eight:
monday, mid-day

“That’s the goddamn problem right there.”

The cream-colored van bore scars. Bloom guessed mid-1990s. New Mexico plates.

Just another traffic stop.

Three cop cars.

Bloom counted seventeen passengers, then counted again to double-check.

Sitting cross-legged. Quiet. Obedient. They have accepted their fate. They are used to this.

“Can you believe they were all packed in that one van? On a day like this?”

DiMarco muttered. He wouldn’t want to be seen consorting with a journalist. But it was DiMarco who had alerted him, ten minutes ago.

The van had been pulled over in the parking lot for the stand-alone, mid-valley restaurant Dos Hermanos, once the semi-swank Mt. Sopris Inn. The shell of the restaurant and its long-abandoned parking lot attracted only weeds and dust. The Mexicans sat on concrete parking bumpers that hadn’t been used for years.

Dos Hermanos. More than “dos.”

Somehow, he would work that into the lead paragraph. He might need to find out the precise date the restaurant was closed for a tasty detail.

The lights on top of the cop cars flashed. Engines idled for the AC.

“What’s going to happen to them?” said Bloom.

DiMarco was average height with a dark complexion and permanent stubble. Bloom guessed he was pressing fifty. He was deliberate and savvy. He wasn’t in charge and didn’t want to be. His nose was fleshy and had a sloping tip.

“One-way ticket back for every one of the passengers,” said DiMarco. “Up to the feds. Unless one of ’em suddenly coughs up a legitimate ID. About the same chances that one of them can recite the Pledge of Allegiance.”

“The driver?” asked Bloom.

They were two strangers talking to the breeze, not each other.

“Whole different story right there,” said DiMarco. “He’ll be arrested, booked, and we’ll try everything we’ve got—human trafficking for sure. Not just a federal crime anymore.”

“Where were they headed?”

“The driver is remarkably unforthcoming right now,” said DiMarco. “That’ll change.”

Four young. Late teens. Rest are older. Two women. They look comfortable, cool, despite heat. One says something, smiles.

“Heading to Carbondale?”

“Or Aspen,” said DiMarco. “Dishwashers, landscapers, painters—waltzing into the country like they run the place. A thousand get through for every one we stop.”

“Why did they get pulled over?”

“Imagine how low the rig was sitting with all these people inside,” said DiMarco. “It was dragging ass.”

“This ain’t Arizona,” said Bloom. Some Colorado legislators had tried a similar law, but it had failed.

“Illegal U-turn,” said DiMarco. “Don’t get your tighty whities in a knot. Officer said he could hear voices in the back, had the driver show him the cargo.”

A decent news story. Worth ten or twelve inches of copy, maybe more. In the wake of the shooting, ironic at least. Hard to imagine fitting it in with everything else Bloom needed to get done, but with the Dos Hermanos bit, this would practically write itself.

“Where do the illegals go?” said Bloom.

“Federal holding,” said DiMarco. “ICE on the way.”

Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Bloom had done stories on a big ICE raid at a meat packing plant in Greeley.

Bloom fought off an undertow of fatigue. The wee-hours meet-up with the cops at the newsroom hadn’t taken as long as he had predicted. A telephone technician quickly isolated the number from the strange caller. Bloom didn’t love the idea of the cops seeing all the numbers from other sources, but what could he do? What could the paper do? The independent editor had prepared a statement in case some left wing journalism professor threw an editorial hand grenade, but they had the cops’ agreement that they’d keep the newspaper’s role out of the narrative.

“Anything new on the main event?”

“There’s a noon press briefing,” said DiMarco.

“I’m aware. Did the phone number lead anywhere?”

DiMarco stood straight, cranked his shoulders around like he needed a stretch, returned his gaze to the gravel. “The number was one of those temporary phones, pre-loaded with minutes, you know?”

“I know them.”

“That’s the bad news,” said DiMarco. “No name goes with the number, you know?”

“If you paid by credit card?”

DiMarco gave him a sideways look that said think about it.

“Okay, probably not likely,” said Bloom. “What’s the good news?
“Who said there is good news?”

“You implied it. The bad news, good news thing. One follows the other.”

Another van, solid beige and spit-shine new, pulled into the parking lot. This one had windows and side-folding doors. There were no markings, but it screamed government business.

Three dark sedans wheeled in behind it and suddenly the parking lot was a busy hub of intergovernmental authorities sorting out roles, rules, laws, and egos.

“My work here is done,” said DiMarco.

“The good news?” said Bloom.

DiMarco looked squarely at Bloom, for a flash. “You still got my back, right? Protect me?”

“All the way to reporter hell,” said Bloom.

“The phone was activated yesterday morning.”

One by one, the Mexicans were interviewed and loaded into the newly arrived van.

“And?”

“And the company that sells these phones distributes ninety percent to convenience stores all over the state.”

DiMarco paused, proud of this nuance. One of the Mexicans, a man with a wrinkled face and dejected eyes, stared out at them from behind the window.

“Do we know which store?” said Bloom.

“No,” said DiMarco. “But we can find the stores that sold a phone yesterday.”

Bloom spotted a flaw in the logic. Just because the phone was activated yesterday didn’t mean that was the day it was purchased. Everything else about the assassination attempt was obviously tight. Why would they have made this slip?

“A little sloppy,” said Bloom. “Correct?”

“The kind of slop we need,” said DiMarco. “And like.”

Besides the sick notion that he might have been on the phone with Lamott’s shooter—or one of the accomplices—there was also the question of whether he could write today’s article since he was now part of it. That might be a journalism no-no in the big city but couldn’t be helped in a two-reporter town.

“How long is it going to take?” asked Bloom.

“To what?”

“I assume you’re checking all the store cameras in all the stores from Grand Junction to Denver where a phone was sold yesterday,” said Bloom.

DiMarco shrugged his shoulders up, held them there for a second. “Maybe. All this consorting with the cops must be rubbing off. You’re wearing your Dick Tracy hat.”

Bloom ignored the slight. “How long do you think?”

“Today,” said DiMarco. “Maybe tomorrow.”

“And nothing more from Lookout Mountain?”

“You think you can keep squeezing me until I run dry?”

“So you’re still coming up empty. Don’t worry,” said Bloom. “I gotta go talk to the feds—do my job.”

“Understood,” said DiMarco. “Keep in mind we wouldn’t be here today if the feds had done their job in the first place—protecting our fucking borders. None of this would have happened.”