Border Son Read online

  He yelled something in Spanish.

  “Get in the van, Dad,” Tyler said.

  “What?”

  “Get in the van.”

  “What’s happening?”

  Julio spewed more talk.

  “Looks like I’m not going,” Tyler said, his hands raised as Julio pointed the gun at him. “You go, Dad. Get out of here.”

  And so, this was it.

  The moment in life that sets the trajectory for the rest of your days. Most people only recognize it in hindsight. In memory. But for Ed, this moment rushed upon him like a desert wind, blasting his thoughts and exposing his life, past and future, to the decision he had to make.

  “No . . . ,” Ed said under his breath.

  Julio turned to him, the gun raised, more angry words.

  “Dad!” Tyler yelled.

  “No,” Ed said louder, the tremor in his voice still noticeable. He drew a breath, and with it came a voice he’d never heard from himself. A voice which carried the weight of so many silences, places when he should have spoken up and didn’t.

  The pistol was now aimed at his forehead. His legs were shaking and Ed thought they would give out at any moment.

  “I’m not leaving!”

  He would die with Tyler knowing that his father did not abandon him.

  The driver in the van started shouting. The migrants already in the van started in too. They couldn’t wait out here in the open. Julio yelled back, the cacophony of foreign voices rising in the air.

  “Dad!”

  “I’m not leaving, I’m not leaving! I’m never leaving!”

  Suddenly the driver hit the gas and the van took off down the highway, leaving the coyote and the two gringos awash in its taillights.

  66

  Tyler sat down in the dirt, grabbing Ed’s arm on the way down.

  “Sit down, Dad,” Tyler said.

  Ed’s energy was spent, but he was resolved. “What’s he going to do?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Julio yelled again, and Ed didn’t need a translator to understand that the coyote wanted them to shut up. Julio pulled his cell phone out, called a number, said a few words, and then put it back. He backed up a couple paces and then sat down himself, keeping the gun trained on them.

  Daylight came upon them all and the shadows moved across the land. Their water was gone.

  They waited.

  A car would appear in the distance and then fly by their position and be gone. The distant mountains became lost in a haze, shaded by nothing more than too much atmosphere. After a couple hours, his skin was burning. It felt like Ed had never been so close to the sun before.

  From the east a car approached quickly. While a little more than a quarter mile away, it slowed dramatically and started to creep down the blacktop. Julio’s phone vibrated. He stood up and backed away from Ed and Tyler toward the road.

  The car came to a stop when Julio waved it down and the door opened.

  A man stepped onto the road.

  “Ed! Tyler?” the man yelled. It was Agent Lomas.

  Ed perked up when he heard his name.

  “Here!” Ed yelled from the back side of the embankment. He stood and walked over to the road. He started to feel a sense of relief, like this whole ordeal was coming to an end. “You have no idea how happy I am to see you, I thought—”

  Lomas raised his gun where they could see it.

  “On your knees, Ed,” Lomas said. “Tyler! I know you’re out there. Get over here next to your dad.”

  After what seemed like forever, Tyler emerged from hiding and took his place on his knees next to Ed. Lomas holstered his gun and from his pocket took out some zip ties and cuffed Tyler. Then he did the same to Ed.

  “I told you, Ed, you should have told me what was going on.”

  Ed didn’t say anything.

  “You go south, start a shooting gallery from what I heard, bodies piling up all over the place in Nuevo Negaldo, and then here you are sneaking through the desert?” Lomas said. He walked over to Julio, and spoke to him. Ed watched as Julio pulled the pistol from his waistband and handed it to Lomas. The agent looked it over and grunted.

  “This could have gone so much different if you had just talked to me, Ed. What were you thinking? I mean, really. Look at him.” Lomas pointed at Tyler. “He’s a loser. Why would you put yourself in this position for him? It doesn’t make any sense. Now it’s gotten way too complicated.”

  Lomas raised Julio’s gun, and before Ed’s mind could contemplate what was happening, the agent fired, putting a bullet right between Julio’s eyes. Ed’s stomach dropped and he dry heaved.

  Lomas walked behind Ed and Tyler. Ed had no idea if this was his last moment on earth when a canvas bag went over his head and was cinched at the neck. Lomas lifted him to his feet and guided him to the car. Ed was put in the back seat and the door was closed.

  He waited there in the dark. He tried to calm his breathing as he listened for what he was sure to be the gunshot that would kill his son. Agent Lomas had killed the unarmed smuggler without even batting an eye. Why would he be any more reserved with them? The opening of the car door across from him eased his nerves as he felt Tyler being pushed in beside him. The door closed and they were alone in the car.

  “You okay, Dad?”

  “Yes.”

  “You sure.”

  Ed grunted.

  “You know this guy?”

  “Lomas. His name is Lomas. FBI, or DEA, or something. He was asking me questions about you the past several days. Wondering if I knew where you were.”

  “When was the last time you saw him?”

  “The night Camilla drove me to Mexico.”

  Ed felt what must have been Tyler kicking the seat in front of him.

  “He’s Cartel.”

  “What?”

  “Lomas . . . must be Cartel or paid off by Salazar.”

  “That means?”

  Ed heard Tyler sigh, then the sound of the driver’s door opening and Lomas getting in the car. He put it in drive and they felt the motion of the vehicle turning around and heading back in the direction from which it had come.

  Behind them, Julio’s body lay on the road, a pistol tossed beside him, and his vacant eyes staring up at the blistering sun.

  67

  They rode with their heads covered in the back seat of the car. Edward had naïvely started asking questions, and Lomas repeatedly told him to shut up. It wasn’t until their captor stopped the car, opened Ed’s door, and pistol-whipped him that the idea to keep his mouth shut finally took hold.

  They were driven for what seemed like hours. The vehicle kept a straight course, the smooth road under them giving no indication how fast they were moving. Eventually the car slowed, made a hard right, and then accelerated again.

  “Get down,” Lomas said.

  “Why?” Ed asked.

  This time Lomas didn’t stop the car to bust Ed in the head.

  “I said get down.”

  Several minutes passed and they pulled into an area with the sounds of commotion all around the car. They came to a stop and Ed could hear voices.

  Two men, Lomas one of them, argued back and forth in Spanish. Tyler’s door opened, Ed heard a few laughs from another man who must have been standing close by, and then the door was shut again.

  The car began to accelerate and soon they were zigzagging through city streets.

  “We are back,” Tyler whispered. His voice was close to Ed’s ear.

  “Where?”

  “Nuevo Negaldo.”

  “What?”

  “He’s brought us back.”

  “That’s right,” Lomas said, “I gave you a chance. You could have told me where the load was. We could have made a deal.”

  “You would have killed us,” Tyler said.

  “You’re dead anyway. Salazar isn’t going to make the same mistake again. Roberto won’t be the one pulling the trigger this time.”

  “Le
t my dad go. This ain’t his show,” Tyler said.

  “He’s not leaving.”

  “Let him go!” Tyler screamed.

  Ed heard kicking, as if Tyler had brought his legs up and was attempting to bust the driver’s seat in front of him. The car swerved and then Lomas applied the brakes hard. The vehicle came to a screeching halt, Ed’s forward momentum carrying him into the seat in front of him, smashing his face. Blinding pain shot through his nose.

  Lomas stepped out of the car and opened Tyler’s door. Ed could hear blows being dealt out viciously, his son holding his tongue with each punch.

  “Stop it!” Ed yelled. “Stop!” The pain in his face made his voice weak.

  The beating stopped after Lomas put in one last hard hit for good measure. The door was shut, Lomas climbed back in the driver’s seat, and they were on their way again. Tyler slumped to his side, his weight collapsing on Ed’s shoulder.

  “You going to be okay?” Ed whispered.

  Tyler grunted, and Ed could feel his son nod slightly.

  They rode like this for several minutes, turning left and right, navigating through the streets of Nuevo Negaldo, until they started to rise up a hill. Tyler mumbled something inaudible.

  “What?” Ed asked.

  “Salazar’s place. We’re here.”

  “He’s right,” Lomas said.

  Ed could hear a voice from what sounded like a fast-food speaker, then the noise of a large iron gate opening, and the car moved on. Lomas brought the car to a stop, the doors opened, and several hands grabbed at Ed. He was lifted out of the car and practically dragged away, his toes barely reaching the ground. He was carried up stone steps, and suddenly air conditioning hit his body full force as he was ushered along.

  He was in a house, the footsteps of his captors echoing in what sounded like a large stone entryway. On and on until eventually they moved him down a stairway. Vertigo started to overtake his mind as down and down they went. He breathed hard against the hood.

  Down and down they went. Ed thought he would suffocate. He couldn’t get enough air. Panic.

  Finally the floor leveled out and his guards forced him to sit in a chair. The zip ties on his wrists were cut, but before he could stretch his muscles, his arms and ankles were taped down to the chair. Once done, his captors left him and all was silent.

  Ed sat, taped to a chair, a bag over his head, in what could only be the basement of a Cartel drug lord. The silence of the room was deafening. His own heart beat in his ears and sweat poured from his brow, leaching into the bag, causing a self-induced sensation of waterboarding with each breath.

  He was scared. He was beyond all his comprehension of the notion of scared.

  Then he heard something that sounded like the scuffing of a foot on a sandy floor. “Tyler? Tyler, is that you?”

  “Ed?” a voice said back. It was feminine.

  “Camilla?”

  “Yes, it’s me,” she said.

  “Where are you?”

  “Over here.”

  It wasn’t long until they realized they both were similarly constrained, hooded, and coming to grips that their futures were tied up in the actions of their wayward sons.

  68

  El Matacerdos arrived in Nuevo Negaldo as the sun was reaching its zenith. It had been years since he had been here, but the city hadn’t changed much. He had taken the main road up from Hermosillo, stopping overnight, and then looked for a motel on the southern side of the city. Something about the border made him uneasy. It had always been that way, and so he kept his distance. He had been sent to Juarez and Nogales before but had never crossed over into the US.

  In Mexico, things made sense to him.

  North of the border, not so much.

  Satisfied with the motel’s location, he paid cash, then parked his car, pulled his duffel out of the trunk, and went to his room. The dry desert air seeped through the walls as he placed his bag on the bed and searched the small room. Once content that this wasn’t the day he was being set up for his own execution, he barricaded the door and went in to take a shower.

  The water poured over him and washed away the past several days of sins. Here as the steam rose and filled the room, his body stood still, but his mind kept moving on the roads he had traveled and the men he had killed. It was an endless highway of places and faces—angry men, crying men, men pleading for their lives. They haunted his mind, but none so much as those at peace to allow him to do what he had been commissioned to do.

  There had only been a few, those who were calm, the fatalists. The spiritual perhaps. In his business there were not many, but there were some.

  Salazar was not one of those men.

  El Matacerdos knew Salazar from way back. He had watched his rise in the Cartel with befuddled amusement. From the very beginning it was apparent to him Salazar would end up shot for ineptitude, but he had the luck of being born into a distant branch of El Aguila’s family. When he was given the plaza in Nuevo Negaldo, word was that one of the other cartels would move against him as soon as he arrived.

  His weakness as a capo had been exposed in a different way, however. He was losing shipments apparently. And that was one thing El Aguila could not tolerate. Not even from his own family.

  El Matacerdos stepped out of the shower, dried off, wrapped the towel around himself, and sat on the bed. From the duffel he pulled out a clean set of clothes, dark jeans and a T-shirt. He got dressed and then inspected his weapons. He had two pistols. Each the same. Redundancy in the event that one should malfunction, which was unlikely since they were meticulously maintained.

  He put them in the shoulder holsters, then put his jacket on over top.

  Salazar’s place was a short drive away. He would be leaving as soon as the job was done, but his eyes were heavy from the long drive and the effects of the shower. He lay down on the bed, his feet still on the floor, and stared at the ceiling until his eyes closed and he drifted to sleep. A fevered sleep with the faces of the long dead dancing in his brain.

  There would be more faces added in a few hours, and the nightmares would grow and the devil’s road would get longer, but for now, he rested with the ghosts of the past.

  69

  Roberto was starting to lose it. His mother had gone off the grid. He kept calling her phone but was always bounced to voicemail. He called his aunt up in Deming; his mother had not arrived. He heard that same message each time he called.

  She had disappeared. More than likely she had not disappeared accidentally.

  Everything in him wanted to cross the border and go to Hurtado to find her, to drive the route up to Deming and see if he could retrace her steps. But he was stuck here in Nuevo Negaldo.

  His hands shook. He paced the room in the back of Adan’s garage where he had been told to stay. After the course of the past several days, he would have thought his body would be on the point of collapsing, but out of some unknown reserve, his adrenaline kept on pumping.

  Salazar’s paid stooges at the border crossing would take him out if he tried to cross, and he wasn’t about to go slumping across the wild to get up north like some lowlife bum. He was stuck, with a million watts of bottled-up energy and no place to exorcise it.

  He pulled a cerveza from the mini fridge Adan kept stocked and tried to sit down on the couch. Then he stood and moved to the small counting table in the middle of the room. Back and forth he went, like a junkie on the street twerking on a bad hit.

  Where was she?

  He tried her phone again.

  He should never have involved his uncle. He was a good man, the only truly good man he had known in his life. Now his uncle was dead. Miguel was dead. What if his mother was dead? What if Salazar had gone after her?

  He got up and threw the empty bottle against the wall where it shattered like fireworks.

  The door opened.

  “You alright?”

  “Where’s Adan?” Roberto asked.

  “He’s coming. Five minutes.”


  The door closed.

  Roberto wasn’t being held prisoner, but he couldn’t leave either. Adan had taken his gun, as he did to everyone coming into his shop. He wanted to be sure if there was ever an attempt of a coup that he would be the only one armed. Roberto going out onto the street without his firearm would be the equivalent of committing suicide. So all he could do was wait.

  And wait some more.

  Eventually, he could hear noise in the garage and the door opened. Adan walked in and shut it behind him. He then sat down at the table across from Roberto.

  “You sure Miguel was dead?” Adan asked.

  “Yes, positive.”

  “They found him this morning. Or at least parts of him over on Revolución Street. It is good to know he was dead before they butchered him.”

  Roberto’s jaw tightened as he listened.

  “Salazar’s turning over every rock looking for you. He’s squeezing everyone, even me. Wants to know where you are. Wants me to bring you in or to kill you myself.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  Adan reached into his belt and pulled out Roberto’s pistol. Roberto’s breath stopped as he looked at the weapon from the other end. Instead of seeing a muzzle flash and eternal darkness, Adan laid it on the table and pushed it across. Roberto didn’t know whether to pick it up or not.

  “He’s got your mom, bro.”

  Roberto’s eyes lit up and he stood to his feet, his fists clenched, he needed something to punch.

  “Where?”

  “His place.”

  “You see her?”

  “Yes.”

  “Alive?”

  Adan nodded. “She looked okay. He hadn’t roughed her up yet.”

  Roberto looked down at the pistol.

  “Take it,” Adan said, “you’re going to need it.”

  He reached out, picked up the piece, and chambered a round.