Dirty Angels 01 (26 page)

The drive back
to Culiacán was longer than the drive to Javier’s. I wasn’t sure if it was the mountainous roads or Juanito’s driving, or the fact that every mile we passed, my veins filled with ice-cold fear. The fact that I couldn’t see didn’t help, but a few hours into it, Juanito leaned over and pulled the bag from my head.

I squinted in the afternoon light. We must have been far enough from Javier’s that it didn’t matter what I saw. I guess I couldn’t blame them for thinking that I might have ratted on their whereabouts. That thought made me wonder if perhaps Salvador was going to think I was a rat myself.

But once I entered his doors—if I even got that far—I would never leave them again. Whether I had switched sides or not, it didn’t really matter. I knew I would die in that gilded cage.

Night was just falling, the sky turning into a brilliant blend of periwinkle and tangerine that made my soul hurt, when Jaunito pulled the car to the side of the highway. He cut the engine and eyed me expectantly. “Well,” he said.

“Well,” I said back.

“This is where you get off.” He nodded to the dusty shoulder that was riddled with garbage.

“But we aren’t even near the city,” I protested. “The sign said we had another two hours or so.”

“True,” he said, “but my orders were to drop you off here. How you get into the city is your own doing. Soon, there will be checkpoints, all from your husband’s cartel. They’ll be looking at each car. I can’t risk being seen with you.”

“So then, what do I do?”

“Hitchhike,” he said.

“But that’s so unsafe,” I said. “I could be attacked or raped.”

He gave me a melancholy smile. “What do you think’s going to happen to you anyway?”

I flinched. The truth stung. “You’re turning heartless, just like them,” I warned him.

“Occupational hazard, I guess,” he said. “It may save your life if you were to turn the same.”

At that he nodded at the door, eager for me to leave his charge. I sighed my acceptance and got out. Though I had told Javier I wanted to be bound at the wrists, he assured me it wasn’t necessary to make it look like I escaped. I was grateful for that. I needed every ounce of power I could get, even if it was just an illusion.

The minute my feet hit the soil, Juanito pulled away. I watched his red lights until he did a U-turn a few meters away. Then he roared past me, heading back to Javier, back to safety.

I’d never been so envious in my life.

I stood there for a long time, just a black figure against the darkening sky, the passing cars anonymous with their blinding lights, my hair and dress billowing around me in their wake. It wasn’t until I summoned the courage to stick my thumb out that one car eventually stopped.

To my utmost relief, it was a middle-aged woman driving. I got in and kept quiet while she scolded me for being out on the highway. I didn’t give her much of an explanation as to why I was out there—I was saving that for later—and I kept my face turned away from her so she wouldn’t see the faded yellow and blue bruises that still colored my skin from Franco’s assault.

She made good company, talking about her newest grandchild and how scandalous it was that he wasn’t baptized yet, and how all the neighbors were flapping their lips. I wondered what it must be like to live a totally normal life. To fall in love, get married, have children and grandchildren. To drive to the supermarket and drink instant coffee and watch daytime television and go to church and take every fucking day for granted.

Because of her normality, we sped past the one checkpoint we saw. The armed men didn’t even slow us down. We just kept driving through, their eyes trained only for people like Juanito.

When we finally arrived in the city and I asked her to drop me off at one of the busy plazas, I told her she was lucky to have all that she did. She only stared at me in disbelief. Then I thanked her and got out of the car. She drove off, shaking her head and talking to herself, and I wondered if I was going to be news in the morning, and if she’d be flipping through her morning paper and realize just who she had given a ride to.

Now, it was time to play a part, a me from another timeline, a timeline where Javier was the brutal captor and that was it. I closed my eyes, inviting the other persona in: frightened, relieved, jubilant at their escape. I looked around the plaza for someone who would know who I was, who would hear the underground tittering from the Sinaloa Cartel, who would first have to hear my story.

I found a musician—a
narcocorrido
singer—sitting by the side of a fountain, playing murder ballads on his accordion. The man, with his slicked back hair and soulful voice, glanced up at me as I hugged myself in front of him, shivering for show, and he immediately knew who I was. I was sure he had sung many songs about narco wives. Perhaps even one just for me. Sing me a song about Luisa, the one who was taken, the one who wasn’t wanted back. The one who found her freedom in another man’s bed.

It didn’t take long before I was wrapped in a blanket and being escorted into a police vehicle, flashing lights illuminating the plaza in red and blue. A few onlookers were watching, camera phones out, recording my apparent rescue as they would the murders that littered the city.

Once in the vehicle, the officers extra courteous, I was driven in a different direction than I thought we’d go. Then I realized that after my kidnapping, Salvador must have abandoned his old mansion for another one, for security’s sake.

It made no difference to me; they all held the same horrors.

Soon we were driving past checkpoints—some operated by other police, some by men with black ski-masks and automatic rifles—and then through the heavily guarded gates of my husband’s newest palace.

Once we came to a stop, the police escorted me out of the SUV and straight up the polished steps of Salvador’s front door. One officer went to knock but the door was already opening, slowly, ominously, like a scary movie.

Salvador stood on the other side, backlit from the foyer, his ugly face cast in sinister shadow. He stroked along his mustache and gave me a smile that even a crocodile would be ashamed to wear.

“Luisa, my princess,” he said cunningly, opening up an arm for me. “Welcome home.”

I looked to the police officers, wondering if I had enough strength to turn back, to run, to plead for their help. But they were paid handsomely by my husband, and their job was about indifference to anything but money. There would be no help from them. There would be no help from anyone.

I was on my own.

I gave Salvador a stiff smile as I walked into the house.

He slowly closed the door behind him and shot me a sly look over his shoulder. “This took me by surprise. I must say I never expected to see you again.”

“I know,” I said, putting on the face of the scared yet sympathetic wife. “And I understand. When I saw I had a chance to escape, I took it. You’d be shocked at how immature Javier’s men are. They are nothing like yours.”

He smiled briefly at my compliment. “I’m surprised you came back
here
.”

“You are my husband,” I told him, hoping he bought the sincerity. “Where else would I go?”

He studied me for a moment, his jaw ticking back and forth. “I guess you’re right.” He took a large step toward me, his cowboy boots echoing on the floor. “It’s too bad that you’ll soon wish you hadn’t.”

My face fell. His lit up. “Sometimes,” he went on, “you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.” He chuckled to himself. “I realized what I had wasn’t even worth bargaining for.” He shrugged and pulled at his chin as he looked my body up and down. “But that doesn’t mean you aren’t worth something. Get on your knees.”

I opened my mouth in protest and almost said something I’d regret. Talking back to Javier had become a bad habit, one he had encouraged.

“I said on your knees, cunt!” Salvador yelled at me. He grabbed me by my hair and thrust me down to the floor, my knees taking the brunt of the fall. I heard his zipper go down but I couldn’t make myself look up.

He made me look. He made a fist at the top of my head and yanked my hair straight up, my nerves exploding in pain. I looked past his rancid cock and right at his face. It was evil incarnate. He shook his head, clucking his tongue. “You hesitated, Luisa, and a woman never hesitates. Looks like I’m going to have to retrain you all over again.”

The next thing I knew, his knee came toward my face. There was pain and spots and all the world went black.

Javier

T
he saying goes, if you love something, let it go. I always thought it was better to just shoot the damn thing so it’d never go anywhere.

But now I understood. Now that I didn’t have a choice.

I suppose I could have said something. I could have told Luisa what she wanted to hear. But that would have been a lie. I didn’t love her. I couldn’t. That was something that was no longer applicable to the person I’d become. There was no place for it in my life; it didn’t fit, it didn’t work. Love didn’t build empires, it ruined them.

What I felt for Luisa wasn’t love. But it was curious. It was something, at least. It was deep and spreading, like a cancer. Yet, instead of only bringing pain, it brought purpose in its sickness. Her lips soothed me, her heart challenged me, her eyes made me bleed. My bed was where we held our exorcisms. She brought me peace. I brought her fire. Now the flame was out—gone forever—and there was a war raging inside me.

I went a full week pretending that nothing had happened. Pretending that nothing was eating me from the inside out. I wore my mask every day. I worked with Este on our next targets, our next hand in this game. A trip to Veracruz was becoming more and more possible. But that city no longer stirred fear in my heart, no longer played on bad memories. Those memories meant nothing to me anymore. There was something so much scarier raging just below my surface.

One night I woke up from a nightmare. I think it was the same as I had before, with my father and I fishing, Luisa on the end of the hook. It was hard to remember; the dream shattered into fragments the moment I woke. But the feeling was there. The unimaginable fear. This was the sickness manifesting itself. This was the war coming. This was what happened to me when I no longer had her to placate me.

And then I realized with certainty that I had been a coward this whole time. I was in my bed, safe and comfortable in the life I had created for myself. I wanted for nothing. And yet she, she was with Salvador. She had been there a week already and I couldn’t imagine her state, if she was even still alive. She wanted for
everything.

I didn’t go back to sleep. Even though it was the middle of the night, I slipped a robe around me and left the house. I went to sit by the koi pond, the lotus blossoms looking ghostly in the moonlight. I stared at their white purity until the sun came up. Then, in that glow of dawn, I saw more clearly. The flowers were magnificent, but they weren’t as the Chinese scholar had said. There were imperfections on their surface. There were stains. Their beauty didn’t come from the fact that they were untainted, their beauty came from their resilience. They were proud to have grown from mud.

Even if my beauty queen was already dead, I knew what I had to do. There would be dire consequences for my actions, but there already were. What was the difference if I stirred up a little more trouble? At this point, it was pretty much expected of me.

Later that day, I told the men I was going away on a business trip to Cabo San Lucas. Este, being my right-hand man and all, insisted he come along for the journey, but I told him I needed to do this alone. I would be safe and I wouldn’t be long—two or three days, at most. And if I happened upon the wrong people at the wrong time, then that was that. I knew Este would slide right in and replace me anyway.

I was a nervous flier. It was a quick trip across the water, but it still took a lot of composure to not drink all the alcohol available in first class. There was a man in the row across from me who stared at me like he might have recognized me. I only smiled back. Though this was risky, I also knew that most people would never do or say anything to me. Besides, my face might have been out there once or twice but Salvador was right—I wasn’t on anyone’s radar.

Though the airport was closer to San Jose del Cabo than it was to San Lucas, that wasn’t my first stop. I wasn’t lying to Este when I said I had business that needed attending to. This time, I wasn’t going to give an order and watch someone else do it. I was going to get my hands very, very dirty.

It was all for her.

And it seemed the more I did for her, the filthier I got.

Once in Cabo, I took a long stroll around the town. I hadn’t been here in a long time and was shocked to see how much it had changed. What was once a small marina was jam-packed with million-dollar yachts. Cruise ships hovered offshore while drunk teenagers on jet skis did circles in the azure surf. The beaches were filled with dance music and DJs announcing hourly body shots. The popular bars spouted Top 40 hits and celebrity-owned statuses.

The town had no soul. Perhaps this was good for tourists—indeed it was excellent for Mexico’s economy, as were my drugs. But I could never live in a place that catered to the other half. Sure, the town was safe and the drug wars hadn’t littered the streets. But where was the real Mexico? Where was the grit beneath the glamour? Where were the proud flowers rising from the mud?

I spent most of the day walking around, taking in everything. Despite all my misgivings toward the resort town, I still enjoyed myself. I was a tourist, just looking at all the sights. I was a man just looking for a bar, a place to get a drink.

And then I found it. It was barely distinguishable from all the other tourist traps.

Cabo Cocktails.

I went in and sat at the bar. Even though it was a hot, sunny day and nearing three o’ clock, the bar was fairly empty. There was an old man nursing a beer at the other end of the bar and a couple in a booth. That was it.

The bartender, a cute girl with blondish pixie hair, was quick to serve me.

“A gin and tonic,” I told her. “Perfect for a day like today.” I gave her the smile that I knew could remove panties.

She smiled back but I could tell I had no true effect on her. She was probably into women.

“No problem,” she said, and got to work.

“What’s your name?” I asked her while she fished out a can of tonic water.

“Camila,” she said, an edge to her voice that told her not to bother asking for more than her name. But I wasn’t here for her.

I waited until she served me my drink and told me the price, then I asked what I really wanted to know.

“Camila, I’m wondering if you can help me,” I said, smiling again. “You see, there’s a girl who used to work here.”

Her eyes widened. I wasn’t sure what tipped her off I was talking about Luisa; perhaps it was my sharp suit, or maybe she’d been on Camila’s mind. “And I’m very worried about her,” I went on. “Luisa is her name. Have you spoken to her recently?”

She shook her head, her eyes darting around the bar. “No.”

“But she did work here…”

She nodded. She looked to the old man at the end of the bar. I waved at him dismissively. “Don’t worry about him. I just have a few questions and I’ll be out of your way.”

“Who are you?” she asked.

“I’m a friend,” I told her. “One of the few that she has these days. So you haven’t seen her around here then? She hasn’t called you?”

“No. No, I haven’t seen or spoken to her since a few days before her wedding.”

“To Salvador Reyes.”

She swallowed. “Yes. Tell me, is she all right?”

“I really hope so,” I said.
I really doubt it.

I knocked the rest of the drink back, feeling immediately refreshed and energized, and slid the money toward her. “One more thing.”

“What?” she asked, a bit of impatience mixed in with her apprehension. I could tell she was a tough girl. No wonder Luisa and she had been friends.

“Is your manager around? I’d like to ask him a few questions about her.”

She nodded and jerked her head down the hall. “Bruno. He’s in his office, I think. He comes and goes.”

I grinned at her. “Perfect.”

I waited until she left to go tend to the couple in the booth, then I reached over behind the bar and picked up the knife she used to cut up the lime for my drink.

I caught the man at the end of the bar watching me with mild interest that only tired old men have. I flashed the blade at him and smiled. He shrugged and went back to his beer.

Making sure the blade was hidden from sight, I walked down the hall and paused outside the door that said Bruno Corchado on it. I gripped the knife in my hand, slightly sticky from the lime juice. It would have been better if I had my own, but airplane security wouldn’t have let me fly with it in my boot or in my carry-on. Bastards.

I decided not to knock. I opened the door a crack and poked my head in.

“Camila,” the man grunted in annoyance until he looked up and saw me. His annoyance deepened. He obviously had no idea who I was. Good.

I shut the door behind me. “Bruno Corchado?”

“Who the fuck are you?”

I shrugged. “I could be a customer coming in with a complaint. Do you talk to all your customers that way?”

He glared at me. It was pitiful. “I can see you’re not. What do you want?”

“I wanted to ask you a few questions about your past employee, Luisa Chavez.”

He smirked and rolled his eyes. “Haven’t you heard? She’s Luisa Reyes now.”

“Is that right?”

“The bitch married a drug lord,” he said. “Salvador Reyes.”

I sucked in my breath. “I see. Well, good for her.”

He picked his nose and then wiped it under the desk. My lips wrinkled in distaste.

“She was money hungry,” he informed me, as if I was suddenly his friend. “She’d always come in here asking for money. Said it was for her parents. I bet it never was. But I don’t know what the hell she spent her money on, actually. Not men. Maybe she was into women, too.” He gave me a knowing look. “She was always such a prude. Doesn’t mean I didn’t get to have my fun with her, if you know what I mean.”

“I know what you mean,” I said, trying hard to keep my voice steady.

Bruno picked up on something anyway. “Aw, shit,” he said, straightening himself in his chair. “You’re not like a relative of hers or something?”

I cocked my head. “No. Though she does carry my name.”

He frowned. I could almost hear the rust in his head as the cogs turned.

“It’s on her back,” I told him. “Where I carved it.”

Before any panic could fully register on Bruno’s face, I swiftly flung the blade out. I aimed for his upper neck, but it went straight in the hollow of his throat.

Good enough.

He gasped, wheezing for air, but the air would not come. His hands went for his throat, trying to pull the blade out as the blood began to run down his chest, but he was already too weak to grab the handle. He started to pitch over, falling for the floor. I was at his side before he could.

I grabbed him by his greasy hair, holding him up by the roots.

“No, no, no,” I said in a hush, making sure to stare him right in the eye. “This is not over.”

I grabbed the knife and quickly yanked it out. Now the blood was gushing from the wound, drenching him in seconds. But as beautiful as the sight was, I had to be careful not to get any on my suit.

With my grip firm in his hair, I leaned over to whisper in his ear, the blade poised at his bloody throat. “You know all those things you tried to do to Luisa,” I said. “Well, I did them. I did them again and again, and she loved it. Maybe because I’m one of the few men who has ever seen her for the queen that she is. All you see her for is her beauty. I see her for
her
, stained and everything.” I pressed the blade in harder. “And I see you for everything you are—a sleazy sack of shit.”

I slowly, deliberately began to work the blade into his throat. He squirmed and kicked and fought against me, but in his current state, I was stronger. His will to live was pathetic, just like he was.

Eventually he stopped kicking. I kept cutting. When I was finally done, I was covered in a sweat and only a few drops of blood on my shoes and pants. They’d come out with a good wash.

I put his head into the garbage and pulled the bag out, making a knot at the end. I hoped it wouldn’t leak through. Then I looked around the office. It was a mess before I came in, piles of paper and empty beer bottles scattered around. The addition of blood and a headless corpse was barely noticeable.

I pushed in the lock on the door and quickly exited, shutting the door behind me. I couldn’t see Camila around, which was a shame. If she had asked me what happened, I would have told her Bruno had a headache and didn’t want to be disturbed. It was such a good line.

Soon I was out of the bar and strolling down the street again toward my rental car, bag of garbage hoisted over my shoulder. My first order of business was complete. Now it was on to the second.

I had a feeling it was going to be a lot harder.