In Desperation

52

Six Feathers, Arizona

L yle Galviera was under siege.

A couple of boys were kicking the shit out of the soda machine outside his room at the Sleep City Motel because it had swallowed their money without giving up a drink.

Galviera had been striving to find a way out of his situation with the cartel but the assault outside on the machine was interfering. “Come on, you stupid freaking-” The earsplitting racket, the vibrating floor, as if forces were coming for him.

His chest was tightening; he couldn’t think.

Since the kidnapping, his face had appeared in the news next to Tilly’s, then Salazar and Johnson’s. But he had cut his hair, had stopped shaving, wore a ball cap, dark glasses and managed to move around freely.

For how much longer? I don’t know.

His entire room shook.

Christ, he wanted to go outside and slap those little assholes, but he couldn’t afford to cause a scene, to give anyone reason to remember him. He turned back to the TV to face himself on the news again, then concentrated on his work on the desk.

He’d emptied all the contents from his wallet-not his fake wallet, but the real one that he’d kept hidden in the liner of his travel bag. The desk was layered with credit cards, membership cards, cash, business cards, worn tattered bits of paper with notes scrawled on them.

Where is it? It has to be here.

He inspected each item, looking for an elusive scrap of information he had seen before. He’d placed a mental flag on it. He reexamined each business card, searching for the one possibility, the tiny thread that could lead him out of this.

His attempt back at Apache Junction to contact the cartel by trying Salazar’s secret number, using the phone he’d stolen in the restaurant, had failed.

The line just rang and rang.

He’d gotten nervous and given up. He’d left Apache Junction and driven aimlessly, trying to find a way out, until exhaustion stopped him here.

He wasn’t sure where here was but it seemed fitting for the hell he was in. The room smelled bad, there were cigarette butts in the corner of the bathroom floor, the ceiling was scuffed and the sheets were frayed.

Is this it?

It was a card Johnson or Salazar had given him long ago for their hotel, one he’d overlooked because it had been compressed against another card. He turned it over to a faded notation. A telephone number and next to it Thirty, penned in ink and crossed out.

Was this his link to the Norte Cartel?

Galviera recognized the area code as Ciudad Juarez. He knew that major cartel operators used numbers for aliases. Studying the number, he came back to his dilemma. If he surrendered to police, it was over. He’d lose his business, go to jail and risk Tilly’s life.

If he could reach the Norte Cartel, reason with them, put this all on Salazar and Johnson, give the cartel the money in exchange for Tilly, he might be able to make it work.

What do I do?

He returned to the all-news channel as once more it replayed the most recent development: the identities of Tilly’s kidnappers, who were known to belong to the Norte Cartel. And there was a new suspect, a young one, who’d been on a Phoenix-bound bus before eluding arrest. Then he saw Tilly’s face again.

Oh Jesus, should I go to police or try the cartel option?

Either way, I’m dead.

Time was running out.

Do something. Now.

Galviera gathered his wallet items, locked his room and drove through town until he found a bar that looked like it would do: The Cha Cha Club. Chicken wire covered the windows. The linoleum floor was warped. A few people were inside. A sign over the bar said Cash Only. There was a jukebox playing something painful, a pool table, two TVs mounted in the far corners, and there was a pay phone in a booth with a folding privacy door.

Galviera got change from the bartender, got into the booth, held his card up to the neon to read the number, checked with the operator, deposited coins and placed his call. The number clicked, followed by long-distance static, then it rang.

He licked his lips. He’d expected a recording, a disconnection, a wrong number, but it rang two, three, four times, then, “Si?”

Galviera’s heart skipped and he focused his thoughts. This was it, his shot. He spoke in Spanish.

“This is Lyle Galviera.”

A long, cautious silence.

“Who gave you this number?”

“Salazar, before he was murdered in the desert.” Another long silence passed before Galviera broke it. “It’s very important that I speak to Thirty now.”

“Speak.”

“Your people are looking for me.”

“My people are concerned about the theft of our property and are holding an asset for return of that property.”

“I am an innocent third party in this dispute,” Galviera said. “So are the others connected to the asset. But I have a solution.”

“And what is it?”

“That we meet in the Phoenix area. I will return your property in exchange for the asset, undamaged. Then the matter will be closed.”

“That is desirable. We wish to resolve the issue quickly, amicably. I assure you no damage has been done to the asset.”

“I will give you an email address and propose the time and location.”

“No. We will tell you the time and location, in the Phoenix area as you prefer. Your email?”

Galviera gave him an email address from an online account he used under another name.

“If this is a setup, the asset we’re holding will be destroyed.”

“I assure you, this is not a setup.”

“Good, Mr. Galviera, we’ll contact you. We’ll finish this within the next forty-eight hours.”

The call ended.

Did that happen?

Adrenaline pumped through Galviera, blood drummed in his ears. He sat at the bar, ordered a Coke and took a few minutes to let his pulse level off.

“You all right there, pal?” the bartender asked.

“I lost my cell phone and need to buy a new one. Is there a good place around here?”

“Six Feathers Mall, down the street. Can’t miss it.”

The clerk at the Six Feathers Mall cell phone store fixed him up quickly with a top-notch, good-to-go, prepaid plan for a phone. Galviera paid cash for it and felt relatively safe with a new phone under an alias. He knew that you did not have to be making a cell phone call for the location of the caller to be tracked; something about triangulating the roaming signals. So to be safe while driving to Phoenix, he shut it off and removed the battery when he wasn’t using it, to ensure he did not accidentally switch it on.

When Galviera got to the outskirts of the city, he went to JBD Mini-Storage and found the self-storage unit he’d rented. He collected the nylon gym bags containing the $1.1 million in cash. Then he drove across the metro area to another self-storage outlet and collected more bags until he had a total of $2.5 million in brick-sized bundles of unmarked tens and twenties.

He checked his email.

Nothing had come in.

Sweat beaded on his upper lip as he drove along the edges of Phoenix. From the news reports, seeing Cora begging for Tilly, urging him to go to police, he knew Cora was in agony. That Cora and Tilly were suffering because of him was tearing him up.

God, he was so sorry. He’d never, ever meant for any of this to happen.

He scanned the streets, thinking that whatever Cora thought of him now, she had to know that he was doing all he could. First, he needed gas. He spotted a service station.

One with a pay phone.

While filling up he decided he had to tell Cora, he had to risk the call being traced. He’d do it to give her some relief. After filling up, he went to the phone and called her number. A man answered, put him on hold, then-

“Lyle! Oh my God! Oh my God, Lyle!”

“Cora, I’m so-”

“Do you have Tilly?”

“I’m working on it… I-”

“Where are you?”

“Cora, listen, I am so sorry…this is all so complicated. I know we had dreams-”

“Turn yourself in now! Tell the FBI where you are. We have to find Tilly! Where are you?”

“I’m going to see Tilly soon, Cora. I swear to you I am going to fix this!”