“Where did Octavio go?”
“I don’t know. Honest, he didn’t say. He was running scared.”
“Who’s looking after his women while he’s gone?”
“His nephew.”
“Describe him to me.”
“Tall, for a Mexican. Thin mustache. He’s wearing a green shirt, blue jeans, a white hat. He’s in there now.”
“What’s his name?”
“Ernesto.”
“Does he carry a gun?”
“Jesus, they all carry guns.”
“Call him.”
“What?”
“I said, ‘Call him.’ Tell him there’s a girl out here wants to see him about work.”
“Then he’ll know I sold him out.”
“I’ll make sure he sees our guns. I’m sure he’ll understand your reasons. Now call him.”
Harry walked to the door.
“Ernesto,” he shouted. “Girl out here says she’d like to talk to you about some work.”
“Send her in,” said a man’s voice.
“She won’t come in. Says she’s frightened.”
The man swore. They heard his footsteps approach. The door was opened and a young Mexican stepped into the light. He looked sleepy, and the faint smell of pot hung about him.
“Stuff will ruin your health,” said Angel as he slipped behind the Mexican’s back and removed a silver Colt from the young man’s belt, his own gun touching the nape of Ernesto’s neck. “Although not as fast as a bullet will. Let’s take a walk.”
Louis turned to Harry.
“He won’t be coming back. You tell anyone what happened here, and we’ll be talking again. You’re a busy man. You have a lot of things to forget now.”
With that, they took Ernesto away. They drove for five miles until they found a dirt road, then headed into the darkness until they could no longer see the traffic on the highway. After a time, Ernesto told them what they wanted to know.
They drove on, coming at last to a shabby trailer that sat behind an unfinished house on unfenced land. The man named Octavio heard them coming and tried to run, but Louis shot him in the leg, Octavio tumbling down a sandy slope and coming to rest in a dried-out water hole. He was told to get rid of the gun in his hand, or die where he lay.
Octavio threw away the gun and watched as the twin shadows descended on him.
“The very worst,” said Neddo, “are in Juarez.”
The tea had grown cold. The image of Santa Muerte still stood between us, listening without hearing, watching blindly.
Juarez: now I understood.
One and a half million people lived in Juarez, most of them in indescribable poverty made all the more difficult for being endured in the shadow of El Paso’s wealth. Here were smugglers of drugs and people. Here were prostitutes barely into puberty, and others who would never live long enough to see puberty. Here were the maquiladoras, the huge electrical assembly plants that provided microwaves and hair dryers to the First World, the prices kept down by paying the workers ten dollars a day and denying them legal protection or union representation. Outside the perimeter fences stretched row upon row of crate houses, the colonias populares without sanitation, running water, electricity, or paved roads, home to the men and women who labored in the maquiladoras, the more fortunate of whom were picked up each morning by the red-and-green buses once used to ferry American children to and from school, while the rest were forced to endure the perilous early-morning walk through Sitio Colosio Valle or some similarly malodorous area. Beyond their homes lay the municipal dumps, where the scavengers made more than the factory workers. Here were the brothels of Mariscal, and the shooting galleries of Ugarte Street, where young men and women injected themselves with Mexican tar, a cheap heroin derivative from Sinaloa, leaving a trail of bloodied needles in their wake. Here were eight hundred gangs, each roaming the streets of the city with relative impunity, their members beyond a law that was powerless to act against them, or more properly too corrupt to care, for the Federales and the FBI no longer informed the local police in Juarez of operations on their turf, in the certain knowledge that to do so would be to forewarn their targets.
But that was not the worst of Juarez: in the last decade, over three hundred young women had been raped and murdered in the city, some putas, some faciles, but most simply hardworking, poor, and vulnerable girls. Usually, it was the scavengers that found them, lying mutilated among the garbage, but the authorities in Chihuahua continued to turn a blind eye to the killings, even as the bodies continued to turn up with numbing regularity. Recently, the Federales had been brought in to investigate, using accusations of organ-trafficking, a federal crime, as their excuse to intervene, but the organ-trafficking angle was largely a smoke screen. By far the most prevalent theories, bolstered by fear and paranoia, were the predations of wealthy men and the actions of religious cults, among them Santa Muerte.
Only one man had ever been convicted for any of the killings: the Egyptian Abdel Latif Sharif, allegedly linked to the slayings of up to twenty women. Even in jail, investigators claimed that Sharif continued his killings, paying members of Los Rebeldes, one of the city’s gangs, to murder women on his behalf. Each gang member who participated was reputedly paid a thousand pesos. When the members of Los Rebeldes were jailed, Sharif was said to have recruited instead a quartet of bus drivers who killed a further twenty women. Their reward: twelve hundred dollars per month, to be divided between them and a fifth man, as long as they killed at least four girls each month. Most of the charges against Sharif were dropped in 1999. Sharif was just one man, and even with his alleged associates could not have accounted for all of the victims. There were others operating, and they continued to kill even while Sharif was in jail.
“There is a place called Anapra,” said Neddo. “It is a slum, a shanty. Twenty-five thousand people live there in the shadow of Mount Christo Rey. Do you know what lies at the top of the mountain? A statue of Jesus.” He laughed hollowly. “Is it any wonder that people turn away from God and look instead to a skeletal deity? It was from Anapra that Sharif was said to have stolen many of his victims, and now others have taken it upon themselves to prey upon Anapra’s women, or on those of Mariscal. More and more, the bodies are being found with images of Santa Muerte upon them. Some have been mutilated after death, deprived of limbs, heads. If one is to believe the rumors, those responsible have learned from the mistakes of their predecessors. They are careful. They have protection. It’s said that they are wealthy, and that they enjoy their sport. It may be true. It may not.”
“There were tapes in Garcia’s apartment,” I said. “They showed women, dead and dying.”
Neddo had the decency to look troubled.
“Yet he was here, in New York,” said Neddo. “Perhaps he had outlived his usefulness and fled. Maybe he planned to use the tapes to blackmail the wrong people, or to secure his safety. It may even be that such a man would take pleasure from revisiting his crimes by viewing them over and over. Whatever the reason for his coming north, he does appear to provide a human link between Santa Muerte and the killings in Juarez. It’s not surprising that the Mexican authorities are interested in him, just as I am.”
“Aside from the connection to Santa Muerte, why would this be of concern to you?” I asked.
“Juarez has a small ossuary,” said Neddo, “a chapel decorated with the remains of the dead. It is not particularly notable, and no great skill was applied to its initial creation. For a long time it was allowed to fall into decay, but in recent years someone has devoted a great deal of time and effort to its restoration. I have visited it. Objects have been expertly repaired. There have even been new additions to its furnishings: sconces, candlesticks, a monstrance, all of far superior quality to the originals. The man responsible apparently claimed only to have used remains left to the ossuary for such a purpose, but I have my doubts. It was not possible to make a close examination of the work that had been done-the priest responsible for its upkeep was both secretive and fearful-but I believe that some of the bones were artificially aged, much like the skull that you brought to me that first evening. I asked to meet the man responsible, but he had already left Juarez. I heard later that the Federales were seeking him. It was said that they were under instructions to capture him alive, and not to kill him. That was a year ago.