City of the Sun

THIRTY-EIGHT

The night was half spent when Behr spoke.

“We have a couple of choices here, and I’ve got to set them out for you.”

“Okay.”

“We can drive back and notify the U.S. government, see what they say. Plain and simple, this is the high-percentage play and I ’ m honor-bound to advance it.”

“Uh-huh,” Paul said, but he was concerned about the time it might take to involve U.S. authorities. He felt that leaving their spot, even breaking his gaze, would cause the compound to disappear like a mirage, and he was afraid to risk that.

“We could go back to town and call the Mexican police,” Behr went on, “but we don ’ t know for sure what the fuck is going on down there. We ’ ve seen some remains in a different location. And we don ’ t even know whose. It ’ s clear people are paid off left, right, and center out here. If they get word about us, they ’ ll arrest us or kill us, or move or kill everybody in that place and burn it to the ground.” This hung in the dark air for a moment as the light around them turned from purple to gray with the morning ’ s approach. “It might be time to pull back and hire some help,” Behr finally continued.

“Other detectives?”

“PIs, private security. I’ve got contacts, but again it ’ d take time.”

“And I ’ m out of money.”

They kept looking.

“Or?” Paul said.

Behr couldn ’ t bring himself to answer for a long time. In his mind was the notion of the great mistake. One in a lifetime was enough to ruin a man and he seemed to be trading in them. His first had destroyed his son, the second his career. There had been others, and this last one upon which he was on the precipice would likely kill his client and himself. But as he looked down on the compound he realized that unspeakable things happened inside it, that he ’ d been living in an unspeakable world since he ’ d started on the case and he was unable to go one more day without changing that.

“We can go in and try to find out for ourselves,” Behr said. “We ’ ve confirmed four guards. Dogs. The place can only be reached by crossing an open expanse. We ’ d have to drive straight in. I could try and do it alone, but it ’ d be senseless.”

He fell silent.

Paul was unable to answer. A wave of panic broke over him, causing him to sweat and chill at the same time. Fear of what might happen down there, that he wouldn ’ t make it back, and that Behr himself was afraid, hit hard against his lower abdomen. Paul flipped over onto his back looking for air, sucking in great gulps of the cold stuff, as if his goal were to swallow the night sky. He flashed on the last breakfast at home, and on his last night with Carol, and the hope it gave him for his return, whether with answers or without.

Paul felt Behr looking at him, but the detective didn ’ t say anything and eventually turned his gaze back down to what was in front of them. Paul didn ’ t belong out here in the desert. Nothing in his life had prepared him for what he was contemplating. He had once thought of his existence as a neat package. Then he had watched that package explode. He knew now that life was never the tidy thing he had imagined it to be, that he had just seen it that way. He had come to learn that the horrible could happen, and when it did, there were things more horrible still that could occur. But when the power that ran the universe, whatever it was, had decided to lay him low, it had reached out and touched him, it had singled him out and had become intimate with him. He understood then that even if his existence had become warped and misshapen, it was life nonetheless, and it was worth everything. He knew now that anything was possible. Maybe he ’ d even survive.

“We need to tell the FBI, you ’ re right about that,” Paul said, his words floating away into the darkness. “But after. If that was my son out there rotting in the desert, then I can ’ t leave this spot until I know. I ’ ve got to go in there, Frank. I ’ ve got to. But I won ’ t ask you to. I can ’ t do that.”

“We ’ ll do it together,” Behr said without pause. “You stay here and watch. I ’ d better go work on that password.” He pulled himself to his feet.

Sometime just after three the floodlights in the compound went out and the whole bowl below Paul was cast into darkness, thick and absolute. Moments later the generator cut off, and silence joined the dark in a chorus of isolation for Paul on top of the bleak hill. He had no concept of where he was. He would have no idea how to even locate himself on a map. His only tether to civilization, to his life, was Behr, and there was no guarantee of his return. He felt his heart beat into the hard ground beneath him, scarce evidence of his own existence. Fear, as he had once known it, no longer existed. He had passed beyond such an earthbound condition. He was eye-to-eye with his oblivion now. Only a sense of logic, feeble and habitual, suggested that the morning would even come.

Behr looked out the windshield, thick with dirt, as girls in groups of two and three left the hybrid adobe-trailer building. Nearly a dozen in all, they made their way to a battered pickup that quickly drove off. Another few walked down the road into the night, perhaps to a bus stop, he considered. Lights went off from one end of the building to another, until only one remained on. Where the kitchen would be, Behr thought, based on most of the double-wides he ’ d been in. The screen door opened, and the woman, older than the others, small and slight, exited smoking a cigarette. That was when Behr got out of his car.

The woman was the one he had heard Victor call Marta. The one he had heard mention the rancho de los caballitos. She was frightened as he stepped out of the darkness into the trailer ’ s weak ring of light, but she hid it quickly and well.

“Buenas,” he said.

“We are closed, eh. Cerrado. Girls gone home.” If she remembered him from his last visit, she was trying to keep it from him. But he knew she knew. There was a flinty intelligence in her black eyes. It had made an impression on him during his last visit, and it gave him hope for coming back now.

“I ’ m not here for that, Marta.”

“No hablo — ”

“Yes, you do.”

“It ’ s late. I go to bed.”

“Wait. Finish your cigarette.” She stared up at him with malice. He supposed in that moment that he was every man that had made her a commodity in her day and currently did so to all the girls in her charge.

“What you want?”

“I need the password to enter the rancho, ” he said. Now she glared at him outright. He saw genuine fear behind the expression she was trying to mask with the anger.

“They look for you,” she said. “They gon ’ kill you.”

“Who?”

She made a tsk sound with her teeth that told him she would probably die before telling him that.

“Then give me the password.”

“No.”

A moment of quiet passed.

“Come inside,” she offered.

“No thanks,” Behr said. She was five feet tall, but Behr was reluctant to share a space with her where she undoubtedly had a weapon.

“It won ’ t come back on you,” he went on. “Others must know it. Plenty of others.”

“Go ask them,” she said.

“I ’ m asking you.”

“Nothing here is for free. You know?”

“I know.” Behr dug the ground with the ball of his foot. “I have very little money to pay you, and I don ’ t guess you take credit cards.”

She squared up with him for the negotiation. He looked at her. She flicked her cigarette away and crossed her arms. Her hard eyes shone back at him, black and cold as the night.