The Dead Women of Juarez Read Free Page A

water from the cooler. “Okay,” he told Estéban. “Tell me when and where.”

FOUR
    M ORE THAN CHEAP FACTORY GOODS crossed the border from Ciudad Juárez into the States. Too many trucks and too many people meant too many places for dope to hide. The cops tried their best to catch the crooks, but it was a losing battle. More than that: it was a rout. Now the hardcore
traficantes
, the ones that came up in places like Mexico City, were even taking their fights and their weapons into Arizona, New Mexico and Texas.
    Estéban’s product was weed, but he handled a little
gumersinda
from time to time. He knew Kelly was off the hard stuff, so when raw heroin came through he had one of his brown runners take care of it. Estéban showed respect for Kelly that way, and that was why they kept on together. That and because of Paloma.
    Kelly carried a Reyes gym bag with boxing gear on top and a kilo of weed underneath. A setup like that could never make it past the border guards with their dogs and checklist of suspicious parcels, but for a gringo walking around here it was nothing a cop would glance at twice. Maybe not even once when Kelly had been through the grinder like the night before.
    He came north, this time by bus, and then walked the rest of the way to a neighborhood so close to the border that he saw the lights of El Paso clearly. Every night was party night on these blocks, with white-boy tourist trash circling around the strip clubs and legal brothels getting drunker and drunker until they staggered backacross the downtown bridge with their wallets and their pockets picked clean.
    People knew Kelly here; at least enough to let him pass without trying to sell him fake Cuban cigars, flowers, Mexican fly and everything else under the sun. While the rest of Ciudad Juárez settled down for dinner and bed, these blocks hopped. This was where the city came close to being like all the other
turista
carnivals along the border, and why Kelly only came here when he was being paid.
    The place was La Posada del Indio, the Inn of the Indian in English. A large animated neon cartoon Indian, complete with feather headdress of the kind never seen south of the border, marked the door. Inside it was no inn and was barely a saloon: tiny stage for a single dancing girl, a compact bar with two men doubling as bartenders and pimps, plus a dozen tables around which girls constantly circulated.
    Kelly bought an overpriced
cerveza
from the bar. He didn’t attract a swarm of girls, either because of his looks or because they knew the score; La Posada del Indio was a good place to get business done, and the men who came for money instead of pussy had a certain air about them.
    “
¿Usted está buscando el hombre gordo?
” the bartender asked Kelly.
    “How did you know?” Kelly asked.
    “He was waiting. You’re here.”
    Kelly shrugged, but now Estéban would have to come up with a new place for a drop; they knew Kelly too well here. “So where is he?”
    “He was waiting a long time. He got a girl.”
    Kelly looked around the place for a fat man. Because it was midweek, most of the faces here were Mexican brown and bodies working-lean under the florid lights. Coming closer to the weekend the complexion would shift and the men would get doughier. There would be more cash changing hands, too.
    “You want to get your dick sucked?” the bartender asked. “There is a girl, she’s new. She won’t mind your face.”
    “No, thanks,” Kelly said. He unconsciously touched the tape on his nose. Even now, after a handful of aspirin, his face throbbed with his heartbeat. “What room did the fat man get?”
    The bartender told him. Kelly finished his beer and went out the front door. A narrow alley brought him to the next street where a ramshackle apartment building with rusty iron balustrades sulked in darkness. Women and girls moved up and down concrete steps, leading men in and sending them away.
    Kelly ignored the women and they did the