Since Evelyn could not speak even to beg and might fall into the hands of one of the many pimps who preyed on unaccompanied girls, Cabrera took her with him in his vehicle. Silent and invisible, Evelyn waited in the van while he conducted dubious deals on his cell phone and had a good time in seedy dives with women for hire. He would come staggering back glassy-eyed at dawn, find her curled up on the seat, and realize the girl had spent the whole day and night with no food or water. “What a sonofabitch I am!” he would mutter, and take her off with him to find somewhere open where she could go to the toilet and eat her fill. “It’s your own fault, dummy. If you don’t talk you’ll die of hunger in this crazy world. How are you going to survive on your own in the north?” he scolded her, with an involuntary hint of tenderness.
Four days later, Maria Ines’s baby was discharged from the hospital, but the coyote decided there was no way they could run the risk of taking him with them, because he might die on the way. The toughest part was still to come: crossing the Rio Grande and then the desert. He gave Maria Ines the choice between staying in Mexico for a while, doing whatever work she could find—which would be difficult, because who would take her on with a baby?—or returning to Guatemala. She chose to go back, and said goodbye to her companions, who had already become her family.
AFTER PUTTING MARIA INES and her baby on the bus, Berto Cabrera drove his clients toward Tamaulipas. He told them that on a previous trip he had been held up in a hotel doorway by two men in suits and ties who looked like officials and who stole his money and cell phone. From then on he was wary of the roadside hotels where coyotes and their passengers often stayed, because Mexican migration officials, the federal police, and detectives all had them in their sights.
They spent that night in the house of someone Cabrera knew, stretched out in a huddle on the ground under blankets from the van. The next morning they set off for Nuevo Laredo, the last stage of their journey in Mexico. A few hours later they found themselves in Plaza Hidalgo in the center of the city, together with hundreds of migrants from Mexico and Central America as well as all kinds of traffickers offering their services. Nine organized gangs of smugglers operated in Nuevo Laredo, each of them employing more than fifty coyotes. They had dreadful reputations: they stole, they raped, and some had links to gangs of thieves and pimps. “They’re not honest people like me. In all the time I’ve been in this profession no one has been able to say a bad word about me. I care about my honor, I’m a responsible person,” Cabrera told them.
They bought phone cards and were able to talk to their relatives to tell them they had reached the border. Evelyn called Father Benito but stammered so badly that Cabrera grabbed the phone from her. “The girl is fine, don’t worry. She says she sends greetings to her grandma. We’ll soon be crossing to the other side. Do me a favor and phone her mother and tell her to be ready,” he said.
He took them to eat tacos and burritos at a street stall and from there to San Jose Church to keep his promise to Father Leo, who he explained was as much a saint as Olga Sanchez. The priest often went without sleep, offering help at any time of the day or night to the endless line of migrants and other needy people, providing water, food, first aid, his telephone, and spiritual comfort in the form of jokes and edifying stories he made up on the spot. On every journey, Berto Cabrera passed by his church to give him 5 percent of whatever he had charged his passengers, less costs, in exchange for his blessing and prayers for his clients’ safety. As Berto said, roaring with laughter, this was his insurance, the quota he paid heaven for protection. Of course he also paid the Zetas cartel not to abduct his passengers. If that happened, the Zetas charged a ransom for each of them, which their families had to pay if they wanted to save their lives. Express kidnappings, they were called. As long as Cabrera could count on the saint’s prayers and paid the Zetas, he felt more or less reassured. That was how it had always been.
They found the priest barefoot, with his trousers rolled up and wearing a filthy T-shirt as he sorted edible fruit and vegetables from the overripe ones they were given at the market. The sweet smell of putrefaction from a big puddle of fruit juice on the floor attracted a cloud of flies. Father Leo was pleased to see Cabrera not simply for his economic contribution but also because he helped convince other coyotes to purchase this tremendous insurance guaranteed by the Lord.
Evelyn and her companions took off their sneakers, waded into the swamp of fruit and rotting vegetables, and helped rescue what could be used in the church kitchen while the priest rested in the shade for a while and brought his friend Cabrera up to date on the latest problems the North Americans had created. Now, as well as using night-vision binoculars and apparatus that could detect body heat, they had sowed the desert with seismic sensors that detected any footsteps on the ground. The two men commented on the latest “events,” a euphemism for the latest assaults. They also avoided using words like “gang” or “narco,” as they had to be cautious.
From San Jose Church, Berto Cabrera took them to one of the camps on the banks of the Rio Grande. These were wretched cardboard villages filled with tents, mattresses, stray dogs, and garbage, a temporary home to beggars, delinquents, drug addicts, and migrants awaiting their opportunity. “We’ll stay here until the moment comes to hop across to the other side,” he told them. His charges plucked up the courage to protest that this had not been the bargain: the woman in the bakery in Guatemala had promised they would sleep in hotels. “Have you forgotten we’ve already stayed in hotels? Here on the border you have to make do. If anyone doesn’t like it, they can go back where they came from,” retorted the coyote.