Yoya answered on the second ring.
“It’s me. Emiliano. Is it too late to call?”
“No,” Yoya said calmly. There was no annoyance in her voice. She sounded fully awake. “You got a burner phone. Good.”
“Any news?”
“Some. Hold on one second. I took some notes.” There was a sound of someone tapping words on a laptop. “Okay. So. Your sister’s name came up in a criminal incident report from the sheriff’s office in Alpine. According to the report filed by one Sandy Morgan, your sister was attacked by two men at Big Bend National Park. One of the men, Lester Mannix, was flown by helicopter to Medical Center Hospital in Odessa. That’s where he was arrested pursuant to a complaint filed by Sandy Morgan. Sara Zapata is listed as the victim of the attack. The report states that the victim is in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement at the Fort Stockton Detention Center, where she is waiting resolution of her asylum petition.”
“What does that mean?” I asked, concerned.
“Well, there’s nothing in the incident report about you. So that’s good.”
“But what does it mean for Sara? If you could find out where she is, then so could Hinojosa’s men.”
“That’s the other thing I found out since we last talked. This is from our Jacquero friends in Mexico. Hinojosa was killed soon after he was arrested—probably by someone in his organization who was afraid he would talk. It’s not Hinojosa or his men who are after you and your sister.”
Yoya paused. It was one of those pauses that implied that the worst was yet to come.
“Then who …”
“Hinojosa was on the Mexican side of a human trafficking scheme between Mexico and the United States. Some of the women were kept in Mexico to be abused by people like Hinojosa, but others were sent to the United States. We have our share of pigs here as well. If anyone is going to come after the cell phone, it would be these U.S. pigs. Their identities are probably in that phone you are carrying. That’s what I think, and it corresponds with the chatter on the Internet that my Jaquero friends have picked up. I’ll start looking into this as well tomorrow.”
I was silent. I had hoped that maybe I could get away from Hinojosa. Every day, I was farther away from Ciudad Juárez and his reach. But where could I or Sara hide if the evil was American?
“Is Sara safe?” I was afraid of the answer, but I had to ask.
“Honestly, I don’t know the answer to that right now. I’m going to try to hack into the detention center tomorrow … I mean later today. I’ll know more next time you call. But these criminal incident reports from the sheriff’s office are easy to obtain. So it is possible that the pigs know where Sara is being held.”
I felt my heart sink into quicksand deep and dark.
Yoya continued quickly, as if sensing where I had gone. “On the other hand, if the pigs know where Sara is being detained, then they will most likely also know that Sara does not have the cell phone with her. All personal items are confiscated at admittance to a detention center, and it is very easy for someone to find out what personal property is being held for a particular prisoner.”
“Then they will only be after me.”
It was a relief to know that I would be the target and not Sara.
“You don’t seem to be on anyone’s radar so far. But the other man who attacked you probably told whoever is calling the shots that you were there. They are probably looking for you. No one knows that you were staying with Gustaf Larsson, right?”
I thought about it. “My father. There was a nurse who treated me when Mr. Larsson found me. My sister’s attorney, Mr. Morgan. Sandy Morgan.”
“Who knows that your father lives in Chicago?”
“Tons of people back in Juárez. But my father doesn’t exactly live in Chicago. He lives in a place called Aurora. No one knows that. And he changed his name from Roberto Zapata to Bob Gropper. That is also a new development that no one back home, other than my mother or Sara, knows about.”
I heard a small laugh on the other line. I laughed too. How could anyone not laugh a very soft laugh when they heard that Roberto Zapata had become Bob Gropper?
“Well, that helps,” Yoya said. “Let’s hope your father is very discreet.”
The image that immediately came to mind was the aerodynamic van with the big ABLE ABE lettering on the side. Also, my father handing out business cards to everyone he met. How many people in Sanderson had his director of sales and marketing cards?
“Call me tomorrow,” Yoya was saying. “I have some ideas about how we can narrow down the identity of the U.S. pigs. Oh, and, Emiliano. I would not call your sister or even write to her right now. Don’t take any chances that someone may be listening to her calls and I know for sure that detainees’ mail gets read. You want to be invisible and stay invisible. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“Talk soon.”
I stayed outside that motel room thinking. It came to me that my only alternative was to fight. Sara had decided to fight evil despite the risk to her life. Yoya and the Jacqueros were out there fighting as well. Couldn’t I try to do the same? I saw a light go on in the room and went inside. Bob was already getting dressed.
“It’s 4:00 a.m.,” he said. “Are you ready?”
“Yes. I’m ready.”
I was ready.
A chaotic sea of concrete. As many cars as there are stars. The infinity of man-made things as we approached Aurora reminded me in a strange way of the nights in the desert under millions of stars and galaxies and unknown planets. It was the same feeling of being puny and lost and insignificant, but without the serenity of the desert.
Bob picked up his cell phone and read the time just as we passed the sign announcing Aurora’s city limits. “Eleven fifty-six! We got here before noon just like I said.”
We were off Highway 88 now, stopped at a red light. I was surprised to see open spaces, trees with the tender green of spring on their branches. Back in Oklahoma, I had seen the oil pumps pierce the red, hot earth. Here the ground was soft and brown. I opened the window and stuck my hand out. The temperature was cold, uncomfortable.
“I’m going to drop you off at home and then head to the office,” Bob announced. “Make yourself a sandwich, take a nap, watch TV. Nancy will be home with Trevor around three. Okay?”
The thought of seeing Nancy Gropper and Trevor made my stomach churn. I had played soccer in front of ten thousand people, been nearly killed a few times, and had not felt one single flutter of an intestinal butterfly. Now there I was, wishing Bob would not leave me alone in a strange house to meet strange people.
“Relax,” Bob said, “Nancy doesn’t bite. Trevor, I’m not sure.”
Bob laughed. In the nineteen hours that we had traveled together, I discovered a new humorous side to my father. Humorous as in he liked to joke and laugh at his own jokes. I turned to look out the window. It took me a few moments to discover that I was looking at a golf course. Jorge Esmeralda, Perla Rubi’s father, wanted to teach me how to play golf. Perla Rubi had told me. It was her way of telling me how much I had impressed her father when I met him. If I had stayed in Juárez, if all that had happened to Sara had not happened, I’d be playing golf with Mr. Esmeralda. Not that I liked golf. Acres and acres of land dedicated to men riding for hours in little carts, occasionally hitting a tiny ball with a stick. It all seemed like such an extravagance of space and time, a vain luxury, a waste. So much of what I saw in the United States went beyond what was needed for the sake of convenience or speed. Two highways, four lanes each, going in opposite directions when maybe one two-lane highway would have been sufficient. But then Bob would not have made it to Aurora before noon.