ROBINSON’S DESK WAS EMPTY. HE WAS DUE in court to testify and would not be back until the afternoon at the earliest. Cristina caught up on paperwork. There was always paperwork. She had just gotten approval to add Felipe Morales as a confidential informant. Now he could be paid for the information he brought in.
She’d checked with Flip’s parole officer and found out most of what she needed to know. He was drug-free and at the time of his test hadn’t had alcohol in twenty-four hours. He had a full-time job working at a grocery store’s delivery hub. He lived with his mother at a stable address. He was scheduled for visits every three weeks from now until the end of time, or close enough.
The phone rang. Cristina answered.
“Detective Salas, it’s Jamie McPeek. Am I calling at a bad time?”
“No, Agent McPeek, I wasn’t doing anything in particular.”
“I was wondering if you had some free time this morning.”
“What do you have in mind?”
“Well, if you’re free, I’d like to take you to Juárez.”
“Juárez?”
“Yes. I thought you might want to see what’s happening from the other side of the fence.”
Cristina checked her watch and then her desk calendar. “Okay,” she said. “I can do that. When do you want to pick me up?”
“Give me an hour to get things squared away here.”
“All right, then.”
“See you soon, Detective.”
Cristina rose from her desk and went to Captain Cokley’s office. She knocked on the open door. “Hey, boss, I’m going to be off the board for a few hours this afternoon. Reynolds and Trevino are here, so they can pick up the slack.”
Cokley wore little granny half-glasses when he read. He peered over them at Cristina. “Where are you headed off to?”
“Special Agent McPeek wants to take me to Juárez.”
“Juárez? What’s in Juárez?”
“I guess it’s part of getting to know you.”
“Will they even let you carry your piece over there?”
“I don’t know.”
Cokley put down the sheaf of papers he was reading and turned to his computer. “Let me look into it, unless you’re out the door right now. I don’t like the idea of you going over there with nothing but harsh language.”
“Maybe McPeek will cover for me.”
“We’ll see.”
It took half an hour for Cokley to come up with an answer. He came by her desk still wearing his granny glasses.
“What do you got?” Cristina asked.
“According to what I found out, you’re not allowed to carry, but I think this is one of those times where it’s better to ask for forgiveness than for permission. You got me?”
“I get you.”
Cokley started to walk away and then stopped. “It’s just that I worry.”
“I’m sure I’ll be all right.”
“Keep an eye out, is what I’m saying.”
“I will.”
McPeek called Cristina at her desk when she was downstairs and Cristina left her desk. She found McPeek idling in a red zone. When she got in the car it was freezing; the air conditioner was turned up full blast. Cristina wished for a sweater.
“I’m glad you could find the time,” McPeek told Cristina. “Too cold?”
“No, it’s fine,” Cristina lied. “Where are we headed?”
“To see our point man in Juárez. He’s my opposite number. Matías Segura with the PFM.”
Driving to Mexico from Central Regional Command was a question of minutes. Less than a mile separated then from the other side of the river. They took the bridge from South Stanton Street, an El Paso thoroughfare that flowed directly into a Juárez street without interruption. At the border checkpoint, McPeek showed her federal ID to the men on duty and spoke Spanish to them. They asked for Cristina’s ID and she gave it to them.
If she expected to be relieved of her service pistol, Cristina was disappointed. After examining the women’s IDs closely, the men waved McPeek’s car through without need for inspection. They were in Juárez.
People said that Segundo Barrio in El Paso was just Juárez continued north of the river, but they were wrong. There was an immediate shift that took place once a person passed over the bridge and it was obvious to anyone who could see. The buildings were closer, the streets narrower and less well maintained. It was not like this everywhere in Juárez, but here it was. They saw an army vehicle within two minutes of crossing over.
Cristina did not visit Ciudad Juárez anymore. There was a time, in high school and in college, when she spent much of her free time in the neighborhoods along the border, especially the marketplaces and the tourist strip called Avenida Juárez. Near where McPeek crossed over there was the bridal district, where Cristina bought her wedding dress.
Things were different now, of course. That was the understatement. The reality was far more frightening. Bullets from Juárez sometimes landed in El Paso. There were thousands of police and military everywhere and at any moment whole neighborhoods could be shut down for police action. Cristina knew no one who crossed, even for a few hours, unless they had family in the city. There were still some hardy leftovers who would go anywhere without regard to the consequences, but the tourist industry in Juárez was functionally dead.
McPeek knew which way to go. They headed downtown where the streets opened up and the traffic thickened. Cristina started counting police vehicles she saw, but stopped at thirty. Once they passed a roadblock where cars were being checked one at a time, packing an entire avenue tight with trapped automobiles.
Cristina found herself bracing for something, then relaxing and then bracing again. She realized it was her unconscious expecting the bullet to come. Everyone knew the stories about pitched gun battles transforming a quiet block into a war zone. It could happen anywhere. She had to unclench her fingers from the armrest.
McPeek glanced down at Cristina’s hand. “Jitters?” she asked.
“Something like that.”
“I get them, too.”
“Tell me we’re almost there.”
“We’re almost there.”
Cristina had no idea where they were now. McPeek had taken them well away from the areas where tourists went and deep downtown. Cristina noted that she was seeing more and more heavily armed trucks passing and then they passed a sandbagged machine gun emplacement on a street corner manned by uniformed soldiers.
“And we’re here.”
There was no way to tell what the building had looked like before. With its small windows and high sides it would have looked like a fortress anyway, but the concrete car barriers, barbed wire and huge metal roadblocks welded together to make giant jacks transformed the structure utterly. Two pick up trucks with mounted weapons in the bed blocked the way and a half-dozen armed police occupied the traffic stop.
McPeek put down the driver’s side window and readied her ID. Cristina did the same.