"Senor?" He was out of breath.
"What is it, Dominguez?" De Leon replied. Dominguez opened his hand.
"I thought you might like to have this." He held out a wallet.
"I took it from the dead man."
"Put it on the table," De Leon said, without interest. Dominguez did as he was told.
"Senor?"
"What is it now, Dominguez?" De Leon said testily.
Mother Mary help me if I ever need a real policeman, De Leon thought to himself. Dominguez unbuttoned his shirt pocket, took out a plastic card and a key, and handed them to De Leon
"I also found these on the body." De Leon indifference faded as he looked at the card. It was a keyless entry card to a storage compound in El Paso. He turned over the metal locker key. A number was stamped on it. De Leon smiled.
"How much money was in the wallet?" Dominguez's grin faded.
"Four hundred dollars, patron," Dominguez admitted.
"Is it securely in your pocket?"
"Yes, Don Enrique."
"I will double it. You have done me a service." Dominguez's grin returned, filled with gratitude.
"I am glad you are pleased."
"I am. Now go and wait for Carlos. Send him to me as soon as he arrives."
Dominguez left, almost running. De Leon turned the card over in his hand. Truly, could it be so easy? Was he holding the key to a fortune that did not have to be bought and paid for? When Carlos arrived he would be sent to investigate. Perhaps Eddie, the charlatan jorobado, had brought him luck after all. If true, it would make an amusing story; one he would enjoy telling. De Leon laugh was loud enough to make some nearby customers pause and look in his direction. *** Benton's car was not in the motel parking lot, and there was no response when Meehan knocked at the door of the room. Sara was on the floor of the backseat of the Cherokee, gagged and covered with a blanket. The heavy traffic of hookers with their customers made sticking around unwise. Meehan decided to cross the border into Mexico, tuck Sara safely away, and come back to look for Benton. Meehan bypassed the direct route to Juarez and crossed the border at Santa Teresa.
The road to Casas Grandes, a dirt washboard that intersected a main highway, was lightly traveled. He turned east toward Juarez before reaching the highway, staying on farm roads and skirting the few little settlements south of the city. To the north, the runway lights of the Juarez airport came into view, shimmering in geometric rows. When he was parallel to the Rio Grande, Meehan cut over to a paved highway that passed through several small villages. He turned off at two barren ridges that loomed up to a plateau above the river bottom. The road dwindled to a set of ruts in the dirt and dropped suddenly toward the river. His headlights lit up crumbling walls, old foundations, and deteriorated stone fences. Across the river, low-lying west Texas mountains showed a wrinkled, windswept face to the night sky. The ruins of the hacienda, protected in a hollow against the ridge, surveyed a narrow strip of bosque at the banks of the Rio Grande.
Meehan stopped in front of a rock stable that encircled a stone granary. He found a flashlight in the glove box, pulled Sara out of the vehicle, and removed the gag.
Sara looked at the granary. Chiseled stone steps twisted around the outside of the tower. At the base, an entrance wide enough for a horse and wagon stood like an open black mouth. The house, an old hacienda undergoing restoration, was roofless. Scaffolding surrounded the walls, and a parapet had been rebuilt with new bricks. Freshly peeled vigas-beams for the ceiling-were secured to the walls, and rough wood framing defined new openings for doors and windows.
"This is interesting," Sara said. "Is it a new theme park?" Meehan smiled.
"It's more like a nature center. Let me show you around. There's one attraction I think you'll really like." Sara looked pale and dispirited, in spite of the attempt at humor. She had softened up nicely, Meehan thought. He turned her by the shoulders, pushed her against the hood of the car, and cut the rope around her ankles. She spun, kicked for his groin, and missed, catching him on the shin instead. He slapped her in the mouth with the butt end of the flashlight. She fell against the Cherokee, stunned but conscious.
Meehan grabbed her by the hair and wrenched her neck. "You think you're a tough little bitch, don't you?" he snarled.
"No," Sara answered. She could feel the blood in her mouth. "I'm not a bitch at all."
"Move, cunt." He pushed her along in front of him, through the remnants of a kitchen, past a crumbling adobe fireplace, to a stone staircase that descended to an underground room. Sara balked at the top step, and he jabbed her in the kidney with the flashlight. She stumbled forward, Meehan holding her by the handcuffs to keep her from falling. Bags of concrete on pallets, milled lumber, and construction equipment filled the underground room. De Leon's restoration project was further along than Meehan had realized. It meant he would need to deal quickly with Sara to avoid any chance encounters with the construction crew.
He prodded her through the large room, past a pile of tarpaulins and rags, to a massive wooden door anchored in the bedrock by thick iron hinges. He raised the heavy latch and pulled the door open. The air, cool and stale-smelling, rushed out. Sara recoiled, so he jabbed her again in a kidney to force her to move.
"Get in," he ordered, pointing the beam of the flashlight into the pitch-black room. He pushed her to her knees and lit a kerosene lamp that hung from the low ceiling.
"Stand up and turn around," he said when the lamp was burning. Sara did as she was told. The rock walls of the tiny room were uneven and black with soot. The jagged ceiling was inches above her head. The lamp cast a pale glow.
"Is this what you wanted to show me?" she asked. Meehan nodded and poked at some rotting boards with the toe of his shoe. A dozen insects scurried into view.
"Scorpions?" Sara asked.
"Big ones," Meehan confirmed, lifting the lamp off the hook and setting it on the ground.
"Heat attracts them. Especially body heat. Some of them drop from the ceiling. Keep your chin up." She stared at Meehan with loathing. He stepped back, swung the door shut, and threw the latch.
"I'll try to get back before the lamp runs out of fuel," he called to her.
"If not, keep yourself entertained."
"Screw you," Sara replied. She barely heard Meehan's receding laughter as he walked away, her attention riveted on the ceiling. The thought of scorpions falling on her made her shudder. She saw an insect dart from under a board and squashed it with her boot. She killed several more before she realized that she was crying. *** Eddie sat in his car feeling frustrated. Bordertown Storage Company was a series of long, rectangular concrete buildings surrounded by a high chain-link fence topped off with concertina wire. Finding it was no sweat, but locating the locker Benton had rented would be an entirely different matter. He coasted to the motorized gate and stopped at the curb. The manager's office inside the fence was closed for the night. The sign on the door advertised twenty-four-hour access, but there was no way in unless he climbed the fence and crawled over the concertina wire. He drove slowly past the gate and looked down the long rows of buildings, hoping somebody was inside who would let him in. The aisles, wide enough for semitrailers to maneuver in, were empty. He went back to the front gate and wrote down the phone number on the company sign. Back at the bar he would call, get somebody to come out to open up, and wait for Kerney. He turned the car around and headed back toward the barrio. *** Leaving the Little Turtle, Carlos was in fine spirits. Instead of having him beaten, as he'd expected, De Leon had given him an entry card and a locker key and ordered him to go to El Paso to search a storage unit. A careful man by nature, Carlos took his customary precautions. He drove past the business without stopping, and circled behind two large warehouses opposite the storage units. He parked in the darkness, took out his binoculars, and trained them on the fenced compound. He studied each aisle thoroughly. All seemed quiet. He would wait ten minutes before entering, just as a precaution. He put his thumb in his mouth and adjusted his upper plate. Headlights appeared on the pavement, and a car came into view, traveling slowly. It stopped in front of storage compound, motor running. He picked up the binoculars, but the glare of the lights by the gate blocked his view into the car. After a few minutes, the car moved away. Soon the car came back, and Carlos picked up the driver in his glasses. He grinned to himself when he recognized Eddie, the phony jorobado. He put aside the binoculars and reached for his gun. It would be interesting to talk to Eddie again, Carlos thought.