A group of Mayan women in traditional traje wandered into the courtyard from the street, clearly lost. With birdlike titters they bowed a group apology, turned around, vanished.
“This is the one day of the year you can cross over without showing documents,” Beto said, explaining the crowds. “There’s another fair right across the river. Mexicans come here, Guatemaltecos go there, trade goods, just for the day. Try to get farther than Tapachula, they’ll nail you. But you should see the mob down along the river. Hundreds of people, these crappy little rafts, scrap wood lashed to inner tubes. It’s nuts.”
“It hasn’t been the easiest trip for us, either.” Roque ignored a warning glance from his uncle. “But you probably know that.”
Beto smiled acidly, then glanced around again, making sure no one was in earshot. “Captain Quintanilla, that what you mean?”
“We never heard him called anything but El Chusquero.”
Beto shook his head, whispered, “El Choo-scay-ro,” like the punch line to a raunchy joke. “Toad-faced fuck. You realize that whole ambush on the road was a hoax, right? Those guys at the roadblock, they were his men, I don’t care what he told you.”
Roque and Tío Faustino sat there, taking that in. Finally, Tío Faustino said, “They got shot. Two of them. Straight to the head.”
“No, trust me.” Beto tottered his fingers, a puppeteer.
“That makes no sense,” Roque said, at the same time realizing it was possible. He hadn’t seen the shootings up close, everybody else ducking down inside the car, terrified. “Why go to all that trouble just to kidnap us anyway?”
“Who knows what goes through that sick fuck’s head? I’m telling you it was bogus. Captain Quintanilla’s way of amusing himself, jerking the chain, adding a tax for moving you through Jutiapa. He makes it look like a gang thing. Something goes wrong, one of you dies, he can walk away, hang it on us.”
Tío Faustino sat back in his chair. “I can’t believe this.”
“Now, let me guess, I’ll bet he’s pushing to get you to cross over to Oaxaca with his people here. Don’t do it, my friends. You’ll die.”
Beto struggled for a notepad stuck in his back pocket. A pencil stub was fastened to it with a rubber band. He opened it to a page where there was a crude map of the coast.
“They’ll send you by boat. Pick you up around here,” he pointed with the pencil, “little outside Champerico, take you to a huequito, a little smuggler’s cove, outside Puerto Escondido. That’s what they say. But how you supposed to get the rest of the way through Mexico?”
“They told us they’d take us overland,” Tío Faustino said, “all the way to the States.”
Beto tossed the pencil down. “Seriously? They tell you two boats, two whole boats, just vanished the last couple months? They tell you fifteen poor fucks drowned just last week? What was left of the boat washed up in pieces. Shit that floats outta Haiti’s got better rep than that.”
High in the conacaste branches, a zanate cawed. The pijuyo on the roof’s edge fled. The zanate swooped down, took its place, a leathery curl of something, flesh maybe, in its talons.
Tío Faustino said, “How are we supposed to trust you?”
“Look, you paid, everybody got his slice, we’ll get you home, okay? El Chusquero on the other hand.” He sat back, crossed his arms, biceps popping. Not carpenter muscle. “Guy’s a bug eater, know what I’m saying?”
Roque told himself not to fall for this but it was seductive. It didn’t just sound like the truth, it was the truth, as far as he knew it. But what con wasn’t salted with truth, how else would suckers buy into the bullshit? He was tired of being a sucker. “Why believe you, not these other guys? You were supposed to get us this far. Look what happened.”
“Wanna go by boat? Fucking be my guest. But say they get you to Puerto Escondido-and that’s a big if, okay? Like I said, you got the whole rest of Mexico to get through. They say they’ll take you overland, sure, and hit you up every step of the way, one leg of the trip after the next. Pay or get left there, stranded, and hold on to your ass so it don’t blow away. That what you want? You’ve already paid. Why pay twice, three times, four?”
“That would’ve been nice to hear before I had to beg twenty grand more off my cousin. So going by boat’s no good. What’s your plan?”
Beto opened his notebook to another page, another rough map. “Know what we call Chiapas? The Beast. More arrests there than anywhere. If it ain’t the federales, it’s the Mexican la migra. If it ain’t them it’s the paramilitaries, the vigilantes. And yeah, I’ll admit it, the maras prey on the poor fuckers too. You pay for protection or you just fucking pay, all right? The way to get through Chiapas, honest to God, is you walk or take the bus. Both, actually.” Again, using the pencil as pointer: “There are checkpoints along the way. Tapachula, Huixtla, Escuintla, Pijijiapan, Tonalá, Arriaga. You have to know where the roadblocks are or you’ll still be on the bus when it gets stopped. No documents? Too bad. Get sent right back where you came from.
“Now, I’ll take you overland to Arriaga. We’ll get off the bus a little before the checkpoints, walk around, catch the next bus.” He glanced up at Roque. “I take it you’ll drive the car. Personally, I think that’s a hassle. Perfectly safe on the bus, safer in my opinion, but you made your choice, Lonely got his piece of that too-I envy the cocksucker, man, the angles he plays-but fine, you got a car. You realize, they catch you moving migrantes in it, they can take it away? Deport you and take the car to boot, fucking American passport won’t mean dick.
“Anyway, me and your uncle, the Arab and the girl, we meet up with you in Arriaga. I call my source, he tells me which routes are clear, which ones got roadblocks right now. We take the clear route, head through Oaxaca, which is the only real rough spot after Chiapas, then it’s on to Mexico City where we’ll take a rest. You’ll need it, trust me.
“From there, things are a snap till you get to the U.S. border. Checkpoints are run by the army, you can buy your way through, fifty bucks, sixty tops, assuming they don’t fall for the docs we’ve got for you.” He sat back, closed the notebook, wrapped the rubber band around it and tucked the pencil into place. “That’s something to keep in mind, okay? We got voter registration cards for you-not you,” he said to Roque, “I mean the other three, you got a passport. Big mistake, phonying up a driver’s license-how many Mexicans got a car? But they register to vote, get the shit knocked out of them by the local jefe they don’t. That ID’ll cure a lot of headaches, trust me. But you go ahead. You listen to what El Chusquero’s man tells you. Let me know if it doesn’t sound like crazy talk. It don’t, you wanna do it, I wash my hands of you. But don’t come back here thinking you can try us twice. This is business, not charity.” He rose from his chair, puffing out his chest. “Sunset’s a little before eight. I’ll be back at nine. If you’re here, we go. If not, good fucking luck, my friends.”
TÍO FAUSTINO STOPPED ON THE NARROW STAIR AS HE AND ROQUE returned to the room. His face looked ashen. “You were very strong down there. You’ve changed, do you know that?”
Don’t tell me, Roque thought. You’re so proud. “I’m tired of being screwed with.”
Tío Faustino smiled wearily. “A big part of learning you can handle yourself is knowing what it feels like to get your ass kicked.”