Prologue
He crouched behind the chalk-white wall of the mausoleum, slick with dew, and peered across the moonlit rows of gravestones. He’d followed his cousin to the cemetery on his bicycle, tracking her with an app he’d installed on her phone. She was here because of the letter. He was sure of it.
She was a tiny girl. Barely five feet tall. Four inches shorter than Erick even though Erick was fourteen and she was twenty-three. Her smooth dark hair caught the moonlight like a mirror where it lay flat on her scalp. Her long braid was tucked beneath a black puffy jacket that looked as if it could swallow her whole.
The man standing before her was much bigger. Not tall, but muscular and tattooed, like the maras Erick’s father spoke about in El Salvador. Men born dead who spent their short lives waiting for nature to catch up. His scalp was shaved close on the sides and left thick on top, like the pelt of an animal. It was cold out tonight—early May in upstate New York was seldom warm. Yet he wore only a T-shirt with the sleeves cut off. All the better to see his bulked-out arms covered in ink. To feel his power. His menace.
He’d boxed her against the side of a dark-colored sedan. The sedan’s interior fabric was ripped and hanging at a slant across the rear window, making it impossible to see inside. Erick wondered whether the tattooed man was alone, or whether there were others with him. Maybe in the car or roaming the cemetery. It was an old and overgrown cemetery. All the names and dates on the headstones were from a century ago. Nobody set foot in the place anymore—especially at night.
The man’s voice was low, but his Spanish had a guttural edge to it. He was demanding something from her. Money, perhaps. His cousin’s replies were choked and breathy. She seemed on the verge of crying. Not girl-crying, the way women did over stuff like boyfriends. No. This was deeper. A full-chest heave, like someone drowning. Like the way his mother cried a few days ago when his father got that letter from Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Since then, Erick’s dreams had been filled with men in flak vests and jack boots. He woke up slicked in sweat, his blankets in a tangle, certain that ICE had already taken his father away.
“Where is it?” the man shouted at his cousin in Spanish. She didn’t answer.
The man slapped her hard across her face.
Silence. Hard breathing. A rustle of wind through the trees. Then a yelp. It took Erick a moment to realize the yelp had come from his own lips.
The man shoved her aside and turned in the direction of Erick’s voice. Moonlight reflected off the white of his left eye. It wandered like a searchlight. Bulging. Freakish. Erick recoiled, slipping on the deep, spongy sod and falling back against a bush.
“Run, Erick!” she shouted.
A second man—big and stiff-shouldered, wearing a dark blue windbreaker—came up from behind. He lifted Erick off the ground, thrusting a forearm across the boy’s neck.
The moon went dark. Voices faded.
Erick came to with his face pressed against the wet grass and the thrum of an engine nearby. His cousin’s cries echoed in his ears. She had to be inside the sedan.
He fumbled for his cell phone to call the police as the man in the dark blue windbreaker opened the back door and jumped in. A breeze caught his windbreaker and billowed it like a sail. Erick read three white letters stitched across the back:
I—C—E
Erick couldn’t call the police.
The police were already here.