Down Among the Dead Men Read online

  But no whitewash this time. No missing crime scene photos or doctored police reports.

  Vargas wasn’t about to take any bullshit from Rojas.

  This time he wanted the fucking truth.

  46

  Rojas wasn’t in his office.

  Even though Vargas had gotten a 3:00 A.M. start, the drive to Juarez had been interminably long and almost unbearably hot, and by the time he reached the state police station he felt as if he’d taken a bath in his own sweat.

  The bandage on his head had become so drenched that he’d pulled it off and left it off, simply covering the damage with his new baseball cap. The bleeding seemed to have stopped anyway.

  Parking his car, he went inside to blessed air-conditioning and found the homicide unit. The office looked the same as before: A reception counter adjacent to a waist-high entry gate. Dingy beige walls decorated with newspaper clippings and photos of wanted suspects. A half-dozen cluttered desks butted up against one another.

  Today, they were all empty except one, where a young detective was leaning back in his chair, talking on a cell phone. Vargas remembered seeing him the last time he was here, but they’d never been introduced.

  He waited, trying not to listen in on the conversation. The detective was speaking Spanish, but Vargas had no trouble understanding him. Growing up, Vargas had been trapped in a kind of limbo between two cultures, raised in a country that spoke English by parents who rarely ever did. A lot of the time he found himself thinking in Spanish, but in these last few days he’d been bouncing back and forth between the United States and Mexico so frequently that he’d begun to blend the two languages, sometimes forgetting where he was.

  “Come on, Carmelita,” the detective said. “You know she means nothing to me. She asked for a ride, so I gave her one.”

  He nodded to Vargas and held up a finger, indicating he’d be with him in a moment.

  “No, baby, that’s not true. If I wanted to be with her, I would have stayed married to her. Look, I gotta go. You still want me to come by tonight?” He listened a moment, then smiled. “That’s my girl. See you around eleven.”

  He clicked off, looked up at Vargas. He was a handsome kid with a wisp of hair above his lip that was supposed to be a mustache. He kept his piece in a shoulder holster, trying hard to look like Steve McQueen in Bullitt but not quite pulling it off.

  “You have a girlfriend?” he asked.

  Vargas shook his head. “Not lately.”

  “Do yourself a favor and keep it that way. I give my ex a ride home, and now I’ll be spending the night apologizing for it. Women are nothing but trouble.”

  It was Vargas’s experience-with few exceptions-that women were only trouble if you treated them that way, but he wasn’t about to argue with the guy. Someone his age wouldn’t get it anyway.

  Instead, Vargas said, “I’m looking for Rojas.”

  The detective got to his feet, came over to the counter. “You’re the reporter, right? You were here last week.”

  “That’s right,” Vargas said. “Is he around?”

  “Not at the moment, no. You here about the casa murders again?”

  “Yes.”

  “That case is as good as dead. Not one lead. I did some of the footwork on it, and we got nothing.”

  “Maybe I can help you with that.”

  The detective’s eyebrows went up. “You have information?”

  “Yes,” Vargas said, “but I’ll only talk to Rojas.”

  “I told you, he’s not here. Why don’t you tell me what you know and I’ll-”

  “Not gonna happen,” Vargas said, making it clear by the tone of his voice that he was leaving no wiggle room. It was Rojas or nothing.

  The detective nodded, then held up a finger again. Moving back to his desk, he picked up his cell phone, dialed, then waited a few moments before speaking quietly into it.

  Vargas couldn’t hear him this time but knew what was being said.

  After a few moments, the detective clicked off, then stuffed the phone into his back pocket.

  “You hungry?”

  Vargas shrugged. Truth was, he was famished, but he saw no reason to point that out. “I could eat.”

  “Good,” the detective said. “Rojas has invited us to breakfast.”

  47

  The restaurant was in the heart of Juarez, a tiny hole-in-the-wall with a walk-up ordering counter and a backyard patio sheltered by trees.

  Rojas sat at a table in the shade of a laurel, a large man with a short, military haircut, looking very much like the Mexican army general he once was. He was halfway through a plate of chorizo and eggs when Vargas and the young detective-whose name was Garcia-approached.

  “Have you ordered something?” Rojas asked.

  “Not yet,” Garcia told him.

  Rojas frowned and gestured to a young woman nearby who was pouring water for another customer. “Anna, bring my two associates some breakfast. And I’ll have another plate as well.”

  The woman nodded and, like an obedient servant, quickly disappeared inside.

  Rojas gestured for them to sit.

  “Best homemade chorizo you’ll ever eat,” he said to Vargas. “My promise to you.”

  Vargas sank into a chair. “I don’t know. My mother’s was hard to beat.”

  “Was? She’s no longer with us?”

  Vargas shook his head. “Cancer.”

  Rojas crossed himself and raised a glass of water in a toast. “May Jesus smile upon her.” He took a sip and set the glass down. “Let me revise my promise. What you’re about to experience is the second — best chorizo you’ll ever eat.”

  Vargas wasn’t quite sure why it mattered-but then it dawned on him. “This is your restaurant?”

  “It is,” Rojas said. “Been in the family for over sixty years. People come from miles away to eat here.”

  “An institution,” Garcia said.

  Rojas shot him a look, as if he were an annoying fly, then smiled at Vargas. “We’ll eat first. Then talk.”

  So they ate, Rojas telling them stories of his childhood, working like a dog in the kitchen and wanting nothing more than to escape its hell. Then, once he joined the military, he found that he missed the place, and years later, when his older brother decided against taking the reins from their father, Rojas had agreed to run the business.

  His version of running it, however, seemed to be to bark the occasional order to one of the staff as he chowed down on his second plate of sausage.

  Vargas paid little attention to it all, merely nodding politely as he ate the chorizo, which, it turned out, was not the second best he had ever tasted.

  It was better than his mother’s, God rest her soul, and as he shoveled it down he realized he’d been more than famished. Despite stopping for food along the way, he felt as if he hadn’t had a bite to eat in days.

  When they were finally done, Rojas said, “What happened to your hand?”

  Vargas glanced at the bandage covering the puncture wound, which was starting to look a little haggard.

  “Long story.”

  “But that’s why you’re here, yes? To tell it? Garcia says you have information about the Casa de la Muerte murders.”

  Vargas nodded. He had been wondering all through breakfast how to broach the subject, and had decided that the direct approach was best.

  “I’m offering an exchange.”

  Rojas hesitated. This obviously wasn’t what he had expected to hear. “What sort of exchange?”

  “I’ll tell you what I know,” Vargas said. “And you tell me the truth about what happened in that house.”

  “Truth? I gave you unfettered access to my case files. Names, dates, all of it. What more could you want?”

  Vargas reached into his back pocket and brought out the passport photo, laying it on the table in front of Rojas.

  “You forgot to tell me about her,” he said.

  He couldn’t be sure, but he thought he heard Garcia inv
oluntarily suck in a breath. Vargas glanced at him, but Garcia had quickly recovered, his expression blank and oddly incurious as he looked at the photo.

  Rojas, however, didn’t flinch.

  “What’s to tell? I’ve never seen her before. Is she a friend of yours?”

  “Come on, Rojas; I know she was in that house. And she was still alive when the Ainsworths found her.”

  “Ahhh,” Rojas said. “The Ainsworths. You take the word of a couple of gabachos over mine?” He looked at his associate. “Garcia, I believe I’ve just been insulted. In my own place of business, no less.”

  Garcia nodded but said nothing.

  “You were at the crime scene,” Rojas continued. “Tell Mr. Vargas what we found that night.”

  It may have been Vargas’s imagination, but Garcia seemed a bit stiff, as if he was about to lie and wasn’t quite comfortable doing it.

  “Five bodies,” he said. “All of them nuns from the Iglesia del Sagrado Corazon in Ciudad de Almas.”

  The words were spoken with about as much passion as that of a campaign worker who didn’t really believe in his candidate.

  “You see?” Rojas said to Vargas. “Your American friends are mistaken.” He wiped his mouth with his napkin. “There’s no doubting that the case is unusual, considering who the victims were, but as I told you before, our investigation has established that they were simply trying to get across the border and fell prey to bandits.”

  “So then the name Angie means nothing to you?”

  Vargas made a point to watch Garcia, whose poker game didn’t even come close to the level of Rojas’s. But this time the younger detective betrayed nothing.

  “I’m afraid not,” Rojas said. “And while I’d never presume to tell you your job, I can assure you that pursuing this particular angle will only result in disappointment.”

  Was that a threat? Vargas couldn’t be sure.

  For a moment he wondered if Rojas was Juarez’s answer to Harmon, but the guy didn’t strike Vargas as someone who would be willing to take orders from anyone, let alone Mr. Blister and his friends. But money was a different story. There was no doubt that in one way or another, the man was dirty. Vargas could see it in his eyes.

  Rojas dropped his napkin to the table and leaned back. “You mentioned an exchange. And now that I’ve lived up to my end of the deal, it’s time for you to tell me what you know.”

  “I asked for the truth,” Vargas said.

  “And that’s what I’ve given you. I even included a wonderful breakfast.” He smiled. “Now it’s your turn.”

  There was something in that smile that said refusal was not an option, and Vargas knew he was on dangerous ground here. Mess with a cop in Juarez-especially one as powerful as Rojas-and you might find yourself in a very confined space, sharing your body heat with a new roommate.

  But if Rojas and Garcia could lie, so could Vargas. And his poker game was pretty damn good.

  “You caught me,” he said. “I’ve got nothing. I was bluffing.”

  Rojas’s smile abruptly disappeared, his voice flat and unamused. “Then I believe we’re done.”

  Vargas didn’t move. Nodded to the photo. “Not until you tell me who she is.”

  Rojas took it from the table and, without looking at it, ripped it in two pieces and tossed them at Vargas.

  “A product of your imagination,” he said. “And we both know what kind of trouble that will bring you.”

  48

  “ You shouldn’t have provoked him,” Garcia said. “He’s as bad as Carmelita. He’ll blame me for ruining his breakfast.”

  They were in Vargas’s car, driving back to the station.

  “All he had to do was tell me the truth.”

  Garcia laughed. “You don’t know Rojas.”

  “Then educate me.”

  Garcia looked at him a moment, weighing the request. Then he said, “The man is a pig. That story he told you about taking over the family business? He didn’t mention that he stabbed his brother twice to convince him to step aside.”

  “So why wasn’t he arrested?”

  “His brother denied it. Blamed the attack on a gang of teenagers. Three of them are still in jail.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  Garcia shrugged. “Probably because I despise the man. Believe it or not, not all Mexican cops are corrupt. We’re hardworking people, trying to do good and make a living at the same time. The drug cartels are out of control down here, treating people as if they’re disposable. And trying to stop them is hard enough without pendejos like Rojas tainting the department.” He paused. “But Rojas also has a lot of friends, so if you ever repeat what I’ve just said, I’ll deny it.”

  “Tell me about the girl in the photo.”

  Garcia shifted his gaze to the street, which was filled with the passing hustle and bustle of downtown Juarez. “That subject is off-limits.”

  “Then it’s true. She was there.”

  “Did I say that?” He shook his head, then pointed at the road. “Drop me off around the corner. I want to get my hair cut for Carmelita.”

  “I’ll keep your name out of it,” Vargas said. “An anonymous source.”

  Garcia laughed again. “You know even less about this city than you do about Rojas. No one is anonymous here. Not for long. And it doesn’t help that I’m riding in your car.”

  Vargas made a left at the next corner and pulled up alongside a shop with the word peluqueria painted on the window. Inside, a barber was busy cleaning the hair out of his electric clippers.

  “It must kill you,” Vargas said.

  “What?”

  “Seeing a man like Rojas in power. You say he taints the department, but what he carries is more like a virus that grows and spreads, infecting everyone who comes in contact with it. You’d better watch out, or you’ll catch it, too.”

  Garcia frowned at him, then opened his door and got out. Turning, he leaned in through the open passenger window.

  “I don’t think you were bluffing,” he said. “You have more than a photograph to share.”

  “Maybe. But there’s only one way to find out. You know my terms.”

  “This book you’re writing. How many people will see it?”

  “As many as it takes.”

  Garcia thought about this a moment, then said, “You like dancing?”

  Vargas shrugged. “Depends on what kind.”

  “The kind where beautiful women show you only what their mothers and boyfriends should see.”

  “One of my favorites,” Vargas said.

  Garcia reached into his shirt pocket and handed a book of matches across to Vargas. “Come watch Carmelita tonight. And if you buy me enough tequila, I might forget what it means to be cautious.”

  And with that, he slapped a hand on top of the car and disappeared into the barbershop.

  49

  Vargas wasn’t ten minutes into his visit to the Velvet Glove when he learned what a woman can do with a simple ice cube. The dancer onstage was showing far more than what Garcia had promised, something no mother or boyfriend should ever see.

  Vargas had arrived shortly past eleven, after spending another day in a motel room, trying to recover from his wounds. In his imaginary movie he would have bounced back by now, but this, unfortunately, was real life and sleep was his only cure.

  When he wasn’t sleeping, he watched Mexican TV, at one point finding himself caught up in an old black-and-white lucha libre movie.

  One of the masked wrestlers reminded him of Rojas.

  After grabbing a bite to eat at a restaurant next to his motel, Vargas checked the address on the matchbook Garcia had given him, asked the waiter for directions, and drove across town to a street lined with bars and nightclubs.

  The Velvet Glove sat smack in the middle of the block, its darkened windows ringed in bright pink and purple neon.

  Vargas paid a cover fee, found a stool at the bar, and ordered a beer. And as the dancer onstage f
inished demonstrating her amazing muscle control-the ice cube now a puddle of water beneath her-he felt a presence on the stool next to him.

  “I’m supposed to be following you,” Garcia said.

  “Oh?”

  “Rojas wants to know what you’re up to.”

  Vargas nodded. “Further proof that Ainsworth wasn’t lying. He had a theory that the police were covering up about the American woman for fear of an international scandal.”

  “Had?”

  “He’s dead. Along with his son, a guy named Sergio, and a Border Patrol agent who was working with them. They were all part of some anonymous drug ring.”

  Garcia looked at him. “Is this the information you were keeping from Rojas? Your so-called bluff?”

  “More or less.”

  “You’ve been busy this week.”

  “You don’t know the half of it.”

  Garcia signaled to the bartender, holding up a finger. The Velvet Glove was an upscale establishment, and the bartender reflected this with her perfectly coiffed hair and her crisp white shirt, showing ample cleavage. She took a bottle of Patron from the shelf behind her, filled a shot glass, and set it on the counter in front of Garcia.

  When she was gone, he said, “Rojas doesn’t give a damn about international scandals.”

  “Then why the whitewash?”

  “To cover his backside. He’s a powerful man and he uses that power to fatten his wallet. He doesn’t want anyone from the outside poking around in his business, and a dead American girl means federales and maybe even the FBI.”

  “Does that business have anything to do with drug smugglers?”

  Garcia snorted. “Smugglers, thieves, politicians, extortionists. Rojas gets a taste of it all and offers allegiance to no one. But there have been a lot of kidnappings here in Juarez and all across Mexico in the past few years. Young women disappearing. Mostly factory workers and prostitutes, but quite a few turistas as well. Rojas has been under pressure to solve these cases, but he’s as incompetent as he is corrupt. And his job is on the line. One more victimized turista is more than he can afford.”