She opened her hand.
“He gave this to me when I was seven years old.”
A faded plastic figure of Jiminy Cricket was in her palm, the blue paint of his top hat chipped and worn. Pinocchio’s conscience.
“When I saw his clock in the picture, I thought we were not so different.”
She put the figure in my hand.
“I can’t take this.”
“Give it back when you find my baby.”
I put the cricket in my pocket, and got out of her car.
Joe Pike:
eleven days after they were taken
3.
Dennis Orlato
Their job was to get rid of the bodies.
Twenty-two miles west of the Salton Sea, one hundred sixty-two miles east of Los Angeles, yellow dust rooster-tailed behind them as the Escalade raced across the twilight desert. The sound system boomed so they could hear bad music over the eighty-mile-per-hour wind, what with the windows down to blow out the stink.
Dennis Orlato, who was driving, punched off the music as he checked the GPS.
Pedro Ruiz, the man in the passenger seat, shifted the 12-gauge shotgun, fingering the barrel like a second dick.
“What you doin’? Give it back.”
Ruiz, who was a Colombian with a badly fixed cleft lip, liked
narcocorridos
—songs that romanticized the lives of drug dealers and Latin-American guerrillas. Orlato was a sixth-generation Mexican-American from Bakersfield, and thought the songs were stupid.
Orlato said, “I’m looking for the turn. We miss it, we’ll be here all night.”
In the back seat, Khalil Haddad leaned forward. Haddad was a thin, dark Yemeni drug runner who had been hauling khat into Mexico before the cartels shut him down. Now, he worked for the Syrian like Orlato and Ruiz. Orlato was certain Haddad talked shit about him to the Syrian, Arab to Arab, so Orlato hated the little bastard.
Haddad said, “A kilometer, less than two. You can’t miss it.”
When they reached the turn, Orlato zeroed the odometer, and drove another two-point-six miles to the head of a narrow sandy road, then stopped again to search the land ahead. Three crumbling rock walls sprouted from the brush less than a mile in the distance, and were all that remained of an abandoned supply shed built for bauxite miners before the turn of the century. Orlato and Ruiz opened their doors, and climbed onto their seats to scan the coppery gloom with binoculars.
The surrounding desert was flat for miles, broken only by rocks and scrub too low to conceal a vehicle. The sandy road before them showed only their tire tracks, made three days earlier, and no footprints. Seeing this, Orlato dropped back behind the wheel. No other cars, trucks, motorcycles, people, or ATVs had passed on this road.
“It’s good. We go.”
Two minutes later, they pulled up beside the walls, and went to work. It was a nasty and dangerous job, there at the edge of the evening hour, best done quickly before the light was lost. They stripped off their shirts and guns, then pulled on gloves as Haddad threw open the back door. The two women and man were the last of a group from India,
pollos
who had been on their way to the Pacific Northwest, brought up through Mexico from Brazil and Central America, only to be kidnapped and held for ransom as they crossed the border into the U.S. Each had been shot in the back of the head when their families stopped paying ransom. The three bodies were now wrapped in plastic, and smelled of sour gas. Orlato pulled them from beneath the carpet remnants that covered them, and let the bodies drop. Ruiz and Haddad each dragged a body to a jagged cut in the wash behind the ruins, and Orlato dragged the last. Counting these three, they had deposited eleven bodies here during the past nine days. Their work here west of the Salton Sea was done.
As Orlato dragged the last body, Ruiz pointed down into the cut.
“Look at this shit. What you want to do?”
An animal had gotten down among the bodies and torn open the plastic. A man’s hand now reached through the split.
Orlato said, “Get the chlorine.”
“Shit, we put a hundred pounds of chlorine in there already, and it didn’t help. Let’s get the fuck out of here.”
Powdered chlorine as fine and white as confectioners’ sugar was supposed to keep the coyotes away. Everyone knew the bodies would be found, but the longer it took the better. Their operation was strictly short term. They set up fast, moved often, and kept moving until they had milked or killed the last of the
pollos
.
But coyotes would spread the bones, and if a dog brought a human bone home, the police and federal authorities would swarm over the desert.
Orlato glared at Ruiz.
“Get the chlorine, you lazy fuck. Maybe you didn’t put enough last time.”
When Ruiz skulked away for the chlorine, Orlato scanned the horizon for approaching vehicles. He was searching the sky for helicopters when Haddad unzipped his pants.
“What’re you doing?”
“Taking a piss.”
“Don’t piss on them bodies. The police could get your DNA.”
“What do they have now, a piss detector?”
Haddad unleashed a rope that hit the plastic as loudly as tearing cloth. Orlato wanted to shove the slack-jaw bastard into the cut with the piss-soaked bodies, but instead turned to see if Ruiz was coming. As he turned, something hit him between the eyes, and three more strikes rained after the first so quickly he threw up his arms to cover his face even as his legs were swept from beneath him. He slammed onto his back, and his solar plexus exploded as he was struck again, then struck on his left temple, snapping his head to the side.
Shock and awe. A sudden, violent attack of such furious intensity Orlato had not seen the man or men who attacked him, or even understood what was happening. Orlato’s head buzzed as if swarming with wasps, and his ears screamed with a high-pitched hum. Now, drifting in a sleep-world, he felt hands on his body. Someone groped his legs, waist, and groin; rolled him over, then rolled him again. Orlato’s head cleared, but he offered no resistance.
A low male voice.
“Look at me.”
Orlato opened his eyes, and saw a tall, muscular Anglo, dark from the sun, wearing a sleeveless gray sweatshirt and jeans. He had short hair, dark glasses, and blurry tattoos on the outer rounds of his shoulders. Orlato squinted to clear his vision. Scarlet arrows. A black revolver floated at the man’s side.
Orlato showed open palms.
“
Policia?
”
A man spoke behind him.
“You’re gonna wish we were
policia
.”
Orlato saw that a man with spiky blond hair had Haddad pinned to the ground. The blond man held an American M4 battle rifle. He tipped the rifle toward the bodies.
“You kill these people?”
Orlato had personally murdered four of the eleven, Ruiz two, and Haddad the rest, but now Orlato shook his head.
“We only bring the bodies. We don’t kill no one.”
The blond man showed teeth like a shark, then lifted Haddad’s bloody head by his hair, and said something in Arabic. This surprised Orlato, who had met few people who spoke it besides Arabs. In that moment, Orlato knew these two men were not the police. He assumed they were
bajadores
—predators who preyed on other criminals.
“You want the car? The keys are in my pocket. You want money? I can get you money.”
The tall man said, “Up.”
Orlato struggled to his feet, careful in how he moved. He remembered being searched, but had left his pistol in the Escalade, and now could not remember if the man found the five-inch knife hidden at the small of his back.
When Orlato was standing, the tall man touched the center of his own forehead.
“Anglo. This tall. He was taken.”
Orlato felt a stitch in his belly. He knew who the tall man described, but shook his head, lying as he had lied about killing the
pollos
.
“I don’t know who you are talkin’ about.”
The man’s pistol snapped up so fast Orlato did not have time to react. The gun rocked his head sideways and unhinged his knees, but the man caught him.
“Elvis Cole.”
The blond man shouted from his perch on Haddad, red-faced and furious.
“Where is he? What did you do with him?”
Orlato’s head cleared, but he feigned being hurt worse than he was, staggering and blinking. If he fell into the man, he might be able to draw the blade, or he might grab the gun.
“I did nothing. I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.”
The pistol snapped again, and the blond man shouted louder.
“Lying fuck! The Escalade was at the house. You bastards know. You work for the Syrian.”
He jerked Haddad’s face from the dirt and pointed at Orlato. Haddad’s eyes bulged like a dog being crushed, and he chattered in Arabic.
The blond man shouted to his friend.
“He knows where they took him! He knows who has him.”
The tall man’s pistol suddenly appeared in front of Orlato’s face, locked dead center between his eyes. The flat copper snouts of its bullets slept in their cylinder crypts.
“Elvis Cole. Where is he?”
The tall man thumbed back the hammer.
“Ten seconds. Where is he?”
The blond man screamed, livid with rage.
“Think we’re bluffing, you will die. What did you do with him?”
Orlato abruptly realized he had only one chance. He had something they wanted, and that gave him power. Power was time, and time was life. He showed both palms, the knife now forgotten.
“Yes! Yes, they have him.”
Haddad barked in Arabic, but Orlato didn’t understand and did not care. The blond man pushed Haddad’s face into the dirt, and barked back. The tall man ignored them.
“Eight seconds.”
“Trade, me for him. The Syrian will trade.”
“I don’t negotiate.”
The blond man shouted.
“Tell us and live!”
“A trade! By morning he will be dead!”
“Five seconds.”
Orlato screamed.
“A phone call. I talk to the Syrian, we will work out a trade, and you will have this man. I swear it. I swear!”
The tall man hesitated, and Orlato felt a whisper of hope. The man they wanted was probably already dead, but if they let him call the Syrian, these men would not survive until morning. Orlato spoke quickly, bartering for his life.
“The Syrian will trade for me. I’m married to his sister. You will get your friend. I promise.”
The tall man glanced at his friend. No other part of him moved. The gun didn’t move. Just the head, turning and locking in place with the precision of a machine.
The blond man lifted Haddad’s head.
“He’s full of shit. This bastard knows.”
The tall man’s head swiveled back to Orlato.
“Three seconds. Where is he?”
Orlato felt a rush of fear, but still didn’t believe they would kill him. They would not risk losing their friend.
“He cannot help. None of them can. I am the only way you can get your friend back.”
The tall man said, “One second.”
Orlato reached for the knife, but by then it was too late.
Dennis Orlato’s last thought before he reached for the knife was one of fearful admiration. He thought:
“This man means it.”
Orlato registered a brilliant, blinding flash, and was dead.
4.
Joe Pike
Pike turned away from the body and walked over to Jon Stone’s prisoner, there in the desert in the fading bronze light. Stone had already strapped the man’s wrists behind his back and his ankles together with plasticuffs. When Pike arrived, Stone lifted the man’s head and peeled back his upper lip.
“Khat runner. Check out these teeth. Fuckers get green teeth from chewing the khat. Ain’t this green rotten?”
“Stop it, Jon.”
Stone laughed, and dropped the man’s head.
Khat was a shrub native to East Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, where people chewed the leaves as a stimulant. Poor man’s speed.
Stone’s prisoner was in his early thirties, with ragged black hair and big eyes crazy with fear. The light was fading and the clock was running. Every passing minute would put Cole farther away or closer to death. Time was everything, and speed was life. Pike wanted to press forward, but needed what this man could give him, and that would take time.
Pike pointed his pistol at the body.
“Do you understand what happened?”
The man spit out Arabic so fast, his voice was distorted. Pike had spent freelance time in Lebanon, Saudi, Somalia, the Sudan, and Iraq. He could get by, but wasn’t fluent.
Pike said, “
Qala Inklizi
.”
Telling him to say it in English.
Stone cracked the M4 across the man’s ear, shouted in Arabic, and the man settled down. Jon Stone was fluent.
Pike squatted in front of the man, and lifted his head.
“If you resist, I will kill you. If you lie, I will kill you. Do you understand?”
The man uttered a soft yes.
Pike pulled him into a sitting position.
“Name.”
“I am Khalil Haddad, from Yemen. Please do not kill me. I will do anything you ask.”
Stone stepped away and did a quick three-sixty of the horizon.
“We gotta roll, bro. We don’t want to be here if ICE choppers in.”
ICE. The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The U.S.–Mexican border from Tijuana to Brownsville was a hot zone of DEA agents after incoming dope, ATF agents after outgoing guns, and ICE agents trying to stop illegal entry. Pike was good with the heat.
“Check the vehicle.”
Stone trotted to the Escalade as Pike tipped his pistol toward the bodies in the cut.
“These people from India?”
“Yes.”
“Who killed them?”
“We did. Me and Orlato and Ruiz. It is what we do when they cannot pay.”
This was an honest answer.
Bajadores
were bandits who kidnapped people who were trying to enter the country illegally. The kidnappers would then demand ransom payments from their families or employers. This continued until the families could or would no longer pay, then the victims were murdered. Dead victims could not bear witness.
“Elvis Cole. You know who I’m talking about?”
“The man who came for the boy and the girl.”
“A young Latina. Krista Morales. An Anglo boy named Berman.”
“Yes, the boy and the girl.”
“Are they alive?”
“I believe so, yes, but I cannot be sure. My job was with these Indians.”
“Why were they taken?”
“They were with
pollos
a Tijuana crew brought north. No one knew they were Americans.”
“Korean
pollos
?”
Haddad looked surprised.
“How do you know these things?”
Pike struck him with his open palm on the forehead before Haddad finished the sentence. This was not a two-way conversation.
“Yes! Koreans. The Sinaloas
stole them from the Tijuanas
.
The Syrian, he stole them from the Sinaloas.”
Pike felt Haddad was telling the truth. Tijuana, Sinaloa, Zeta, La Familia, on and on—if the U.S. side of the border was a hot zone of law enforcement agencies, the Mexican side was a war zone controlled by cartel factions who fought and stole from each other like rabid dogs. Pike was good with war zones, too. He felt at home.
“Is Cole alive?”
“This morning, yes. He was brought to our house for the Syrian.”
“Your house?”
“Where we kept the Indians.”
Pike hammered back the .357, and held it to Haddad as he had held it to Orlato.
“What happened to him?”
Haddad cringed, but Pike held him close. Haddad did not want to see what Orlato had seen. He did not want to see his death coming.
“Did the Syrian kill him?”
“I don’t know! Orlato and Ruiz and I, we left with the bodies. The others, they were to hold him for the Syrian.”
Pike pressed the gun hard into Haddad’s forehead.
“A prisoner?”
“Yes!”
“Was the Syrian going to kill him?”
“I don’t know! These men, they told me the Syrian thinks your friend is a federal agent.”
“How long ago was this?”
“Three hours! Maybe four!”
“When was the Syrian coming?”
“I don’t know!”
“Five minutes? Five hours?”
“I don’t know! I can take you to the house! Maybe they still wait!”
Pike studied Haddad, then lowered the gun.
“Yes.”
Stone returned, and shook his head.
“No IDs or credit cards on the stiffs. Thirty-two hundred in cash. I took it. Registration shows the Caddy belongs to a Joan Harrell of San Diego. None of these shitbirds looks like a Joan.”
Haddad said, “Everything is stolen. He has thieves who get cars and trucks for him.”
“Keys?”
Stone held up the keys.
“Yeah, man. Good to go.”
“Drive.”
“We’re taking Mr. Green Teeth?”
“He knows the way.”
Stone ran hard for the Escalade.
Pike clipped the plastic binding Haddad’s ankles, but left his wrists bound. Pike pulled him to his feet.
Haddad said, “You are not killing me?”
“Not yet.”
The big Escalade thundered up in a cloud of dust. Pike pushed Haddad into the back seat, and climbed in behind him.
Stone powered away even as Pike closed the door. Driving hard. Pushing. They bounced over brush and rocks, and neither of them gave a damn if they tore the Escalade apart.
Haddad said, “This is not the way.”
Stone said, “Shut up.”
Pike said, “Faster.”
They ran hard toward the mountains, driving without lights. They had to move fast or Cole would be lost.