MATÍAS RECEIVED A CALL FROM JAMIE McPeek that lasted almost an hour. He took extensive notes, drawing circles around names and connecting them with arrows and lines. Large blocks of the flowchart were missing: the Mexican parts. Paco was doing what he could to fill them in, but the rest was up to Matías.
“They’re going to move soon,” McPeek told him.
“Weeks? Months?”
“Once they get the warehouse manager roped in, it’ll just be a matter of time before they’re ready to start shipping. ATF’s already tracked three separate shipments of weapons from Texas into Mexico. I’ll have all the serial numbers and information faxed to you. You’ll have them by tomorrow.”
“Good-bye, Jamie.”
“Adiós, Matías.”
Matías hung up the phone and looked over his notes again. They were lucky on the American side to have a voice on the inside of José Martinez’s operation. No member of Los Aztecas was lining up to give information to the police in Ciudad Juárez, though Matías would have paid dearly for the source.
Paco looked up from his desk. “Good news?” he asked.
“There’ll be some faxes coming in from Agent McPeek. About guns the Aztecas are taking in.”
“I don’t like it when they let guns across the border,” Paco said. “It’s too dangerous. We might not get them all.”
“Try not to think about it,” Matías said. He stretched and looked at his watch. It was time to be gone from here. “Anyway, I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Oh, I put a dedicated team on Víctor Barrios,” Paco said.
“And?”
“Nothing so far. If he goes to the depot, we’ll know right away.”
“What about José’s contact there?”
“Oh, yes! I have that. One second. Here it is: Gonzalo Flores.”
“Do we know anything about him yet?”
“The depot is locally owned, so we can’t get his work records without alerting the whole place to what we’re up to. I made an official request for his financial records as soon as we got the name. They tell me it’ll take forty-eight hours.”
“All right.”
Matías stood up and put on his jacket. It was home to another microwaved meal eaten in front of the television set and then a night spent sleeping alone. Elvira hadn’t come back from her sister’s and talking seemed to do no good. Matías didn’t know how long she could stay away from her firm and keep her job.
He left Paco behind and took the elevator down to the basement level. It was nighttime when he drove onto the street, though the guards around the building were no less vigilant. He took the long way home, watching the few brave pedestrians that ventured onto the streets after dark, ghosting buses from the maquiladoras that trundled through the city on the way to rundown neighborhoods and colonias alike.
His key stuck in the lock of the inner door of the vestibule at his apartment building, but some wrangling got it to turn and he was inside and up the stairs. The apartment itself was as dark and neglected as it had been when he left. Dishes had begun to accumulate in the sink and something unpleasant was rotting in the kitchen trash.
It took a half-hour to wash the dishes and the garbage went into the chute. Matías found he was ravenous and consumed two microwaved meals instead of one, electing to eat them out of their plastic trays rather than dirty the dishes all over again. There was a recorded fútbol match on the television and though he was a fan of neither team, he watched the whole thing.
He noted the time and thought about going to sleep, but he wasn’t ready yet. Unbidden, his phone was in his hand and he was speed-dialing. Elvira answered right away.
“Good evening, my love,” Matías said, and he muted the television.
“It’s late, Matías.”
“Were you sleeping?”
“No.”
“Then there’s no harm in me calling.”
“What do you want, Matías?”
“I want you to come home.”
There was the murmur of a sigh from Elvira’s end, and then she said, “I don’t know. I still haven’t made up my mind.”
Matías flicked through voiceless channels as he talked. Finding nothing, he snapped off the television. “If you won’t come home, then at least talk to me when I call. I miss the sound of your voice.”
“I miss yours.”
“You can hear it all the time if you come home.”
“Don’t keep pushing.”
“I will. I will until you give this up and come back to where you belong.”
“My sister says I could get legal work in Monterrey. We could move here.”
“And what would I do?” Matías asked.
“You could do private security.”
Matías thought about everything that had happened, everything that was going to happen. The depot. The trucks. He shook his head, though Elvira couldn’t see. “I’d be no good at it.”
“Won’t you think about it?”
“All right, I’ll think about it.”
“Thank you.”
“Now tell me about your day. Don’t leave anything out.”
“Won’t you be bored?”
“I’ll never be bored with you.”