The Breakout Page 6

  He’d first smoked marijuana while in Afghanistan. Life there was both boring and dangerous, an unsettling combination, and brutal violence could erupt out of nowhere. Pot kept his nerves under control, and when he needed to take action, helped him focus.

  Up until a month ago, he and the rest of his scout-sniper platoon had been stationed with the Second Reconnaissance Battalion in Nad Ali, and while much of their job consisted of reconnoitering the landscape to gain intelligence, on eleven occasions he’d been tasked with assassinating specific enemy targets.

  Pot also helped him smudge the otherwise crisp memories he had of what he’d seen through his scope, both before and after squeezing his trigger.

  After a while he turned, walked to the bathroom, flipped up the seat with his bare foot, and pulled down his waistband. Urine splashed into the bowl, hitting the water with great force. He drained for a long time, feeling like he must’ve had a gallon of piss in him, but finally sent out the last few splashes with a shiver.

  “That your first piss in a week? Sounds like a fire hose in there.”

  He jumped, splashing the edge of the bowl, then shook off and made his way out to the living room. Coop was sitting on the couch watching cartoons. He sipped coffee from a Dunkin’ Donuts cup, popped a hash brown into his mouth.

  “I got you coffee but left it in the rental car.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “You got a little pee-pee on your undies.”

  Bogart looked down and saw a quarter-sized wet spot on the front of his briefs. “It’ll dry. What are you doing here?”

  “We’re going to Mexico.”

  “Who are?”

  “We are.”

  “How come?”

  “Do you care?”

  “Not really. When are we going?”

  “Now.”

  “Be back before Monday?”

  “That’s the plan.”

  “Let me get my weed.”

  “Most people smuggle drugs out of Mexico, Bogart.”

  “I’m not smuggling. It’s for personal use.”

  “All right, get your weed. You might wanna put some pants on too.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  * * *

  They were on the road by ten o’clock. Coop sat behind the wheel of the rented Toyota Corolla, feeling jittery, wishing he’d skipped the third cup of coffee. Pilar in the passenger seat to his right. Bogart and Normal in back. Coop had picked up Normal last, and he’d made them stop at a convenience store to grab some sour chews. He and Bogart were fighting over who got to eat the red ones.

  “I bought them, motherfucker.”

  “But I hate the green ones. You like them.”

  “Not as much as the reds.”

  Coop turned up the radio, which was playing The Fall’s cover of “Mr. Pharmacist,” and tried to tune out the braying donkeys in the backseat. He lit a Newport, cracked his window, and eased them onto US-54. While he drove he thought about what they were doing, going to Mexico with no idea what they might find there, but he was pretty damn sure they were rolling into trouble. Whatever James had been doing in La Paz, he’d gotten himself tangled in a mess, and they’d have to climb into it to get him out.

  Coop was born in Rochester, New York, to a lawyer father and a schoolteacher mother, and they were both upset when he started talking about joining the Marine Corps. His father told him that black people signed up for military service to get opportunities they wouldn’t otherwise have, but since he already had those opportunities—good grades from a suburban school (with a weighted GPA of 4.6), a college fund ($62,000), and supportive parents—he didn’t need the signing bonus or the GI Bill to continue his education. He tried to explain that he was joining for the experience, joining so that he could see something other than upstate New York before he went on with his life, but his father only told him he should take a sabbatical year and travel Europe if that’s what he was after. That wasn’t the kind of experience he was looking for, though, so he signed up against his parents’ wishes, and saw things he never would have imagined, did things he never would have believed.

  He’d learned more about himself in the last eleven years, learned more about what he was capable of, than most people ever did.

  For instance, he knew without doubt that he would risk his own life to save the life of a friend. James Murphy was one of his best friends, which meant it didn’t matter what kind of trouble James had gotten himself into, Coop was going to do what he could to get him out of it, and he wouldn’t hesitate in his actions.

  He pressed down on the gas pedal and drove on, angling toward Mexico and whatever was waiting for him there.

  * * *

  Pilar looked out the passenger window at the hot blur of the world while Coop slanted the car off US-54, brought it to a stop at an intersection, and turned right onto East Paisano Drive. He turned the car left onto I-110, and they headed south toward Mexico once more, but only drove a few hundred feet before traffic brought them to a crawl, backed up at the border. Pilar looked past Coop to the driver’s-side window and the world beyond it. To their left was the El Paso BOTA Port of Entry, twelve lanes of slow-moving traffic merging into four lanes of stopped traffic that snaked south for at least a mile. They’d be in Mexico within ten minutes. Those near the end of the line on the Mexico side wouldn’t enter the United States for hours. Coop pulled his foot off the brake and eased the car forward.

  They’d soon be entering Mexico, and though it had only been a twenty minute drive, it already felt like they were on a different planet.

  For the last several days, James had been no more than forty-five miles away, but what he was involved in had so little to do with normal life that it felt as though he were much farther. Pilar knew that to be true without knowing exactly what he’d been involved in.

  She’d felt the same when, as a girl, she visited her uncle Arturo in Mexico City. Two weeks each summer from the time she was seven until she was seventeen. Her parents thought it would keep her connected to her ancestry. Three generations of family lived in Mexico while she and her parents lived in Jacksonville, North Carolina, where she’d met James while he was stationed at Camp Lejeune.

  Uncle Arturo managed an armored truck company with six branches in Mexico. He was fat and funny and crude, with a big round face and a goatee that only drew attention to the second chin he tried to hide. She liked him a great deal. She also believed that, every once in a while, he organized the heist of one of his company’s trucks. She had no evidence to confirm this, no proof, but every now and then Uncle Arturo had a lot of money on hand without explanation. He’d spend more freely, buy expensive meals, send toys or several hundred dollars in a birthday card whether it was her birthday or not. He was smart enough that he wouldn’t spend like that if one of his trucks had been robbed recently. But if you checked the newspapers, something she’d never done, she bet you’d find an article from six or nine months earlier about an ATC truck being robbed somewhere, probably right after a large collection from a bank or department store. Police might believe the way the robbery went down meant they were dealing with professionals who spent weeks planning their heist. But an inside man who knew all the details could get even common hoodlums to do a professional job, and such a man could also get away with paying those hoodlums a very small cut of the overall take.

  After crossing the border, traffic picked up again, and they continued south on route 45 for some time, moving down through the cluttered city until they reached a two-lane road that would carry them west. They turned right and drove into the empty desert, the white sun beating down on the rented Toyota, nothing but shrub-punctuated sand and rocks on either side of them, rattlesnakes stretched across the faded asphalt.

  * * *

  Coop turned onto Avenida Hidalgo about eleven o’clock, drove the Toyota through La Paz until he hit the north end of town, and made a left onto Calle Santa Lucia. He drove slowly, checking the place out. James had be
en arrested here, and since he and James were a scout sniper team, since he’d worked as James’s spotter in Afghanistan, he found himself instinctively noting the landscape as if reconnoitering enemy territory. Here was a blind alley. Here was a good place from which to shoot, offering protection and a 180-degree view of the surrounding area. Here was an old church with only one entrance, boarded-up windows, and thick walls, a good place to hole up if facing more enemies than you could handle; they might come in but you’d pick them off as they did.

  There was no good reason for this. La Paz was a mid-sized desert town in Mexico with little that might distinguish it from any other desert town, but on instinct he filed the information away. He simply couldn’t turn off that part of his brain.

  “Do you know where you’re going?” Pilar said.

  Coop’s iPhone map indicated that they should have reached the jail already, that they’d passed it a quarter mile back, but since they hadn’t, he’d have to go old school and ask for directions. “No,” he said, “but I’m about to find out.”

  He pulled the car into a strip mall and brought it to an angled stop at the front of the building. Looked at the various businesses lined up in front of him. A couple restaurants, a bar, a dry-cleaning place, and a convenience store. Someone in one of those joints would be able to tell them how to get to the jail. He pushed open the door, stepped outside, and slammed himself into a wall of heat. Sweat beaded on his skin.

  He walked toward the convenience store.

  * * *

  They arrived at La Paz City Jail visitors’ entrance about twenty minutes later. Eleven other cars were already parked in front of them. Visiting hours, according to a sign on the front of the guard station, were twelve to one Monday, Thursday, and Saturday, and the gates were open from eleven fifty until twelve ten on those days. Any car not let through at that point wouldn’t be let through at all. They waited, their air-conditioned vehicle motionless, a chain of cars extending behind them, new links constantly latching to the back of the line.

  Finally, the gate guard began letting vehicles through one at a time. The line moved forward and they moved with it. When they reached the guard station, Coop handed the guard all four IDs. The guard noted their names, recorded their license plate number and its origin, and waved them through.

  Coop drove them onto the jailhouse grounds. It was five past noon.

  They rolled along tire ruts in the sand to a large dirt parking lot.

  Once Coop brought the car to a stop, they stepped out into the heat and walked to the back of yet another line, this one human in form, a couple dozen people standing and sweating under the sun’s glare. The line led toward a cinder block building. A guard with a clipboard stood by the door. Above his head was a sign telling them that the door closed at twelve thirty; anybody still outside at that point would remain outside. The line progressed as people were processed and allowed through. After about twenty minutes, with visiting hour almost half over, they reached the guard.

  He asked who they were visiting.

  “James Murphy,” Pilar said.

  The guard looked at the clipboard, flipping through the pages. Finally he said, “James Murphy can have no visitors.”

  “Why not?”

  “He is in the infirmary.”

  Coop felt a ball of dread plunk into his gut like a lead fishing weight, splashing acid up into his throat. He swallowed, glanced at Pilar, and saw her face blanch.

  “Is he gonna be okay?”

  “You think I’m a doctor?”

  “What happened?”

  The guard shrugged and looked past them to the next person in line, ending the conversation. James was in the infirmary and they had no idea what had happened other than he was injured, which could mean anything from a bad hangnail to a cracked skull.

  Maybe he’d be okay; maybe he wouldn’t.

  “What do we do now?” Pilar said.

  “Let’s see if we can find a hotel in La Paz,” Coop said. “I’m not leaving Mexico until I know what the hell is going on here.”

  5

  Juan Jesus Gonzales folded the wad of cash Rocha had given him without bothering to count it and shoved it into his uniform’s right hip pocket. He looked at the man standing across from him in that bloodstained seersucker suit, black hair neatly trimmed, eyes bright as lanterns. Finally, Juan Jesus spoke: “It will be taken care of.”

  “What did I say?”

  “You said he is to be hurt.”

  “But.”

  Juan Jesus paused a moment as he thought about what Rocha expected of him. He knew he must say the right thing. Rocha appeared calm on the surface, like a lake on a windless day, and he might have been calm, but he could turn violent with shocking suddenness. Things were happening beneath the glassy surface that you couldn’t see, a frenzy of violence down in the darkness. “But not killed,” he said.

  “That last part is important. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Make sure the man you hire understands as well.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Have it done tomorrow. On the yard.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Okay.” Rocha stepped outside. Juan Jesus watched the door swing shut behind him, pinching the light that slanted in through the doorway, and as it latched, cutting it off.

  Relief washed over him. Rocha paid well, but being around him made Juan Jesus nervous, made his chest feel tight with the fear that he’d do something wrong, or something Rocha perceived as wrong, and face violent consequences. That fear made him think of his wife and his one-year-old daughter, made him think about their lives without him.

  If he died today, his little girl wouldn’t even remember him.

  He exhaled in a sigh, turned, and walked with Miguel, the other guard, stumbling along beside him. They walked in silence for a while, but as they got to the break room, Miguel said, “Why did he give you the money and not me?”

  “I guess he trusts me.”

  “Didn’t sound like he trusted you.”

  “Trusts me more than he trusts you.”

  “It’s bullshit. Like I don’t need money?”

  “Take it up with him next time you two sit down for a heart-to-heart.”

  “Very funny.”

  Juan Jesus pulled out the fold of cash Rocha had given him, peeled off a hundred-dollar bill, and handed it to Miguel. He slipped the rest back into his pocket and told Miguel he had to take care of business now, so why didn’t he go back to what he’d been doing before Rocha had showed up. Miguel left, and once he was gone, Juan Jesus walked to his locker. He unlocked the padlock, pulled open the blue metal door, pushed aside his lunch bag, which was on the top shelf, and from behind it grabbed a shiv he’d confiscated from an inmate last week.

  The same inmate slit someone’s throat in the cafeteria two days later.

  If someone in jail wanted a weapon, he’d find a way to make or procure one. Earlier this year, an inmate even managed to get a gun in. His brother shoved a PSA .25 Baby Browning into a Nerf football and threw it over the fences. Guards hadn’t seen it happen. The next day he shot three members of a gang that’d been threatening him. Might as well hand them all guns and be done with it. Let them kill each other. It’d save time and money in the long run.

  He slipped the shiv into his uniform pocket, leaned down, and grabbed four packs of Marlboros. They traded better in jails and prisons than any other brand, so he always had a few cartons on hand. He slammed the locker shut, threaded the padlock, and snapped it into place. Walked out of the break room and made his way to Block D, one of the three long-term wings in the jail, cell 24.

  A bespectacled man in his late forties sat at the desk on the other side of the bars reading La Luz Que Regresa by Salvador Elizondo in the early morning light that poured in through the window. He was thin and clean-shaven with short gray hair. His lenses were thick, wedged into black plastic frames. He was nearsighted but even behind the glass, his eyes looked b
ig as boiled eggs. If he weren’t a brutal murderer, he might have been a librarian.

  He didn’t have a name. Or rather, nobody knew his name. He’d been arrested while in the midst of disemboweling a prostitute, his tenth victim that police knew about, but refused to identify himself to police. His fingerprints had been burned off with acid. So he was called Fulanito, which meant “so-and-so,” making him as nonexistent as a man could be nowadays. He never had visitors, had no friends, and wasn’t a member of a gang, though he’d been here four years, in a kind of purgatory, waiting until his identity was discovered so he could face trial. But nobody messed with him. Nobody dared to.

  His crimes were severe enough that, after his conviction, he’d almost certainly be moved to a federal prison. But since that trial would never happen, he’d instead remain here until he died, never facing judgment other than God’s.

  He looked up at Juan Jesus, keeping his place in the book with an index finger, and said, “How may I help you?”

  “I have a job for you.”

  “What kind of job?”

  Juan Jesus removed the shiv from his pocket and held it out to Fulanito through the bars. The man took it, examined it a moment, and set it down on the desk.

  “Who is this job for?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “I’d like to know.”

  “Alejandro Rocha.”

  “Ah. Payment?”

  Juan Jesus held out the cigarettes, but Fulanito only blinked, refusing to take them.

  “I require a full carton of cigarettes for such a job.”

  “You’re not supposed to kill him.”

  Fulanito raised an eyebrow.

  “This man needs to understand that if Rocha wanted to, he could have him killed.”

  “I see.” He took the cigarettes.

  “It needs to happen tomorrow. On the yard.”

  “The white-bread American brought in yesterday?”

  Juan Jesus nodded.

  “Anything else?”

  “Try not to cause any permanent damage.”