"Tony Chehenga," he said.

"Can I buy you breakfast?" Jose asked, starting the Mercedes.

"Dinner for me," Tony said. "Sure. There's a Perkins one exit up."

Jose pulled out of the lot and headed back up the highway.

"So what's all the mystery?" Tony asked.

"I thought they might be listening to your calls," Jose said.

"Not our government," Tony said, sitting back in his seat. "We respect your privacy. So, what is it you need?"

"Let's get you something to eat," Jose said.

"That bad, huh?"

"We've seen worse," Jose said.

"That's no comfort, Jose," Tony said.

Tony asked Casey how she got mixed up with Jose and she told him.

"I had a partner killed by these Mexican bangers from M-13," Tony said. "He was visiting his ex-wife and kids up in Dallas. Jose worked the case, that's how we met, but we've done a few favors for each other over the years."

Casey suspected there was a story behind the favors, but they pulled into the Perkins and she didn't ask.

Tony ordered steak and eggs, then handed the menu to their waitress. "Okay, I don't have to actually have the food in my stomach. What's up?"

"We need to stop a truck from going into Mexico," Jose said.

"No problem," Tony said, flipping his cup and accepting some coffee from a waitress with a toothy smile. "I'll call President Calderon."

"Or at least know when it went in and where it's going."

Tony looked at the flag on the shoulder of his uniform and said, "You got me confused with a Mexican border agent."

"Don't you know those guys?" Casey asked.

"Last time one of our guys crossed the line to ask if they wanted to put together a softball team to play us, they arrested him. We're not real close."

"Really? Arrested him?" Casey said.

Tony nodded. "Really. They had to go halfway up the ladder to get it worked out. I could get what you need, though. I just have to go through channels. We have a Mexican liaison. I know they've got cameras, same system as us, so you could run the plates and it'll come right up. It'll cost you some cash, though. Nothing happens over there without grease."

Jose glanced at Casey and said, "We don't have a plate number."

Tony tapped the tines of his fork against the spoon, looking from one of them to the other as if waiting for the punch line, before he sighed and said, "I could get you some DVDs, I guess. You'll have to watch them yourself, though."

"We'd be looking for them right away," Jose said, checking his watch. "The truck we want could've come through here any time since, I don't know, two a.m. if they were making time. Or it might come through any time now if the driver stopped, which I doubt."

"Maybe you should sit out there on the road and watch until I know I can get a copy of it," Tony said.

"I guess we'll have to," Jose said.

"I was kidding. What happens if you see it?"

"I ask for another favor," Jose said.

"And I'm going to find what in this truck?" Tony asked.

"Let's talk about that if we get to that point," Jose said. "How long would it take you to stop it if we see it heading into the border?"

"A phone call," Tony said. "Providing it's as urgent as you're making out."

"If we found the truck on the video, could you have them pull the destination?" Casey asked. "Would they have that?"

"For the right price, they'd give you a limousine ride there,'' Tony said. "Todo es para la venta, they say. Everything is for sale."

"Even women and children," Casey said under her breath.

CASEY BLINKED AND RUBBED HER EYES WITH THE PALMS OF HER hands, clicking the pause button on the computer.

"I can't even keep my eyes open," she said, hiding a yawn in her elbow and swinging her legs off the motel bed. The room was a room like a million others, flowered bedspread with assorted stains and spots, cheap furniture, and a small television with a pay-per-view box for porn on top. Jose had dismantled the box and hooked up the laptop.

"Eight lanes of truck traffic," Jose said, his voice trancelike. "Too bad half of the hundred billion we export to Mexico comes from Texas."

He sat slumped down in the desk chair, his eyes half shut but unblinking as he stared at the screen. He picked up the menu of television choices from a little table by a bank of windows. "Lord of the Cock Rings? Must be epic.''

"You're losing it," she said. "You're running what? Thirty-six hours without sleep?"

Jose held his Rolex out in front of his face, then moved it farther away, trying to focus. "Forty."

"We have to do this," Casey said, "but we also have to sleep. You should see what you look like. Come to bed."

"You go," Jose said, his eyes glued to the screen. He flipped the porn menu into the trash can.

Casey shook her head, got up, and went into the bathroom. She examined the hint of crow's feet in the corners of her eyes, then stretched the skin taut to make them disappear. She ran the water hot enough to fill the small tiled bathroom with steam before dropping her clothes and stepping into the shower. She got clean and let the water run over her hair, covering her face.

A hand on her hip made her jump and let out a shriek.

"Jesus," she said.

Jose stepped in behind her and wrapped his arms around her middle, pulling her tight and resting his head on top of hers.

"Something about those three words," he said. "I lost my concentration."

"What three words?" she asked, turning to kiss him.

His lips grazed hers and his hands moved down the small of her back. In a whisper, he said, "Come to bed."

Casey woke with a start, sitting up in bed and feeling for Jose even as the sight of him back at the computer registered in her brain. The streetlight outside their window cast a trapezoid of pale light across the musty carpet.

"I'm guessing 'come to bed' doesn't work twice in the same night?" Casey said, sweeping the hair from her face and looking at the clock. "It's four o'clock."

"Can you come here?" he said, still hunched over, his voice laced with excitement.

Casey broke free from the covers and crossed the small room. She put her hands on his shoulders and leaned past his neck.

"Look familiar?" he asked.

Casey sucked in a breath of air at the sight of the black rooster painted on the truck's red cab.

"That's it," she said.

"Then we've got him."

THE SUN WENT DOWN AS THEY DROVE SOUTH. THE RED CRACKS in the sky cast deep shadows across the east end of Nuevo Laredo, the Mexican sister to Laredo, Texas, just across the border. With the license plate of the eighteen-wheeler and some cash, Tony had been able to get them the truck's destination, but not the name of the facility. When Tony showed them exactly where it was on a map, they realized the eighteen-wheeler was headed for the same factory they'd passed on their way up from Monterrey with Isodora and her baby, the same place the federales had smashed Casey's camera. Jose and Casey had only been able to stare at each other and shake their heads.

While Casey argued to scope out the factory, Jose insisted that he make use of some old contacts before they made another move.

Heavy purple clouds roiled in the red light, dropping rain in sporadic sheets as they wound their way off the highway and into the city. TV antennae, water towers, and chimney pots stood out against the crimson light like sentinels atop row houses and tenements. Laundry drooped on sagging lines hung from one building to another like bunting.

"That's the place," Jose said, pointing down into a dark alley.

A green neon sign for a bar named Perro Rojo glimmered in the downpour. Garbage spilled from cans and an emaciated yellow dog trotted their way, ears flat, with a plastic bag in its mouth. A drunk peed on the crooked brick wall, steadying himself on the ladder of a rusted fire escape. At the far mouth of the alley, three men stood in dripping cowboy hats around an oil drum whose burning contents cast flickering light across their hardened faces. Jose recognized two of them, even from a distance.