“Taxi, mister?”
Treviño looked the driver over and turned him down. The temperature had dropped considerably, as it did in desert towns, but he would rather have shot himself than get into one of those cars. He lit a cigarette and walked around the block.
According to Ramiro, there was no way to get into the compound unnoticed. Treviño remembered the informant warning him that the main building was on the other side of three heavily guarded enclosures.
As he watched the smoke drift upward, Treviño saw the scarlet moon floating above his head. He suddenly felt he was in the presence of a ghost.
He turned and noticed that not only had it gotten colder, but a nocturnal wind was lifting the red-light district’s garbage and thrashing it around in the air. It was hard to think of the wind as a single thing: it looked like an invisible pack of jackals tearing the alley to shreds. Isolated gusts rustled newspapers and plastic bags up and down the streets, whipping them around in a frenzy.
Maybe it was the moon or the vision of desert ghosts, but Treviño suddenly knew how to get into and out of the ranch. True, he’d be risking his life. But he learned back when he was a cop that if you want to solve a mystery, sometimes you have to take on challenges that are bigger than you are.
He asked himself several times if it wasn’t the tequila thinking for him. If he set the plan in motion, there’d be no turning back. He had to get in, locate the girl, and get out like a bat out of hell. Just figure out if she’s there or not, and if she is, let Mr. De León know they should start negotiations. And if something goes wrong? He fiddled with his cell phone. If he ever wanted to smooth things over with his wife, this was exactly the kind of trouble he needed to avoid. The moon slipped behind some clouds and he dialed Mr. De León’s cell, waking the businessman up.
“Treviño? What is it?”
“I was just calling to see if the kidnappers made contact.”
“No, no one’s called.” Mr. De León cleared his throat. “Would you like to talk to the consul? He’s manning the phone in the living room.”
“There’s no need.”
“Any news?”
Treviño took a deep breath. “We need to figure out if your daughter is with El Tiburón. If she is, we need to get the negotiations started. Otherwise she won’t be alive for long. She’s not the first woman this guy has taken. Trouble is, I’ve confirmed he’s hiding out on the ranch held by Los Nuevos.”
“Do whatever it takes. Please.”
Treviño thought for a moment and added, “I figured out a way to sneak into the compound. I don’t know how I’m going to get out just yet, but I’ll deal with that once I’m inside. I need to confirm your daughter is there. If everything goes as planned, you won’t be able to reach me for a few hours, so wait for my call.”
“Is there anything we can do from here?”
“When you talk to the Bus, tell him to wait for me at the hotel. He needs to stay put and wait for me. Tell him the car should be ready and he should have guns on hand for whatever we might need to deal with.”
“Where’s the Bus? What’s going on?”
“Don’t worry about him, I gave him a special assignment. Another thing: if this thing goes wrong, my wife and daughter will depend on you.”
“We made a deal, and I’ll honor it. Go in there and find my girl. You have my word.”
The wind stirred the garbage in the street. Treviño stared at the town’s main drag in the distance and nodded.
“All right. I’ll call you as soon as I can.”
De León breathed a sigh of relief. “I’ll make it worth your while.”
The detective hung up and checked his watch. It was three in the morning. He did his best to close his jacket and walked toward the avenue; the bus terminal was just three blocks away. Travel and prostitution always go hand in hand. When he caught sight of the sign for the station, he checked his reflection in a store window to make sure he wasn’t being followed.
The first thing he noticed when he stepped inside was that only the second-rate lines ran at that hour. He walked up to the Autobuses del Golfo counter and greeted the clerk.
“I’d like a ticket for the first bus to Paso de Liebre.”
“You crossing the border?” the man behind the counter asked, giving Treviño’s clothes a quick once-over.
“Yes, sir. Have to be there bright and early.”
“There’s one about to leave. You’ll be there in forty minutes.”
“That works.”
The clerk took Treviño’s money and handed back his change and a ticket. “Hurry up and get to gate five,” he urged. “The bus is about to leave.”
The detective walked through the back entrance and out to the parking lot. It wasn’t hard to spot the only clunker with its engine running.
“Come on, get in.” The driver hurried him along.
The first rows were filled by a group of teenagers dressed like basketball players who were passing around a bottle of alcohol poorly concealed by a brown paper bag. As he walked along the aisle he noticed a few of them looking at him with the professional interest of pickpockets. Several of them had tattooed arms. One pair of eyes, belonging to a sinewy, dark-skinned kid in shorts and a sleeveless T-shirt, bore into him like daggers. Behind that bunch: a woman nodding off with two little girls and a couple of old-timers. No one wanted to sit near seat thirteen, he realized, which meant he could have the row to himself. He took it and got comfortable.
“Paso de Liebre!” shouted the bus driver. The bus shook as he fired up the engine, and after slaloming past a few obstacles they were on the highway.
The bus swayed like a boat out at sea. Treviño rested his head on the window, crossed his legs, and decided he’d let himself close his eyes for five minutes. Just five minutes, he thought.
In his dream, a breeze caressed the fronds of a tall palm tree. He was on the beach with his wife, and it was that day they’d spent hours making love right after she’d moved into the hotel. The sun was strong but pleasant and it lit the ocean a blazing blue. The light disappeared as the bus rattled to a stop.
While the rest of the passengers panicked, Treviño checked his watch. It was five in the morning.
“What’s going on?” moaned one of the old men. His accent suggested he was from Campeche. A moment later, he exclaimed, “Holy Mary!”
A group of men dressed in what looked like black military gear approached the bus. The leader of the pack had a gun tucked into the front of his pants.
“Don’t be alarmed,” the bus driver smiled. “They’re just keeping the highway safe.”
“Oh, God. Oh, dear God,” the mother of the two girls intoned.
The driver opened the door to the bus and two of the soldiers stepped inside.
“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,” said a slim man with a broad smile. Treviño was immediately suspicious of him. “This is a checkpoint, for your own safety.”
What he didn’t say, though, was whether he was from the army or the marines, and the gun in his right hand was pointed straight up, contrary to military search protocols. Behind him, a man with a shaved head pointed an assault rifle at them. The man with the crocodile smile walked up the aisle and the detective noticed he was carrying a revolver—not exactly standard army issue.
Before reaching the rear of the bus, the man with the revolver turned, satisfied, and walked back to stand next to the driver.
“Close your curtains, ladies and gentlemen. We’ll be passing a military base.”
The driver started the bus and did his best to avoid a series of enormous potholes. The detective’s traveling companions were concerned.
“What’s he doing?” one of the old men said. “This isn’t the way.”
While his buzz wore off, Treviño tried to see through a slit in the curtains. The only thing he could make out in the five minutes or so they were on the road was a row of pine trees shrouded in the morning mist.
The next time the bus stopped he saw they were at an intersection: a dense forest and what looked to be an unwalled cemetery barely peeked through the fog. It was a terrible idea to travel without Bustamante, he thought.
“All the men get off here. The women stay on the bus,” ordered the man with the revolver.
“Hey, what’s going on?” yelled the woman.
“Just do as you’re told, ma’am,” he said, silencing her. “It’s for your safety.”
The detective got off the bus behind the group of boys, who, young and foolish as they were, kept cracking jokes. Six armed men immediately surrounded the group. One ordered them to line up with their identification in hand.
“Forward, march!” came an order from somewhere in the fog.
“Forward, march!” the smiling man repeated, and the line started moving.
After twenty paces, Treviño was able to make out a group of men sitting around a table under an improvised tent made of tree trunks and palm fronds. The travelers approached, handed over their papers, and lined up with their backs to the inspectors. More armed men (impossible to say how many) oversaw the operation.
When it was their turn, a soldier escorted them over to the table, where the smiling man who had boarded the bus, the one the others called Captain, was waiting. The man standing beside him was huge. Treviño was used to people in the north of the country being tall, but this guy broke every record. His black hair had been shorn into a buzz cut and one of his ears was grotesquely swollen.
When they got to the table, the captain asked for their papers. He didn’t even bother examining the boys’ passports.
“What’s this?” he asked.
“A passe-port, sir,” said one boy in shorts and a sleeveless T-shirt.
The officer shook his head.
“You’re Mexican?”
“Yes, sir,” said the boy, with a marked Central American accent.
“From Chiapas.”
“Then you can tell me where in the state Lake Pátzcuaro is.”
The boy hesitated a moment before answering, “In the north.”
While the soldiers behind him laughed, the officer replied, “North is right, boy. It’s all the way up in Michoacán. Inside, all of you. Fucking cholo punks. Chiapas …” Turning to the other soldiers he said, “Time they came up with a better line.”
As the officer compared Treviño’s face with the picture on his fake identification, the detective discreetly scanned his surroundings. They were on some kind of ranch made up of what looked like a main house, a barn, and a small stable with a horse inside.
“Name?”
“Juan Rentería.”
“Age?”
“Thirty-five.”
“Occupation?”
“Salesman.”
“What are you doing so far from Veracruz?”
The address on Treviño’s papers indicated he was from there.
“I’m headed to the border for a business meeting.”
“That’s where you’re going?”
“That’s right.”
“Let’s see your wallet.”
Treviño handed it over, along with the two hundred dollars in small bills and the fake visa that were inside. Like his identification, it had all been provided by the consul. The soldier hesitated. “What did you say you do, again?
What’s your line of work?”
“Construction materials,” replied Treviño.
“All right,” said the man with the smile, tossing his wallet into the same sack that held the other travelers’ belongings. The colossus made sure he wasn’t carrying any weapons and gestured to him to get back in line.
When they’d finished interviewing all the men, they sent for the women and children and lined them up. The moment of truth had arrived.
The man with the crocodile smile called for their attention.
“Good morning, fellow citizens.”
“Good morning,” echoed the fake Chiapans, expectantly.
“You’re all headed north, and most of you don’t have papers. Which means you’re looking for work.”
In a speech he seemed to have delivered many times before, the man explained that the coyotes working the border would charge them somewhere between two and three grand to get them across. That they’d leave them in the desert to die of hunger and exposure. That they’d probably get shot by either the rangers or one of those vigilante lunatics, and for what? To make a sorry fifty bucks a week working like dogs and being humiliated by gringos?
“We’re offering you two thousand dollars per month, and you don’t even have to cross the border. We’re looking for a few brave men. A few real men.”
“Listen,” said one of the old men from Campeche. “We’re just passing through. We’re on our way to McAllen and were going to stop by Champotón on our way back.
The officer in the wide-brimmed hat ignored his comment.
“Last call. Anyone who wants in should get in the bus. Whoever doesn’t, stay here.”
The cholo and the fake Chiapans were the first to climb on board. Treviño slid in among them. The only ones to stay behind were the old men from Campeche and a couple of Canadians.
“All right, you’ll stay with the women and children. Another bus will come pick you up.”
“You promise?” asked the woman.
The man smiled. “Of course.”
Treviño looked at the woman and her daughters with concern.
“Come on, keep your sorry ass moving,” said one of the soldiers, pushing him forward.
Before he had time to regret his choice, he was sitting in the back of the bus as it drove along a narrow road into the compound. He was riding the wave now. Would he be able to get out?
When the bus couldn’t go any farther, they were ordered off. The detective’s feet sank into the sticky yellow dirt. Almost immediately, they heard a burst of machine-gun fire. He looked at the soldiers escorting them, but they didn’t flinch. Terror was par for the course.
“Don’t be a little bitch. Keep it moving.”
They were ordered to climb a little hill. Slipping and stumbling, they reached a barbed-wire fence guarded by four armed men. Contrary to the gringo’s intel, there were no cameras or alarm systems to be seen. There were even a few gaps in the perimeter.
He couldn’t believe what he saw next. After that first fence, the plateau dipped into a depression the size of a football stadium. The space was divided into four camps of about fifty people each. He’d been hearing about this kind of thing for months, but had always thought the accounts were exaggerated. As the smell of gunpowder and burning rubber reached him, he realized how wrong he’d been. This wasn’t just some little ranch. It was the size of a military base.
His heart leaped for a moment at the sight of what he thought was a row of electrical poles in the distance, which would have meant that the highway—and salvation—was within reach. But it was just a few cables strung between the trees for mountaineering practice. A voice inside him told him to give up hope. A man on horseback rode up to the other side of the fence, an assault rifle strapped to his back.
“Today, assholes!”
There was another fence when they got to the bottom of the slope; on the other side, fifty or so men dressed in tattered clothes, most of them shirtless, took turns shooting weapons of different calibers, first into a brick wall, then into a dummy or the dirt slope. Two pillars of dark smoke rose off to one side. One came from a tree; the other, from what seemed to be a pile of burning clothes. It took Treviño a minute to make out the charred human remains underneath.
A bald man in military attire stood in front of two dozen ragtag trainees, who hung on his every word. After aiming his assault rifle at a target and showing them how to shoot it, he handed the weapon to the guy closest to him: a leathery-skinned teenager with a strip of fabric tied around his forehead. The man in military attire pointed toward two dozen soda cans hanging in front of what remained of a house, and the teenager aimed, then fired four times. The man examined the results and passed the weapon to the next in line. As Treviño made his way down the hill, he felt his blood run cold: the bald man was the guy he’d had trouble with down at the beach. The Colonel, himself.
A skirmish suddenly broke out. In one of the other groups, the colossus with the cauliflower ear was kicking a man who was already flat on the ground. No one dared step in to separate them, and the giant didn’t stop until the man was unconscious. Only then did he calm down.
The soldiers who’d piled them onto the bus walked them to the middle of the camp, where they met their instructor for the day: a man around fifty years old, whom the other men called the lieutenant. He’d been expecting them. A few yards farther in, yet another instructor was showing a different group of shirtless men how to make Molotov cocktails. Treviño was struck by the fact that they were using Coca-Cola bottles.
When it was his turn to shoot, Treviño made sure his aim was impeccable. He hit three bottles set at different spots on a tree trunk.
“All right, let’s see that again,” said the instructor.
Treviño repeated the feat, which wasn’t really all that hard. It was a good rifle and just needed a little adjustment to the sight. The lieutenant asked if he’d had any military training.
“I used to be a cop,” he confessed. Just as he and the consul had agreed beforehand, he went on to explain that he’d been on the force in Veracruz, where one of the gringo’s contacts could vouch for him.
“Why’d you quit?”
“Wasn’t enough for me.”
“Who’d you report to?”
“Antonio Segura.”
The instructor nodded and asked him to wait to the side until they’d finished this round. Treviño walked over to the row of pine trees, where the cholo was already sitting with the fake Chiapans. He breathed a sigh of relief.
They smoked in silence. Treviño looked the kid over from time to time. At around two in the afternoon, something like an alarm sounded over the loudspeakers and the newcomers had to line up. To Treviño’s concern, the Colonel walked over to say a few words to them. He thought he saw the man recoil when he saw him, so he tried to make himself invisible in the crowd.
“You have three weeks to prove your worth, and that worth will be measured by your participation in real operations. You will be judged on the basis of your resourcefulness, teamwork, obedience, and loyalty. You will not question orders. An infraction will get you corporal punishment. Traitors will be executed on the spot. At the end, the best will be invited to join the organization; the rest will join the staff. Desertion is not an option: whoever sets foot in here is in here for good.”
At three o’clock, they were taken to a barracks that must have been used for cattle at one point. A large, open space that held a row of at least thirty benches. On one of them, behind a column, a woman with Asian features and a body covered in tattoos was riding one of the fake Chiapans. She was naked except for a pair of knee-high cowboy boots. She caught sight of Treviño when he walked in and didn’t take her eyes off him.
When the Chiapan finished, he put his hands on the woman’s hips and said something to her that pissed her off. She slapped him jokingly, but hard enough to make it clear that she’d gone easy on him, and stood up. She took stock of her surroundings, then sauntered toward the newcomers, putting all her weight on one leg, then the other, as if they were industrial shock absorbers. It took Treviño a moment to understand that she was offering him her services. “Five bucks, sweetie.” He declined.
They were given ham sandwiches and coffee. After the meal, Treviño walked over to the two soldiers on guard duty and offered them cigarettes. He introduced himself by his assumed name and told them he was at their service. He asked a few practical questions:
“Where do we sleep?”
“In one of the barns, they’ll show you where later tonight.”
“What time do we get up tomorrow morning?”
“We start at five every day.”
A few minutes later he asked if it was true that they bused in prostitutes, like he’d heard. If it was true that some of the girls were foreigners, if there were any blondes, if they were hot. One of the guards told him to chill out, that he’d just gotten there and was already talking about taking a vacation, but he insisted:he had his expectations too. He’d signed up because he’d heard that the guys who got in were treated right, and that there’d be plenty of honeys.
“It’s pretty fucked at first,” offered the shortest of the soldiers. “But don’t worry, it gets worse.”
The others, who were sharing a joint, ignored Treviño entirely.
“You’ll be up to your ears in bitches, booze, pills, and weed, maybe even a little blow, but you’ve got a long way to go,” said the runt. “You gotta earn it, cabrón. Now, I don’t say this to get you all hot and bothered, but yeah, they bring us girls. Every month, month and a half.”
“And there aren’t any other girls around here?”
The runt went on teasing him for being impatient and asked him what was wrong with La Chinita. After beating way around the bush with talk about the cauliflower-eared giant’s short temper and what he did to guys who disrespected him, the runt said that, yeah, there were a few other women around, but they were reserved for the bosses.
“Sometimes the bosses bring in broads from outside. Those ones stay for just a few days.”
Treviño said he’d seen a blonde, maybe sixteen years old. She’d made an impression. They told him there were a few blondes hanging around, but he shouldn’t get his hopes up. The only time they left the main house was to get some sun, and that was in a little attached enclosure. When they were done, they went right back inside. Mostly Asian chicks. They’d brought them in around six months before, but there weren’t many left.
“There’s blondes, too, though,” said the other soldier, pointing at the main house. “I saw a few yesterday, from a distance. They were swimming in the enclosure with three or four buzz cuts standing guard. Real choice broads. They spent the whole time bouncing from the trampoline into the pool until they got tired and flopped into some colorful hammocks hung from the trees. They sunbathed out there and had drinks brought to them for a while. Three of them.”
Treviño asked if they were Mexican or foreigners.
“More like Russians,” the soldier replied. “A little long in the tooth, they’d had a lot of work done.” He said they’d been speaking a sharp, explosive language that sounded more as though they were crushing gravel between their teeth than talking and that—judging by the way they shouted at one another—they didn’t get along all that well. Mockery and contempt sound the same in any language. Treviño said he’d like to get a look at the women, anyway. He was just finishing up his cigarette when the colossus with the cauliflower ear walked up.
“Get to work, gentlemen.”
They unloaded a shipment of bricks from the back of a truck and set them on a plot that had recently been cleared, at the back of which they could see barns and what was probably the main house. A third fence and another pair of guards stood between them. Just as Treviño was thinking there was no way to get over there, much less to explain himself if he got caught, the colossus got a call on his cell phone and asked if anyone there knew anything about plumbing.
Treviño raised his hand.
“Can you install a Jacuzzi?”
He nodded convincingly and was told to head straight up toward a two-story structure that was pretty run-down but still bore some resemblance to a house. He advanced cautiously until he reached the first guard, who leveled his rifle at him.
“They sent me to install a Jacuzzi,” he explained.
“Who did?” The sentry looked at him suspiciously.
The sentry looked into the distance, nodded, then told him to head straight up there and keep it moving.
“Go around back and report to Sergeant Garlanza.”
Treviño walked toward the house at a leisurely pace, as if he were admiring the landscape. He noticed four square windows on the second floor and two larger, rectangular ones on the ground floor. He estimated that if the structure was built like the estates of yesteryear, there were probably only four bedrooms, all upstairs. When he’d almost reached the front of the house, he paused. In one of the upstairs windows he could see an Asian girl of about twenty-five or thirty doing a line of coke. The plunging neckline on her dress revealed the beautiful woman’s breasts as she bent forward. So this is where the bosses hang out, he thought.
“Go on, quit dragging ass,” called the sentry, tossing a rock at him.
As he walked, the sentry whistled to another guard who was standing at the front door to the house. The second guard responded in kind, and when Treviño got close enough, he gave him a good kick in the back.
“Keep moving that slow and you’ll catch a bullet. Around here, we follow orders.”
“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.”
“This way.”
He took Treviño around back, where a bunch of muscular dudes in swim trunks were chatting up three women wearing only thongs. It didn’t take the detective long to notice that contrary to what the runt had said there was only one real woman among them, a tall brunette with shapely long legs and enormous implants. The other two were bottle-blond transvestites. So this is how the “real men” spend their time, eh, Treviño thought and looked away. A soldier was cooking meat on a grill nearby.
“The reinforcements are here, boss.”
One of the more sour-faced members of the group stood and walked over to him without putting down his beer.
“You’re a plumber?”
“I do construction, dabble in plumbing.” Treviño saw an enormous eight-person Jacuzzi still in its original packaging and, next to it, a state-of-the-art water heater.
“How long will it take you to install?”
“About three hours, sir.”
“You’ve got half that. And remember, it’s your ass if you break this shit. What do you need?”
“Some bricks for the base. Cement. A set of wrenches. And help lifting the thing.”
“The Jacuzzi is fine where it is. You move it, I bust your head. They’ll bring you the rest of that shit now. Get cracking. This guy will give you a hand,” he said, pointing to the soldier who had kicked him.
They were unpacking the water heater when Treviño heard new peals of laughter. Two blondes in their forties with spectacular fake tits had arrived. The man with the crocodile smile followed a few paces behind them, and all the way at the back there was the Colonel. Treviño hid behind the machine and tried to cover his face with his hat.
“Let’s go get those bricks,” he suggested. Just as he and the soldier were getting up, someone called out his real name.
“Carlos Treviño.” The Colonel was right behind him. “What, you don’t remember me? We met on the beach a while back.”
The men held the detective’s arms while the Colonel mercilessly pummeled his ribs and face. Eventually he got tired.
“Take him to the kitchen. I’ll be there soon.” The Colonel’s knuckles were bleeding. The men lifted Treviño into the bed of a pickup truck. “Awww shiiiit,” they said. “You’re gonna get yours.”
His body was floating on an immense wave of pain that made it hard for him to think. All he wanted was to get his hands on the cannonball lodged in his back, giving off flashes of black lightning.
They didn’t take him to the kitchen. Instead, they drove a good twenty minutes across hilly terrain. He suddenly thought he smelled boiled chicken. Then one of his attackers grabbed him by the arm and rolled him onto the ground. Opening his eyes was as hard as lifting a truck.
The first thing he saw was three men heating a gigantic vat that stood around three feet tall. A long-haired guy in a shirt splattered with dark stains lifted a neon green bottle and emptied its contents into one of the containers near him, out of which a hand protruded. Treviño suddenly understood who they were, what they were doing, and that this would be how he’d meet his end too.
“Hey, here are a few more.”
Only then did the detective notice the two bodies that had been thrown down beside him.
“How do you want them?”
“These two, same as the rest. But this other one”—he pointed at Treviño—“don’t touch him. The Colonel will come pay his respects after dinner.”
The guy with the long hair looked at him and nodded.
“Don’t touch this one. We’re waiting for the bald man,” he said to one of his helpers, who stopped in his tracks, shovel in hand. The other one laughed and stared at the ex-cop, who looked the other way and discovered a dozen trees in bloom. The big, lush bougainvillea and canary-yellow golden chains were like beaming smiles amid the chaos. Flowers existing in a parallel dimension, blithely unaware of the terror.
The guy with the long hair poured himself a handful of pills and swallowed them with a swig from his can of Coke. Then he went over to Treviño, pushed him over to a nearby tree, and tied his hands and feet with nylon cords. When he was finished, he walked back and handed a machete to one of his helpers.
“This one goes in the gray drum, that one in the blue. But not right now. Right now it’s time,” he went on, raising his voice so the two men could hear him, “to get something to eat.”
Treviño noticed a small piece of metal near him—probably the lid from a can of food. He covered it with his foot, praying no one else had seen it. The undertaker with the long hair looked at the detective, furrowed his brow, and planted himself right in front of him. For a moment, Treviño thought he was on to him.
“Who’s going to watch him?” asked one of the helpers.
“The guardians of the mountain,” said the man. “No one gets past them.”
Flashing his jack-o-lantern smile, the undertaker leaned over the detective and tapped him several times on the forehead to get his attention.
“Be right back,” he grunted.
And they left Treviño tied to a tree.
As soon as they were nearly out of sight, he grabbed the shard of metal and began rubbing it desperately against the ropes that bound his wrists and ankles. The moment they started to loosen, he wriggled out of them like an angry cat. It took a little while, but he’d cut himself free.
A bolt of pain shot through his back when he tried to stand, propping himself up on a shovel he’d found. He doubled over and had to take a deep breath before he was able to move his right leg forward, then his left.
He made sure there was no one in sight and, using the shovel for support, hobbled down the hill in the opposite direction from where the undertakers had gone. The good news was that there wasn’t a soul for miles. The bad news was that there wasn’t a rock, bush, or burrow to hide him anywhere, either. All it would take to catch him would be for someone to return to the execution site and look toward the horizon. Winded and trying to ignore the pain from his injuries, he made his way toward the crest of the nearest hill.
The evening sun painted the rocks a warm orange. He knew night would fall soon and the Colonel would be coming for him.
He reached the crest of the hill and saw that he was just ten feet from a large pond, probably stocked with fish.
Water was one of the things he needed most, so he carefully made his way down, knelt on the gravel, and drank like a dog until he couldn’t breathe anymore.
He checked to make sure there was no one around and leaned over again to wash the dried blood off his face. He rinsed his mouth and spat several times onto the dry earth. Then he removed the torn, bloodstained rag that had once been his guayabera, leaving on his sleeveless undershirt. His tongue was in bad shape and he was pretty sure that if he wiggled one tooth too hard, it’d end up in his hand.
He suddenly felt a change in his surroundings, as if all the birds had fallen silent at once. His whole body tensed.
A shiver ran down Treviño’s spine. He turned to see a straw hat appear at the water’s edge and under it a diminutive man with an impeccable goatee.
The shock nearly killed him. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, he thought. As the tiny man walked toward him, he wondered why he was so scared, and a voice inside him answered: Because he’s an evil spirit. A Chaneque. He thought back to all the stories he’d heard as a child. If you were alone near a river or spring they warned, you might get a visit from one of these wicked creatures, who prey on the defenseless. If one of them asked you a question, you were supposed to lie or trick him if possible, because they’d ruin your life if they got the chance. You only had to say the name of a loved one out loud, and that person would fall deathly ill or have a fatal accident that exact moment. He told himself it was all ridiculous, but he couldn’t stop himself from shaking as the visitor approached.
Unlike most dwarfs, the man had fine features, long fingers, and a harmonious build: a homunculus made to scale. The only shocking thing about him was his enormous eyes, tapered and yellow like a coyote’s. Other than that, he was dressed in typical Huastecan attire: white shirt and pants and a red handkerchief tied around his neck. His legs were hidden by the grass, so Treviño couldn’t tell whether he was wearing boots or huaraches.
The detective knew there was something dangerous about the visitor, but he couldn’t say why he found him so terrifying. He was clearly unarmed and barely came up to the detective’s waist. Still, when the little man walked up to him, Treviño’s blood ran cold.
“Good evening,” he said. “Because evening it is.”
Treviño nodded, thinking he might faint, while the homunculus looked him up and down.
“You’re not from around here. May I have some water?”
Treviño was about to answer that of course, he should drink all the water he liked, but then he saw the glint in his interlocutor’s eyes. If he hadn’t been nearly forty, callous, and deeply cynical, Treviño might have said that the visitor’s teeth had gotten sharper from one second to the next. He felt a cold wind on the back of his neck and had to swallow hard before he could speak.
“Of course.”
The little man smiled and knelt at the edge of the pond. He took three sips, using his hands as a bowl, then dipped his hat in and poured water over the crown of his head.
“Ah … sweet, sweet water …” He sighed, content. Then, without missing a beat, he turned to the former cop. “They don’t give me water here. Not even water. Things were better, before. I’m famous over there, over there on that hill. Over there, some people even pray to me,” he smiled.
Treviño mumbled that yes, things were better before and how terrible that they didn’t let him drink the water here. The homunculus smiled and walked over to him. He seemed to enjoy Treviño’s fear.
“No, you’re not from around here,” he said, locking eyes with the detective. “This isn’t your place. You gave me a sip of water and so I have to help you, but only once. Only for a little while. Then I’ll be watching you, and every time something bad happens to you, you’ll know it came from me.”
He took a deep breath, as if he were searching for something.
“The door you seek is down the hill, behind those trees. But take that shovel. You’re going to need it,” he added.
The little man leaned over, picked up some dirt, ground it in his left hand, and blew a bit in each of the four cardinal directions while muttering: “Brother Red, Brother Black, and all my brothers without names: clear a path so this Christian may leave unbitten. And now,” he said, turning to Treviño, “get out of here before the door closes.”
Treviño hesitated.
“Go on. It won’t last forever,” the tiny man insisted.
Aware that his life depended on that conversation, the detective extended his hand, palm up, and asked, “What can I offer you so you don’t hurt me? I’ve already given you water.”
Red in the face and trembling from the effort to control his temper, the little man spat: “Nothing you have is of any interest to me. If I want to hurt you, I will. Now, get out of here before I get angry!”
But Treviño didn’t give up so easily.
“What can I give you so you don’t hurt me?”
“Nothing!” the homunculus barked, purple with rage. “You can’t give me anything. Everyone has his own luck. All you can do is pass yours to someone else.” As soon as he’d said this, the tiny man clammed up, as if he’d gone too far, and waved his hands in the air. “Now get out of here, before the door shuts.”
He thought he was going to fall, but Treviño made it down the hill with the shovel in his hand. When he saw a few cargo trucks parked near the fence there, he regained what little was left of his lucidity and wondered if he was walking into a trap. What if those men were waiting to kill him?
About a dozen men were shoveling gravel from a massive cargo truck into a smaller one.
“Hey!” a man with a walkie-talkie yelled in his direction.
As he got closer, he was met with loud whistles. The workers seemed to be giving him shit.
“Motherfucker!”
“Always there when we need you, right?”
Next to one of the trucks, a man lay on the ground in a dark puddle, surrounded by flies. No one seemed particularly worried about it.
“What happened? You fall?” the only guy with a gun asked him. Treviño remembered the bloodstains on his clothes and nodded.
“Dumbass,” the man scolded.
“Everybody in,” called the driver of the truck. “We’re running late.”
One after the other, the workers jumped into the back of the truck. Treviño limped after them, thinking there was no way he’d make it, but someone behind him pushed him onto the flatbed. He curled up in a ball in the far corner next to the other workers and looked up at the clouds and the spectacle of a perfect blue and an unforgettable red fighting for control of the sky. The truck drove down the hill and past a small copse of pines, passed through a wooden gate opened for them by the guards themselves, and then took the highway toward the city.