David Corbett - The Devil’s Redhead

“Moreira,” Waxman continued, “is a hacendado who runs a glass factory in Tapachula, near the Guatemalan border. He also owns a great deal of ranch land in that area, all along the Rio Suchiate, which is to Chiapas what the Rio Grande is to Texas. Immigrants cross it by the thousands daily.”

Abatangelo said, “The point, Wax. We’ve got a drive to make.”

“I understand. Indulge me just this moment. Basically, Moreira positions touts in the border village of Hidalgo, across the river from Tecún Umán. He offers work on his ranches or transport north to America. The touts charge outrageous fees and kick back to Moreira. Sometimes they just drop the pretense, take their pigeons out into the forest and rob them. Rape them.”

“Let me guess,” Abatangelo said. “You just snuck in Aleris’s story.”

Frank groaned on the sofa and pulled the blankets tighter over his head. Waxman regarded him a bit differently now, as though he were a rare and poisonous flower.

“Here,” he said, finding a second clipping and photograph, “is the person Frank referred to as El Zopilote.”

The grainy picture, a decade older than Moreira’s, presented a man with lean features and thick black hair, descending the steps of a small white courthouse.

“His real name is Victor Facio,” Waxman explained. “He’s the overlord of Rolando Moreira’s security apparatus. I don’t know how much you know about recent Mexican history.”

“No history lessons,” Abatangelo said.

“The short version, then.”

“Tell me in the car.”

“I don’t think it would be wise,” Waxman said, “to share some of this information with him present.” He nodded toward the sofa.

Abatangelo sighed. “Go on, wrap it up.”

“After 1972 or so, rumors put Facio everywhere and anywhere there’s money and guns and a smack of anticommunism in the air. There’s only one file in the public record here in the States, though. It’s in U.S. District Court in Brownsville, Texas.” Waxman pointed again to the article Abatangelo was holding, the one with the picture of Facio standing before a courthouse. “It was for trafficking- weapons, primarily, the drug charges were quashed. Facio served twenty-three months in Huntsville, was released, and then vanished underground again.”

Waxman’s tone was almost reverential. There was a newfound purpose about him. Abatangelo found this troubling.

“Wax,” he said. “It’s gonna be dark soon.”

“I’m almost finished,” Waxman insisted. “Come the 1990’s, Facio apparently saw the wisdom of plying his trade in the private sector. The Iron Curtain fell; Castro was isolated. During a return visit to Mexico City he paid calls on several patrones he’d hit up for funds over the years. There were a lot of executive kidnappings then, it was a very tense time. Facio interviewed with Rolando Moreira in the Colonia Roma. Curiously, at the same time as his interview, a prominent financier who’d been abducted a month before was found alive, wandering along the Paseo de la Reforma. There’s always been talk that Facio was somehow involved in the man’s release, and he used it as a calling card. Regardless, he became Moreira’s director of security.”

Abatangelo thought about this for a moment. “What you’re saying is, he plays both sides.”

“The rumor,” Waxman said, “is that Facio is responsible for putting Rolando Moreira together with a major trafficker from Sinaloa. A man named Marco Carasco.”

“A rumor,” Abatangelo said. “This article, the one about the kidnapping, it appeared…?”

“In one of the opposition newspapers from Guerrero.”

“Aha,” Abatangelo said. “What’s that, a Mexican rad rag?”

Waxman bristled. “You put Facio in the picture with Moreira and Marco Carasco, you have the prospects for everything we heard from our friend there on the couch. Stolen goods? Trafficking, kidnapping, murder? I don’t find it a stretch. Not now. I’ll be honest, at first I hadn’t the least faith he would say anything worthwhile, or even coherent. But these people are real. If he knows half what he claims to know, he is a very valuable man.”

Abatangelo eyed Waxman with mild dismay. In a cautioning tone, he said, “You were at the table with me, Wax. You got to watch him work. It was like he was tooling through his mind on roller skates. And it’s not much of a mind.”

“I believe he’s telling the truth.”

“There’s no future in the truth, Wax, not on that plane. Let’s not save the world today, all right? Think small, walk tall.”

Waxman reddened. “We have to get corroboration. Of course. I don’t mean to imply otherwise.”

Abatangelo shook his head. “No time.”

“I intend to make time,” Waxman responded. “I also intend to treat our friend with a little more respect. It’s time we stopped assuming the only way to get him to cooperate is to scare him. You’ll probably laugh if I say we might appeal to his conscience.”

Abatangelo laughed.

“He could use a friend.”

“I’m friendly,” Abatangelo said.

“Aleris is willing to track down other witnesses- ”

“To what- something that happened years ago at the ass end of Mexico? That’s not my fight, Wax. Her kind can’t blame me or my politics. I don’t vote, remember? I’m a felon.” He returned his glance to Frank. “It’s not that I’m unsympathetic. It’s just my focus here is a little narrower.”

Waxman removed his glasses and wiped the lenses with his shirttail. “Excuse my saying so, but given the circumstances of your friend’s abduction- the methods, to use your term- I find this little fit of cynicism less than compelling.”

Abatangelo turned and in one short movement grabbed Waxman’s shoulders, lifted him onto the balls of his feet and pinned him to the wall. He pushed his face close, hissing through his teeth. “Don’t lecture me about her. What happened to her. What to do about her or how to feel about it.”

Waxman stared back blinking. He licked his lips. Abatangelo released his hold and turned away. Waxman gathered his breath, fumbled with his glasses and put them back on. “Forgive me,” he said. “I shouldn’t sermonize. What I said about your friend was improper. I know she means a great deal to you.”

Abatangelo winced at the change of tone. Turning around again, he found himself regarded with immense, pitying eyes. He felt indulged. He felt as though an appeal were being made to his conscience.

Saturday traffic offered little resistance as they headed up the Eastshore Freeway. Waxman sat alone in front, driving the Dart. Abatangelo sat in back with Frank. It seemed best not to make him sit back there alone, like a prize, or a prisoner. Abatangelo urged him to talk, thinking that training Frank’s mind on actual events might keep his more extreme imaginings at bay. Frank obliged, telling again the story of the past few weeks, confirming details. The effort came off like a sort of dreary chant. Abatangelo couldn’t resist the impression that this was the last time Frank expected to say these things.

In time they turned onto the Delta Highway, heading toward the flood plain beyond Martinez. They reached the Pacheco turnoff and Frank told Waxman to leave the highway and head north through the low hills toward the river.

“There’s a turn up here,” Waxman shortly announced from the front. “Which way do I go?”

Frank told him to bear right. They rounded a corner above which a refinery complex crowned a grassless bluff and then the marina came into view. Nearly three dozen boats buffeted a hatchwork of low sagging docks: weathered houseboats fouled with rubbish, listing barks, fishing smacks. Mainsails rattled in the late-day wind. The stench of brackish water mingled with that of rotting food and turpentine.