’s keeping an eye out for a good place to snatch a vehicle, but Saturday morning on the city’s largest thoroughfare is not an ideal time or place to steal a car. Every parking lot they see is too open to view, too full of shoppers coming and going. He doesn’t want to leave the protective cover of heavy traffic to search the side streets for a car, but they’re almost to the city limits and the last of the traffic lights, where he will have to double back.
But now they come abreast of a shopping mall with the sort of lot he’s been searching for. It goes all the way around the big mall building, and its parking rows are lined with shade trees. He checks the rearview mirror and sees a station wagon crammed with three adults and a pack of kids, and behind it a bus. In the adjoining lane, a taxi, and a smoking Chrysler of 1960s vintage. Nothing to alarm.
He turns into the lot and goes around to the side of the mall where the trees are heaviest and their trunks present the most obstruction to the view of passersby. He drives slowly between two rows of cars, studying the array of vehicles, and fixes on a late-model Dodge van that has tinted windows and whose locks and ignition system he knows how to deal with.
That one, he says. It’ll do fine.
I like it, she says. We can sleep in it.
He stops short of the van, leaving himself room to back it out of the parking space. He rummages in the bag for a screwdriver and a set of clamp wires and then waits while a man and woman and two small children get into a gray sedan parked farther down the row. A minute later the car drives off, and he takes another look in the rearview before getting out. And sees a large red pickup truck with smoked windows come around the far end of the row.
It advances slowly and halts about ten yards behind them.
Miranda turns around to see what’s caught his attention. Oh shit.
The idling truck remains motionless.
If it’s them, she says, what are they waiting for?
Eddie is wondering the same thing. Then understands there’s another one coming around to cut them off.
He guns the Escalade forward and the red truck leaps after them—and up ahead a white sedan comes wheeling around from the far end of the row.
