She grins. “Go slay the dragon, my knight, Don Emiliano de la Zapata. I’ll be here waiting.”
Sara gets a call from Lupita, the secretary who Felipe and Juana share. “The big bad boss wants to see you. Like now.”
When Sara gets to Felipe’s office, he is, as usual, doing three things at once: talking to the staff photographer, Elias; holding a phone to his ear; and typing on his keyboard. “You’re on with the Boy Scouts article. Wednesday’s edition,” he tells Sara. “Elias will take pictures.”
“What?”
“He means the Jiparis,” Elias says.
“Wednesday? This coming Wednesday?” Sara says.
“A week from this coming Wednesday. So we got time to do some deep, undercover, investigative research together.” Elias waggles his eyebrows at her. “He wants us to go on an overnight trip with the group. We’ll have to share a tent.”
“In your dreams.” Sara says. “Oh, I think I may need some pictures for the article I’m writing on the new city buses.”
“Anything for you,” Elias says.
Sara rolls her eyes. Why should Elias be any different today? Back at her desk, she looks at the business card that Juana gave her. Enrique Cortázar. She doesn’t recognize the name. A rich developer willing to advertise in El Sol. How can interviewing someone about a mall be more important than investigating the disappearance of young girls?
Every job has its bad parts. She opens her top drawer and places the card in there. First she has to write the Jipari article. On the group’s website, she finds a piece about how the Jiparis got started. The name Jipari comes from the Tarahumara, an indigenous people in the western part of Chihuahua. The Tarahumaras played a game called rarájipari with a wooden ball. Teams of four kicked the ball over many miles, and when one got tired, the person running behind him continued the game. The Jiparis try to support one another in that same fashion.
Sara knows she needs a specific example of how the Jiparis changed the lives of one of their members. Emiliano’s story would be perfect. Two years ago, after their father left, he was caught shoplifting an expensive video camera from an electronics store. He would have gone to jail if Brother Patricio had not intervened. A week later, Brother Patricio took Emiliano on a hiking trip to the Sierra Tarahumara. Emiliano has never talked about that trip, but something important happened there, because when he returned, the shoplifting and petty theft were over and he and Brother Patricio founded the Jiparis. There’s no better Jipari story than that.
But she would need to get Emiliano’s consent to write about him, and there’s no way he would agree. The delinquent period in his life is not something her brother likes to talk about. Maybe she can interview his friend Javier. Emiliano told her that Brother Patricio found Javier in a juvenile detention center where he was sent for stealing to support a heroin addiction. It was Emiliano who discovered Javier’s talent for making paper piñatas and all kinds of papier-mâché animals. Now Emiliano sells his sculptures in folk art stores around Juárez, and Javier helps support his mother and three sisters while going to school. Javier lives in one of Juárez’s worst slums, so a photograph of Javier in front of his house would be good. She stands to walk over to Elias’s desk, but then sees Ernesto and Guillermo, one of the senior reporters at El Sol, talking to each other. Guillermo motions for her to come over.
“Sara, can you believe this guy is not coming to my daughter’s quinceañera tonight? Tell him that’s not acceptable,” Guillermo says.
“I don’t believe in quinceañeras,” Ernesto says to Sara. “It’s ridiculous to spend all that money on dresses and hairdos. Why? Just so his daughter can boast that her party was better than some other girl’s. He should put the money into a savings account for college.”
Sara happens to agree with Ernesto, but she knows how much Guillermo loves Aracelis, his only daughter. “I think the quinceañera obviously means a lot to Aracelis,” she says, “and we should respect Guillermo’s wishes to make her happy.”
Ernesto gives her one of those I expected more from you looks. “That’s why we never get anywhere in this country. Sentimental crap.”
“You have a computer chip for a heart,” Guillermo says.
“And you have a sponge for a brain.”
“Why do we have to work with people like him?” Guillermo asks Sara.
“You know I’m right, even if you don’t admit it,” Ernesto tells him.
“You’re coming, right, Sara?” Guillermo says to her.
“Yes, I wouldn’t miss it. And thanks for letting me bring my mother as my date. Ernesto, you should come. Even if you dislike quinceañeras on principle, Guillermo is your best friend here at work. That counts for something, doesn’t it?”
“I’ll think about it,” Ernesto says. “Hey, do you have a few minutes, Sara? I have something for you.”
“Yes.” Ernesto starts walking toward the stairs. Sara says to Guillermo, “Don’t mind him. He only pretends to be a jerk.”
Guillermo waves. “Don’t worry, I know he’s a teddy bear deep down. Way deep down.”
“See you tonight,” Sara says, laughing.
The IT department is one floor below the main newsroom in a windowless space that is always cold. When Sara started working at El Sol as an intern, the only empty desk she could find was in that room, and she learned to love the quiet and the air-conditioning. Now, whenever she has trouble writing something, she goes down there to work, away from the noisy telephone conversations and heat of the news floor. Unlike the IT room, which needs an air conditioner to keep the servers from overheating, the news floor is kept “cool” during the hot summer months by a dozen or so floor fans that whir and clang like the propellers on early planes.
Ernesto sits at his desk and clicks on the screen. Then he begins to type.
“Damn place,” he says, noticing Sara. He seems to have forgotten that he asked her to come down. “Juana wants me to revise my budget proposal. Year after year I ask for new computers and year after year I get shot down.” He hits the side of his computer screen. “This equipment is so old the company that makes the computers doesn’t exist anymore. How are we supposed to do our work driving cars from The Flintstones when the rest of the world is zipping around in BMWs?” He stands and pushes his black thick-framed glasses up the bridge of his nose. “What’s up?”
“You said you had something for me. Maybe the e-mail I gave you? Did the Jaqueros find anything on it?”
“Oh, yeah.” He looks around like he’s making sure no one else is near. “We weren’t able to trace the e-mail fully, but the person who sent it”—he peers down at his screen—“[email protected], is no dummy. The methodology used to hide its origin is super sophisticated, like I told you. Jeremias is probably not a guy but a moniker for an organization.”
“If that’s the case,” Sara says, “whoever sent the message must know it wouldn’t take us long to find that out.”
Ernesto grins. “Glad to see someone around here has some actual brains! Yes, you can say that with this e-mail, the medium is the message.”