The Baker's Daughter (23 page)

“What's the point?” Bert shrugged. “Guy's coming at me, I'm stopping him dead in his tracks. Damned if I'm going wait till he throws a fireball in my face.” He cinched the sides of his bulletproof vest. “Carol's rather fond of it.” He grinned. “And I've gotten used to it myself.”

Riki kept one hand on the wheel and scratched the base of his five o'clock shadow with the other. “A lot of women and kids these days though. Guns scare them more than they help.”

Bert gave a caustic laugh. “That's the point! Scare them so bad they won't break the law twice! Don't go soft on me, Rik. Americans today are a bunch of bleeding hearts. Oh, human rights, human rights, they whine. What about the rights of the law-abiding people of our country? What about them, huh? So easy to sit around talking all philosophical-like when you're eating a cream cheese bagel in New Hampshire, but out here—shit.” He sat up quick.

A Hispanic man stood on the path directly across from the division of trailer homes Riki had scouted two weeks prior. Bert flicked on the truck's police lights. The guy took off in a sprint down the trail. Riki slowed the truck near the targeted double-wide, and Bert opened the passenger door.

“Looks like we got a runner.” He swung himself out. A sandy mushroom rose from the braked tires. “10-33!” He said into the handheld. “Going south along the Rio. Should be easy to spot. Hispanic male in a green jacket.”

“10-4, this is Chief Garza. Sending one of our cars to rope him in.”

A police car whizzed by in pursuit.

“Copy,” said Bert. “Let's get in the house and see what we got.”

Reluctantly, Riki drew his pistol from its holster.

A gray, windowless van parked outside. The trailer was still padlocked, but now the boards had been removed from two small windows.

“Nice find, Rik.” Bert pulled his cap lower on his forehead and extended his steel baton. “Bet we got us a real rat's nest here.”

The men in the following CBP and El Paso PD cars joined them, then quickly dispersed around the trailer.

“Van's empty,” called an agent.

Bert and Riki headed to the front door with a handful of armed men at their heels.

Riki pounded with his fist. “Open up! Abierto!”

Without waiting for an answer, Bert smashed the padlock with his baton butt, and it broke free from the rusty aluminum. Chief Garza jammed a metal comb into the door frame and cracked it open. Within a minute, they had infiltrated the house.

Inside, people lined the walls and huddled next to one another in the corners.

“Abajo, abajo!” commanded Riki, pointing to the dirty mattresses on the ground.

The immigrants did as instructed, instinctively lying like canned sardines, facedown.

“Put your hands up!” Bert thwacked his truncheon against the wall. “Up, goddamnit!”

“Ponga sus manos,” interpreted Riki.

The women flung their hands in the air superman-style; the men laced them behind their heads.

Agents and officers raced through the rooms, herding people into the main living space.

“Any more?” asked Bert.

“I think this is all,” said Chief Garza.

“How many?” Riki assessed the space, so full of bodies that the room's temperature had risen considerably. He was drenched with sweat; his uniform clung to his back like sheets of hot wax.

“Twenty-five. Thirty, maybe. Not sure,” said Bert. “A shit ton.” He collapsed his baton and tucked it in his belt. “Don't know how these people can stand it.” He wiped the perspiration from his nose. “One crapper, no food, cockroaches, and black widow nests everywhere you turn. It can't be worth it. We're just going to send them back where they come from and that has to be better than this.” He picked up his handheld. “El Paso, do you copy? We're going to need a damn bus.”

A young man in a Timberland T-shirt dared to lift his head from the mattress.

“You—do you speak English?” Riki asked him.

“Yes,” he replied.

“Where are you from?”

“Mexico,” he answered quickly.

Riki nodded. Guatemalan, Honduran, they could be Chinese, but they'd
all claim Mexico, hoping to only be deported a mile across the border and not any farther. Riki understood the game.

“How old are you?”

“Seventeen.”

“Where's your family?”

He shrugged.

The girl to his right started to cry, and Riki noticed her eye was split and swollen.

He knelt to her. “What happened, señorita?”

She whimpered and turned her face away.

“Bert,” Riki said over his shoulder. “We need to get the medic kit from the truck. Looks like this girl—”

Suddenly, the seventeen-year-old sprang to his feet, waving a Buck knife. He kicked Riki square across the jaw, slashed the bulletproof vest of the CBP agent to his right, then made a dash for the door.

The room spun sideways and split open wet as Riki fell back against the trailer's corrugated metal siding. A childhood memory returned afresh: eating warm watermelon in the back of his father's pickup. Initially, his parents had been day croppers, reaping fields in Canutillo and selling the produce on I-10. For their work, the local farmer gave them lodging on his land and a percentage of the earnings. Now again, Riki tasted the melon's sweetness on his tongue, the steely truck bed beneath his back. He spat. The seeds suspended before him, floating black spots in a sea of pink.

The room erupted in shouts.

“Get down!” Bert yelled at the boy. “Drop the knife or I'll shoot!”

The girl screamed.

A gunshot ripped the air.

Boots thudded the floor.

Bert's face appeared overhead, hovering among the seeds. “Rik? You okay? Nod if you can hear me.”

Riki nodded. He blinked hard. The pink cleared, and he realized he was lying on his back staring up at the pockmarked ceiling.

“The ambulance is on the way,” someone said.

“I … I don't need … an ambulance,” said Riki. He tried to lift himself but couldn't gain balance; the room was still rolling like a melon down a hill.

“It'll be here in five,” said the voice.

“I said”—Riki reached up and grabbed Bert by the sleeve—“I'm fine.”

Bert patted his hand, and Riki felt a tremor in it. “I know you are, Rik, but he ain't.”

The girl cried. “Lo siento. Tuvimos que hacerlo para nuestra familia. Mi hermano. Por favor. Señor, señor, señor,” she called and reached feebly out to Riki.

A CBP agent crooked her arm behind her back, forced her to a stand and escorted her away.

“Kid had 300 grams of cocaine in his pants.” Bert cleared his throat. “Guess he figured he was screwed either way. Might as well …” He wiped the sweat trickling down his neck. “I got him in the leg—just to stop him. Paramedics are on the way.”

Riki's hand to his face returned bloody. Bert helped him sit upright.

“The kid kicked your face.” Bert's Adam's apple wobbled.

Riki took a sharp breath. “Hurts like hell.” A fiery throbbing commenced between his eye sockets and the back of his skull.

Agents and police officers ushered people out. “Agent Mosley,” called Chief Garza. “Looks like the boy and his sister are a couple of drug mules. Smuggler says he didn't know. When he found out, he gave her the eye.”

“They caught him?” asked Riki.

“Yup,” said Garza. “Name's Carl Bauer. Funny thing is, he's not even Hispanic. He's from Nebraska. Prior record. Figured he'd come down to Mexico and make a killing bringing people over. One of the immigrants says everybody in here paid $4,000 a pop.”

“Same guy on the Rio?” asked Bert.

“Naw,” said Garza. “That was a local. He checked out. Legal.”

“Shit.” Bert shook his head. “Guy looked as Mexican as they come. Why'd he run?”

“ 'Cause we were chasing him,” said Riki.

“Carl was hiding in the trailer next door. Came in and told the lady and her kid he'd give them ten thousand if they kept quiet. Scared the kid so bad he pissed his pants. Mom dialed 911 when he wasn't looking,” explained Garza.

“Dumb fellow,” said Bert. “He didn't know it was the same lady who tipped us off in the first place.”

Riki recalled the woman's scowling face from weeks prior, her little boy on the tricycle: “Bye! Bye-Bye!” She had to be of Mexican descent too. Maybe she thought the same way he did: that rules were there for a reason, even if the reasons didn't exactly add up. Better to be on the side of authority than against it.

Still, as the paramedics arrived and flashed penlights over his eyes, Riki couldn't help but think there had to be a better way than this—useless
suffering, unwarranted loss. There had to be a way for him to be loyal to his country and his personal convictions.

“You got a nasty cut and a concussion.” The paramedic had a thick Spanish accent made even more distinct by the wad of bubblegum he chewed. “You're lucky. They say that guy almost broke your neck. Lights out.” He handed Riki two Tylenol. “Rest, and don't bang your head for a week. You got someone to take care of you at home?”

Riki didn't answer. Instead, he swallowed the pills dry. They scoured the back of his throat as they went down.

He'd accused Reba of being the one with the problem, but maybe deep down, it was him. How could he demand decisions from others when he hadn't made them? Before he could be true to her, he had to be true to himself.

“T
his is a surprise.” Frau Rattelmüller gave a hacking cough into the sleeve of her coat.

A chilly wind swept round the kitchen.

“I saw the chimney smoke.” She banged her cane against timber door frame. “Your oven was lit early, so I thought I'd get my brötchen.”

Elsie swallowed hard and stepped in front of Tobias, shielding him with her skirt. “Six o'clock. You know we don't open until then. With my parents away, I haven't the time for special purchases. I'm sorry, but you'll have to wait like the rest.”

Frau Rattelmüller craned her neck around Elsie. “Seems you have a helper.” She pointed with the shepherd's hook of her staff. “A little elf.”

Elsie stiffened. “I must ask you to go.” She moved toward the door, aching to lock the chain, usher Tobias up to his hiding space, and pretend it was all a bad dream. The consequence of this moment was more than she could bear. Even Josef wouldn't be able to save her now.

Tobias cowered by the oven, its kindle burning and hissing within.

“Is he a Jew?” Frau Rattelmüller asked, unyielding.

Elsie's knees buckled. She couldn't throw the old woman out now or she'd go straight to the Gestapo. “A Jew?” She forced an awkward laugh. “Nein, this is—”

“Because he seems to fit the description of the Jew child the Gestapo searched for on Christmas Eve.” She stepped inside the kitchen and closed the door behind her. “They came to my house, too, and scared my old Matilda into a hairball fit.”

Frau took a seat on the nearby stool and leaned her wrinkled chin on the wooden cane handle, inspecting them.

“You are mistaken,” said Elsie. Her cheeks were as hot as the oven's coals. A pitchy note rang shrill in her ears. She tried to sip in air.

“Come here, boy,” said Frau Rattelmüller.

Elsie held him by the hand. “This is my nephew Julius. Hazel's son.”

Frau Rattelmüller narrowed her eyes on Tobias. “Tell me then, when did they start marking the German boys like the Jews in the camps?”

Tobias's sleeves were folded up to the bend of his elbows. A centipede of inked numbers scrawled down his left arm. He covered them.

Frau Rattelmüller huffed and thudded her staff against the tiled floor. “Don't lie to me, child. I know your family too well. It isn't in your blood—the art of deception.” She grinned with yellowed teeth that reminded Elsie of a children's recording her papa bought them long ago:
Peter and the Wolf
. The wolf's French horns and Peter's pitched violins played in her mind.

Though the sun climbed in the sky, the room grew darker and blurred at the edges. Elsie steadied herself, dug her fingernails into her palms. She had to think clearly, to find an explanation, but all she could hear was the squeals and moans of the logs in the oven.

“You've been hiding this child for what—a month now? I'm impressed. Are your parents involved?”

There was no way out, but Elsie would not drag her family into her mess. “No,” she said.

“Gut.” Frau Rattelmüller nodded. “Then may I make a suggestion?” She stood and came within whisper distance. “Get him out of here. You don't know what you're doing. And if they find him, your whole family will pay. Herr Hub, too.”