She opened the door and stepped out into the road. The people clustered around the shrine turned to look. A heroin-thin man shuffled towards her, eyes as vacant as those of the saint he had come to worship. A fat girl with a baby wedged against her hip whispered something to an older woman. All the while, Santa Muerte shot that demonic smile in Julia’s direction.
She jumped as she felt a hand in the small of her back. Someone giggled at her reaction, the laughter rippling through the crowd. She spun round to see Ty.
‘We have to get out of here, Julia. You understand me?’
Her eyes flicked to the row of gifts laid at the skeleton’s feet. Cigarettes and bottles of beer and tequila jostled with baby bootees and tourist-tat jewellery.
‘Who is she?’ she asked Ty.
He hesitated. ‘It’s some messed up bullshit is all. Now, let’s go.’
She didn’t move. ‘I asked who she is.’
‘Santa Muerte,’ he said.
Muerte. She knew that word. Muerte was Spanish for ‘death’. Santa Muerte. Saint Death.
The junkie had stepped from the semi-circle of the crowd towards her. He had his hand out, asking her for money. Ty took a step towards him, ‘Back off, asshole,’ his hand resting on the butt of his handgun. The junkie lurched back into the crowd, spitting at Ty’s feet as he went.
‘Okay,’ he said to her quietly. ‘You have until the count of three. When I hit three you are on your own, Julia. You got me?’
She said nothing. She knew she had to leave, that she had no choice if she wanted to stay alive, but the shrine was drawing her towards it.
‘One.’ His voice betrayed the weakness of a parent who has threatened a sanction they’re not sure they’ll be able to deliver.
‘Two.’
She turned back towards the SUV, ready to get back in but his hand grasped her elbow. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Too many people have seen us now. Seen the vehicle we’re in. We’re going to have to walk.’
Tears bulged at the corners of her eyes. Her lack of control had made the hole they were in even deeper than it had been. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Save it,’ said Ty. A huge arm folded over her back and he led her meekly away from the shrine. She glanced back at the vehicle, abandoned in the middle of the road, the rear passenger door still open.
Ty set a brisk pace but eventually he had to slow down. The only way she would have been able to match his long, loping strides would have been if she had jogged and she was too tired for that. Beyond the shrine, he shepherded her down a side-street, away from the prying eyes of the crowd, who, no doubt, were still discussing the behaviour of the two crazy Americans who had offered up an SUV to Saint Death.
The GPS clasped in his hand, Ty was busy recalculating their route. He turned down the volume and zoomed out, trying to commit the new route to memory, aware that he would need his eyes on the girl and the surrounding streets rather than the screen.
They had under a mile to cover. Given the traffic, walking wouldn’t take much longer than driving. They might be more mobile too, and it would be easier to adjust their route, to duck into a doorway if he saw the cops. The drawback was that they were both exposed. You could hide in a car. Now everyone they passed could see them.
As they walked, he scanned the buildings. He and Julia drew interest but it lasted no more than half a block.
He wondered how long it would take the cops to find the abandoned RAV 4 and work out who the occupants had been. Less time than it would take him and the girl to cover the mile, that was for sure. And if they knew he had her so close to the consulate they would be able to figure where they were headed.
At the end of the block, he spotted a store with racks of clothes left out on the sidewalk. As they reached it, he guided Julia in as a Federal Policia car sped down the next street. ‘What are we doing?’ she asked.
Three minutes later and fifty dollars lighter (twenty for the clothes and thirty for the owner’s silence), they emerged from the store, the girl’s long hair tucked up under a baseball cap, both of them wearing long sleeves, the tall man with a wind-breaker zipped up to his chin. Hand in hand, they strolled across the street, without a care in the world.
Looking ahead, Ty swore that if he pulled this off he would head back to that old witch Santa Muerte and leave her the biggest goddamn spliff he could find, with a whole goddamn case of tequila.
Sixty-three
Lock hunkered down next to the thin plywood door of the one-room shack where he was holed up with Charlie Mendez. Outside, a group of children were busy kicking a soccer ball. Behind him, Mendez was sprawled on a threadbare floral couch, his chest rising and falling as he slept. Sunlight splashed lazily through a Perspex window, etching a yellow square on the bare floorboards. The facilities were meagre — a chemical toilet out back, but no electricity.
After a nerve-shredding night spent one step ahead of the police search party, they had chanced upon the owner, a heavy-set middle-aged woman, as she was leaving for work at around four in the morning. As soon as she had turned the corner at the end of the street, Lock had snuck them inside, figuring they would probably have the place to themselves until early evening when she would return from one of the factories or a day spent cleaning rich people’s houses.
Mendez had fallen asleep quickly, the exhaustion of the pursuit and the consequent huge dump of adrenalin taking its toll. Lock had kept guard by the door. A cursory check of the GPS on his cell phone, before he had powered it down, had given him their position.
They were approximately five miles north of the city centre, and south of the Rio Grande by less than a mile. To the west lay the highway they had fled. To the east lay the desert. But to the north lay another highway where headlights twinkled in the distance, and that highway lay in the United States. They were closer than he would have dared believe possible, but it was an agonizing proximity.
Though the distance may have been less than a mile, more and more cops were pouring into the colonia with every minute that passed, and even if they could make good their escape, they still had to cross the border. Ten, even five years ago, it would have been a matter of wading the river. But now they faced not only the river but a whole host of defences aimed at keeping people out of the United States. The irony of an American trying to break back into his own country wasn’t lost on him but that was what he faced, and the plain fact of the matter was that they wouldn’t be able to achieve it during daylight. They would have to sit out a long day and wait until night fell again.
On the up-side, he had Mendez, and the shots aimed at him from the helicopter had made him broadly compliant. Mendez knew that, on his own, he was most probably dead. The knowledge had served — it often did — as a calming influence. Lock wasn’t sure how long it would last but Mendez was aware that, at this very second, the only person who appeared even vaguely interested in him staying alive was Lock. If it hadn’t been for him, he’d already be dead.
Sixty-four
Ty stood at the edge of the crossing, directly opposite the office building that held the consulate, and gave Julia’s hand a reassuring squeeze. He had talked to her the whole way there, as they played the part of a happy couple, trying to keep her calm. He had asked her about her family, about her memories of growing up. Safe stuff designed to reassure.
The walk had gone quickly. There had been a moment when, darting through traffic, a motorcycle cop had stopped to stare at them. Ty had bluffed with a friendly wave, and that single nonchalant act had been enough to satisfy the cop’s curiosity as he took off with a macho twist of his handlebars.
It was as they started to cross that Ty noticed the two men. Both Hispanic, both wearing wrap-around sunglasses, each man posted within twenty yards of the two entrances to the consulate building. They might have been working for the Americans — US consulates were often staffed by locals and now, with military resources stretched, regularly used private security. As they hit the opposite sidewalk and Julia made towards the nearest entrance, a set of glass double doors, Ty pulled her in the opposite direction towards a row of stores on the ground floor of the building.