LESLI BOOKED THEM A FLIGHT from Palm Springs to El Paso. As the plane begins its descent, Erica looks out the window at the glittering nighttime sprawl of El Paso and Juarez, Mexico—separated only by the shimmering black ribbon of the Rio Grande. The plane lands and they head to an airport hotel, where Erica falls into a deep sleep.
Lesli has arranged for a van and a Spanish-speaking driver to take them across into Mexico, and they set out early the next morning. The little bit of El Paso Erica sees looks poor and scruffy, but nothing prepares her for Juarez. As soon as they cross the border, any semblance of order disappears. The traffic is dizzying—cars, bicycles, and scooters dart in and out, cut each other off, fill the air with honks and curses. Shops seem to be exploding out of their storefronts, the sidewalks are filled with multicolor displays of everything from fruits to dresses to toys to electronics, music blares from tinny speakers. There are shaved-ice carts, tortilla stands, and stray dogs by the dozen.
They drive through town and soon they’re in a vast slum that stretches as far as the eye can see. Thousands and thousands of shack-like houses jammed together, their walls leaning in ominous indecision, windowless, waterless. Wires carrying pirated electricity, barefoot children, smoke from ten thousand cookstoves mixing with the dust and sand to haze the air and—coupled with the filth—assault the nostrils.
Children run alongside the van with their hands out, shouting for money. Adults stare warily as they pass. The driver turns down a narrow street, so tight it feels as if the van could knock against one of the houses and set off a domino reaction that would level half the slum. Then he stops. “This is it.”
Erica and the driver get out. The house they are in front of looks just a little bit nicer than its neighbors. The outside is freshly painted, there’s a flowerpot beside the door, the curtains in the window look new. Erica knocks on the door, and an older teenage girl opens it. She looks smart and hard. The driver asks her name and she says, “Dolores.” Then he begins to explain in Spanish who they are and why they’re there.
She cuts him off. “I speak English.” Then she turns to Erica. “And I know who you are. Arturo is my brother.”
“Do you know . . .?”
“That he’s dead? Yes, of course I know. It’s been all over television, all over the neighborhood. Thanks to you. What do you want? Why did you come here?”
Erica motions to the driver and he returns to the van. “I’m very sorry,” she says.
“No, you’re not. People like you play games with people like us. You get famous, you get rich. We die.”
“I want to find out who killed your brother.”
“I told him not to go to the States. I told him! Idiota! Estupido idiota! Estupido! Estupido Arturo!” Dolores clenches her fists and for a moment Erica is afraid the girl will hit her—but then her shoulders slump and her mouth opens and tears pour from her eyes. “Arturo, mi Arturo, mi hermano Arturo . . .”
In that moment Erica hates her job, hates the voyeurism, the intrusion onto private sorrow. Is Detective Takahashi right, are we all vultures? She wants to put her arms around this girl, wants to bring her solace, wants to bring her brother back. But she can’t bring him back. And she didn’t kill Barrish or Yanez. In fact, she’s trying to find out who did. She takes a deep breath. She has a job to do.
Dolores slowly pulls herself together—clearly this isn’t her young life’s first sorrow. She reaches into her jeans and takes out a tissue, blots her eyes and blows her nose. “Do you want to know why my brother is dead?” she asks in a remarkably matter-of-fact voice.
Erica nods. Dolores leads her into the house. It’s just two small rooms, with a curtain over the doorway that leads to the back room. The front room has a rudimentary kitchen, several daybeds, and a flat-screen TV.
Dolores pulls back the curtain. A woman who is probably forty-five but looks ninety is on the bed, skeletal, unconscious, near death. “This is our mother. Cancer is eating her alive. It is over. But a month ago she was still getting up, still eating. We had hope. Stupid us. There is a doctor who says he can cure cancer, but he wants twenty thousand dollars. Arturo sent ten thousand and said the other half would be coming soon. The doctor took the ten thousand and gave Mama some stupid blood treatment. But Arturo was so proud. He thought he bought Mama life.” She laughs bitterly. “But he bought himself death.”
“Did he say where he got the money?”
“He told me he won it gambling, but Arturo could never lie to me.” Dolores walks over to the bed and strokes her mother’s forehead.
“So that’s all he said, he gave no hint of who paid him?”
Dolores shakes her head.
“We’ll find out who is behind all this. I promise.”
Dolores sits on the side of the bed, takes her mother’s hand and kisses it, holds it to her cheek. “No matter what you do, it won’t bring Mama back. Or Arturo.”
Erica heads out to the van and her flight back to New York. As she sits in her window seat looking down at the endless brown expanse of southern Texas, she feels frustrated but determined—the trip to Juarez didn’t bring her any closer to knowing who hired Yanez, but she’ll get there, yes she will.