The Dead Women of Juarez Read Free Page B

same for him. In the bar they were selling, but back here it was business. He went to the third floor and rapped on the last door. He heard nothing from inside until a short, dumpy prostitute opened the door and then the sound of a television game show reached Kelly’s ears.
    The woman was topless, dark skinned and had a heavy-featured, almost Indian look. She didn’t smile at Kelly. “What do you want?” she asked.
    “He’s lookin’ for me, honey.”
    Kelly saw the fat man on a little bed in the room. Light from the television made him seem pasty and blue. He reclined with his pants down around his knees and his cock was somewhere under a heavy pudding of fat.
    He covered himself up when Kelly came in. The man wore a Texas State shirt half buttoned with a sweaty white tee underneath. Everything about him was large and fatty, including his hands. The woman put her blouse on.
    “You want me to come back when you’re done?” Kelly asked the fat man.
    “Nah.”
    The fat man paid the woman off. They squabbled about the price because he hadn’t popped his nut. Kelly stood in the corner of the little room and stared into the bathroom; too small for a tub, it had a standing shower infested with roaches. A thick, brown carpet ofshiny palmetto bugs gathered in the center around the drain. Kelly wondered whether they would scatter if he turned on the light over the sink and if they did, where they might go.
    “You only going to pay
me
half?” Kelly asked the fat man.
    “You got the full kilo?”
    “Sure.”
    “Then I got no complaints. Let’s see it.”
    They left the television on and didn’t switch on a lamp. In the flicker of the tube, Kelly brought out the
motivosa
tightly wrapped in four flat packets of plastic film. He put the packets on the bed. The fat man took a roll of hundreds out of his pocket and counted out twenty. Then he took off his Texas State shirt.
    “Want me to call the girl back?” Kelly asked.
    “Funny,” the fat man said. He removed his T-shirt. His body wasn’t hairy, but it looked like it was melting; great folds of pallid flesh drooped from his frame. He had breasts bigger than a stripper.
    Kelly took the two grand and recounted it. He put it in his breast pocket, zipped up his bag and prepared to leave. This was the awkward part; some buyers liked to chat, others were all about getting the hell out of there. Kelly preferred the latter. “You’re not gonna put it in a belt, are you?” he asked. “They watch for that.”
    “Nah,” the fat man said. He palmed one packet of weed in one hand and lifted a roll with the other. Kelly imagined a musty smell. “Got my own safety deposit box.”
    The fat man stowed the weed and put his shirts back on. Kelly couldn’t tell the difference.
    “It’s a pleasure,” Kelly said at last. “I’m gonna go.”
    “See you next time,” the fat man said. “I’m Frank.”
    “Good luck, Frank,” Kelly said and he left.
    His chances of seeing Frank again were slim. Every white guy with a dream of making a quick buck on a hop across the border had to try running a little
motivosa
, and the odds were good, but whenthe first batch sold and it was time for another run, nerves got the better of them. Would they make it? Could they make it? What if they didn’t make it? And that was that; the head game was harder than the deal.
    Smart buyers and sellers used cutouts to divide the risk. The ones that came over themselves, like Frank, were amateurs. But so long as the money was good, there were no complaints from Estéban.
    Kelly took a taxi home because it was late and he had money in his pocket. The ride was only five bucks.
    In this neighborhood people went to bed early and got up before sunrise. All-night parties were for gringos and losers; around here people worked for a living, and they worked hard. To stay out of the city’s temporary suburbs of particleboard, cinder blocks and plastic everyone in a family had to work hard. It was the