We also picked up several gallon jugs of water. When we went to pay, the clerk, a kid with spiked hair the color of cotton candy, eyed my torn shirt and the blood-soaked bandage on my cheek.
“I’d like to see the other guy,” he said.
Before we rejoined Mondragón, I asked Rainy, “Where you’re staying, is it safe?”
“Berto arranged for a house in Nogales. We’re less than half an hour from Cadiz. Don’t worry about me, Cork. It feels very safe.” She glanced outside, where her ex-husband was seeing to the SUV, and she shook her head. “But I’m remembering now all of Berto’s bad habits.” She smiled and kissed my cheek. “I’d rather be with you.”
Outside, we put the supplies in the back of the SUV. Under the bright glare of the truck stop lights, I rolled out the map on the hood, and Mondragón and Rainy flanked me.
“Here,” I said and pinpointed the Lulabelle.
Mondragón studied the map for a couple of minutes, then, without a word, walked away and made a call on his cell phone. When he came back, he leaned over the map and said, “There’s a jeep trail off the Magdalena Road this side of Sells. It will take us to the base of the Santa Margaritas within a stone’s throw of the mine.”
“Who’d you call?” I said.
“Friends,” he answered. “Who know the area well.”
We took a highway west toward the desert once called Desolation. After half an hour, Mondragón’s cell phone rang and he answered.
“Sí,” he said. “Muchas gracias, amigo.” Over his shoulder, he said, “There’s a rolling Border Patrol just after we turn off Eighty-Six. You looking decent back there, O’Connor?” Then he said, “Doesn’t matter. You’re white. But probably best we hide your Winchester and my Weatherby.”
He pulled over, and I handed him my Winchester. He opened the back of the SUV, lifted a panel in the flooring, laid both weapons inside, then dropped the panel back into place.
“You should come up front with me, Rainy,” he said. “A little more natural looking.”
She patted my hand and climbed into the passenger seat.
A short while later, we turned onto the Magdalena Road, a dirt and gravel track, and almost immediately hit the checkpoint, a couple of wooden barricades manned by several Border Patrol agents. One of them held up a hand signaling us to stop, and Mondragón complied. The agent approached us with a flashlight in his hand. Mondragón slid his window down. The agent shot the light into his face, then across to Rainy, then in back, where I was sitting.
“Where you folks headed?” he asked.
“Ali Molina,” Mondragón said. “But when I was growing up we called it Magdalena.”
The agent moved around to the rear of the SUV and shone the light into the back, which looked empty. He continued circling and, when he came to the window beside me, studied my face carefully.
“What happened?” he asked.
“A little surgery,” I said. “Had a skin cancer removed. Looks worse than it is.”
He grunted, maybe in acceptance of my story or maybe in sympathy. Hard to tell from the stone of his face. He moved to Rainy and took a good look at her. She smiled and said, “Good evening, Officer. Beautiful night on the desert.”
“Yes, ma’am, it is. You folks wait here a minute.”
He returned to the barricade and spoke briefly with one of the other agents.
“What’s the holdup?” I said quietly to Mondragón.
“I don’t know, but I don’t like it.”
The agent returned. “Where you folks coming from?”
“Phoenix,” Mondragón said.
“What’s your business?”
“Family reunion,” Mondragón said.
“In Magdalena?” The agent didn’t hide his skepticism.
“The family reunion is in Phoenix. We came down to visit my uncle, who’s too old to travel.”
“Kind of late for a visit, don’t you think?”
“Our plane was delayed. We got to Phoenix much later than we’d expected.”
“Got lots of water in the back.”
“Our relatives have warned us plenty about being in the desert without water.”
The agent nodded, then looked into the dark beyond the barricades. “I need to caution you, there’s been significant drug activity reported in this area. One of our agents was attacked out here this morning. I can’t stop you, but if you come across a vehicle off to the side of the road or see anything that looks suspicious, I’d advise you to just keep moving, don’t stop. If it’s something you think needs to be looked into, give 911 a call.”
“Thank you, Officer,” Mondragón said. “We’ll be careful.”
“All right, then. Night, folks. Drive safely.”
The agent returned to the barricades, moved one of them aside for us to pass, and we drove on.
“Rodriguez,” Mondragón said, the name like something foul he’d spit from his mouth. “He conducts his business with all the finesse of a pig in a sty.”
I said, “His business is drugs and trafficking in human misery. How do you expect him to operate?”
“Quietly,” Mondragón said.
“Like you?”
“We are legitimate businesspeople, O’Connor. The holdings of my family, our investments, are international. We have interests in manufacturing, transportation, real estate, electronics.”
“All from laundered money, I would guess, that came originally from the same kind of work Rodriguez is doing. Am I wrong?”
“Carnegie’s money or the money of the Rockefellers, where do you think that came from? The sweat and labor and even the sacrifice of the lives of small people, and from a manipulation of the law and authority. Do you know the story of the Ludlow Massacre? Coal miners in Colorado striking for fair wages and safe working conditions in 1914. John D. Rockefeller owned the mine. What did he do? He had the governor send in the Colorado National Guard to break the strike. They killed twenty-six people, mostly women and children. And now in the United States, the name of Rockefeller is revered. What my family does, what we aspire to, is simply the American dream.”
“And what is Rodriguez to you but competition?”
“Rodriguez has threatened my family,” Mondragón said in a low voice. “I will make Rodriguez pay.”
We turned onto what was little more than a faint track through the cacti. As soon as we were off the Magdalena Road, Mondragón stopped.
“We wait here. If we tried driving any farther, our headlights would give us away. We’d be visible to Border Patrol or Rodriguez’s people, if they’re out there.”
“I want to get to Peter as soon as possible,” Rainy said.
“We’ll move at first light, querida.”
I was beginning to hate that word.
CHAPTER 22
* * *
I slept fitfully in the backseat. Rainy had insisted that I lay myself out, try to rest. She’d given me ibuprofen from a container she carried in her purse, but everywhere still hurt like hell.
In my sleep, I dreamed that she and Mondragón were walking on a beach along the ocean somewhere. The sky behind them was a blazing red, as if from either a sunrise or a sunset. Or maybe even from a huge fire invisible except for the glow of its flames. They were talking.
You have always been beautiful, Mondragón said.
Rainy replied, but I heard only the last part: I loved when you did that.