Emiliano thinks. Five hundred pesos, and he can do all his folk art business tomorrow after the exhibition game. That’s maybe seven hundred pesos net in two days. That will go a long way to paying the monthly bills, and he’ll be that much closer to owning the motorcycle. “Okay,” he says.
“There you go.” Armando hands Emiliano the car keys. “You don’t need to call me when they tell you they found something that needs fixing. Whatever it is and whatever the cost, just let them do it.”
They walk outside. Emiliano pops open the trunk and places Doña Pepa’s purse in there. Then he walks over to his bicycle, takes Javier’s piñatas from the trailer, and puts them in the trunk as well. Armando, standing by the trunk, picks up one of the piñatas and examines it.
“So who do you sell these to?” he asks.
“Stores near the bridge to El Paso. Mostly to Lalo Torres. He owns a folk art store downtown.”
“And tourists buy them?”
“He ships to stores in the United States. One of his clients owns a chain of stores at airports.”
“How does he get them across the border?”
“A shipping company. He knows all the customs regulations. He does it so much everyone knows him.”
“Interesting.”
Emiliano waits for Armando to finish inspecting the piñata. After a few moments, he takes it from him and places it in the trunk with the others. “I better get going. I’ll bring the car back in the afternoon. Will you be here?”
“It would be better if you took the car to my house. I’ll give you a ride back here to pick up your bike.”
“Can I just bring it here and leave the keys with the bartender? This is closer to my house. I have to be at a birthday party in Campestre by six.”
“Really? I used to live in Campestre before I got my own place. My father and little brother still live there, you know. Who’s having a birthday?”
Emiliano closes the trunk. “The Esmeraldas. Mrs. Esmeralda. The mother of one of my classmates.”
“No way! Jorge Esmeralda is my father’s lawyer! You’re invited to Judith Esmeralda’s birthday party? Emiliano, you never cease to amaze me. I knew you were a mover and a shaker, but this takes you up a few notches in my already high estimation.”
Emiliano waves to him as he gets in the car. Is it wrong to feel flattered and even honored by Armando’s words?
No. Maybe. Whatever. It still feels good.
Sara tries to put the threatening e-mail out of her mind long enough to do her daily assignments. One of these jobs requires reading all the e-mails people send to the El Sol news “hotline” and deciding whether any are worthy of follow-up. The hotline is the special inbox where readers send anonymous tips about suspected crime and corruption (or simply complain). Most of the e-mails are about potholes that never get filled or garbage that is never picked up. It’s work Sara usually does not mind doing and even enjoys—but today all she can think is she’s wasting time that could be better spent on Linda.
She usually checks the hotline as soon as she gets to work, but she skipped yesterday, which means she’ll get all the e-mails from Thursday as well as those that have come in so far today. She clicks on the link to the hotline inbox, but there is nothing there.
That’s strange. Sara has been covering the hotline since she was a high school intern, and there has never been a day with no tips, no complaints, no nasty retort to one of Felipe’s editorials. Maybe something is wrong with the site. She sends an e-mail to Ernesto asking him if he sees any technical problems. Five minutes later, Ernesto calls.
“This is very weird,” he says.
“What is?”
“Someone deleted all of the hotline e-mails for Thursday.”
“What do you mean, deleted? I thought you, me, and Juana were the only people who had access to the hotline.”
“That’s correct. Someone logged on to Juana’s terminal this morning at five a.m. Whoever it was deleted all the e-mails from the previous day. There were fourteen of them. All gone.”
“How do you know they were deleted?”
“Every keystroke you make on a computer creates a track that can be traced. The person who did this obviously wanted us to think we didn’t get any e-mails.”
“But how? You said they were deleted from Juana’s terminal. Juana didn’t delete those e-mails. She doesn’t even know how to access them. Whoever did it would need to know her password.”
“Everyone knows Juana keeps her latest password under the P in her Rolodex. I bet you always write your passwords on the last page of your address book.”
“Oops,” Sara says.
“Yeah, oops. But listen, I installed a program that saves all the e-mails we receive to the cloud. It’s a precaution I took after our system started dying of old age. I’ll send you a copy of the deleted e-mails in a few minutes. There must be something in there that someone doesn’t want us to see.” He laughs. “If this turkey had only deleted the one e-mail that worried him instead of all of them, we never would have known.”
“Ernesto, I have a bad feeling about this.”
“You must be thinking what I’m thinking …”
“This is related to the e-mail about Linda.”
“That’s what I think. Stay put.”
“Thanks, Ernesto.”
A few minutes later, Sara gets an e-mail from Ernesto.
Take a look at the third e-mail attached. The one from [email protected]. It came in Thursday morning at 2. Pretty weird to get an e-mail with only a picture and no text. It’s the only one that stood out to me. Who’s the girl in the picture? One of your girls, maybe?
Sara clicks on the third e-mail and her heart stops. The subject line says puchi. That’s Linda and Sara’s secret word.
Heart racing now, Sara clicks on the attachment. It’s a picture. It isn’t Linda, but another beautiful young woman, about sixteen or seventeen, grimacing as if she smells something bad. She’s sitting in what looks like a nightclub booth, next to an older man whose bald head has fallen to his chest as if he’s passed out. On the table in front of them are an empty bottle of expensive Scotch whiskey and two thick crystal glasses. Next to the man is an ashtray with a cigarette still burning. Everything looks expensive in a cheap kind of way. The picture is off-center, rushed, like someone got up, leaving his cell phone behind, and someone else snapped a picture and sent it.
Someone else. Linda. Linda knew that one of Sara’s jobs at El Sol is checking the hotline. And only Linda would use “puchi” for the old man.
Sara’s head spins. She doesn’t recognize the nightclub, but she doesn’t go to places like that often. And this wouldn’t be just any club, otherwise Linda would come home. This must be a place where girls are kept against their will. If Linda was at the table with the puchi guy, she must be kept by these men too.
Then she realizes: Someone deleted the hotline e-mails. That means the criminals know Linda sent the e-mail. The thought of what they might do to her takes Sara’s breath away.
She calls Ernesto. “Hey,” she says, struggling to keep her voice calm. “Any way you and the Jaqueros can find out who the guy in the picture is?”