El Gato smiled at them.

They watched as he walked over to a kitchen cabinet beside the dirt-smudged faded-white Kenmore refrigerator, opened the cabinet, and took out a bottle of Jose Cuervo tequila. He uncapped it and took a long swallow, then held out the bottle, waving it as an offering to the women. There were no takers. He shrugged and took another pull.

Miguel Guilar walked into the kitchen and wordlessly looked around the group for the next person to be chained in the bedroom. He shook his head out of annoyance and grabbed the nearest girl by her upper right arm. It was the pudgy eighteen-year-old with the streaks of bleached hair. She pulled back from him, but when Guilar used more force, and El Cheque motioned menacingly with the TEC-9, she reluctantly went with him.

Delgado walked over to the very attractive girl in the tight jeans and pink lace blouse. She narrowed her eyes at him.

He smiled, reached out with his index finger, and stroked the soft skin of her throat on up to her chin.

The fire in her eyes grew, and she made an angry face and slapped away his hand. Then the look on her face and the fire in her eyes changed to fear as she recoiled at the thought of his response.

El Gato laughed aloud.

“Come,” he said, holding out his hand for her to take. “Let us go show your boyfriend a thing or two.”

She stood frozen. He grabbed her by the upper left arm and jerked, herding her toward the hallway that led to the master bedroom. She shook free of his grip and walked ahead of him.

When they entered the master bedroom, the pretty girl in pink saw her boyfriend lying on the carpet at the far end of the room and ran to him. He was still somewhat groggy from hitting his head on the floor.

Delgado went to them, grabbed the boy by the shirtsleeves at his shoulders, pulled him into a seated position, and leaned him against the gas heater. Then he slapped him.

The girl whimpered.

The boy opened his eyes, dazed. But it was clear that he recognized the girl and, when he made a face, Delgado, too.

“Bueno,” Delgado said.

Then El Gato stood.

The eyes of the boy and girl followed him as he walked over to the small table between them and the bed, then picked up a small electronic device and pushed a button on it. A pinhead-size red light came on. He put the device back on the table and walked back over.

Then he bent over, grabbed the girl by the waist with both of his hands, lifted her completely off the floor, and threw her onto the bed.

The pretty girl in pink started screaming hysterically. The teenage boy began yelling. The girl kicked at El Gato and flailed with her arms, fighting off his advances with a great effort.

But El Gato only laughed as he tore off her clothing.

The great effort of a ninety-five-pound girl proved no match for the strength of a muscular man twice her size.

When the women in the kitchen heard the screaming from the boy and girl, their crying intensified.

After a moment, El Cheque sighed disgustedly.

“Just shut the fuck up!” he shouted.

They were quiet a moment. Then their sad noises began again.

El Cheque shook his head.

Miguel Guilar came back into the kitchen.

El Cheque walked over to him and without a word handed him the TEC-9. Then he walked back across the kitchen and grabbed two of the teenage girls he’d eyed as they got out of the van, pushing them toward the hallway.

He said to Guilar, “Your turn to keep watch, mi amigo.”

Five minutes later, the women in the kitchen heard a girl cry out from one of the smaller bedrooms. From the master bedroom, they could no longer hear the teenage boy’s terrified shouts of “Stop! No!” over and over.

Now only the muffled cries of the pretty girl could be heard.

“Someone! Anyone! Help me! No…”

After another twenty minutes, El Gato reappeared in the kitchen, wearing only his desert camouflage cutoff shorts. In his left hand he carried the recording device. His right hand had the roll of duct tape.

He looked absently at the two mothers and their toddlers who had not yet been locked up in one of the bedrooms. The women glared back at him.

Miguel Guilar was drinking from the bottle of tequila. He grinned at El Gato and held out the bottle. El Gato grinned back and took it.

Then El Cheque came into the kitchen and removed the last of the group.

Delgado looked at Guilar and held up the recording device. “Want to hear? It came out better than I thought. The boy shouting is the better of the two, I think.”

“I already did hear…”

Delgado shrugged and said, “Bueno.”

He looked around the kitchen.

“Where is the bag of stuff?”

Guilar pointed to the doorway that led to what originally had served as the dining room.

El Gato took another swig of tequila, then went through the doorway. Guilar followed.

The onetime dining room now contained a long folding table with a battered top and rusty steel legs. It had three of the white plastic stackable chairs around it.

Against one wall were gray plastic storage bins stacked five high. These contained the various paraphernalia-the mixing bowls, the digital scales, the empty packets, et cetera-for the manufacturing of Queso Azul. One bin also held at least a dozen brand-new prepaid cellular phones, all unused and still in their original clear plastic containers.

“There on the table,” Guilar said.

On the folding table was a black thirty-three-gallon plastic bag commonly used for the collection and disposal of lawn clippings.

Delgado went to the table and sat in one of the plastic chairs. As he reached for the top of the bag, he noticed that it had been put on top of an official-looking envelope. The return address of the envelope read: CITY OF DALLAS, WATER UTILITIES DEPARTMENT, CITY HHALL, 1500 MARILLA STREET, DALLAS, TX 75201. Across the envelope in big red lettering was printed: FINAL NOTICE!

No wonder the damned water’s turned off.

The idiots didn’t pay the bill.

The house was still listed under Delgado’s grandmother’s name. The utilities were under a phony name and were supposed to be paid in cash every month. In lieu of proving their creditworthiness, they’d had to put up a five-hundred-dollar deposit in order for the city to agree to begin service. But that had been a helluva lot better than giving a social security number or driver’s license number-genuine or stolen-that would then be part of the City of Dallas database and could somehow come back to bite them in the ass.

Delgado noted that the envelope also had a familiar stain across the words FINAL NOTICE! And there was some white powder residue.

He licked a finger, wiped at the residue, and touched it to his tongue.

Coke.

No wonder they forgot to pay the bill.

Too damned coked out…

Miguel saw what he was looking at and raised his eyebrows.

“Ramos was supposed to pay that,” he said.

Delgado shook his head, disgusted at the idiocy of the seventeen-year-old Ramos Manuel Chac?n.

And it’s probably the same stupidity that’s the reason we haven’t heard from him.

Los Zetas didn’t grab him.

He’s down there throwing coke at those gringo college girls to get in their pants.

“It needs to be paid, Miguel. We don’t want the city thinking this is now an abandoned property, and come around for a look. You take care of it tomorrow.”

“S?.”

Delgado grabbed the top of the big black bag and untied the overhand knot that held it closed. Inside he saw almost fifteen individual zipper-top clear plastic bag. In each of the bags was a cell phone or a small address book or a spiral notepad or a wallet-or a combination thereof. Each bag had a number written on it in black permanent marker ink along with a brief description. One, for example, had “#6 Fat girl, 18, w/striped hair.”