Thirty-six

“So, let me see if I’ve got this right,” Tomás said. “Some new organization’s running rogue ICE units and neo-Nazi biker gangs to grab up girls and move ’em out of the city while they move new girls in?”

“Yep.”

“And the girls they’re moving out pay for the new girls coming in?”

“Uh huh.”

“Why?”

“That part I haven’t quite worked out,” I said. “One or the other makes some sort of perverse sense. But opposite and simultaneous paths along a single pipeline? The rogue ICE units look like they’re only responsible for moving women out. Maybe double-dipping selling some of the women as drug mules. But who’s moving new women in—and why?”

“I think the ‘why’ is pretty obvious,” Tomás said. “Prostitution. But this? This is a big undertaking just to run a few new whores through strip clubs, casinos and hotels.”

“Let’s agree to call them sex-workers. Being forced into selling sex—or choosing to sell sex—doesn’t make these women ‘whores.’ It makes them victims, survivors or entrepreneurs.”

“You gotta stop watching public TV,” Tomás said. “How’d Barney Olsen fit in?”

“This organization probably ran ICE and biker payments through Olsen,” I said. “But let’s say he starts skimming payments and women to feed his own habits. With the heat two dead women brought, this new organization probably had no choice but to disappear Olsen. There’s something very—antiseptic—about whoever these people are.”

“Guess we’ll know more about these fuckers tonight.”

“Guess so.”

We sat in old webbed aluminum lawn chairs in front of his open gun locker. Elena was back to breathing fire, leading a DACA sit-in at City Hall. The folks at City Hall were damned if they knew what to do about the sit-in.

Then again, they were damned if they knew what to do about anything on any given day.

“I’ve never asked you this before,” I said while admiring Tomás’s newly acquired Winchester SX4 rifle. “But exactly why do you have so damned many guns?”

“I ever tell you my pops got robbed at gunpoint?” Tomás said.

“No.”

“Oh, yeah,” Tomás said. “My mama, too. Me and my sister was with ’em both times. All we had was migrant cash. We didn’t know nothin’ about banks. What migrant does? A week’s worth of back-breaking work—” he snapped his fingers “—gone. Both times. The looks on their faces—like they’d failed each other. Failed us. Robbers even made us take our shoes off—the ‘wetback wallet.’ Nothin’ like lookin’ into your parents’ eyes and they look back at you like they failed you. Looking down the barrel of a gun is when you realize what real power looks like. When you realize how valuable life is. And how quick and cheap it can be.” Tomás took a long pause. Then he said, “Your mom ever tell you stories about the four sun gods?”

“No.”

“Creepy old Aztec stories about how the universe was created and destroyed four times by four suns. Four times people have inhabited the earth. And four times, wiped out by the fifth sun. All because the gods grew jealous of each other. Started pissin’ on each others’ golden boots. The fifth sun rides in, wipes out the old gods and everything they created and ushers in a new age. I look around, Octavio, this ‘new age’ ain’t that cool. The gods are at it again and we’re smack dab in the middle of their pissing match. You know I ain’t much for ghost stories or religion. But if the new ‘gods’ are thinking about catching me unaware and in the middle, I’m unloading every weapon I got. Every bullet. Every clip.”

Tomás and I talked about tonight’s mission and the conflagration we were soon to set off. I hadn’t managed to get much out of Anna Green Eyes, but what I did get from her while she bled on the floor of the Major’s study was vital: a freighter—the Federal Shoreland—docking tonight, the Nielsen Emery Terminal at the Port of Detroit. An iron ore freighter taking on fuel and crew supplies.

And eight women.

Seven or eight well-armed men guarding the ship and human cargo.

That’s what Anna Green Eyes said I could expect.

“You won’t even get past the fucking gate,” she’d said to me. “These guys chew Boy Scouts like you up for breakfast!”

“Well, they’d better come hungry.”

If Anna Green Eyes said seven or eight well-armed men, then Tomás and I had to be strapped for fifteen or more.

“You figure they’re BMC biker crews?” Tomás said.

“Yep. But they’re still just the wranglers. The hired help.”

“Still,” Tomás said. “Ain’t nothin’ sweeter than kickin’ Nazi ass.”

Once we selected primary weapons and ammo, we loaded secondary artillery into the covered bed of his everyday Ford-150. Then we went to my house.

I pulled up Google Earth and we took a detailed look at the Nielsen Emery Terminal, a sprawling shipyard with two freighter loading docks, two berths for repair, stationary cranes and rail loading gantries. There were stacks of freight containers and five long, low corrugated metal buildings where various and sundry goods and equipment were stored. A sixteen-foot-tall fence topped with razor wire ran the serpentine one-mile length of the terminal. There were two entries with roll-away gates large enough for trucks, and a gate security booth manned 24/7.

“It’s possible they’ve added security or moved things around,” I said, staring at the laptop screen. “No telling how old these photos are. But I’m guessing nothing’s changed much. They rarely do at freight yards. Only hang-up we could face—”

“You mean besides getting shot?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Besides getting shot. This is a Foreign Trade Zone shipyard. And that means some areas are outside of US Customs jurisdiction.”

“Which means they’re out of US cop jurisdiction,” Tomás said. We were quiet for a moment. Then Tomás said, “We really are flying by our ass-hairs on this one.” He squinted at the overhead photo of the docks and said, “Well, we can’t go in here on account of there’s water. We got no boat and I ain’t fuckin’ swimmin’. So, it’s looking like the southeastern security gate. How many cameras you figure?”

“Ten, maybe fifteen,” I said, “manned by a couple of regular Joes just trying to make this month’s mortgage payment. Our guys are probably huddled around Dock 1 and any freight containers on the dock ready for loading.”

“That’s where the women are?”

“That’s where the women are.”

We gave each other a fleeting look, leaving volumes unspoken: Volumes that men and women for millennia had written in blood. The stratagems and campaigns, insurgencies and wars, lost soldiers’ names and riderless horses, all covered over by indifferent epochs of sand.

There are things you come back from. And things from which you never return.

“Time?” Tomás finally said.

“Be here at nine,” I said.

“You wanna have dinner with Elena and me?”

“No,” I said. “You guys go ahead.”

“What are you gonna do?”

I was going to do exactly what Tomás planned to do: Immerse myself in the sight and sound, smell and feel of someone I hoped would remember me should I this very night pass from existence. Someone who would accept me into the DNA of their memory and add me as another thread in the diaphanous fabric of their soul.

No, not Tatina.

She already knew my soul in both what was said and unsaid, felt and anticipated.

Why give her a reason to worry six thousand miles away.

No, Tatina would know how much she had meant to me. She would receive a cashier’s check in a bouquet of roses, an Octavio Paz poem—“Touch”—and a note that simply read, “I’m sorry.” Money doesn’t make loss or mourning any easier. But it still provides a bit of cushion at the end of the fall.

The ladies of Café Consuela’s agreed to stay open late for me.

I offered a cash incentive.

“You think we wouldn’t do this for you without your money?” Martiza said before ordering me to sit in the restaurant’s lone booth.

“Never insult me with your money again, Octavio.”

Sitting across from me in the small restaurant’s solitary booth were Jimmy Radmon and Lucy Three Rivers.

“So, what’s the occasion, Sherlock?” Lucy said.

“No reason,” I said. “Just thought it was as good a time as any for the three of us to sit down and have a meal together. And no, this isn’t me matchmaking. Whatever happens between you two is your business.”

Jimmy and Lucy gave each other a nervous look before bringing their eyes back to me.

“Can I have a margarita?” Lucy said. “I mean, I know I’m only nineteen and . . .”

“I’m not a proponent for underage drinking,” I said. “But in this case, yeah, sure. Regular or strawberry?”

“They make strawberry margaritas?” Lucy said, her eyes lighting up.

I looked up at Martiza and, in Spanish, I said, “A strawberry margarita. Light on the tequila.”

She smiled and nodded.

“Just a Coke for me, ma’am,” Jimmy said.

We didn’t order. We simply ate whatever the ladies of Café Consuela’s made for us: Chicken Posole soup with homegrown poblano peppers and fresh radishes; queso empanadas; the house grilled shrimp and blackened salmon Quesadas; chicken and grilled vegetable tacos with homemade chipotle sauce; fresh guacamole and chips.

I supplied the salsa.

“You’re learning,” Martiza said after tasting half a teaspoon. “Si—you’re learning.”

This I took as high praise indeed.

After dinner, I took Jimmy aside and said, “You still got that envelope I gave you last year?”

“Yessir,” Jimmy said.

“Good.”

“I ain’t never opened it,” Jimmy said. “You told me not to unless you—I know what it is, Mr. Snow. And you already done did enough for me. I don’t never want to open that envelope.”

“Frankly, I’m hoping you never have to, Jimmy,” I said. “But like I said then, I’ll say now; you’ve put your stamp on Markham Street. And when I’m not around, it’s yours. I don’t trust anyone more than you and Carlos to take care of it.”

“I don’t know what you into, Mr. Snow,” Jimmy said, “but if you need backup—”

“You’ve been backing me since we met,” I said. “Your only job now is to be the best version of yourself.”

With Jimmy settled at his new house, I got Lucy back to Carmela and Sylvia’s.

On the front porch I gave her the same kind of envelope I’d given Jimmy. She stared at it for a few seconds. “What’s this?”

“Something for your future,” I said. “Don’t open it now, okay? Just—you know—put it somewhere safe—”

“Is this, like, your last will and testament?” she said. “’Cause that’s kinda creepy and I don’t want to be responsible for, you know, making burial arrangements or having you cremated. How’m I supposed to do that shit and I can’t even make decent chili?”

“No,” I said. “It’s not my last will and testament. It’s something for you. But don’t open it for a while. Promise me.”

She stared at the envelope for a moment more.

Then she hugged me. Long and tight.

When she released me, I could see her eyes were wet.

“You’re a moron,” she said, quickly wiping her eyes. Then she turned and walked into Carmela and Sylvia’s house.