Border Crossings: A Catherine James Thriller (23 page)

“Look,” said the man.  “I just did what they told me to, all right?  I didn’t hurt anybody.”

“Well, you tried to kill us,” said Catherine.

The man shook his head.  “No, no, I didn’t try to kill anybody.  I was just there, okay.  I’m the driver, that’s it.”

“Oh, yes, you did,” said Catherine.  “Tell us who killed the girl.”

“I already told you I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Taylor Woodall, who killed her?”  She asked coolly, for about the twentieth time now.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, okay.  I don’t know anything about that
pinche gringa
.”  His eyes drifted downward to the metal ring Matt had placed around his finger.  Matt had finally convinced Catherine it was time to try a new approach.

Matt pulled the wire tighter and the man screamed in pain.  The wire cut through his skin and Matt kept applying pressure and then pulled downward and layers of skin filleted outward like a peeled banana, the man screaming.  “I told you it was going to hurt,” he told the man, “and I really wouldn’t talk about the girl like that in front of my friend here.”

When Matt stopped pulling, the man looked down and could just see the white of his bone beneath the few remaining layers of skin on his finger.  He began to sway.  Catherine tried her best not to let her face reflect how horrific she thought what they were doing was. 
We don’t have a choice,
she thought. 
There’s no way this guy will talk without resorting to this.

Matt smacked the man on the face gently to keep him conscious.  “Hey, hey,” he told him.  “You paying attention?  You ready yet to start telling us what we want to know?”

“I told you!  I don’t know nothing about that girl!” the man screamed.  “I swear!”

“What do you think?” he asked Catherine, turning and looking at her.  She only glanced back at him, trying to hide her discomfort with torturing the man.  “Nope, I don’t believe him, either,” said Matt, pulling a bit more causing the man to cry out again.  Catherine turned away briefly.  She didn’t like resorting to these tactics, but the man had been uncooperative up to this point and they needed to know what he knew.  They had found an empty metal building down a lonely road from the highway and decided to use it to question the man.  So far, they’d garnered nothing.  They’d started off with just questions, then a more forceful cajoling, but all he had offered was insults and curses.  So now they were at the point of last resort.  Matt worked the man’s hand like a fish boner preparing fillets, pulling the skin away from the pink flesh slowly but surely.  Blood splattered on the floor, at first a trickle, but then it began dripping profusely like a broken faucet.  “That looks painful,” Matt noted, staring at the man’s
exposed muscle and bone past the third knuckle of the man’s index and middle fingers.  “And we’ve really only started.  Sure you don’t want to start sharing?”

The man’s head bobbed around as though his neck muscles were no longer working.  A thick silver chain with an etched silver coin hung about his neck.  It looked like a silver dollar someone had machined and re-tooled with a new design, two small exes in its center.  She had a suspicion what that meant.

“Look at me,” said Matt, who seemed a little too at ease for Catherine’s liking. 
This is why I called him,
she reminded herself,
to do what I can't. 
"Start answering truthfully."  The man stared at Matt with venom in his eyes, hate pouring out like the blood from his hand.

“Tell us who put the hit on the boy, then,” Catherine said.  “Tell us something before we have to start cutting things off!” 
She demanded, her voice rising in frustration.

The man had drool coming from his mouth from trying to hold in his cries of pain and now spit upon the floor, still eyeing Matt.  “I don’t know who.”

“You’re still lying,” said Matt, pulling some more until the finger was now a quarter smaller in diameter from the skin that’d been pulled away while the man screamed and cursed some more.  “You keep lying like this and there won’t be anything left.”

“Who?” asked Catherine again.

When Matt let go this time, the man was crying.  “I don’t know, I don’t know,” he whined.  Matt put the circle of wire around a third finger and began to tighten it.  “Wait!” he said.  “I don’t know, ok!  I don’t!”

“Who!?” Catherine demanded.  She grabbed him by the back of his head, a large clump of hair between her white knuckles, “No more of this shit!  Tell us now or I’m going to have him cut your fingers off one by one.  Tell us
!”

He shook his head in tears and Matt tightened the wire.  Again, the man screamed.

Catherine was now truly wondering if the man was a dead end.  Surely he would have said something by now.  Catherine had had enough.  She was going to stop Matt, but then . . .

“Ortiz!” Yelled the man.  “Fernando Ortiz!”

Finally. 
“Who is Fernando Ortiz?” asked Catherine.  “And where do we find him?”

The man sat quietly crying, his breaths rapid and labored.

Matt went back to the wire, pulling it just a hair more, cutting more of the top layer of skin away, “Where!?”

He winced in pain, “Mexico City!  Fuck!  Mexico City, okay?”

“Where in Mexico City?” asked Catherine.

“I don’t know.  Come on,” he moaned.  “I told you what you wanted to know, already.  I don’t know any more.”

“Not yet you haven’t,” Matt said.

“Tell us how to find him,” Catherine said.

The man’s head began to bob around again as he moaned to himself.  “I bet you’d really like this to end, wouldn’t you?” asked Matt.  “You’re almost there.  Just tell us what we need to know and we’ll leave you alone.”  The man said nothing, only moaned some more.  “Or,” said Matt, pulling the wire down and stripping the skin from the man’s finger bringing a renewed screamed of pain.  “You still have seven more fingers to go and I’ve got all night.”

The man’s entire body clenched in agony.  He looked down at his right hand and saw that now three of his fingers were without skin, three alien looking appendages with blood and tissue shooting needles of
excruciating pain through his body.  The bloody stumps that were his index and middle finger looked like bits of bloody salmon after a bear had had its fill.  He nearly retched at the sight of them.  “Oh, fuck, man.  Stop!  Please stop!” 
They killed Taylor, Juan, and tried to kill us,
Catherine reminded herself. 
Let Matt handle this.
Matt began to wrap wire around the next finger. 
Just tell us,
she thought. 
For God’s sake, let’s end this. 
“No,” said the man.  “Please stop, man.  I’m fucking begging you, please.  I can’t.  They’ll kill me.”

“What do you think I’m going to do if you don’t tell us?” asked Matt.  “And I’ve got all day to kill you.  You really want to see just how painful I can make it?”

“They’ll kill my brother and mother,” he said.  “Please.  I can’t tell you anything more.  You don’t understand what these people are like.  My whole family, man, they’ll kill my whole family.”

“Oh, we’re getting a good idea of what they’re like,” said Catherine.

“Just kill me,” said the man quietly.  “Just kill me and get it over with.”

Catherine hated the fact this man was able to elicit empathy from her, but she couldn’t help it.  “You’re one of ‘these people’ just in case you forgot.  How many brothers and mothers have you killed?”

“They won’t kill anyone if they’re dead,” said Matt.  “Now either you talk, or I keep pulling layers away until your right arm is nothing but bones.  Do you want to see?  I’m a bit curious how long your fingers will stay attached at this rate.  Maybe we’ll try some of your toes afterward, see which ones last longer.  I think the toes will stay on longer.  What do you think?”

Catherine walked over and leaned down in front of the man much the same way she had with Jim in his study, “Do something right while you still have the chance,” she told him.  “If you want to save your family, tell us where we can find Ortiz so we can put a stop to all this once and for all.”

The man looked up and gave her a horrible smile, “You thinking killing him is going to stop anything?”  He shook his head.

Catherine only stared at him until his eyes once again met hers.  “Tell us.  That girl didn’t deserve to die like she did.  Someone has to atone for all this.  You have to atone for it.  Now tell us what we need to know.”

Still, he said nothing.  But as Matt began to put the wire on the fourth finger, the man gave in.  “Okay.  Enough.  They’re just going to kill you anyway, same as me.  I don’t know how to find Ortiz, okay, but Miguel does.”

“Who’s Miguel?” asked Catherine.

“Miguel Valencia.  He runs the gang, right?  He’s Ortiz’s guy.  He’ll know where to find him.  Everything goes through Miguel.  Ortiz doesn’t talk to anyone else in the gang.”

Another name to find,
thought Catherine.  She was having trouble believing all these people were involved in Taylor’s murder. 
Why?

“And where do we find Miguel?” asked Matt, skeptical the man
might be making up the name to end his ordeal.

“Luna Azul,” said the man.

“Blue moon?” asked Catherine.  “What’s that, a restaurant?”

“It’s a strip club,” said the man.  “Miguel owns it.  He’s always there.  Miguel loves the ladies.”

“Where?”

“Mexico City, man.  He’s in Mexico City.”

“He lives there?”  He nodded.  “Where?”

“I don’t know where he lives, just go to the club.  You’ll find him there.”

“Does he have a car?” she asked.

“Mercedes.  Black.  He parks it behind the club when he’s there.”

“You wouldn’t still be lying to us, would you?” asked Matt, pressing again on the tender areas of stripped skin.

“No, man!” he cried.  “I’m telling you the truth!  It’s all I know, man.  Come on, please, let me go.  That’s all I know, I swear.”

Matt looked at Catherine and they seemed to reach an agreement in their eyes.  They’d gotten what they needed from the man.  Matt removed the slim wire from the man’s finger and they walked together towards the back.

When they were out of earshot, Catherine asked Matt, “What do you think?”

“He might be full of shit, but I don’t think we’re going to get much more out of him.”

“I agree,” said Catherine.  “And it sounds like a good lead, at least.”

Matt looked back towards the man sitting in the chair.  He was moaning, “Let me go, man.  I want to go home.  I just want to fucking go home.”

Catherine looked back at him, too.  “We can’t let him go,” said Matt.  “He knows Julio’s in Playa.  He may have even heard us talking to Pat.”  He looked into her eyes.  She was already shaking her head.  “Catherine,” he whispered.  “This is the cartel we’re dealing with.  The first thing he’ll do if we let him go is run back to his gang.  Then they’ll know everything he just told us and everything he’s heard and seen since we took him.”

“I didn’t come here for this,” she told him.  “I don’t know if this is right.  Who are we to decide this man has to die?”  Back home, this guy would have been sent to prison for the next 20 years, but Catherine had to remind herself she wasn’t back home.  She thought about what Ramirez had said about charges never sticking to these guys.  If they handed him over to the police in Mexico, he’d probably never even see the inside of the police station.  He’d be back with his buddies before breakfast.

“No,” he told her.  “This is war.  I don’t know how Taylor ended up a victim of it, but make no mistake, Catherine.  This is war.  And these guys,” he said, pointing back at the gang member, “are the enemy.  I know how you feel about these things, but sympathy will get you killed.  I’m not saying we do this because the guy deserves it or because it’s justice.  We simply don’t have a choice.  If he goes free and tells the rest of them what’s happened, it could get Julio killed, Pat killed, his family . . .”

“Enough,” she told him, shrugging his arms off her.  “I get it.”  She looked back at the man, still moaning in pain. 
Who’s to say if it was justice or revenge? 
She thought of the implications of their actions, and then she knew he wasn’t going home.  As much as she hated to admit it, Matt was right.  The man was a cartel henchman.  There was nothing they could do to stop him from warning Miguel or coming back to Playa with a dozen armed thugs to find Patrick’s house if they cut him loose.  Even if they locked him up somewhere, the risk of his escape meant too much.  And no matter what he promised, as soon as the risk of losing his life was gone, he’d be right back to the Barrio Boys. 
Take a life to save lives,
she told herself, hoping she wasn’t deluding herself into becoming a coldblooded killer.

“Go on,” said Matt.  “I’ll be right behind you.”

“Wait,” she said.  If they were going to do it she wanted to know one more thing, first.

She walked back to the man.  “Just let me go,” he pleaded with her.  “You’ll never see me again, I swear.  I just want to go home.”

She knelt down in front of the man again and lifted his medallion up to better see the little exes engraved.  “Two?” she asked him.  “Who were they?”