TWO days later, a Friday, Finn and Mona were on an early-morning flight to Mexico City. Finn had switched shifts with a colleague so he could go with her, and now, sitting in the plane looking out the small window, he was struck by how similar Mexico City looked to LA, with its sprawl and nearby mountains. He could see no sign of its notorious smog, and indeed, a half hour later, he and Mona stood in clear, bright, high-altitude sunshine in the queue for a cab outside the terminal. It was Finn’s first time in the Mexican capital, and the airport alone elicited in him a discordant sense of both arriving somewhere new and discovering it to be familiar, as though, after years of staring at the moon through a telescope until he could recognize its every sea and crater, he was for the first time seeing its dark side. Mona—who, Finn knew, had spent a semester in Mexico City during college—seemed lost in another world entirely.
They climbed into a cab and asked the driver to take them to Ciudad Nezahualcóyotl. The guy shook his head. No way, he said. The driver of the car behind him refused as well. So did the next one. Finally, they gave up and went back into the terminal, where Mona asked someone where they could catch a bus.
On the bus, Mona explained where they were going.
“Carmen told me she grew up in Ciudad Neza and that she could hear the crowd roaring from the stadium whenever the home team, the Cementeros, scored a goal. So I looked up the stadium. Then I did a search for middle schools within shouting distance of it. There’s only one. That’s our starting point.”
Finn shook his head in wonder. “You’re a genius, you know that?”
Mona gave him a sad smile, then leaned her forehead against the window.
The bus dropped them outside the school gate. Finn looked around. The school’s perimeter wall was entirely tagged in graffiti. The high metal gate was locked. Across the street was a row of double-story, flat-roofed, informally designed buildings, some of them plastered, some plain cinder block. The only consistent feature was the bars on all their windows, both street level and upper floor. Several shops were open for business—a bodega, a cell phone shop, a man standing under an umbrella selling carnitas from a pushcart. Most of the vehicles traveling by were recent models. The sidewalk was in need of repair, and pedestrians skirted around large muddy puddles that remained from a recent rain. To Finn, they seemed like regular, middle-class people—women with strollers, guys in collared shirts, old folks. A couple of mangy-looking dogs trotted past, their ribs showing. Still, it didn’t match Finn’s idea of a slum. Grimy, unplanned, low income, sure. But why call it a slum?
Mona smiled. “The meaning of a word is its use,” she said.
“What?”
“Something I learned in college. Half the people here don’t have running water. No running water is one of the academic definitions of a slum.”
Finn reflected on that. “I guess I was expecting something worse, the way the cabdrivers reacted,” he said. “So, where do they get their water?”
“They buy it from those guys.” Mona pointed at a donkey-drawn cart ambling down the street. The cart had a water tank on it. People were placing plastic drums on the sidewalk. “The city gives away the water for free, but the residents have to pay the middleman. They buy what they can afford, then ration it month to month.”
Finn watched the man get down from the cart and attach a hose between the tank and a blue drum. Money changed hands. He looked up and noticed the water tanks perched on stands above the houses.
Mona pressed the security intercom button by the school gate. A woman in dark slacks and a cardigan appeared at the gate. Mona spoke to her in Spanish. Finn didn’t catch everything, but he understood when Mona explained that a former pupil had died in the United States. They wanted to notify her parents, she said.
The woman, who Mona said was the principal, invited them in. Finn and Mona followed her through the yard, where kids in uniform stopped their playing to stare at them. In her office, the principal asked them to sit and went to a filing cabinet. “Qué pena,” she said, flipping through files. She said some more, which Finn didn’t catch. Mona translated for him. “She says she remembers Carmen well. She was a spirited girl.”
“Ella quería ser actriz,” said the principal.
The principal pulled out a file and hesitated a moment before opening it. A conversation ensued that Finn couldn’t follow.
Mona said something, and then the principal nodded, relieved. “Pobre Carmucha,” she said, writing something down on a piece of paper and handing it to Mona.
Outside, Mona explained why the principal had hesitated. “Carmen has a little sister, Clara, who is a student at the school. The principal wanted to know whether she should tell her. I said no, wait for us to go to the parents first.”
Mona followed the directions on the piece of paper that the principal had given her, and Finn followed Mona. After a five-minute walk, they came to a narrow house. Mona pressed the buzzer. A potbellied man with gray hair opened the door but not the grille. Through its bars, Mona asked if he was Señor Jorge Amado Vega. He nodded warily. “We’re here about your daughter,” she said in Spanish.
“Clara?” he said.
Mona shook her head. “Carmen.”
He unlocked the grille. Jorge Amado Vega shook Mona’s and then Finn’s hand with a rough-skinned palm. They followed him through a lounge, down a lightless corridor, to a kitchen where a short, wiry woman stood at a counter, husking corn, dropping the husks into a bucket by her feet. Jorge Amado Vega introduced her as his wife, Maria Elena. Finn recognized Carmen in her features—the big, gleaming eyes, the golden skin stretched over high cheekbones. If Maria Elena was surprised to see them, she didn’t show it.
Finn looked around the room. He got the impression that Jorge Amado Vega had built the house himself. There was a kitchen table with a plastic tablecloth, a crucifix on the wall, and a TV on a sideboard. At the back, a dutch door gave onto a tiny yard. The top half was open, and something squealed from the yard. He glanced over the half door and saw the biggest hog he’d ever laid eyes on—a great, pony-sized beast too large for the yard containing it. He wondered if it could even turn around in there. Maria Elena emptied the bucket of husks into the yard, washed her hands, and invited Finn and Mona to sit. She sat across from them and stared. Finn got the feeling that she knew what was coming and was steeling herself. He assumed she would react with the forbearing he’d come to expect on the faces of so many of the migrants he had intercepted. Yet when Mona broke the news, tears burst from Maria Elena’s river-stone eyes. “Lo siento,” he heard Mona say.
Finn paid close attention. He wanted to follow the conversation with his limited Spanish. He was fortunate in that Carmen’s parents spoke slowly.
“It was the telenovelas,” said Jorge Amado, leaning against the doorjamb. He made no move to comfort his wife. He pointed at the television. “She watched that rubbish all day. It gave her foolish ideas.”
Mona turned to Carmen’s mother. “Señora Vega, when was the last time you heard from Carmen?” she said.
Señora Vega pushed herself up from the table, went to a drawer, and brought back a postcard. Mona read it, then handed it to Finn.
“She must’ve bought it at the commissary,” said Mona in English. “She didn’t tell me she’d contacted her parents.”
Finn looked at the card. On the picture side was the California flag. The card had been postmarked in Paradise, California, on April 3—three weeks earlier, and the day before Carmen’s arraignment before Judge Ross.
Carmen’s last words to her mother, scribbled in a childish script, were in a Spanish basic enough for Finn to read: “Mama, I am in the United States. God willing, I will make a new life here. I am sorry for leaving you and Clara. One day I will bring you both here, I promise. I love you like the sky. Carmen.”
Maria Elena asked how her daughter had died.
Finn noticed Mona hesitate.
“They think a rattlesnake bit her,” she said.
“A rattlesnake?” said Carmen’s mother, startled.
Mona put down the postcard and pulled a sheaf of documents from her bag. “These are copies of the reports from the hospital where they took Carmen, the coroner who examined her, and the police who investigated. I have translated all three into Spanish.”
Maria Elena looked at the pile of documents with a defeated expression. She made no move to reach for them. “Tell me what they say,” she said.
Mona nodded. “The detention center is in the desert, north of Mexicali. There are rattlesnakes there. The guards found Carmen unconscious on a bench. The doctor came, but it was too late. The snake had bitten her three times on the arm. Nobody saw it happen. They took her to the hospital, but she died in the ambulance.”
“What will they do with her body?”
“I will arrange to bring her here.”
Finn could feel the awkwardness. He heard Mona say, “The government will pay for it.” She glanced at him. He knew it wasn’t true. Mona presented another piece of paper.
“This document authorizes me to represent you in the United States,” said Mona. “It means I can arrange to have Carmen’s body sent back to you.”
She handed Maria Elena a pen and pointed where to sign. The mother made her mark. The father did the same. Mona put the paper in her briefcase. Then she put another one in front of Maria Elena.
“Señora, it is my belief that the authorities at the prison should have done more to protect Carmen. I believe they should have treated her more quickly. I want to sue them for negligence. But I cannot sue them directly; I need to do it on your behalf. If I win in court, then they will be forced to do something to protect others. This document authorizes me to sue the prison in your name. I want to make sure no other family suffers what Carmen suffered. What you have suffered,” she said. Her voice sounded strained.
“I don’t understand. You want to sue the American government?” said Maria Elena.
Mona explained how the government had outsourced the detention center to a corporation. “We think you have a strong legal case against the Border Security Corporation of America—the company that the government paid to look after Carmen. We believe we can make the company pay compensation. For your loss.”
Now it was the father’s turn to speak. “How much?” he said.
Mona told him about the man from El Salvador whose family was awarded $2 million after he died in a detention center in Texas. Carmen’s father looked at his wife, but Señora Vega did not meet his gaze.
She looked at Carmen’s last postcard, pressed between her hands. “From when she was a little girl, Carmen always wanted to be on television. Everyone told her, ‘Forget it, muchacha. People from Neza don’t go on television.’”
“Dos millones de dólares,” said the father, to no one in particular.
“But I always said to her, ‘Why not? You’re so beautiful.’”
Mona nodded. “She looked like Dolores Romero.”
“We are humble people,” said Maria Elena. “I don’t know how we can fight a big American company. We have nothing.”
“You don’t have to fight them. I will. All you have to do is sign.”
“You?” said Maria Elena. She didn’t sound convinced.
“Dos millones de dólares,” said the father again.
The pig grunted.
“I used to watch the telenovelas with Carmen,” said Maria Elena. “If one of us missed an episode, the other would tell her what happened. She loved Aprendí a Llorar. She liked the romantic ones. She was young, but she tried to pretend she wasn’t.”
Maria Elena wept. When she was finished, she looked directly at Mona and said, “Do you think you can win, Señora?”
Mona said, “I don’t have an answer, Señora. But I will fight with everything I have.”
Maria Elena absorbed this. Then she said, “I have another daughter, Clara. This is going to break her heart.”
“I know of no greater grief than yours,” said Mona.
Maria Elena wiped her tears. “Women here don’t live lives like they do on television. Carmen tried to live a different life. I will remember her for her courage.”
She asked Mona where on the document she wanted her to sign.
Then, in a hard voice, she said to her husband, “If there is money, it will be for Clara. To take her away from here. It will be Carmen’s final gift to her.”
Out on the street, walking back toward the bus stop, Finn—who didn’t have a knack for languages but who was trying to improve his Spanish—said, “You told Carmen’s mother, ‘Creen que una Vibora de cascabel la mordiò’; that’s the third person, right? ‘They think a rattlesnake bit her’?”
“Correct.”
“You don’t?”
“No, I do think a snake bit her.”
“But you don’t think it was an accident?”
Mona let out a sigh. “I’ve got a thought going through my head I can’t shake, Nick. What if Soto had found her? Like in the dream she told me about? What if he found a way to get into the detention center and put Carmen in a box with snakes, like she said he did to another girl? I know snakes bite people. But everything about this is wrong: the fact that it bit her three times, that no one noticed, that she died from it … I need to talk to someone who knows about snakes.”
Finn thought for a moment. Then he said, “I know a guy at Fish and Wildlife who might be able to help you. Greg Wilkins, out at LAX. Last time I saw him, he was saying how they caught this one guy who flew in from Vietnam with ten snakes taped to his body. Live snakes, I mean. Venomous. Anyway, Greg told me how they weren’t too sure how to handle it at the airport. None of them wanted to pull the snakes off the guy’s body, and they couldn’t figure out how to deal with the situation without hurting the guy or the snakes. One of them had a contact, a guy out in Pasadena, who’s apparently a world expert on venomous snakes. They call this guy, this snake guy, he comes down, gets all the snakes off the smuggler. I can ask Greg for his name, if you want.”
They passed the school again. It was lunchtime, and kids were crowded round the carnitas cart. Finn got the uneasy feeling that the guy under the umbrella was watching them, keeping track of their movements. Mona said she would very much like to speak to the snake expert. “How’d he do it?”
“What?”
“Get the snakes off the smuggler from Vietnam?”
“He got the guy to stand in a cold room for fifteen minutes. The cold numbed the snakes. Then he just picked them off him with his bare hands.”
Mona smiled. The bus came and they got on it, heading back to the airport. Finn looked out the rear window and saw Carmen’s mother standing at the school gate. A girl with long black hair came out. Maria Elena held open her arms.
A little farther down the street, Finn noticed the man at the food cart talking into a cell phone.