The Dead Run Read online

  Nichols reached the mile marker at noon on the dot, the hottest minute of a scorching day. He’d sweated through his uniform, dark circles under both arms and a wet patch at the small of his back. As if the Mexicans gave a shit what he looked like. But vanity was a hard thing to put down, even if you weren’t so pretty anymore.

  Still prettier than most, though, he told himself. And not in bad shape, either, considering the crap diet and the fact that I only make it to the gym a half a dozen times a year. I bet I could still throw for sixty if I had to. How many goddamn sheriffs can say that?

  He pulled off the road, rambled the cruiser toward the two Mexican police cars parked a hundred feet away. Dust kicked up around him. The second you pulled off the asphalt, you were in the wilderness. Darting lizards, cacti, the whole nine.

  Fuentes turned and nodded. He was a stocky guy with salt-and-pepper hair, a little bit of a paunch. Always seemed to have a toothpick in his mouth and a couple of fingers on the toothpick. His three deputies were all taller than he, Fuentes short even by Mexican standards. Nichols towered over them all.

  “What have we got?” he said by way of greeting. The cops stepped aside to give him a look.

  In a real department, the sight and smell wouldn’t have made the sheriff’s stomach turn. Or hell, maybe they would. Yeah, probably so.

  The vultures had been at her. The vultures, the sun, the bugs. She lay on her stomach, the top half of her body buried in the sandy, silty dirt.

  From the waist down, she’d been picked at—not picked clean, though you could see stark white flashes of bone peeking through in some places, but torn apart pretty good. Even vultures stopped eating once the meat went rancid, and in this heat that had happened fast. The flesh was bloated, purpled, falling from the bone, and the maggots were working at her from the inside.

  It was hard to remember that this had very recently been a human being. A woman. Someone you could laugh and joke with, someone you might love.

  Hard to remember, yet impossible to forget.

  Nichols spoke through his handkerchief. “This is how you found her?” A stupid question—no, señor, we thought it would be fun to bury her—but you had to ask.

  “Sí.”

  “Well, let’s dig her up. Carefully. Con mucho cuidado.”

  From the car trunks came the shovels. Nichols watched them work. The way she was lying, it looked almost as if she’d dug herself in—like she’d been working on a shallow tunnel, and it had collapsed. That was ridiculous, of course. But so was half-burying a girl.

  Within minutes, the deputies had nearly unearthed her. Nichols could see the contours of her body beginning to emerge, and he told Fuentes to have his men drop their shovels and do the rest by hand, as if they were archeologists removing a prized artifact from the earth. To his surprise, Fuentes complied without debate.

  The smell was overpowering, but the cops didn’t complain. It was more than Nichols would have been able to say of his own men in this situation. Soon they were dusting the corpse, scraping the dirt from her back, her arms. She was still a person from the waist up. Decomposed, but human. Probably no more than two days gone.

  “Turn her over,” he ordered, glancing at Fuentes. The jefe toyed with his mouth lumber and said nothing.

  The deputies grunted and bent over her. The woman flopped onto her back. Nichols jockeyed for a better view. Fuentes, too, edged forward, raising his bushy eyebrows.

  Suddenly, all three deputies darted back, quicker than anybody had any business moving in this heat. As if the corpse had winked at them. All three men began speaking, the Spanish too agitated for Nichols to follow.

  “Que pasó?” he demanded, trying to push his way through. All he could see was an arm, up to the elbow. The deputies paid no attention. Too busy crossing themselves and praying.

  “Get the hell out of the way!” He grabbed the closest one by the elbow and yanked.

  The man turned, clamped his hand around Nichols’s wrist, and looked at him, wide-eyed. It didn’t take a psychologist to see that he was scared out of his mind.

  “Ella tiene el beso demonico!” he hissed. “Mira en su pecho!”

  Pecho, Nichols knew. Chest. He took a deep breath, held it, and knelt next to the girl. Between her breasts was what looked like a stab wound, or a cluster of them. It was hard to tell; decay had rendered her body grotesque and mysterious, and Nichols was no doctor. He raised a hand, as if to touch the mark, then drew it back.

  When he stood, Fuentes was right behind him.

  “ ‘Beso demonico’ is ‘kiss of the devil,’ ” he said, and turned to glance at the deputies. They had retreated to their cars, clearly eager for permission to leave. One was still crossing himself, over and over. He looked like a third-base coach, perpetually signaling a runner.

  “What does that mean?”

  “Just an old superstition.” Fuentes waved a hand. “But as you can see, to some it’s very real. Look at them. Policía one minute, pinches muchachos the next.” He flung his toothpick to the ground and clapped Nichols on the shoulder. “I think she’s a gringa, my friend. In fact, I’m sure.” Fuentes nodded to his men. They jumped gratefully into their cars. He climbed into the backseat, buzzed the window down.

  “She’s all yours, Bob.” A new toothpick bobbed between his lips. “Have fun with her.”

  “What the hell, Fuentes? You know I can’t haul her by myself.”

  “Leave her be, pendejo. Let the desert finish the job.”

  “Kinda fuckin’ cop are you?” Nichols grumbled, already turning away, resigned to the futility of it all.

  But the dig had gotten Fuentes’s ire up. He ratcheted the door, stepped back into the sun. “What kind of cop am I? An honest cop, ese. Maybe the only one left in this pinche country, me entiendes?”

  Nichols met his eye and nodded. Fair was fair.

  But Fuentes was on a roll now. “The shit you bitch about? Shitty cars, not enough men? Try walking in my shoes sometime, compadre. Try Federales in bed with narcos in bed with politicians. It’s all one big orgy, and I’m the fuckin’ eunuch in the corner, ’cause I play it straight. I can’t even sleep at night, I got so much rage in the belly. Ah, basta.”

  He threw up a hand, then slid back into the cruiser, sighing as the cool air hit his skin. “Even I have my limits. We’re only here for the living. Try to remember that, amigo.”

  The window rose, and the cars rattled off. It was just Nichols, and the heat, and the girl.

  CHAPTER 4

  For Galvan, the key to surviving prison was ritual. Routine. Break the months down into weeks, the days down into hours. Anticipate any small pleasure. Ignore anything and anyone that wasn’t on the schedule.

  At six thirty, he woke up. Half an hour before the rest of the population—because he could, because it was a decision he was still allowed to make. He savored the quiet, then dropped to the cement floor for fifty close-grip push-ups, fifty regular, fifty wide. Two hundred sit-ups, a hundred dips. Shave. Wash off in the sink, kiss the picture of his daughter hanging over it, where the mirror would have been if this were the real world. It served the same purpose a mirror would have: it confirmed his existence.

  Get dressed. Notice that he was hungry. Relish the thought of the meal to come, unappetizing as the food might be. Pick a song.

  The song was crucial. He had to have one by seven, when the door opened and the march down to the cafeteria began. The song was the theme music for the day. He’d play it in his head again and again, really get to know it. Sing it in the shower, run to its beat in the yard, use it to tune out trouble. In eleven months and twelve days, Galvan had never picked the same song twice.

  They’d hit him with attempted murder, five counts. Given him ten years on each, to be served concurrently. If he could keep his head down, he might be out in five. He had another four years’ worth of songs in hi
m, he was pretty sure.

  But not another nine.

  There was a radio in his cell, a cheap transistor another American had passed down to him when the guy got out last summer—dude name of Jimmy, closest thing to a friend Galvan had made in here. The only stations it got played narcocorrido, a kind of Mexican country music full of stories about drug runs and robberies, murders and border crossings. Plenty appropriate for this place, but fucking unlistenable. He would’ve given anything for some music that meant something to him. Some Johnny Cash, some Run-DMC, some War. Something.

  A rap song got you the furthest. More lyrics to recite, a good tempo to run to. But Galvan had pretty much exhausted all the tunes he’d grown up driving around L.A. to—and besides, all those so-called gangsta tunes were softer than baby shit compared to the reality of life in here, where vatos slit each other’s throats over disrespectful eye contact and the Barrio Azteca and Federación Sinaloa occupied the yard, the cafeteria, even the library at different times of day to minimize the likelihood of their killing each other.

  Where the stink of corruption lay heavy over everything and justice was something you bought, if you wanted some. Where cartel bosses sitting in steel cages commanded armies whose firepower the police, the army, couldn’t match even if they wanted to.

  Which they did not. Instead, one hand washed the other, and everybody else stayed dipped in shit.

  Kodiak Brinks, Galvan decided. “Welcome to the Ruckas.” He only knew the first verse, if that. But the rest would come. It had all day.

  I’m kickin’ the illest shit / Surrounded by wickedness . . .

  The bars opened, and Galvan walked down the tier, toward the stairs, eyes darting left, right, left. Who’s in front of me? Who’s in back?

  I slide through the drama / Use my eyes as my armor . . .

  The only reason he was still alive was that the men who mattered had been slow in deciding what to make of him. Galvan kept to himself, worked out like mad. A gringo, but not here for drugs. Showed respect but wasn’t weak. Knew how to handle himself. The first thing Galvan had done when he arrived was quick-study the population until he found a guy as much like himself as possible, a hard-ass loner. Then he’d picked a fight and kicked the piss out of the dude, as publicly as possible.

  Best thing he could have done, but it was wearing off. And doing it again, Galvan knew, would not help. Prison was boredom. Violence was relief. Alone was vulnerable.

  The last month had been buildup: taunts, catcalls. Nothing so direct that the code of the prison dictated he had to fight over it. But closer and closer. It was the weakest members of both gangs who tested him, skinny eighteen-year-olds with bad teeth, little more than court jesters. Or pawns. Expendable flesh, the kind of vatos whose life expectancies had doubled on the day they’d been arrested. Their superiors wanted to see how far Galvan could be pushed before he snapped.

  Galvan wondered that himself.

  Known as fair and square throughout my youth / Kick the truth, uncouth but I’m livin’ proof / Eye to eye, man to man I never blink / The last motherfucker with a pail when the ship sinks . . .

  They smelled something on him, Galvan thought. Not fear. Innocence. These men, from the rank-and-file to the bosses, were here because they broke the law for money. That was who they were, and they were proud of it. Galvan was here because he’d failed to mind his business. Because he’d seen something he couldn’t stomach and reacted.

  It wasn’t a mistake he planned to make again.

  After breakfast was the yard. Some people lifted weights. Others played soccer. The old men and the higher-ups smoked cigarettes, ate candy bars, talked business.

  Galvan ran wind sprints. He didn’t know why, exactly. It was the one risk he took, the one thing he did that drew attention. Scorn was a better word. But he had to move, had to exhaust himself. In some vague way, he suspected that running would be important when he got out of here. In chasing down his old life and making things right.

  That, and outdistancing whatever memories he took with him.

  Galvan was ten minutes into his workout, his breath coming in jagged gasps, when a skinny kid they called Payaso broke off from a cluster of inmates and joined him. He was a low-ranking member of Barrio Azteca, an errand boy. A loudmouth. A catcaller. Top five on the list of people Galvan would have liked to pound into the ground.

  “I got a message for you, pendejo,” he said, already panting from the effort of catching up.

  Galvan didn’t break his stride. “What’s that, pendejo?”

  “El Cucuy wants to see you.”

  Galvan snorted. “Tell him I already got a lunch appointment with Santa Claus. Seeing the Easter Bunny after that, but I might be able to squeeze him in before drinks with the tooth fairy.”

  He accelerated, left Payaso in the dust. El Cucuy. Shit. The mythical boogeyman of Ojos Negros Prison. Supposedly, he lived in the bowels of the place, las entranas de la tierra, half inmate and half god. Half monster and half mastermind. Some said they’d built the place around him. Others claimed he was the leader of both gangs, that each was an instrument of his bidding and he played one against the other for reasons known only to himself. His appetite for women was said to be prodigious; the families of inmates left their young daughters at home on visiting days in case the tales were true.

  No one ever saw the guy, of course. The guards had made the whole thing up: Better not give us any trouble, or we’ll take you downstairs and hand you over to El Cucuy. Decades ago, probably. Now the fable had a life of its own.

  Whatever this message meant, it couldn’t be good. El Cucuy wants to see you—loosely translated, it became You’re going to disappear. They’d gotten bored with taunts, and now it was time for threats, intimidation. Mind-fuckery.

  Galvan threw on a burst of speed. He had to save his aggression for the man who’d put him here, and that meant surviving long enough to rejoin the world and find him.

  Sink and more / never get caught on the ropes through / The devil threw low blows / I ducked ’em in slow mo . . .

  Galvan never saw the rock, or the arm that threw it. “Órale, gringo!” he heard somewhere behind him, and then pain exploded against the side of his head and Galvan dropped to the ground, clutching his temple. Blood slicked his hands. His vision went spangly.

  Easy prey, if he stayed down, and so Galvan forced himself to stand, wiped away the scarlet rivulets cascading down his forehead, turned in a tight circle like a cat chasing its tail. Two men were coming at him from the right, the weightlifting area. He pretended not to see the first one until he was close, then ducked the man’s swing, came around his back, and dropped an elbow onto his kidneys. He crumpled. Galvan kneed him in the face as he went down. He wouldn’t be getting back up.

  The other guy was bigger. One of the biggest. Gutierrez. An enforcer, brutal. Famous as a rapist. He was on top of Galvan before the gringo knew it, shockingly quick for his size. He went right for the neck, with both hands—no nonsense, get it over with fast.

  If he’d pushed Galvan down, choked him from above, used the leverage his body supplied, it would have been. Instead, all that practicality went out the window, and he went for the glamour shot: lifted Galvan off his feet, like Homer Simpson when he strangled Bart. Galvan reared back and kicked him in the nuts with everything he had, and the behemoth dropped him, doubled over. Galvan hit him with a right cross, snapped his head sideways, then followed with a left.

  All that bought him was time to breathe. Gutierrez was built for this; he wasn’t close to done. A circle had formed around the three of them, the noise cacophonous. Galvan had seen this before. The circle was a joke. You thought you were fighting one man, two men, but the truth was that every inmate forming that perimeter was a potential combatant.

  The sport was to deliver the knockout blow unseen.

  He heard somebody running at him, whirled, a
nd cracked Payaso in the jaw, sent him spinning into the dust. The crack was bullwhip sharp, and for an instant, it hushed the yard. Then Galvan was on the ground next to him, with no idea how he’d gotten there except that it seemed to involve getting hit in the face. He scrabbled to his knees. The noise crested. This was when the shivs came out.

  Then the sound everybody was waiting for ripped through the air: three warning shots from the riflemen stationed in the watchtowers overlooking the yard.

  The buckshot kicked up flares of dust, and the circle loosened, dispersed. Galvan staggered to his feet, only to be laid flat on his back by a guard’s baton. They were everywhere, sticks flashing, taking people down.

  Galvan caught a blow to the head and felt himself go limp. The cries of the other inmates reached him as if from far away, the sounds swimming through the fog that filled his head.

  Payaso’s voice cut through it all.

  “Please, please, I’m begging you,” the kid wailed through his busted face, the words distorted by pain and panic, as the guards rained down blow after blow.

  “Kill me if you want. Just don’t take me to El Cucuy.”

  Welcome to the Ruckus.

  CHAPTER 5

  Nichols hooked his thumbs into his belt loops, shifted his weight, sighed.

  “What makes you think your daughter’s been abducted, ma’am?”

  Melinda Richards threw her arms wide. Hard to do, standing in a doorway, but she managed. Tears hung in the corners of her eyes.

  “I’m her mother!”

  “I understand that, ma’am. But—”

  “When something’s wrong, a mother knows!”

  She was loud, panic edging her voice, and the neighbors were starting to pay furtive attention. The guy across the street had been pretending to curb his trash ever since Nichols pulled up in the squad car, and now the old biddy next door was futzing with her front-porch flowerpots, ears pricked up for scandal.