Chapter 18

I met Shezzie in the hotel parking lot, but she didn’t mention last night.

We traded cars as I explained what had happened. “I ended up getting new tires all around, even the spare. You should be good for another fifty thousand miles, probably more. I washed your car too. Oh, and Henderson isn’t a problem. He’s gone.” There was no reason to tell her more.

“Really? Well, I have to say that makes me feel better!”

She brought me up to date on what she’d found in Mexico, which was essentially nothing. “I guess I didn’t waste my time, even though I didn’t overhear anything useful. We needed to know what the police were doing, and the answer is nothing; they’ve already stopped working on Marisela’s case. They’ve had hundreds of murders and her death was no different from what happened to those others. Sooner or later they’ll work through the cartel problems, and maybe then the police can pay more attention to the victims.” She seemed to want to talk. A reaction from last night? “I know they’ve got their hands full, what with all the violence, and too many of their cops are corrupted by the cartels. I guess the government simply can’t afford to hire honest cops and pay them a living wage. The cartels pay more anyway. So the killings and the kidnappings get ignored because the honest cops are overwhelmed by the drug wars. They’ll get things under control eventually, maybe by bringing in the Mexican Army, but if they can’t they’re likely to have another revolution. Or maybe the honest citizens will get tired of it and take the law into their own hands. They might start standing cartel members against the nearest adobe wall; they’ve done it before. The cartels have the weapons, but the people have numbers on their side.”

Shezzie got a faraway look in her eyes and I decided she was contacting Ray to bring him up to date. I didn’t try to be part of the conversation. She soon had a half-smile on her face, so I guess she now knew about Ana Maria and Ray. That stuff means more to women than it does to men. Maybe she was happy that their relationship was moving on, while ours was on hold or maybe even slipping backward. I wouldn’t ask. It had been her decision to get miffed at me, it would be her decision to get over it. Or not.

I wouldn’t say any more about Henderson unless she brought it up. If she asked, I would say he’d had a traffic accident. Which, of course, was what happened. There was no need to tell her that the accident hadn’t killed him, I had. I also wouldn’t mention the playful stuff I’d done off Trans-Mountain Road. If she was pulling away from me, it would be better if I kept my own counsel. I wasn’t sure how much I wanted to share with Ray either, not now. My paranoia had returned.

I no longer felt I could really trust either of them, not in the way I had before. It wasn’t so much that I resented them thinking I was drunk. I’d explained that I can’t really get drunk, but they hadn’t believed me, and it was that lack of belief that bothered me the most.

I had held back some things, sure, but I had never lied to either of them. We had melded together, an experience no non-Talent can ever understand. For a short time, we were one person. Now, they had shown that they lacked the trust that I’d given them, a level of absolute belief such that I couldn’t have doubted if they had told me something. But almost overnight, I had changed. I wouldn’t tell them anything of significance going forward, so there would be nothing for them to disbelieve.

I checked us out of the hotel, she went her way and I went mine.

Shezzie hadn’t found an answer in Mexico, but what about the gangs in the barrio? The Juarez cops might not care about what had happened to Marisela, but I did. I’d seen too many young women killed in Afghanistan! No matter how much I wanted to, there had been nothing I could do to change things.

But having it happen in Juarez was closer to home, so maybe this time I could do something. I couldn’t bring her back to life, but considering my new abilities, it was possible I could do something the cops couldn’t. Starting with the graffiti that was everywhere, some of it a form of gang advertising, but a lot bore no resemblance to the rest. Artistic differences, or were there really that many gangs? Some might have been the work of ‘tagger’ gangs, interested primarily in painting their logo on every flat surface. Not even danger stopped them; they would climb out over the freeway, hang on the bridges and paint their gang’s initials on the structural members. They climbed water towers too.

Taggers were annoying, but they usually didn’t engage in serious crimes. The other gangs were different, because they lived off the income from ongoing criminal enterprises. Burglaries and robberies were common, but more often their offenses centered around drugs. Some grew their own marijuana, others cooked methamphetamine in kitchen labs, and as for the heroin, cocaine, and crack they sold, they bought those from the cartels.

And some were believed to engage in murder for hire. They did this not only in El Paso, but according to news reports some worked in Juarez as hit men for the cartels.

Marisela’s murder had happened in Juarez, but a south El Paso gang might have killed her. But which one? Realistically, I couldn’t target all of them. Frustrating!

The graffiti was often unreadable, but sometimes it was quite clear. Los Fatherless used large, bold letters spelling out the name, while the South Side Locos often used initials. For the others, I had no idea what much of it meant or even what many of the highly stylized letters were supposed to be. Can the gangs read the initials? Did it even matter? The gangers would know.

If barrio gangs were contracting out to the cartelistas, I might be able to pick something up. I would need to get close enough to overhear their thoughts, and even then my telepathy wasn’t great, but it was worth a try. What else did I have to do?

Not a thing.

I cruised the border communities the rest of the day, just getting a feel for the neighborhoods and gaining a sense of streets and directions. I heard nothing from Ray, and Shezzie apparently had nothing she wanted to say to me. I felt no urge to comm them either.

Late that afternoon, I gave up and went home.

I spent the night in our apartment, the one that Surfer had been using. He had left surprisingly little of a personal nature behind. A few shirts and trousers, some underwear in a drawer, some personal stuff in the bathroom, neatly packed into a Dopp kit; that was all there was.

There were TV dinners and similar microwave-ready meals in the freezer compartment, plus a half-full jug of milk and an unopened bottle of orange juice in the refrigerator section. A cupboard contained boxes of cereal, raisin bran, puffed rice, and rolled oats. Pre-ground coffee was stored in a canister. Not much to leave behind; he lived, then he died. There was little to show that the man I’d called Surfer had ever been here. Depressing!

I gathered up his clothing and stuffed it into a trash bag. In the bedroom I found a pair of sneakers I’d missed the first time through and threw them in the bag too. The bag would go to Goodwill or one of the other charities; there are many such in the border cities, and they always need donations. If the police came around to ask what happened to the guy who’d been staying here, I’d just tell them we’d provided him with a place to stay while he looked for his own apartment. True enough, after all.

I set the coffeepot timer to start brewing at 7am and bagged in.

No Shezzie; I had no idea where she’d gone, and I didn’t feel like contacting her. If she had anything to say, she could call me.

I was alone again. I missed the feeling I’d found after I met Shezzie, but maybe I should get used to the idea. This time, I would try to avoid the depression that had haunted me after combat. I wanted no part of the nightmares and the rest of the PTSD. But I no longer had to worry about Henderson. That was the one positive thing that had come out of everything that had happened. I had gotten through the aloneness, the depression and nightmares before, I could do it again. I knew I could. I also knew it wouldn’t be easy, but I would cope just as I had before.

Sometime after midnight, I finally fell asleep.

The gurgling of the coffeepot woke me. I drank a cup of coffee and ate a bowl of cereal, then put the bowl in the sink after deciding that cleaning the kitchen could wait until later. I took a quick shower, got dressed, and headed out.

I was already on the east side of El Paso, so that’s where I began my search.

There were gangs farther north, up around Canutillo where Texas and New Mexico meet, but if I found I had to go there it would take longer. And anyway, the neighborhoods up that way were generally better-behaved and less violent than those on the south side. The north valley gangs were generally smaller too, and I suspected they would stay in their own neighborhood for the most part. Roaming outside ‘their’ turf could get them involved with the gang who claimed that other neighborhood, and conflicts were not good business for either group.

Instead, I headed for the area near the downtown bridges. There would likely be more larger gangs around those poor neighborhoods. I followed a simple technique; pick up a quick meal and coffee from a McDonald’s by going through the drive-through, then find a place to park. I rolled the windows down and just let the traffic and pedestrians go by while I ate. I caught fragments of thoughts, but most were boring in the extreme. Some were in English, which I understood, but the ones in Spanish mostly escaped me. I could understand a word now and then, but not enough to really follow the conversation.

I ate the food, drank my coffee, and sensed the area around me. I stayed for about half an hour in each location, then moved on. I nursed my coffee as it cooled, relaxed, and sensed, depending on the PreCog Talent to warn me of danger. All I got was an occasional belligerent look and once a couple of young men flashed me a gang sign with their fingers. I ignored them and they kept walking. Confidence; I had it, and maybe they could sense it. Or maybe they were just seeing if I would react. I couldn’t tell, but I had no problems.

A cruising cop looked me over but didn’t stop; I would move on before he came by again. Half an hour later, I looked for another place to park. Still nothing, so I moved on. I reached the area near Riverside High School shortly after noon, then started moving north.

My new search area was in the neighborhoods around Ascarate Park. Alameda Avenue was my primary route, and I drove down the left or right side roads to explore interesting-looking neighborhoods as I passed. One thing I spotted immediately; there were a lot of young men around. Most appeared unemployed, something I confirmed when I picked up a random thought, and they were probably ganged up.

I was the target of suspicious, even hostile, looks from the loiterers. I ignored them. If you really own this turf, kid, roust me! It might be fun letting you try. I served in the rockpile! Compared with those guys, you’re punks! But they contented themselves with looking, so I continued on and eventually found my way back to Alameda, where I turned northwest again.

I found a couple of seedy-looking bars that looked promising and hung out near them for a while. From time to time, I picked up snippets of thoughts about gangs, but I couldn’t really tell what they were thinking. It was like reading a letter with most of the words chopped out. The good thing, I was picking up more thoughts now, as well as sensing mood and emotions clearly. If nothing else, this exercise was helping me improve my telepathy.