Eric van Lustbader - The Bourne Objective

She had finished her last tamale and was on her second Corona when she saw an old black Chevy, dusty and hulking, but the plates didn’t match and she went back to her beer. She declined dessert but ordered coffee.

The waiter was setting the tiny cup in front of her when, over his shoulder, she saw another black Chevy. She stood up as he walked away. The plate matched the one on the car Arkadin had rented, but the driver was an eighteen-year-old punk. He parked near the café and got out. His hair was crested, his arms covered in tattoos of snakes and plumed birds. Soraya recognized the quetzal, the sacred bird of the Aztecs and Maya. Downing her espresso in one shot, she left some bills on the table and walked over to the punk.

“Where did you get that car, compadre ?” she asked him.

He looked her up and down with a sneer. His eyes on her breasts, he said, “What business is it of yours?”

“I’m not a cop, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“Why should I be worried?”

“Because that Chevy is a rental car from Tucson-you and I both know that.”

The punk continued his sneer. He looked like he practiced it in front of a mirror every morning.

“Do you like them?”

The punk started. “What?”

“My breasts.”

He laughed uneasily and looked away.

“Listen,” she said, “I’m not interested in you or the car. Tell me about the man who rented it.”

He spat sideways and said nothing.

“Don’t be stupid,” she said. “You’re already in enough trouble. I can make it go away.”

The punk sighed. “I really don’t know. I found the car out in the desert. It was abandoned.”

“How did you start it up-did you hot-wire it?”

“Nah, I didn’t have to, the key was in the ignition.”

Now, that was interesting. It probably meant that Arkadin wasn’t coming back for it, which meant that he was no longer in Nogales. Soraya thought for a moment. “If I wanted to cross the border, how would I do it?”

“The border station’s just a couple miles south-”

“I don’t want to go that way.”

The punk squinted, eyeing her as if for the first time. “I’m hungry,” he said. “How about buying me a meal?”

“Okay,” she said, “but don’t expect anything else.”

When he laughed, the brittle shell of his forced bravado cracked open. His face was transformed into that of a simple kid who looked at the world through sad eyes.

She took him back to the café, where he ordered burritos de machaca and a huge plate of cowboy beans larded with chiles pasados. His name was Álvaro Obregón. He was from Chihuahua. His family had migrated north in search of work and had ended up here. Through the intervention of his mother’s brother, his parents worked at a maquiladora packaging fruit and vegetables. According to him, his sister was a slut and his brothers goofed off all day instead of working. He himself was employed by a rancher. He’d come into town to pick up an order of supplies the rancher had phoned in.

“At first, I was excited about coming here,” he said. “I’d read up about American Nogales and discovered that a lot of really cool people were born here, like Charlie Mingus. His music sounds like shit to me, but you know, he’s famous and all. And then there’s Roger Smith. Imagine banging Ann-Margret, huh! But the coolest is Movita Castaneda. I bet you never heard of her.”

When Soraya said she hadn’t, he grinned. “She was in Flying Down to Rio and Mutiny on the Bounty, but I only saw her in Tower of Terror. ” He mopped up the last of his beans. “Anyway, she married Marlon Brando. Now, there was one cool actor, until he blew up like a blimp, anyway.”

He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and smacked his lips. “It didn’t take long for the shine to wear off. I mean, just look around you. What a fucking dump!”

“You seem to have a good job,” Soraya pointed out.

“Yeah, you try it. It sucks.”

“It’s steady work.”

“A rat makes more money than I do.” He gave a wry, lopsided smile. “But that doesn’t mean I starve to death.”

“Which brings us back to my original question. I want to get into Mexico.”

“Why? The place is a fucking shithole.”

Soraya smiled. “Who do I see?”

Álvaro Obregón made a show of having to think about it, but Soraya suspected he already knew. He looked out over the square. The lights had come on, people were on their way to dinner or heading home after some last-minute shopping. The air smelled of refried beans and other sharp, acidic scents of norteño cooking. Finally, he said, “Well, there are a couple of local polleros across the border.” These were people whom you paid to guide you across the border without having to bother with customs and Immigration. “But really, there’s only one to use, and you’re in luck, early this morning he brought a family of migrants across from Mexico. He’s here now and I can make the introductions. He’s known as Contreras, though I know for a fact that’s not his real name. I’ve dealt with him personally.”

On that score Soraya had no doubt. “I’d like you to set up the meet with your compadre Contreras.”

“It’ll cost you. A hundred American dollars.”

“Highway robbery. Fifty.”

“Seventy-five.”

“Sixty. That’s my last offer.”

Álvaro Obregón put his hand on the table palm-up, and Soraya laid a twenty and a ten onto it. The bills disappeared so fast they might never have existed.

“The rest when you deliver,” she said.

“Wait here,” Álvaro Obregón said.

“Save time and call him, why don’t you?”

Álvaro Obregón shook his head. “No cell contact, ever. Rules of the game.” He rose and, seemingly in no particular hurry, sauntered off at the leisurely pace endemic to Nogales.

For just over an hour Soraya sat alone, soaking up the spangle of the night and the lilt of songs of a local banda, playing a form of brass-heavy music from Sinaloa. A couple of men asked her to dance; politely but firmly she turned them down.

Then, just as the banda segued into its second cumbia, she saw Álvaro Obregón emerge out of the shadows. He was accompanied by a man, presumably Contreras, the pollero, whom she judged to be in his early to midforties with a face like a map that had been folded and refolded too many times. Contreras was tall and rangy with slightly bowed legs, like a lifetime cowboy. And like a cowboy he wore a wide-brimmed hat, stovepipe jeans, and a western shirt with piping and pearl snaps.

The man and the boy sat down without a word. Up close Contreras had the sun-bleached eyes of a man used to sagebrush, dust, and the scorching desert. His skin resembled overtanned leather.

“Boy tells me you want to go south.” Contreras spoke to her in English.

“That’s right.” Soraya had seen eyes like his before in professional gamblers. They seemed to bore into your skull.

“When?”

A man of few words, that was all right with her. “The sooner the better.”

Contreras lifted his head to the moon, as if he were a coyote about to howl at it. “Just a sliver,” he said. “Tonight’ll be better than tomorrow, tomorrow’ll be better than the next. After that…” He shrugged, as if to say the door would close.

“What’s your fee?” she asked.

He gazed at her again in a neutral way. “Can’t bargain with me like you did with the boy.”

“All right.”

“Fifteen hundred, half up front.”

“A quarter, the rest when you’ve brought me safely across.”

Contreras’s mouth gave a little twitch. “You were right, boy, she is some kinda bitch.”