The Second Saladin

1

Reynoldo Ramirez, moderately prosperous by the standards of his time and place, imagined himself beyond surprise. He observed the world through calm brown eyes set wide apart in a calm brown face — an Aztec face, an Indian face, a peasant’s face, a gangster’s face, for he was all of them — and nothing of his considerable bulk suggested a capacity for astonishment; or foolishness, for that matter; or mercy. He felt he’d seen most things by now: he’d killed men in fights with knives or fists; he’d been shot twice, stabbed four times; he’d had three wives and eleven children, seven of whom still lived; he’d spent six years in three prisons; and he looked forward at forty-four to a tranquil future, as befitted the owner of El Palacio, a bar and brothel on the Calle de Buenos Aires in the northern Mexican city of Nogales, on the Arizona border.

Yet, by the Virgin and Her glory, Reynoldo Ramirez was astounded.

A feeling that the simple rhythms of the world had been profoundly upset crept through him as he sat with his closest associate, the ever-smiling Oscar Meza, at their usual Number 1 table well back from the bar at El Palacio. Yet he allowed no sign of concern to disturb the surface of his face as he regarded the man who now stood before him.

The man was American. Or again, was he? He stood in blue jeans, impatiently, his face sealed off behind sunglasses. He looked immensely muscular. He was tan and hawk-nosed. And he had something quite foreign to the usual pawing, grabbing, yakking, farting gringo: he had dignity, which Ramirez prized most in this world, having worked so assiduously to fashion his own.

“Why not just walk up the street and go through the gate?” asked Oscar Meza in English. It was Oscar’s job to handle this sort of negotiation. “A simple matter. It’s done ten thousand times a day. Then you are there, eh? In wonderful America. Why trouble us with illegal proposals?” Oscar turned to smile at Ramirez.

“Why not just answer my question?” said the American — or the maybe-American.

The maybe-American was tall too, and his hair was blondish, light from the bright sun; and though Ramirez could not see them, he gauged the eyes, from the skin coloring, to be blue.

Yellow hair and blue eyes: what could be more American?

“It’s a dangerous trip,” said Oscar, “this trip you propose. It would cost much money.”

“I have money.”

“You are a rich man? Why, I wonder, would a rich man—”

“Just talk the business.”

Stung, Oscar recoiled. He had merely been sociable. Oscar always tried to be sociable.

“All right then. Three hundred U.S., cash. No credit cards—” Oscar turned, pleased with his joke, and smiled at Reynoldo. “Two hundred now. Then one hundred tomorrow morning when you are in Los Estados safe and sound.”

“A boy said it would be one hundred.”

“Boys lie,” said Oscar Meza. “It’s a rule. When I was a boy I lied. All the time, about everything.” He laughed again. “Forget what this boy said.”

No flicker crossed the maybe-American’s face.

“I think you are not happy,” said Oscar Meza. “We want you to be happy. Sit down. Look, have a drink, get a woman — there are some pretty ones here and not too expensive, although you say you are a rich man. Think it over. You must learn to relax. We want you to be happy. We can work something out.”

Behind his glasses the man remained impassive.

“I want a guarantee.”

“Life is too short for guarantees,” Oscar said. “Maybe we ought to make it four hundred, five hundred, a thousand? All this talking is making me weary. I cannot guarantee what I cannot control and I cannot control fate.”

“A guarantee,” said the man.

“I said, no guarantees. Don’t you hear so good, mister?”

Ramirez at last spoke.

“Once every twenty nights out, they get you, mister. That’s a law. You may go thirty-eight nights clean, then they get you twice. Or they may get you twice, then you go thirty-eight. But one out of twenty. I can’t control it. God himself, the Holy Father, He cannot control it. It’s the law.”

Oscar said, “You listen good, mister. It’s the true law.”

“Send this stupid man away,” the man said to Ramirez. “He makes me want to hurt him.”

“I’ll hurt you, mister,” Oscar said. “I’ll cut you up damn quick.”

“No,” Ramirez said. “Go away, Oscar. Get me another Carta Blanca.”

Oscar scurried off.

“He’s a stupid man,” said Ramirez. “But useful in certain things. Now. Say your case.”

“You go a special way. There’s a special way you can go. High, in the mountains. The direction from here is west. A road to a mine which is old and no longer used gets you there. Is this not right?”

The maybe-American spoke an almost-English. It was passable but fractured. Even Ramirez could pick out the occasional discordant phrase.

Ramirez looked at him coldly.

“You go this route,” the man continued. “Once, maybe twice a year, depending. Depending on what? Depending on the moon, which must be down. And depending on the drugs, which you take across to the Huerra family in Mexico City for delivery to certain American groups. You are paid five thousand American dollars each trip. And the last time the Huerras gave you some extra because it went so nice. And I hear it said you don’t give one dollar to the priests of your church, because you are a greedy man.”

Ramirez stared at him. He had known such a moment would one day come. A stranger, with information enough to kill him or own him forever. It could only mean the Huerras were done with him and had sold him out, or that the police had finally —

“The last run was January sixteenth,” the man said. “And the next one will be tonight, moon or no moon, and that’s the true law.”

Ramirez fought his own breathing.

“Who sent you?”

“Nobody sent me.”

“How do you know all this?”

“I have friends.”

“Important men?”

“Very important. Very knowledgeable in certain areas.”

“You should have come to me and explained. You are a special man. I can see this now.”

The man said nothing.

“You better watch yourself, though. Somebody might put a bullet in your head.”

“Sure, okay; somebody might. And then somebody might come looking for him and put a bullet in his head too.”

Ramirez struggled to take stock. The man had not had anything to drink, he was not talking wildly, he was not a crazy man. He had much coolness, much presence. He was a man Ramirez could respect. You wouldn’t fool him too easily. He wouldn’t make mistakes. He would make others make the mistakes.

“All right,” Ramirez said. “But it will cost you more. The distance is a factor, the increased risk, the danger to my way of doing business. This is no easy thing — it’s not running illegals into Los Estados. You want to go the guaranteed way, you got to pay for it. Or go someplace else, to some man who’ll cut your throat in the desert.”

“Nobody cuts my throat. How much?”

“A thousand. Half now, half later.”

“You are a thief as well as anything else.”

“I am a man of business. Come on, damn you, pay up or go someplace else. I’m done with talking.”

“As God wills it.” He handed over the money, counting out the bills.

“Out back, at eleven. Beyond the sewer there’s a small shop called La Argentina. Wait behind it in the yard with the trucks. A van will come. You’ll be in Arizona tomorrow. Pay the man in America, or he’ll give you to the Border Patrol.”

The man nodded.

“If nothing goes wrong,” he said.

“Nothing will go wrong. I’ll drive the damned truck myself.”

The man nodded again, and then turned and left.

Oscar returned.

“A gringo pig,” he said. “I’d like to cut him up.”

Ramirez would have liked to have seen Oscar try to cut the man up. But he said nothing. He wiped his brow with a handkerchief scented with persimmon, took a sip from the new glass of Carta Blanca Oscar had brought him, and looked about.

“Did you notice?” he said to Oscar. “Even the whores left him alone.”

But now at least he thought he knew why, and he guessed that tonight the man would have with him enough cocaine for all the noses in America.

The tall man crouched in the yard behind the small shop called La Argentina. The odor of human waste from the open sewer in a gully next to El Palacio was disagreeable and thick. He could hear the music the Mexicans like, all guitars and vibration. He could see poor Mexican men gathering in the pools of light along the cobbled street that curved up the hill behind him. The few minutes passed and a drunk and a whore wandered into the yard and came to rest not far from him. Their conversation, in English and Pidgin Spanish, was all of money. The act of sex that followed lasted but seconds.

The man listened to it dispassionately, the two rutting against the side of the shop, in the dim light of half a moon. There was a swift cry and they were done and then another argument. Finally a deal was struck. Contemptuously, the woman strode away.

“Whore!” the man called, as though he’d just learned it. Then he too left the yard.

A truck pulled into the yard; its lights flashed twice.

“Hey! Where are you?” called the fat Mexican.

The man waited, watching.

“Damn you. Tall one. Gringo. Where are you, damn you?”

At last he stepped out.

“Here.”

“Jesus Mary, you made me jump. Make some noise next time.”

“Get on with it.”

“In back. There are others. Poor men, looking for work with Tio Sam.”

“Others?”

“Just don’t bother them. They know nothing of you and care nothing.”

The man shook his head.

“Two hours now,” Ramirez said. “Longer, because of the special route. Bad roads, much climbing. But it will go fine. Just don’t make no trouble.”

The tall man spat. He climbed into the back of the truck.

“No policemen,” he warned.

The truck crawled up the dark and twisting roads through west Nogales. The shacks began to separate, giving way to wider spaces and the vehicle moved out of the edge of the city, into rough scrub country. Then it began to climb slowly and after a while the road became a track, jagged and brutal.

Ramirez had watched this progress many times; it did not interest him by now. He was thinking of the man in the back. Yes, the man had had a bundle with him, a pack of some sort. It could carry twenty pounds of cocaine. Twenty pounds? Close to a million dollars’ worth. Ramirez reached inside his jacket and touched the butt of a Colt Python 357 magnum in blue steel, his favorite pistol.

Jesus Mary, it would be so simple.

The tall man comes out high in the mountains, dazed, probably trembling with the chill. He blinks, shivering. Perhaps he turns. Ramirez lifts the pistol, already cocked, and fires once into the center of the body. Then he’d go into the business himself: no more errand boy for the Huerras. He had the contacts too; he knew the people in Tucson.

Jesus Mary, it would be simple.

“Turn here?” Oscar Meza asked.

“No.”

“Keep going?”

“Yes.”

“Reynoldo, I—”

“Keep going.”

“We are going into the mountains. I—”

“Keep straight.”

Ramirez reached down and turned on the radio. He fiddled with the dial until he found a Tucson station. He left it on, thinking of Tucson, a flat new city on a plain surrounded by mountains. He thought of it as a city of money, full of Americans with money, full of blond women and swimming pools.

So simple.

The American country music rolled softly against his ear. The jarring in the cab was thunderous. He prodded his cowboy hat lower down his face, masking off his eyes, set his head against the seat back, and stretched and crossed his legs. He chewed a toothpick and thought of himself as a don, with a palatial estate in the hills outside Mexico City like Don José Huerra. He thought of blond women and horses.

So how did he know so much? And who was he working for?

This was the crux of Ramirez’s dilemma. In three or four sentences he had delivered up Ramirez’s most closely held secret. If he knew of Ramirez’s connection to the Huerras and the mountain route into America, then —

“Reynoldo, I can tell. This gringo scares you. Say the word and I’ll go back and finish him. Nothing to worry about.”

“Drive on, stupid one,” Ramirez said. Oscar was really getting on his nerves this night. He’d found him five years ago driving an Exclusivo cab and pimping for American college boys down from Tucson; now the fool considered himself a right-hand man. Ramirez spat out the window.

“Lights. And go slower.”

“Yes, Reynoldo.”

The lights vanished.

“Keep the side lights on, idiot. Do you want to go over the side?”

Oscar immediately turned on the lower-powered orange lights.

Ramirez got out a stick of gum as the truck lurched forward. Soon they were on a ledge and the two Nogaleses were visible, the small and pretty American one and its larger, less neat brother, spilling awkwardly over the hills, spangles of light these many miles away. But Ramirez was not a man for views; in fact, he was looking now in the other direction.

“There,” he said suddenly. “Jesus Mary, almost missed her. I’m too old for this.”

Oscar stomped the brake and the van skidded for a breathtaking moment on the gravel and dirt as its treads failed. Ramirez shot a bad look toward the idiot Oscar, whose fingers whitely fought the wheel. But the van did not slide off. Ramirez, cursing, got out, pulling his jacket tight against him. Cold up here, so high. The men in back would have no coats; they’d shudder and whimper in the chill. But the gringo?

Ramirez’s breath billowed before him. He fished in the brush with gloved hands until his finger closed on something taut; pulling, he opened a crude gate wrapped with an equally crude camouflage of brush to reveal a smaller road leading off the main track.

“She’s ready,” he called.

The truck eased through the gap, turning. It began to slip and drop. Oscar double-clutched as the vehicle tipped off; it seemed to fall, sliding down the incline in a shower of dust, coming at last to rest on an even narrower road. Ramirez swung the gate shut and scrambled down.

The truck picked its way down the switchback in the dark. Ramirez hung out of the cab, watching. It was tough work. Twice the fool Oscar almost killed them, halted by Ramirez’s cry, “No! No! Jesus Mary,” only inches before spilling them off into blank space. It was a younger man’s game and Ramirez’s heart beat heavily. Once he even walked ahead, aware of the dark peaks all around him, of the stars and the scalding cold air and the half-moon, whose presence unnerved him. He’d never been here before in the gray moonlight. He crossed himself and swore to light a candle at the shrine of the Virgin.

Finally he ordered, “Kill it.”

Ramirez climbed out of the cab and went back to the rear doors.

If you’re going to do it, here’s the time.

He took out the pistol. He opened the doors. He could smell the men inside, dense and close.

“Let’s go, little boys. Nothing but American money up ahead,” he joked in Spanish, and stood back to watch them clamber gingerly out. They came one by one — five youngsters and an older man — shivering in the piercing cold. Ramirez waited, not sure what he would do.

He backed off a little and whispered, “Hey, gringo. Come ahead. We’re waiting. Cold out here.”

There was no sound from the truck.

“Hey? You fall out? What’s with this hombre, eh?” He leaned forward, into the interior, and could not quite make out if —

The blow smashed him to the earth. Before he could rise, the man was on him. He could feel a blade.

“Patrón, patrón!” shouted Oscar, rushing to them with a shotgun.

The pistol was pried from Ramirez’s fingers; the man rose and stood back.

“Hey,” called Ramirez. “Don’t do nothing stupid. The gun is for your protection. From federales.”

“What should I do, patrón?” asked Oscar.

“Tell him to drop that shotgun,” said the man.

“Drop it,” yelled Ramirez. The gun fell to the dust.

“Now get up,” the man said.

Ramirez climbed to his feet, shaking his head. He’d been hit with something heavy, something metal.

“I was just making sure you don’t bounce out,” he said. “Don’t do nothing crazy with that gun.”

The tall man tossed the pistol into the scrub. Ramirez marked its fall next to a saguaro cactus that looked like a crucifix. He could pick it up on the way back.

“Okay?” he asked. “No guns now. We’re friends.”

“Let’s go,” said the man.

Ramirez walked ahead, pushing through the knot of men. He didn’t wait to see what the tall man would do. He walked ahead a short way down a path, hearing them shuffle into line behind him. The moon’s soft light turned the landscape to the color of bone. Ramirez turned.

He spoke in Spanish, quickly and efficiently.

“Now say it for me,” said the tall man. “I don’t have that language.”

“Just telling them how it goes from here. Two hundred meters down the slope. Then a flat place, over a dry creek, then through some trees. A gully, a last field to cross. Okay? No tricks. Just the truth, just a walk in the moon. Some compadres of mine wait on the other side. And you are with your Tio Sam, eh?”

“Then do it,” said the man.

Ramirez led them down the incline, thinking of himself, stupid! stupid! and trying not to mourn excessively the lost fortune. This hombre was a smart one!

The ground was stony and treacherous, strewn with cactus and jumping cholla and other bitter little plants, leather things that caught and tore at him. The feathery moonlight fell, light as powder. Ramirez licked his dry lips. The trees, twisted little oaks, were widely spaced among tufts and rills of scrub and he guided the clumsy party until at last they passed between the last of the trees and came to a stream, dry now, leaped the bed, and gathered finally at the edge of a moon-flushed meadow.

“Hold up, muchachos,” he called. He could hear them breathing laboriously behind him.

He scurried ahead. Here was the guarantee: a geographic freak in the landscape, where the underlying sandstone had been drained away until the land itself collapsed, forming this depression, this sudden, unexpected, unmapped flat stretch in the heart of otherwise impassable mountains. Accessible only by the lost road, it was a place where a man could walk across, where no fences had yet been built, where no border patrolman had ever set foot. He’d discovered it in 1963 and had been guiding the drug shipments through since then, three, maybe four times a year, during the dark of the moon, and never been caught.

But never before in the moonlight. He glanced at the white thing above him, feeling its cold.

He crossed himself.

He peered ahead. A cool breeze pressed against his face.

He took a flashlight from his coat.

Out there, if the arrangements had worked, were two Americans awaiting his signal.

Holy Mother, let them be there. Let them be efficient, dedicated gringos who follow orders.

He blinked twice.

Come on, damn you. You had plenty of time to get ready. The money is good.

A minute passed.

Come on, damn you.

Two blinks in answer.

He scuttled back.

“Done,” he said. “Another five hundred meters. Then you pay — right, amigos? Then they’ll take you to Arivaca by back roads. And you’ll be in the American Nogales by sunup.”

“Thank you, Virgin,” somebody said.

“Hurry, damn you all. They won’t wait. You too, gringo.”

They filed past him, the norteamericano last, his pack across one shoulder.

Good-bye, strange man. I hope never to see you again.

They picked their way across the flat in the moonlight. In a little while Ramirez lost them, even with the moon. They’d made it, made it easily, and then the searchlight came on and a harsh voice was yelling over the loudspeaker, “Manos arriba! Manos arriba! Hands up, hands up, motherfuckers!”

They froze in the light. Ramirez watched.

Curse my mother, that whore, he thought.

The voice from above: “Don’t move, amigos. Get those hands up. Get ’em up! Manos arriba.”

They stood stiffly, hands high in the glare of the single beam.

Ramirez thought, I ought to get out of here. Jesus Mary.

For Christ Jesus’ sake, run, he told himself. But he watched in sick fascination.

An American officer — in the deep green of the Border Patrol and a baseball cap and carrying a shotgun — came into the light.

“Face down. Down, goddammit. Descendente pronto!”

The men in the light looked at each other in panic. One young boy turned back to Ramirez. The gringo stood erect.

“Down, down,” screamed the policeman.

They went to their knees. The officer walked behind them and with his boot nudged one forward into the sand. The others followed.

“Jimmy, get that chopper on the horn again.”

“It’s coming,” came a voice from back near the light.

Luck. Maniac luck, the true law of God. Ramirez cursed his mother for bearing him and himself for his selfishness to the Virgin. He made a vow to change all that, crossed himself quickly and spat into the dust.

Clearly this was no raid; he had not been betrayed. There would have been hundreds of them, with bullhorns, machine guns. And on his side federales. He’d seen it before, down below, and once had to run half the night with an American.38 in his side. But this was just two stupid gringos with a four-wheel-drive truck. They had been lucky; Ramirez had been unlucky; the stranger with a million dollars in his knapsack had been unlucky. Fate, a whore like his mother with clap and no teeth and ribbons in her filthy hair, laughed at him, spat his way.

The border patroman had walked around in front of them again and stood nervously with the shotgun, shifting his weight from leg to leg.

“Buzz him again, Jimmy.”

“I just did. He’s on his way.”

They would wait for the helicopter, for more men, before searching and cuffing their captives.

Ramirez thought: If the tall man is going to do anything he’d better do it now.

If he’d had the Python, he could have fired for the light, or even the patrolman. But that was bad business, shooting norteamericanos. They were a crazy people; they’d get you for sure. Besides the range was over two hundred yards, a long shot for a pistol, even a big one.

Ramirez looked again. The long figure lay on the stony soil. His pack was inches beyond his fingers.

Gringo, do something, do it now. They’ll put you away for a century if they catch you.

Ramirez rubbed his mouth nervously.

A sound of engines, low and pulsing, rose in the distance and began to build.

“There he is,” yelled the one at the truck.

“Okay,” yelled the one with the shotgun, easing back a step, half twisting. He turned his head toward the sound —

It happened with the speed of a snake’s strike. The patrolman turned, the tall man seemed to elongate upon the earth, and in the same half-second he had in his hands a small gun with a blunt barrel, and a spurt of flash broke from the muzzle and the patrolman fell.

A machine gun! A small machine gun! thought Ramirez, astonished at the treasure.

The others began to flee the light. A hasty shot rang out to kick at the dust near the tall man. He stood, holding his weapon with two hands, the left cupped under the grip for support, and fired carefully into the vehicle on the ridge. Ramirez heard the glass shattering, the metal shuddering as the bullets tore through. The searchlight vanished. The tall man dropped to one knee and swiftly changed magazines in his weapon. He rose and fired again, and the truck detonated in an oily orange flash that filled the night with heat and color.

Ramirez blinked as the dust and gas from the blast pushed across him. He saw purple spinning circles before his eyes from the bright flash. He squinted them away and turned back to the spectacle before him. Rolling flames from the ridge illuminated the valley.

The tall man had moved to the fallen Border Patrol officer. Ramirez watched in astonishment as the tall man bent to the man he’d just slain, and seemed to close his eyes and a hanging jaw. Then with one hand he pushed the flattened body to its side and turned it toward Nogales. Then he grabbed his pack and ran into the darkness.

The roaring of the helicopter became huge. Dust began to whirl and rise and Ramirez could see the dark shape of it, lights blinking, start to settle out of the sky. A searchlight beam sprang from the port to play across the stones.

Ramirez drew back. He knew that inside an hour the federales would arrive, summoned by the Americans. He knew that more Americans would come, and more and more. He knew he’d better get the hell out of there. He prayed that the Americans wouldn’t find his gringo compadres, who’d obviously been spooked by the passing patrol. If they found them and they talked and they told of Ramirez …

Ramirez crossed himself. Holy Virgin, I’ve lied and cheated and stolen and killed, but spare your sinning child. He prayed intently as he scurried through the moonlight up the hill. He saw his van ahead and knew he’d make it. He even paused by the cactus to fetch his pistol.

“What happened?” asked Oscar. “Mother of Jesus, it sounded like a war.”

“Mother of Jesus, it was a war,” Ramirez said, thinking of the tall one, for he suddenly realized he’d seen a kind of soldier.