David Levien - City of the Sun

“What ’ s up?” Paul asked.

“Don ’ t know,” Behr answered.

“You see?” Victor said.

“You see?” Ernesto echoed from his place near the berm. “I show you something very dangerous.” And then he began kicking at the ground. He went on for a few moments, going deeper into the soft dirt, and then stopped and stepped back.

Behr and Paul looked at each other and walked forward. They saw it there, covered in brown earth, a human rib cage. Behr pushed at a nearby pile with his foot and uncovered a lower jawbone complete with teeth.

“Ah, shit,” he said.

“What is this?” Paul wondered.

Behr thought back to what he ’ d seen at Eagle Creek Park and knew. “The remains of a teenage boy.”

“ Sн, ” Ernesto said. He seemed vaguely proud to have shown them.

Paul moved forward and began kicking hard at the ground. Behr joined him. They uncovered femur bones, arms, clavicles, and skulls, evidence of perhaps half a dozen bodies. The remains weren ’ t fresh, but still an odor became present — that of decomposition.

“This is where they dump them,” Behr said.

Ernesto nodded. “I don ’ t go more far,” he said. “Or we all be killed.”

Paul realized he was in an unholy burial ground and doubled over, his hands on his thighs. He fell to his knees and began raking through the debris with his hands, looking for what, he was not sure, only something that would tell him what he needed to know. His breathing became ragged and shallow. He fought against a rising nausea and finally ceased with the digging.

Behr stopped his digging, too. There was very little sound above their breathing. “Why did you bring us here?” Behr asked.

“He hope you be satisfy,” Victor piped in. “And you pay him.”

“We ’ re not satisfied,” Behr said. “Where are they kept before?”

Ernesto just shook his head.

“You think I ’ m going to pay you for a graveyard?” Behr asked.

“This is where they end,” Ernesto said. “I no can take you where they are before.”

“Then you ’ re not getting any money,” Behr said with firmness.

“You see this place. I know from my cousin you no customers. I know if I take you there, you make trouble. Then trouble find me. So you gon ’ pay me now and then go away.” Ernesto smiled, the rhythmic clicking of a butterfly knife opening in his hand.

“For this? No,” Behr said, allowing himself to face Ernesto full-on but quartering away from Victor so his right side was shielded. “We want more. We need answers.”

Ernesto nodded at Victor, who was standing at the edge of the pool of the truck ’ s headlights. Behr ’ s assumptions proved correct as Victor raised both arms and in his trembling hands was a Ruger. 357.

Paul saw it and slowly stood. Perhaps he had come all this way to die among what might be the bones of his son.

Behr eased his hand into his pocket and gripped his own gun.

“Don ’ t fuck around, Victor. їComprende? ” Behr said evenly. “Put that thing up before this goes to shit.”

“You no pay him. You hit me. No good,” Victor said.

“You ’ re not shooting anyone. And I’ m not shooting you.” Behr slowly took out his gun and kept it pointed low, but in Victor ’ s general direction. “We ’ ll pay, and we ’ ll pay plenty if you take us to where the boys are kept when they ’ re alive.”

“Maybe we kill you and take all your money?” Ernesto suggested. “Safer for me than to take you there.”

“You do that, you ’ ll have the FBI up your ass,” Behr said with conviction.

“Bullshit, FBI.” Ernesto tried to sound brave and convinced.

“Bullshit if you look in my wallet and don ’ t find a badge there,” Behr said firmly.

Ernesto showed no inclination to check badges or anything else. Instead he yelled harshly at Victor in rapid Spanish. The words policнa and federales popped out from the speech. Victor struggled to keep the gun up and under control. It was an uncomfortable stalemate, one Paul anticipated Behr breaking with gunfire at any moment, and it motivated him to speak.

“Do you have kids?” Paul asked the men. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Victor look to Ernesto, giving him away.

“ Sн, my son, Keke, is two years,” Ernesto said, his voice losing its sharp edges.

“I believe my son, Jamie, could be one of them.” Paul gestured to the bones at their feet. “He ’ d be fourteen.” His words hung like dust in the desert air. “I need to find out what happened to him. To see where he was, how he may have ended up here. That ’ s all I want now.” He swallowed. “I hope nothing bad ever happens to Keke. You can make a lot of money for him right now. It can be easy.” They watched Ernesto chew it over.

“I want two thousand. It ’ s more danger than to bring people across.” He finally spoke.

“Forget two thousand,” Behr began.

“Two thousand,” Paul agreed. Ernesto nodded to Victor to lower the gun. Victor seemed relieved to do it. Paul went right to his pocket for the money. There wouldn ’ t be much left after he paid.

When the darkness comes, so do the noises. The sounds of cars and trucks arriving, of men laughing, the thumping of doors open and shut, the dogs barking, and sometimes music, other times a lone squeal. The night is the time of dreams for the world, but not for him. For him, the night is a time for work. The cinder-block shavings come slowly together in a pile by his knees, which he blows away from time to time. Once, a long time ago, a meal had gone back without a spoon and it had not been noticed and now the spoon handle heats from friction, its point sharp and mean. He ’ s bent the rounded part of the spoon back toward itself, and after holding it for so many hours it fits smoothly into his palm. The point and edges of the weapon have long been sharp enough. He knows this by his blood, which he ’ s drawn from his own hand. He stops at a sound: footsteps in the hall. He tucks his weapon behind him. Then the footsteps continue on and he returns to his work…

Their headlights washed over what looked like a lunar landscape. The stark desert dirt, dried to chalky powder by the day ’ s sun, puffed up from the ground and filled the air inside the car. They had driven back to town, riding uncomfortable and alert in Ernesto ’ s truckbed. They had picked up Behr ’ s car and then followed Ernesto out into the night. They drove for a long time into the desert, beyond roads, paved or otherwise, in a direction they calculated as south and west of where they had been before. They passed giant saguaro cacti, standing silent like ominous sentinels, and caught sight of a fleeing jackrabbit, painted white by their headlamps. Finally the pickup ahead of them slowed and doused its lights. Frank did the same and followed as they rolled slowly, finding their way in the darkness for a half-mile. Their eyes adjusted to the night, and eventually they came to a stop in what they saw was a swale in the desert floor. A tall rise of sandstone and rock a few hundred yards distant blocked any view farther on. All four men climbed out of the vehicles. None seemed eager to speak.

“So…” Paul ventured.

“Over that hill.” Ernesto pointed toward the rise. “ El rancho de los caballitos. ”

Something about the phrase was familiar to Behr. “Over the hill? That ’ s it, then?” he asked. “Take us there.”

“Hey, pendejo, you just visiting here, but we have to live,” Ernesto said, and then spat. He got in the truck.

Victor hesitated, seeming unwilling to part from them.

“I sorry,” he said, looking down at his feet uncomfortably, “about the gun. I didn ’ t know for what you were here. I didn ’ t know about your son. I just think — ”