“Nieves and Marta collected the bottle caps and glued them,” Mrs. Robles explains. “It gives them something to do while Javier is in school and Rosario and me are out working.”
“I don’t go to school,” Marta says, a note of sadness in her voice. An assortment of her medicine bottles sits on the table. “It’s the Popocatépetl, see?” She points at a volcano in the center of the cardboard. To the right of the volcano there’s a sun. Marta sniffs and says, “It still smells like beer. The only yellow caps we could find for the sun were from beer bottles.”
Emiliano can’t imagine how five people can live in this minuscule space they call home. The inside of the shack is clean and there is no clutter. Everything seems to have an essential purpose. The floor consists of wooden pallets covered with remnants from various rugs. Two cots are joined together in the far end of the room where, Emiliano supposes, Mrs. Robles sleeps with the three girls. He can tell that Javier sleeps on the remaining cot because he can see three piñatas on top of it. The red plastic cooler with the white top sits behind the door. A wire stretches between two nails, holding dresses and flimsy jackets. Emiliano can see cracks of light between the walls of the shack. How do they keep warm in winter? How does Javier work on the piñatas at night with only that dim lightbulb? How do they not roast to death in the summer months, with only one window high up in the back wall? Against the other wall stands the dresser, with an iron crucifix on top, and a bench with a double-burner petroleum stove, where a pot is gurgling with something that smells like his mother’s stew.
“We were waiting for Javier to eat. Will you join us?” Mrs. Robles says.
“Thank you, no. I have another stop after this. And then I have to go downtown to sell the merchandise. I’m late already.”
“Oh, and here we are detaining you with our chatter. Rosario, can you help Emiliano with the piñatas?”
“I got them,” Emiliano says, standing. He goes over to Javier’s cot and reads the note on one of the piñatas.
Hey, Emiliano. Sorry I missed you. Can you bring whatever you get for the piñatas tomorrow? We need to get some medicine for Marta. Thank you. Javier.
Emiliano puts down the piñata and takes one thousand pesos from his wallet. He brought the money from his savings at home to buy Perla Rubi’s mother a birthday present, but he can figure out something else for that. “This is for the piñatas,” he says to Mrs. Robles. “I’ll give Javier the rest tomorrow. I’m sure I’ll get at least four hundred for these.”
“Thank you,” Mrs. Robles says, taking the money. “God bless you.”
He takes two piñatas and Rosario takes the third. The whole family walks out with him.
“I’ll come and get the doll next Saturday,” Emiliano tells Rosario. “It’s really beautiful.”
“What about my leopard?” Marta asks, pouting.
He smiles at her. “Your leopard also. But see if you can get the ears and the tail to grow. And your volcano too,” he says to Nieves.
“Thank you for all you do for us,” Mrs. Robles says, taking his hand in hers. He squeezes it and lets it go.
Now it’s time to fly. After Emiliano says his good-byes, it takes him thirty minutes to reach the commercial district where the Taurus nightclub is located. Thai and Indian restaurants line the streets, and boutiques with dresses so flimsy Emiliano can’t imagine anyone wearing them. The six blocks surrounding Taurus are what everyone points to when they want to show that the old Juárez is gone and a new one has arrived. No one wants to think about Javier’s neighborhood just forty blocks away.
Taurus has a hot pink facade with black music notes popping out of saxophones. There are no windows anywhere, and inside it’s all black leather, chrome, and mirrors. It’s the hot spot in Juárez, Emiliano knows, where all the kids with rich parents come to drink and dance. Some day, he imagines, he’ll drive up to the club on his motorcycle with Perla Rubi behind him. But right now he is here for business and not to fantasize about the future.
The owner’s son, Armando, is kind to him. He always asks about his mother. Likes to talk with him about soccer. Emiliano wants to ask him now about the empty beer cans he’s seen in garbage bags at the back of the club. There must be at least one hundred cans in those bags, and that’s just from one evening. Taurus is open six days a week. If Emiliano can take all those cans to the recycling center and keep a percentage of the fees, he could be making serious money. Armando is a friendly guy. He might go for a fifty-fifty split.
Emiliano needs to make at least two thousand pesos every month. Half of what he makes he gives to Sara so she can pay the monthly bills for cable and their cell phones. The other half goes inside the fake Bible on his desk, his savings for a down payment on Paco’s brother’s motorcycle. Once he gets the motorcycle, he can make twice, maybe three times what he’s making now. He can also take Sara to work and pick her up again afterward. Riding those buses is too dangerous. He doesn’t want what happened to Linda to happen to his sister.
Emiliano’s heart jumps when he turns into the alleyway to the nightclub. There in the parking lot is Armando, walking toward a black Mercedes. Armando waited for him like he said he would. The day is looking good.
“Emiliano Zapata!” Armando practically shouts when he hears the rattle of the bike. “How are you?”
Emiliano dismounts and pushes the bike toward Armando. From the corner of his eye, he sees four garbage bags bulging with empty beer cans. “Good to see you.” He stretches his hand out to Armando.
“Hold on,” Armando says, shaking his hand. “I have to get something from the car.” He clicks the car doors open and retrieves an envelope from the glove compartment. “Come on in. You want a beer?”
“No, thank you.” Emiliano told Armando once that the Jipari code prohibited drinking, and now Armando jokingly offers him a beer every time he sees him. “I just need to get a purse from Doña Pepa.”
“How about a cup of coffee? Doña Pepa made a fresh pot a little while ago.”
“Maybe some water.”
“You got it.” Armando is wearing white chino pants and a soft black T-shirt that makes his biceps bulge. Emiliano knows he likes to work out. They go through the back door into Taurus’s small office. “Pepa! Emiliano’s here!” Armando shouts through the door that leads to the nightclub. He opens a small refrigerator next to the desk and takes out two bottles of water. He gives one to Emiliano. “Sit for a second,” he says. “I got a proposition for you, like I told you.”
Emiliano sits on a brown ottoman next to the sofa. “I wanted to ask you something too.”
“Yeah? One second.” Armando gets up and disappears into the darkness of the club. A few moments later, he returns and sits again. “I wanted to make sure Pepa was okay. The other day I found her on the floor. She blacked out. She really shouldn’t be working, but she insists on coming in. She says she’d go crazy with nothing to do at home. She used to take care of my father when he was a kid, and he’s sixty-eight, so you do the math.” He raises his bottle and drinks. Emiliano does as well. “So, you go first. What did you want to ask me?”
“I was wondering about all those beer cans you throw away every day. I could take them to the recycling center and we can split the profits.”
“The recycling center. That’s, like, on the other side of town. You’re going to bike all the way over there?”
“It’s not a problem.”
Armando studies Emiliano for a few moments and then laughs. “Okay. They’re all yours.”
“Sixty-forty?” Emiliano says. He knows you should always ask for a little more than you expect to get.
“Me sixty, you forty. Right?” Armando asks.
“The other way. I’m doing all the work. You’re just throwing the cans away now,” Emiliano responds in his best poker voice.
“All right,” Armando says, laughing. “You’re tough. But listen, I need a favor from you.”
Doña Pepa hobbles in with something folded in newspaper. Emi
liano stands and she hands him the package. “Here’s the purse, Emiliano. I hope your buyers like it.”
“If it’s like the other three you made, I’m sure they will. As many as you can make, I’ll find the best buyers for you.”
“Those little beads are a big strain on my eyes,” Doña Pepa says, blinking. “And my hands are stiff always. But I like keeping them busy. And the money is for Memo to buy one of those little computers. He loves those Piparis. He’s been talking about that thing where he gets new shoes for weeks.”
Emiliano nods, deciding not to tell her that it’s Jiparis, not Piparis.
“You go home now. You’re only supposed to work until twelve,” Armando says to Doña Pepa, concern in his voice.
“Just have to do the women’s toilets.” Doña Pepa walks away slowly.
Emiliano finishes the water in his bottle. “You said you had a proposition for me.”
“That’s pretty impressive, that little business you got going.” Armando nods in the direction of the newspaper package. “You like doing business, don’t you?”
“I like making deals. It’s about the only thing I’m good at.”
“Oh, come on. Don’t put yourself down. You’re the best high school soccer player in Juárez, maybe in all of Chihuahua. I’ve seen you play. You’re a natural-born leader. You singlehandedly got this city its first state championship.”
“Thank you.”
“How are your grades?”
“Nobody’s perfect.” Emiliano shrugs.
Armando laughs. “Listen, here’s my proposition. My father saddled me with taking his car, the Mercedes out there, to the repair shop. It’s supposed to be just an oil change and tire rotation, but the dealership is going to find something wrong with it, because that’s what they always do. So this morning—it came to me when I saw Pepa wrapping the purse—I said to myself, ‘Emiliano is going to come to pick up that purse. Why not help him and myself by giving him a little money to take the car to the dealership? He needs the money and I need the time.’ What do you think?”
“What exactly would I do?”
“You drive the car to the dealership on Mariscal. You wait there, watch some TV on the big screen in the air-conditioned room they got there, drink all the sodas you can drink, and then bring the car back here and go on your way a little better off financially than you started. Say, five hundred pesos better off.”
Emiliano tries not to react, but it’s too late. Armando sees the surprise in his eyes. “It’s probably, what? Twice what you’re going to make today after you sell all your things?” he says.
“A little more,” Emiliano admits.
“So?”
“Why? Why so much for doing nothing?”
“Honestly?”
“Yes.”
“You’re going to be at the dealership for at least two hours, maybe three. Three hours of my day is worth five hundred pesos. And I get to help you out a little. I know you can use the money.” Armando reaches into a pocket and takes out a shiny brown wallet. He opens it and offers Emiliano five crisp bills. “Take them. This is for three hours. And if it’s more than three hours, I’ll give you one hundred for each hour after that. If by some miracle it’s less than three hours, you still keep the five hundred. And I don’t care if you use the car afterward to do everything you were going to do on that antique you call a bicycle.”
“I don’t have a driver’s license,” Emiliano says.
Armando takes a card out of one of the wallet’s compartments. “If a cop stops you, show him this and ask him to call me. I’ll take care of it. You got nothing to worry about. And the insurance on that car is probably more than you’ll make in your lifetime.”
Emiliano thinks. Five hundred pesos, and he can do all his folk art business tomorrow after the exhibition game. That’s maybe seven hundred pesos net in two days. That will go a long way to paying the monthly bills, and he’ll be that much closer to owning the motorcycle. “Okay,” he says.
“There you go.” Armando hands Emiliano the car keys. “You don’t need to call me when they tell you they found something that needs fixing. Whatever it is and whatever the cost, just let them do it.”
They walk outside. Emiliano pops open the trunk and places Doña Pepa’s purse in there. Then he walks over to his bicycle, takes Javier’s piñatas from the trailer, and puts them in the trunk as well. Armando, standing by the trunk, picks up one of the piñatas and examines it.
“So who do you sell these to?” he asks.
“Stores near the bridge to El Paso. Mostly to Lalo Torres. He owns a folk art store downtown.”
“And tourists buy them?”
“He ships to stores in the United States. One of his clients owns a chain of stores at airports.”
“How does he get them across the border?”
“A shipping company. He knows all the customs regulations. He does it so much everyone knows him.”
“Interesting.”
Emiliano waits for Armando to finish inspecting the piñata. After a few moments, he takes it from him and places it in the trunk with the others. “I better get going. I’ll bring the car back in the afternoon. Will you be here?”
“It would be better if you took the car to my house. I’ll give you a ride back here to pick up your bike.”
“Can I just bring it here and leave the keys with the bartender? This is closer to my house. I have to be at a birthday party in Campestre by six.”
“Really? I used to live in Campestre before I got my own place. My father and little brother still live there, you know. Who’s having a birthday?”
Emiliano closes the trunk. “The Esmeraldas. Mrs. Esmeralda. The mother of one of my classmates.”
“No way! Jorge Esmeralda is my father’s lawyer! You’re invited to Judith Esmeralda’s birthday party? Emiliano, you never cease to amaze me. I knew you were a mover and a shaker, but this takes you up a few notches in my already high estimation.”
Emiliano waves to him as he gets in the car. Is it wrong to feel flattered and even honored by Armando’s words?
No. Maybe. Whatever. It still feels good.
Sara tries to put the threatening e-mail out of her mind long enough to do her daily assignments. One of these jobs requires reading all the e-mails people send to the El Sol news “hotline” and deciding whether any are worthy of follow-up. The hotline is the special inbox where readers send anonymous tips about suspected crime and corruption (or simply complain). Most of the e-mails are about potholes that never get filled or garbage that is never picked up. It’s work Sara usually does not mind doing and even enjoys—but today all she can think is she’s wasting time that could be better spent on Linda.
She usually checks the hotline as soon as she gets to work, but she skipped yesterday, which means she’ll get all the e-mails from Thursday as well as those that have come in so far today. She clicks on the link to the hotline inbox, but there is nothing there.
That’s strange. Sara has been covering the hotline since she was a high school intern, and there has never been a day with no tips, no complaints, no nasty retort to one of Felipe’s editorials. Maybe something is wrong with the site. She sends an e-mail to Ernesto asking him if he sees any technical problems. Five minutes later, Ernesto calls.
“This is very weird,” he says.
“What is?”
“Someone deleted all of the hotline e-mails for Thursday.”
“What do you mean, deleted? I thought you, me, and Juana were the only people who had access to the hotline.”
“That’s correct. Someone logged on to Juana’s terminal this morning at five a.m. Whoever it was deleted all the e-mails from the previous day. There were fourteen of them. All gone.”
“How do you know they were deleted?”
“Every keystroke you make on a computer creates a track that can be traced. The person who did this obviously wanted us to think we didn’t get any e-mails.”
“But how? You said they we
re deleted from Juana’s terminal. Juana didn’t delete those e-mails. She doesn’t even know how to access them. Whoever did it would need to know her password.”
“Everyone knows Juana keeps her latest password under the P in her Rolodex. I bet you always write your passwords on the last page of your address book.”
“Oops,” Sara says.
“Yeah, oops. But listen, I installed a program that saves all the e-mails we receive to the cloud. It’s a precaution I took after our system started dying of old age. I’ll send you a copy of the deleted e-mails in a few minutes. There must be something in there that someone doesn’t want us to see.” He laughs. “If this turkey had only deleted the one e-mail that worried him instead of all of them, we never would have known.”
“Ernesto, I have a bad feeling about this.”
“You must be thinking what I’m thinking …”
“This is related to the e-mail about Linda.”
“That’s what I think. Stay put.”
“Thanks, Ernesto.”
A few minutes later, Sara gets an e-mail from Ernesto.
Take a look at the third e-mail attached. The one from
[email protected]. It came in Thursday morning at 2. Pretty weird to get an e-mail with only a picture and no text. It’s the only one that stood out to me. Who’s the girl in the picture? One of your girls, maybe?
Sara clicks on the third e-mail and her heart stops. The subject line says puchi. That’s Linda and Sara’s secret word.
Heart racing now, Sara clicks on the attachment. It’s a picture. It isn’t Linda, but another beautiful young woman, about sixteen or seventeen, grimacing as if she smells something bad. She’s sitting in what looks like a nightclub booth, next to an older man whose bald head has fallen to his chest as if he’s passed out. On the table in front of them are an empty bottle of expensive Scotch whiskey and two thick crystal glasses. Next to the man is an ashtray with a cigarette still burning. Everything looks expensive in a cheap kind of way. The picture is off-center, rushed, like someone got up, leaving his cell phone behind, and someone else snapped a picture and sent it.