Sunland: A Novel

24

• • 158 • • Early morning I received a phone call from the Mexicans. El Bebé’s advisor spat directions into the phone. I wrote them on the back of the sports section. I shut my phone. The casita was quiet. A clock ticked. A floorboard creaked. Something was blooming this time of year, and I sneezed. I drove south out of Tucson and passed through the twin border-kissing Nogaleses, and into Mexican sun. Shape-shifting figures skipped across my car’s hood as the red morning sky cooled into icy blue. I followed the dusty two-lane road between Catedral and the international line. I slowed when I saw the motel in the distance. Bulbs were shot out of the motel’s old neon sign, and the ramshackle building bent U-shaped around a dirt lot. I didn’t trust the place. Except for a horse trailer in front, the building looked deserted. My car door creaked open and the smells hit me: sagebrush, tropospheric dust, oil, gas. Dry air sucked moisture from my lips and the sun drilled my bald spot. I looked around. I was alone out here. Sunlight dabbed out the farthest range, some twenty miles away, smearing the ridges into the blue-white sky. The room number was affixed to the door with cheap gold numerals. Sweat had collected in the hollow of my upper lip. As instructed, I knocked on the door three times, took a breath, and knocked once more. A drape in the window swayed and went still. Very quickly the door opened, fingers clamped around my throat, and I was yanked inside. A strong, short man kicked the door shut and forced me against it. I felt the cold, sharp tines of a fork against my Adam’s apple. “Los Tigres del Norte,” I said, feeling my adrenal glands empty. The password came out in a spray of spittle. “Los Tigres del Norte.” An onion stench eased off the man. His forehead hovered at my chin. Without warning he nicked me on the pull and I felt heat on my jaw. “Hijo de puta,” I said. “Lolli,” the man said in response. Black sunspots dissolved in my eyes. The man was wearing a policía uniform with sweat stains at the pits. A revolver stuck out from his fanny pack. The frigid, dank room smelled heady. “I’ve come to check the people,” I said. Blood leaked onto my neck. “Diego?” he asked. “Diego’s not here.” “No here?” the man said. “Just me.” The man pressed me against the door with his forearm again. “Lolli,” 24 • • 159 • • he said vehemently. The man’s breath was a blast of chemicals, ripe with gasoline and pipe cleaner, and I knew he’d been chewing the wrong kind of Chiclets, which could turn any man shitbird insane. His yellow eyes signaled a failing liver, and his two front teeth were chipped down into stalactites . “Lolli,” he said again and kneed my thigh, forcing me to the floor. Behind the man was an adjoining room, and for a moment I thought I’d drifted into a hallucination. In the other room I noticed long, regal, dotted legs standing motionless. I was expecting Brazilians. I was expecting Chinese . Droppings littered the carpet and looked like brown mashed-potato bombs. The animal had kicked over a twelver of Carta Blanca. Bottles lay strewn. The giraffe was younger and shorter than the giraffes at the zoo. An adolescent. Undersized, able to fit inside a motel room. “Where are the people?” I asked the man with the fork. “I’m supposed to move people. This isn’t funny.” I watched the animal’s long neck scuff the ceiling. “Lolli,” the maniac said and pointed the fork at my hands. He meant that I should warm them with my ass. I did. Dirt embedded in the carpet scratched my palms. By the look of the pesthole scum motel, the place was used often. Tattered wallpaper showed a tropical coastline—green fronds, beige sand, the sea. The maniac padded around. I watched the sides of his mouth jerk wildly. Over my shoulder the motel’s door opened and hit me. “Que te pasa?” another man said, trying to push in. The maniac leaped toward the door. “Agarramos un gabacho,” he said. “El es el coyote,” the other man said. “Lolli,” the maniac said. I rolled to my side and slithered out of the way and saw another uniformed municipal. A black, untrimmed...