I can’t see Jeff anywhere. As I move onto the bridge, its sides lined with hurricane fencing topped by rusted barbed wire, I try to center my mind, to think only positive thoughts. My phone starts to buzz, and then the ringer fills the car.
It’s Charlotte.
“Honey, I got your message. Where are you?” she asks.
This makes me laugh. I briefly imagine what would happen if I told her the truth, that I was sitting in line waiting to enter Mexico with my guns zip-tied to the bottom of the car. The absurdity of the situation surges through me and suddenly I can’t stop laughing.
“Sorry,” I say. “I’m gonna be a little late.”
I glance out across the brown ebb of the Rio Grande, gilded by the sinking orange sunset. I’m not sure what side of the line I’m on anymore.
“I’m calling you from the hospital,” she says.
The hospital. Every dark thought flashes through my head. It’s been ten years almost since the car accident that put Charlotte in the hospital and our daughter Jess in the grave, but those words drag me right back, flooding me with the same helplessness.
“Are you all right, baby? Did something happen?” I’m hours away. There’s nothing I can do. My hands begin to shake.
“No, I’m fine,” she says, the fear she picked up in my voice forcing her into her uppermost, euphoric register. “Honey, it’s time. You need to get down here or you’re gonna miss it. Carter’s pacing so much he’s gonna wear a hole in the floor.”
The cars ahead of me roll forward. The white van disappears under the shade of the roofed checkpoint on the opposite end of the bridge.
“Baby, you got my message, didn’t you? I’m working a lead. I’m not even in Houston. I’m hours away.”
“Roland, they’re having the baby. Gina’s in labor. She was asking for you. Where are you? Can you at least tell me that?”
“I’m about to crawl over the devil’s back,” I say. “No, listen, that’s wonderful. I feel terrible that I’m not there. I would be if there was any way in the world. You tell them I’m thinking about them, and I’ll get there as soon as I can.”
“Are you in trouble, Roland?”
The white van is no longer in sight. The cars move forward again. The phone is hot against the side of my face, hot and silent.
“I’ve got to go, Charlotte. I’m so sorry.”
“Are you all right?”
“Don’t worry about me. Everything’s going to be fine. I love you. Tell Carter and Gina I love them, too. And I want to see that baby when I get there. I want to hold it.”
The car in front of me advances under the soaring red arch that marks the end of the bridge. Half the lanes are blocked by orange pylons. Off to my right a flock of pedestrians passes through, the air around them humming with laughter. I pull my phone away, imagining a sterile hospital hallway, Charlotte standing off to the side, stricken with worry.
“Are you doing something stupid?” she whispers.
“Possibly. But get in there and be with them, okay? Don’t worry about me. I can take care of myself just fine.”
I should turn around and go back. But I’ve come too far already.
“I love you,” she says.
“I love you, too.”
Up above me, as my car moves forward into the shade, there’s a string of words emblazoned across the entry terminal, like the motto at the gates of Dante’s hell. “Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.” Only in this case, it’s a Spanish epitaph:
BIENVENIDOS A MEXICO
Interlude: 1986
When the phone rang, I was twisted in my sheets, reliving old memories in my dreams. The glowing clock said it was two in the morning. The voice on the other end of the line belonged to Sgt. Crewes. He spoke quietly, with great precision, like a man who doesn’t want to repeat himself. Like a man who doesn’t want to be overheard. “Report to base,” he said, only not to the office. I was to meet him at the special housing block set aside for the cabana boys.
“You know that’s off-limits to me,” I said.
“Ten minutes.” He hung up the phone.
When I arrived, a couple of MPs were descending the second-floor stairs. They wouldn’t answer any questions. “Sergeant Crewes is upstairs, sir. We were never even here.”
I went up. The building layout reminded me of a dormitory. An entrance at either end led into a long corridor with doors on either side. Because of the hour, the common area lights were dimmed. Some of them flickered as I walked beneath them. I glanced up to see the husks of dead insects trapped inside the plastic.
Crewes stood outside one of the doors, looking pale and thin as woodsmoke.
“I couldn’t put this on my men,” he said. “But you know the score.”
Then he led me into the suite. The front room was bare apart from the furniture and a couple of garbage bags with bright yellow twist-ties. The hallway opened into a central bathroom with a bedroom on either side.
At the right-hand door stood Magnum, his expression blank.
“All right,” he said, patting my shoulder. “Good man.”
In the bedroom there were two bunks. She was on one of them, covered to her forehead with a green woolen blanket so that only her bobbed hair showed.
“What is this?” I asked.
“We need your help,” Magnum said. “This has to disappear.”
I walked to the side of the bunk, my hand edging toward the blanket.
“I wouldn’t do that-”
She looked barely human, she’d been so badly beaten. She looked like a mutant in some kind of genetic experiment gone wrong, covered in blood, her bones smashed and twisted, her bruised skin a record of fingertips and the tread of boots. The stud was missing from her nose. Shaking, I forced myself nearer, listening for breath.
“There’s no point in that,” Magnum told me. “I’m not an idiot.”
I wheeled on him. “What happened?”
“It was one of the cabana boys,” Crewes said. “They’ve ordered up some girls before, which is what put the major on the warpath.”
“And this time,” Magnum said, “it got out of hand. He was alone with her; otherwise it would have been stopped.”
“Where is he? Do we have him in custody?”
Crewes studied the linoleum floor while Magnum got the same amused look he’d had in the major’s office.
“We’re talking about your golden boy, right? César?”
“I asked for you,” Magnum said, “because you seemed reliable. We’ve got some tough hours ahead of us, and the longer we spend talking, the closer daybreak is.”
The protocol wouldn’t come to me. An image of the warrant officer at the PX flashed in my mind. That’s who should have been there, not me. I had no business at the scene of a murder, no business witnessing what was under that blanket. I looked from one man to the other, my features twisted in shock. Crewes wouldn’t make eye contact. Magnum seemed disappointed, like he’d expected me to be made of stiffer stuff.
“What. .” I said. “What do you expect from me?”
“We’re going to need more blankets,” Magnum began. “And some kind of conveyance so we can move her quickly and cleanly. Apart from the mattress, everything’s taken care of, so no worries on that score.”
The trash bags in the front room. Everything’s taken care of. The evidence, he meant.
“You want to move the body?” I asked, incredulous.
“Lieutenant,” Crewes said, his voice paternal and warm.
I had come straight over when the sergeant called, which meant I didn’t have a side arm. Ordinarily I didn’t. Magnum, if he’d been true to his namesake, would have had a Government Model tucked into the small of his back, but I hadn’t seen one. Crewes had one, though, hidden under the leather flap of a duty holster.