People cross me at their peril. I don’t have the luxury of ignoring open cruelty, because it makes me angry. I don’t turn into a green monster and start throwing pickup trucks around, but when I’m truly angry the amygdala buried in the folds of my brain starts whooping like twin howler monkeys, overwhelming the inner Vulcan, if you will, of my frontal cortex, and then I tend to do rash, inappropriate things.
Like now.
BOBBY BONAROO IS just starting to wake up. His breathing has quickened, and his jaw shifts as if he is about to open his mouth. Instead, he opens his eyes and looks straight up at me, standing over him. “Wha?” he manages. “Wha the fuh?”
“Morning,” I say brightly. I’ve clamped a utility work light to a nearby railing and turned it to face downward so it doesn’t shine directly into Bobby’s face, but it casts enough light so we can see each other. “Was last night good for you? ’Cause I had a lot of fun.”
He frowns slightly, like we’ve run into each other at Kroger and he can’t quite remember my name. I’m wearing a black tactical jumpsuit, very different from the tight skirt and low-cut top I was wearing last night, so his confusion is understandable. Then he takes in my long red hair and his eyes widen. “You,” he says.
“Me,” I say.
He glances around, disoriented but recovering nicely. I can almost read his mind, not that Bobby Bonaroo is a hard nut to crack: what happened, why does my head hurt, why am I lying on my back, why is the redhead from last night smiling at me? My guess is the women Bobby dates don’t tend to smile much the morning after.
“It was Xanax in your scotch,” I say. “The dizziness, headache, memory loss? Xanax.”
“What the fuck?” Bobby Bonaroo says, and his voice echoes in the vast space around us. He tries to sit up, then tries to move his arms, but he can only lift his hands an inch or so. The chain binding him rattles and clinks, and his eyes widen further. He manages to lift his head enough to look down at his hands and see the manacles on his wrists. The chain that connects his wrists runs beneath him, under the small of his back. There is a rope around his chest, snug beneath his armpits. Bobby looks further down to see his legs are wrapped with duct tape. He starts jerking back and forth, trying to get loose. “Get me the fuck out of this!” he shouts.
I crouch down so he can see my face more clearly. “Do you like Tom Hanks movies?” I ask politely.
Bobby Bonaroo stares at me like I just suggested we should eat a baby.
“Catch Me If You Can is sort of an underrated performance of his,” I continue. “The one where he’s the FBI agent chasing Leo DiCaprio? Sure, Leo’s young and hot and charming, but Tom Hanks just won’t quit chasing him. He never stops. I mean, he gets the French police to work on Christmas Eve.”
Bobby Bonaroo is not dumb. He has assessed his situation and found himself tied up in an unknown location, at the mercy of a woman he thought would be an easy lay and who has instead drugged him and is clearly crazy. With a visible effort, he takes a deep breath, then another. “I never saw that one,” he says.
I smile, appreciating the gesture. “It’s not a great work of cinematic art,” I admit. “But it’s fun to watch. And it illustrates a point.”
The conversation is already taking a toll on Bobby. When I don’t continue, he says between clenched teeth, “What point?”
“The bad guy always gets caught in the end,” I say. “It’s a movie, granted, and the point’s not always true. Not by a long shot. But it’s true in this case.”
Bobby narrows his eyes. Playing along is clearly not his forte, so he opts for threatening. “Lady, I don’t know who you think you are, but you’re fucking with the wrong guy.”
“Oh, I’m pretty sure I’ve got the right guy,” I say. “You’re a private contractor with American First Defense. You ran an immigration detention facility called Casa Madre, which, I mean, the name alone is laughably obscene.”
Bobby glares at me, which is less impressive than he wants it to be, considering he’s trussed up like a damsel in distress on a railroad track. “You drug me and tie me up—no, chain me up,” he says, “and you want to talk to me about Tom fucking Hanks and my job?”
“How many girls did you have in Casa Madre, Bobby? Four hundred?” I lean forward, my eyes on his. “All between the ages of ten and seventeen. All separated from their parents.”
Bobby Bonaroo shakes his head in disgust and looks away, his gaze directed up into the dark.
“Maria Flores,” I say.
That gets his attention. He looks back at me, and for a moment I see a flicker in his eyes. Guilt, maybe, but that might just be optimism on my part.
“She died in your prison because one of your people gave her the wrong meds,” I say.
“Wait,” Bobby says. “Is that what this is about?”
“Other girls reported being abused or raped by guards.”
“I had nothing to do with that,” Bobby says, his voice rising. “The guards who gave that girl the wrong medicine were punished. I told the government lawyer—”
“After Maria Flores died, you tried to get Casa Madre labeled a ‘childcare center’ so you could house more kids.” I hear the edge in my own voice. “How much did you get paid per kid?”
“What is this?” Bobby Bonaroo asks. “Some sort of revenge or something? I closed that place months ago!”
“There are still kids missing,” I say. “They haven’t all been reunited with their families.”
He stares at me, incredulous. “That’s on Health and Human Services. I just ran the facility.”
“Where a child died and others were raped,” I say. “And you tried to erase all your records of everything having to do with Casa Madre so you could cover up all the shit that went down in there.”
We stare at each other for a long moment, Bobby weighing his options. Then he shakes his head again. “You stupid bitch. I know people. People you don’t want to fuck with.”
“Tough talk from a guy who profits from little girls.” I lean away and shift so now I’m kneeling by his side.
I’ll give him this, Bobby Bonaroo has balls. He sneers up at me. “Tough talk from a woman who has me tied up on the floor.”
I place one hand on his hip and the other on his shoulder, bracing myself. “You’re not on a floor.”
I shove him, hard. He rolls off the side of the catwalk, the chain rattling against the metal mesh, and drops. His scream echoes through the darkness as he falls. Then his scream is cut off as the rope connecting him to the catwalk snaps taut and pulls tight, jerking him to a stop some eight feet above the concrete floor. The catwalk shudders, but I tested it earlier this week and know it will hold. Bobby Bonaroo now hangs by a rope looped like a noose beneath his arms. He’s crying and cursing in a steady flood; the fall may have dislocated a shoulder. I walk over to a winch bolted to the catwalk and start cranking, bringing Bobby back up a foot at a time. It’s hard work and I’m starting to sweat by the time the top of Bobby’s head is level with the catwalk. My legs are already burning from having to fireman-carry his ass up here earlier.
“You’re a lot of work, Bobby,” I say.
“Fuck you,” he bawls. “You fucking cunt.”
“I’m looking for someone who was in Casa Madre.”
“Go to hell.”
I hit the release clamp on the winch and Bobby plummets toward the floor again. He screams even louder than before. This time, when the rope yanks him up short, he bellows like a bull being gelded. Definitely dislocated a shoulder this time. Slowly I winch him back up, panting by the time he is back up level with the catwalk. I lean over the railing to get a closer look at him. With his hands chained together behind his back, he already looks a little like a carved figurehead on the bow of a ship, with his chest thrust out, but now his left shoulder is cocked at an awkward angle, his left arm hanging nerveless and unmoving. Fat beads of sweat run down his face, and his eyes are closed and he’s moaning.
“Bobby,” I say, snapping my fingers, and his eyes open, bright with pain. Slowly, he focuses on me. “I’m looking for someone. Don’t make me drop you again.”
“Okay,” he gasps, the word wrenched out of him. “Okay, okay. Oh, God.”
“She’s fourteen,” I say. “A real stunner. She likes Coca-Cola and her daddy’s pepián. It’s a stew they make in Guatemala.”
Bobby is starting to go into shock, his eyes rolling back. I sigh and reach out and grab his left shoulder, and he snaps his head back and screams from the pain. The echoes take a while to subside.
“We’re all alone here, Bobby,” I say when he quiets to a reasonable whimper. “No one can hear you no matter how loud you yell. I don’t want to hurt you. Well, maybe that’s a little bit of a lie. But I won’t drop you anymore if you give me what I want.”
“Yes,” he manages between sobs. “Yes, okay, yes. I—I don’t know … you said a—girl?”
“I’m not giving you her name,” I say, wagging a finger at him—naughty. “Then you could find her yourself, punish her and her family for what I did to you. Plus I know you don’t know them by name. There were too many of them. Probably weren’t even people to you.”
Despite the pain Bobby is in, his frustration is obvious in his voice. “How can I help you find someone if you don’t tell me their name?” he cries out.
“I need the password to your laptop,” I say. “The one that was locked in the trunk of your Lexus.”
Bobby pauses, his mind darting around like a bat in a cave trying to find an exit. I take a step toward the winch and its release clamp, and Bobby sings out a twelve-digit alphanumeric code, which I commit to memory.
“Okay, you got it,” Bobby says. Tears stream from his eyes, snot from his nose. “Now get me out of this thing. Please.”
“Give me a second,” I say, bending over so Bobby doesn’t see the syringe in my hand. I pluck the cap off the syringe and stick it into the back of his left arm. Bobby yelps and tries to turn his head around toward me. “What the hell!”
“Ketamine,” I say, capping the now-empty syringe and replacing it in the cargo pocket of my pants. “Great pain management and excellent safety record.” I hesitate. “Unless you have a history of schizophrenia. You don’t, do you?”
“Get me out of this fucking thing!”
“It’ll take five or ten minutes and then your shoulder ought to feel better,” I say. “If you’re lucky, you’ll pass out and take a nap. Some people puke after they wake up from a dose, but you’re upright so you probably won’t choke to death.”
“You are not leaving me here!”
“Actually,” I say, scanning the catwalk to make sure I haven’t left anything behind, “I am. I’ll call the cops and let them know where you are once I’m gone. And Bobby? Don’t come looking for me.”
The string of curses he shouts after me as I take a set of stairs to the floor is inventive. I make a note of a couple of them, filing them away for future use.
OUTSIDE, IT’S EARLY Sunday morning and already hot, the sun a hard white star in a clear sky. By noon, the empty parking lot will be baking. Finding this shuttered Sam’s Club outside of San Antonio was an extra bonus. I could have just driven Bobby Bonaroo a couple of hours outside the city and interrogated him on some back road in the hill country, but there are always people driving by or wandering up, curious and eager to help. People are annoying that way. And you might think Texas is full of vast, empty tracts of land outside the big cities, but the state is peppered with towns and hamlets and tourists and truckers and farms, on and on and on. It’s too damn big and I feel too exposed here. I need to get back to the East Coast, where states are a more manageable size.
Bobby Bonaroo’s Lexus, which I drove here with the unconscious Bobby, is parked in a loading bay at the back of the building, hidden from the nearby street. It’s a beautiful car, and I swear it purred when I drove it last night. But I can’t risk driving off in Bobby’s car and getting pulled over. I could drive it to the center of the parking lot and set it on fire—that would be a nice touch, and then I wouldn’t have to bother with calling the cops to cut Bobby down as the smoke would be a giant LOOK HERE sign. But I don’t have any kerosene or anything to start a fire. Maybe I could siphon the gas tank. Suddenly I’m bone weary—I didn’t sleep at all last night, what with picking up Bobby Bonaroo in a dance club, spiking his drink, walking him out to his car, driving him here, carrying him up to the catwalk, et cetera—and all I want is to crash at my motel room for an hour or so and then hit the road. I have things to do before that, though, and the clock is ticking. Bobby might be knocked out by now, so I should be safe and clear for a few hours, but better safe than sorry, and setting fire to Bobby’s Lexus is a luxury I can’t afford. So I leave the Lexus behind.
My pickup truck, dented and dusty and bought with cash at a used lot in Brownsville, is parked behind a dumpster across from the loading bay. Inside the truck, I remove the red wig I’ve been wearing for hours and start the engine so the A/C can crank on. Then I retrieve Bobby Bonaroo’s laptop from underneath the passenger seat. I open the laptop, wait for it to power up, and enter the password he gave me. I’m almost surprised when it works. Bobby’s desktop is a mess of separate docs and files, and I spend fifteen minutes searching through his data. I see all sorts of interesting things, including what looks like money skimmed off from government contracts and diverted into private accounts—I don’t have time to dive into it but it looks shady as shit. Finally I find what I’m looking for: the single remaining copy of all the records from Casa Madre.
Buried in the Casa Madre file is a manifest of prisoners, and after a few seconds I find Yoselin Asturias and her location—foster care in North Dakota. Jesus, these people. Still, I breathe a sigh of relief. Yoselin could have vanished into the ether, but here was proof of where she had been sent just a few weeks ago, according to the dates in the file. Using a throwaway cell phone, I set up a personal hotspot, then email a copy of the file to the Asturias family using a Gmail account I promptly delete afterward.
What I did to Bobby Bonaroo was outright bonkers and involved breaking at least half a dozen federal laws. And it worked. I’ve found lots of things are a matter of willpower—if you want to do something badly enough, and you have the time and the capability to do it, then all that’s left is your resolve. Most people balk at certain predictable limits. I tend to vault straight over them, and so some people call me crazy. I’m a mess, don’t get me wrong, but I’m not a psychopath. Psychopaths don’t have to worry about bothersome things like a conscience or guilt. I’ll admit there have been times in my life when I’ve wondered whether it would be easier to be one of those lost souls who don’t share a sense of empathy with the rest of the human race. But while I may be crazy—have even been hospitalized—I’m smart enough to realize that I’m better off having emotional connections, however stunted or odd, with other people. So I’m more of a high-functioning sociopath. I’ve just decided to put that part of me to good use. I’m good at finding people—a skill I honed by looking for, and finding, the man who killed my parents, although he very nearly killed me first—and I’m often willing to do things most people won’t do, or just can’t. I’ve chosen to side with the better angel of my nature, to join Gryffindor over Slytherin, to be a white hat in a dark world. Or whatever other stupid metaphor you want to use.
But now, sitting in this parking lot on a bright Sunday morning, having just found one immigrant family’s missing daughter and putting the hurt on a scumbag like Bobby Bonaroo, I don’t feel like patting myself on the back, or like I just won one for the good guys. I don’t even really register a sense of accomplishment. Mostly I just feel tired. Is this what’s waiting for me down the road? Another empty parking lot, secretive emails, short bursts of violence followed by long, tedious hours of waiting and watching, mostly alone? My brother lives alone, but he has neighbors and friends, and our uncle. Our parents were both killed by a bad man with a gun, and for months beforehand my father had been struggling—and my mother, too, to be fair—but they had at least died together. What about me? Somehow I don’t see myself dying at age ninety in a bed surrounded by my loving family. More likely I’ll die in a back alley or a stairwell, chasing someone who ought to be caught and punished, only to be shot or stabbed or thrown from a great height, or otherwise killed in some spectacularly violent fashion.
“Fuck it,” I say aloud, and I put the truck in gear and drive out of the parking lot, leaving Bobby Bonaroo and those nagging doubts behind me. Time to get to the motel and call the cops before I leave town. I need to figure out the best way to get to North Dakota.
THE LONE STAR Inn is about as original as its name. Picture any generic roadside motel from the 1970s, with the same paint and decor as it had on opening day, and that’s where I’ve been staying while visiting the greater San Antonio metro area. Even the people who run the place look like they stepped out of a sitcom about a motel: they’re an older couple, husband and wife, named Bert and Shirley. Bert favors a comb-over and wears cardigans against the chill of the air conditioning. Shirley is plump, with blue hair and a tired cheerfulness, like a cruise director who woke up one day to find herself managing a motel off I-10 but makes the best of it. Bert is on duty when I pull into the Lone Star’s parking lot, and through the plate-glass windows of the lobby I can see Bert sitting behind the front desk, taking a nap. I roll past and down to the end unit and park. I need a nap myself, and a shower, and then I’ll call the cops before hopping on the highway. Maybe I’ve got some protein bars left to eat. A Clif bar and gas station coffee: breakfast of champions.
I step out of the truck, and my brain, fuzzy around the edges, lurches into alert mode. I crouch slightly before I realize I’m doing it, using the truck door as cover. Part of me wonders when this became a thing, my initial instinct to treat every situation like I’m walking around in Syria or Yemen or some other place where the citizens are happily killing one another. I don’t even know what triggered this until I see the door to my motel room. The window next to it has the curtain drawn, like all the other rooms, but there’s a bright seam of lamplight at the very edge of the curtain. I turned all the lights off yesterday when I left, just before I hung the Do Not Disturb sign on the door handle. The sign is still hanging from the door. No maid turned on the light, then.
I scan the motel parking lot, then the closed doors of the rooms. Seeing nobody, I reach back into the truck and from underneath the driver’s seat pull out a CZ 75 9mm. Holding the pistol low, I dash across the parking lot toward my room. Nobody shouts or steps out from another doorway, and when I reach the building I flatten myself against the wall to one side of the door to my room. With my left hand I take my room’s key card out of another pocket—my jumpsuit has all sorts of pockets, holding all sorts of things—and slide the card into the slot above the door handle. The tiny light next to the slot blinks green, and I push the handle down and open the door, going in crouched, my pistol up to cover the room.
The bedside lamp is on and I can see a man—Black, bald—standing next to my bed about ten feet away. His back is to me and his hands are already raised to shoulder height. “Don’t move,” I say, reaching for the zip tie cuffs I have in yet another pocket, my pistol aimed dead-center at his back. “Get down on your knees.”
“On this carpet?” the man says in a familiar deep voice.
Relief floods me and I lower the pistol. “Caesar!”
Caesar turns his head to look at me, lowers his hands, and raises an eyebrow. “Nice jumpsuit.”
I put the pistol down on the nearby dresser and kick the door closed behind me before crossing the room to hug him. He smells like eucalyptus and burnt cinnamon. “How did you find me?” I ask, my face still pressed against his chest.
He hmms in response, and I can feel it vibrate from deep inside him. “Twitter.”
“Twitter?” I lift my head and look up at him, still wrapped in a hug. “Are you kidding? My Twitter handle is generic as hell!”
“Yeah, @lady10456 does seem like a Russian bot.” He gives me a smile this time, a brief flash of teeth.
I release Caesar and take a step back, fully taking him in for the first time. He’s wearing a black T-shirt and chinos, like he’s an engineer at Google. “How’d you know that was me?”
He shrugs. “Someone starts arguing on Twitter about how Voyager was a horrible Star Trek show except for the half-Klingon chief engineer, it’s probably you.”
“It’s true! Torres was the only decent character—wait, you found me because of a tweet?”
“Couple dozen of them. Went through the metadata, narrowed your location down to San Antonio …” He shrugs again, as if he had found a book on a library shelf instead of locating a single person in a nation of three hundred and thirty million people—a single person who didn’t particularly want to be found.
I drop into the one chair next to the dresser, my initial relief now withdrawing in the face of exhaustion, an exhaustion that is not entirely due to the fact that I’ve been awake for over twenty-four hours. “Why are you here, Caesar?”
He sits on the bed, even that simple movement an exercise in grace and balance, like most everything Caesar does. Watching him walk across a room is a lesson in the physics of movement. “That’s my girl. Right to the point.”
I roll my eyes. “Keep calling me your girl and Frankie’ll get jealous. Is he all right?”
Caesar nods. “He’s fine.”
My mouth is dry and tastes foul. “My uncle?” I hope my voice sounds more neutral than I feel. To say my relationship with my uncle is complicated would be a gigantic understatement.
“Mr. Lester has some … challenges,” Caesar says. “But nothing he can’t handle.” His eyes are on mine, dark and deep and sober.
“So it’s Ethan.” Something shifts in my gut, a lazy rotation, like a whale coming to the surface and then, with a roll of its fins, disappearing again. I lean my head back and close my eyes, fatigue settling on me like summer smog in Atlanta. “I told him not to look for me.”
“Your brother needs your help,” Caesar says.
“I tried to help him last year. And that turned out well.”
Caesar says nothing, but I keep my eyes closed. Last year a woman tried to hurt my brother and used me to get to him. I reacted poorly and people died. Caesar very nearly died himself while trying to protect me. When it was all over, I left Atlanta. It was the right call then and it’s the right call now. Ethan’s better off without me fucking up his life.
“He says it’s about your father,” Caesar says.
I open my eyes and stare at Caesar, who sits on my bed and looks placidly back at me, legs crossed at the ankle, hands clasped on his lap, a counselor awaiting his client’s decision.
CAESAR DRIVES US to the airport in his rental, a new Mercedes that is white as pearl, I having sold my pickup to Bert and Shirley for a ridiculously low price. Before we left, Caesar copied Bobby Bonaroo’s hard drive onto his own portable laptop, encrypting the copied data before erasing the original files on Bobby’s machine. Then he produced a hammer and we took turns smashing the laptop into bits before sweeping the pieces up into a trash bag. As an afterthought I put my red wig into the bag as well. ...
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