WHETHER YOU’RE AN AMERICAN CITIZEN IS NOT THE ISSUE AT hand.” The speaker was a big man called Connelly. The light twisted and ran in his pink scalp.
“Quit hassling me, then.” Jonah’s stomach groaned. They’d kept him waiting a long time, and he was exhausted. He needed a shower and he needed food and he needed sleep, but he was still so far from home.
Connelly chuckled. The door opened and the other agent, Gonzalez, reentered bearing three Styrofoam cups. He set one down in front of Jonah, steam snaking out from the coffee. Gonzalez was the younger of the two. A smooth and serious face, sculpted black hair. He sat and folded his hands on the burnished silver tabletop. A slender digital recorder sat on the table between them.
“You”—Connelly consulted his notes—“left New Orleans to visit a woman named Luz Hidalgo in Las Monarcas, Coahuila.”
“She was my girlfriend.” Jonah wiped grit from his eyes. “That’s like the fourth time I’ve said it. Please. Either tell me what the hell is going on or let me go home.”
“Okay, here’s the hang-up.” Connelly was slate-colored eyes in a pale face. “A Luz Hidalgo from Coahuila recently blipped on our radar. Nothing significant enough for us to worry about, but it seems she helped some cartel boys pull off a massacre. Bunch of bodies, a face stitched onto a soccer ball—an instant classic. We’ve got her name on a little list of narcos now and everything.”
Jonah looked at the two agents and started laughing. “Come on, man. I saw that face thing in the news down there.”
Connelly grinned. “Unmentioned in a newspaper doesn’t mean her name hasn’t gotten around.”
“You’re joking. You have to be.”
“Not in the slightest, Mr. McBee.”
“It’s fucking impossible. I just saw her. I mean”—Jonah shook his head—“there’s gotta be millions of Luz Hidalgos.”
“I’ll grant you that.” Connelly spread his hands. “But understand, I don’t give a sincere rat’s ass what your girlfriend is into. I care about you showing up at my border looking—well, let’s just say it—looking like shit. You’re flustered by harmless questions. And the first name out of your mouth is a girl hooked up with a drug gang.”
Jonah exhaled and looked into the corner of the room. White painted cinder block.
“I don’t want to make this a bigger production than it has to be, but I need some answers first.” Connelly tapped his pen on his notepad. “Show me how this all adds up.”
Jonah sighed.
“I’m going to read you some names,” Connelly went on, “and I want you to tell me if they mean anything to you.”
“Fine.”
“Juan Luis Medina.”
“Nope.”
“How about Cicatriz?”
Jonah waited for more. “Is that a name?”
“Cecilia Garcia.”
“No.”
“Oziel Zegas y Garcia.”
“No, man,” Jonah said. “Look, I just want to go home. I haven’t done anything wrong.”
“Help us believe that.” This was the other one, Gonzalez. A measured tone. “Earlier, you said Luz lived in New Orleans but she recently moved back to Mexico. Tell us what happened.”
I’m not afraid—Luz had said that to him in the dark of his bedroom that night. When all the possibilities began to chip and fray. I’m not afraid. Jonah understood less now than he did then about Luz, though her fearlessness seemed to remain. She couldn’t have done the things these men were saying, but there was the matter of her kidnapping. At best these men had it backward, and that was a stretch. But Jonah didn’t tell them so. It wouldn’t matter, and they didn’t deserve it. Jonah just had to get out of here. He had to keep going. He had to get home and start building something. The lights in the room sizzled and swelled.