“No, no, mija,” Ise said. “I can pay for the room myself.”
“You don’t understand,” she said, pushing the money into view of the bartender who managed the room transactions. “It is my proof that this is not just business.”
She smiled at him, and he saw she was young, not much over twenty. “Bueno,” he said. “I see now.”
The girl lifted her brandy snifter and threw back its contents like a dose of medicine.
“Hijuela,” Leon remarked.
She slapped her hand down and looked at the bartender. “La llave,” she said, the key.
Two hours later, a little before 1:00 a.m., Isedro and the girl stepped back into the bar. Her hands were linked around his elbow as though he’d been her steady the last six months. Holguin and Rascon had been inspired in kind but neither transaction had taken over thirty minutes, and the girls with whom they had consorted sat along the bar with their friends, no more interested in either of the men than they had been before.
Leon, ready for a drink, stopped at the bar and ordered a house tequila and a Dos Equis, then, with the girl still attached, stepped up to his two friends. He emptied the tequila glass and chugged back half the beer.
“¿Listos?” he said. Are we ready?
Jimmy and Juan Carlos glanced at each other. “We’re still doing it tonight?” Juan Carlos asked in English.
“Simón, pues,” he said. “Don’t you think, Jimmy?”
Holguin shrugged. “Why not?” he said. “Just as long we don’t wake up my grandmother.”
“You think we can be quiet enough?” Juan Carlos asked.
“I think so,” Jimmy said. “It’s pretty far from the ranch house, and she doesn’t hear good anyway.”
Jimmy had to use the bathroom before they left, and when he had gone from the table, Rascon rose quickly and approached Isedro. “Por favor,” he said to Dora, who reluctantly gave up Ise’s elbow and stepped over to the bar to give them a moment’s privacy.
“The chick’s going with us, man?”
“Why not?”
“You know what we gotta do. We can’t have her around for that.”
“She’ll wait in the car. No big deal. We’ll say, ‘Jimmy’s grandmother wasn’t feeling well, or she needed his help, so Jimmy had to stay out there tonight.’ Right? No problem.”
“But it’s an unnecessary risk.”
“How good would life be if you didn’t take unnecessary risks.”
Damn good, Rascon thought, but didn’t dare say it.
When Jimmy came out of the bathroom, the three others were waiting for him at the door. They had come there in Jimmy’s GMC Suburban, and when they climbed in with their extra passenger, it was late and the clubs in the red light square had quieted. A few neon signs and lighted windows still glowed out into the plaza, where in its center stood a small and solitary police station, about the size and construct of a San Francisco toll booth, which most nights sat empty. A thin strain of Tejano music, from an indeterminate direction, leaked from a jukebox somewhere, and weaved into the music was the faint sound of men’s laughter and the smell of cooking masa, torillas, and chile meat as the late-night restaurants were serving the empty-bellied drunks who, this time of night, stumbled around for that something more all humans seek.
Jimmy and Juan Carlos sat in the front seat, and Isedro and Dora in the back where she was free to run her hand along his thigh. As she pressed herself up against his left side, she could feel the steel lump of his nine millimeter under his leather coat. She’d done business with men carrying guns before.
They took Calle 14 south until it intersected with Avenida Industrial, a main street that headed out of town. Isedro and Juan Carlos had been born US citizens on the Douglas side of the line. Jimmy had been born in Cananea, Mexico, a town about forty miles south, within three years of the other two.
“How far is it?” Juan Carlos asked.
“Not far,” Isedro answered from the back seat. “What, about three miles out of town, Jimmy?”
“Yeah,” Jimmy said, “about three or four miles—just before the hills start.”
“Do you still run cattle?” Juan Carlos asked, renewing Leon’s admiration of him for working so deftly at putting Jimmy at ease. The guy may have been quiet, but when things got tight, when it came down to the wire, he always came through.
“No, not since my grandfather died. Two horses and my grandmother, and sometimes my niece, and that’s it.”
“¿A dónde vamos?” Dora asked Ise. Where are we going?
“Un ranchito,” he answered.
“¿Por qué? ¿Más pisto?”
“El Jimmy necesita hablar con su abuela.” Jimmy needs to talk to his grandmother. “Right, Jimmy?” he said into the front seat.
“Sî” Jimmy came back.
They arrived at the small, disheveled ranch, lighted only by the headlights and what appeared to be a single lantern or candle burning from within. The shakewood shingles of the main house had rotted and all but fallen off. Two clapboard out buildings and small barn had never seen paint and stood at a slant as though to topple with the slightest nudge. The small rough-hewn ocotillo corrals held two plug bay geldings that shied at the headlights, which Jimmy immediately snapped off as they parked in front of the house.
“What’s that light inside?” Leon asked. “I thought you said she’d be asleep.”
“She is. She just burns a candle at night to keep the evil spirits away.”
Isedro kissed the girl and told her firmly she must stay in the car, that they would be back in less than an hour. He fished in his pocket and found the gram vial of coke and left it with her.
“Remember,” he told her. “Stay in the car,” at which she nodded reluctant assent and looked down at the vial in her palm.
Jimmy brought a flashlight out from under the seat, and the three men walked past the ranch house to the ramshackle barn where, after some searching, Jimmy found two shovels and a digging bar. He led them about a hundred yards back of the house to a lone mesquite tree, the ground around it trampled bare and flaked with dried manure from generations of starving cattle. Once at the tree, Jimmy oriented himself a moment, then counted out ten paces to the west. “Esto es,” he said, This is it.
Isedro, not shy of hard work, broke the ground with the digging bar and the other two used the shovels. The hole they dug was about five feet in diameter and after three feet and half an hour’s work they came to the strong box, twenty inches long and ten wide and deep, wrapped in a burlap sack.
Jimmy dropped to his belly and drew out the box and unwrapped it. The lock had long since broken and he opened it immediately and shined the light on several rows of bundled, new hundred-dollar bills. “It’s all there, Ise. You can count it if you want.”
“No,” Leon said behind him. “I don’t need to count it.”
When Jimmy rose, Isedro had the nine millimeter pointed at his forehead.
“Sorry man,” Rascon said, sincerely remorseful that he had to be part of this.
“Where’s all my dope, Jimmy?” Isedro asked.
“Ise, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Jimmy held out his hands as one would in a hopeless attempt to stop a flood or avalanche.
“You’ve