Send More Idiots

CHAPTER ONE The Mexican punched me so hard that I said my mother’s name, which is interesting, because I don’t like my mother. “¿Quién es Elizabeth?” the hitter asked, looking over his shoulder at the men who had formed a semi-circle around me in the parking lot. Amazingly, I didn’t go down with the first shot. Even though I stood half a foot taller than the Mexican, it had been a long time since I’d been pasted like that. Square on the jaw, uppercut. I managed to keep my legs under me, even though I dropped the digital camera. I’d been working in Mexico for three years, so my Spanish was pretty good—good enough so that I could make out the tall man in the aviator sunglasses telling the guy to hit me again. I was so stunned from the first punch that I didn’t even try to get my hands up. Next thing I knew, I was looking at the dirt from the dirt’s point of view. I saw several pairs of ostrich-skin cowboy boots closing in around me, and, through the boots, I spotted the little kid at the edge of the parking lot. He was the same urchin who’d been watching me since I’d pulled into the building site ten minutes earlier. The kid wore a washed-out Boston Celtics T-shirt and shorts that had dark stains down the front, like he’d been wiping his hands on them for a week solid. The odd thing was that the boy, who couldn’t have been more than eight years old, was holding a brand-new BlackBerry. The guys grabbed me by the ankles and dragged me across the lot. Just before I went down into that hole of unconsciousness, I saw the little kid wave goodbye. He wasn’t smiling. * * * I came to on the floor of a vehicle with someone’s boot on my neck, my cheek mashed into an empty bag of pork rinds. My hands had been duct-taped behind my back and my legs similarly bound. The Mexicans jabbered above me as the car jounced along the potholed street. A lasso of pain cinched tighter around my head with each bump. “You’re losing your right, Lalo,” one of the guys said in Spanish. “That pinche güey didn’t even take a step back after that first punch. He called you ‘Elizabeth.’” “He’s been eating too much of that American ass,” another voice said. “Fuck you guys. I had to reach up to hit him.” “Doesn’t matter. Used to be you got a guy like that, he went down. From now on we use baseball bats, like the boss said.” “Any of you want to step out of the car and try me?” the one called Lalo challenged. “I’ve still got the hands of stone.” “More like la boca de panocha.” “Your mother would know.” “Your sister!” “Pull over!” “You bitches shut up,” the driver said, “or I’ll shoot both of you.” That ended that. The realization that I was in serious trouble came through loud and clear despite the throbbing of my skull. As I struggled to pull breath with the boot on my neck and my hands taped behind my back, I knew it would probably get worse. Anyone who lives in El Paso knows about folks getting kidnapped, jacked up and killed. More than thirty people—and I’m talking Americans—had gone missing along the border recently. It was worse for the Mexicans. Over 3,000 murders. In one year. Death had gotten to be such a regular thing that you stopped paying attention to the articles in the newspaper; a 55-gallon oil drum along the highway with a decomposed body inside; hands sticking out of the sand dunes, the bodies purposely not buried all the way; corpses discovered gussied up with yellow ribbons wrapped around their necks. That is, if they still had heads. The narcos do most of it, but there’s lots of chatter about it being the Mexican Army or federales on the cartel payrolls. Some of the Mexicans I worked with were convinced that DEA or CIA were pulling triggers. Or it was the chupacabra, that mythical blood-sucking goat stalking the darkness on its hind legs. But most people had stopped trying to figure out who—or what—was behind it. There were too many bodies to keep track of. I could tell we were on a dirt road from the bouncing of the vehicle, but that didn’t tell me much. Only a third of the streets in Juarez are paved, despite the fact that something like a billion dollars’ worth of drugs are shipped through there on a monthly basis. Only a small portion of that loot stays in the pockets of your American dimebag dealers, so you’d think the Mexicans could afford a bit of asphalt with the surplus. The car hit another pothole and I felt the floorboards hard against my ribs. “Listen,” I said in Spanish, “you got the wrong guy.” The man sitting over me ground his boot harder into my neck. “I’ve got money,” I said. Another passenger laughed. “I bet you do.” “Please—” “No talking!” The man above me stomped my lower back. I started thinking back to what I might’ve done to deserve this. I’d only been in Juarez for half an hour, so I couldn’t have pissed anyone off that badly. I’d come to the construction site to do a simple broker’s evaluation, legwork for a stateside agent who wanted pictures of the facility. I’d e-mail the digital photos to him when I got back to the office, and he’d pay me a thousand dollars. Standard pre-lunch activity. I thought about my Tahoe, although I could guess that it was already on the way to the chop shop. If I managed to get myself out of this mess, I’d have to hoof it back across the bridge. I didn’t know if I even had my passport in my pocket any longer, and I wondered about how long the lines were going to be at Customs. I’ll admit it was a strange thought process, considering these guys were probably going to kill me. “I’m a real estate—” “What did I just say?” the guy above me asked. “This is—” Something cracked the back of my skull, and the black rushed in from all sides. CHAPTER TWO I had a glimmer of hope that when I came out of the pit of unconsciousness I would be back in El Paso with a hangover. Instead, I was duct-taped to a wooden chair inside a stifling room. Once I realized where I was, the pounding in my skull started to keep time with my pulse, which was going bam-bam-bam. The room was lit by a desk lamp in one corner, where two guys were reading magazines and smoking cigarettes. Wisps of bluish smoke trailed through the dim light. The floors were concrete and the walls corrugated steel. A warehouse. Not much to go on. Juarez is filled with warehouses. My nose started running, and I sniffed as quietly as possible. One of the guys heard me and looked over. He nudged the fellow sitting next to him. In Spanish he said, “I guess we better get him.” He walked past the circle of light, and I heard him knock on a door. The door cracked open and a wedge of pus-colored illumination slid across the concrete floor. “He’s awake,” the Mexican said. He closed the door and went back to his periodical. I tried to slow my heart down, but the bindings around my hands and feet were so tight. I couldn’t stop thinking about pliers, hacksaws, ball-peen hammers and ice picks. I tried to rock the chair, but it was bolted down. I looked at the mooring and saw the dark stains on the concrete, and that got my heart bumping so hard that it felt like it was climbing up my throat. A figure emerged from the office, and I heard his hard-soled footsteps come across the room. He stopped right at the edge of the light so I could only see his pressed blue jeans in the rays cast from the lamp. He regarded me for a minute or so. I opened my mouth to speak, but my tongue was huge and dry. I worked my jaw, but there was no saliva. When I finally spoke, my voice came out a rasp. “There’s been a mistake.” “I won’t argue with that,” the man said in perfect English. He circled behind me, still careful to stay out of the light. I craned my neck to follow him, but he stopped right on my six. I heard him shaking something. The two Mexicans hadn’t looked up from their magazines. “It would be in our best interests to get this over with as quickly as possible,”