Blood Daughters: A Romilia Chacon Novel

Chapter 48

203 Chapter 48 We did not go to Mexico. But this did not feel like the United States either. Adobe shacks alongside the road. An abandoned church and its desert yard, overgrown with brush; I could see the cross in the moonlight. An old poster of Jennifer Lopez, posing for one of her CDs, was stuck on a large wall. Then the building, one that could have been a school or a company or any number of offices but at this moment was the warehouse. This could have been either country, the way it was set off from San Diego, the way it lost itself somewhere along the border. Or perhaps this simply was the third country that Officer Saenz had warned me about. The way I saw it, once we were inside, all I had was my gun and my hostage. Which meant that logistically I was somewhat safer out here, in the dust of the street. I was wrong. Ingrid turned off the car. She looked at me. She smiled. “Where do we go in?” I said. “The front door.” That was too easy. “Where’s Ritchie?” “I don’t know.” “Is he inside?” “He’s inside.” “So this is his outfit.” “This is his outfit.” The way she parroted me, she should have sounded like the foolish one. But it didn’t work that way; I felt the fool. As if she were more worldly, that her world inside building was much bigger than mine. She sighed. “Well. I’m going to bed.” She clicked open the door. 204 ~ Blood Daughters “Get back in here.” “Why?” Ingrid looked at me, confused. “To wait for your ‘backup?’ Sorry, but I sure as fuck don’t want to be out here when they show up.” She opened the door and stepped out. Casually. “Once you get those fuckin’ Pezoneros stirred up, they’re like jodido wasps. When Ritchie gives the word, you’re carne asada.” She chuckled. “Goddammit.” I got out, came around the car and put the gun into her back, shoving the barrel into her kidneys. She cursed. I looked around at all the buildings, their rooftops, into all of that silence. “We go in together,” I said. “You say anything, I’ll kill you.” “And they’ll kill you, bitch.” But she walked ahead, slowly. She opened the door. We walked down a half-lit hallway, turned right into another hall. There was no one around. “I have to piss,” she said. “No you don’t.” “Yes. I do.” This was once a bilingual public utility. The two words, “Ladies” and “Damas” were still on the door, with the figure of a person in a triangle dress underneath. Small sinks, low to the ground. This had been a school once. Inside Ingrid made to go to one stall. “No,” I said, “the next one.” For I could imagine she had a gun hidden behind the first toilet. She pulled down her jeans and sat. The stream was strong. “Where’s Karen Allende?” I said. “Is she dead?” Without choking. Not in front of this woman. She shrugged. “I don’t know if she’s bled yet.” IhadseenthefilmofyoungRitchie.Iknewwhatshemeant.Iunderstood her brother more than I cared to. “Did Marisa Jackson bleed?” I said. Ingrid merely nodded. “That why he killed her?” She said nothing. There was no toilet paper, but there was a glossy women’s magazine on the floor, which she used. “He killed a little girl, because she had her first period?” I wanted to scream the question at her. To rattle her with it. Marcos M. Villatoro ~ 205 She crumpled another page. “Girls these days, they’re having their menses earlier and earlier. Before you know it, we’ll be using eight year olds.” She stood up and buttoned her jeans. She was ten inches away from me, in the cramp of the stall. “So Ritchie kills her,” I said. “Why throw her across the border?” “Ay, Mexican Chota, heads up their asses,” she said. “They thought she would have been out of their jurisdiction if she was found in California. Stupid fucks. Scared of their own shadow.” “Ritchie didn’t have them throw the body into California?” “What? No way.” Ingrid thought about that. “Ritchie don’t care about no borders.” “And there were cops present?” “Well, yeah.” “Are they . . . the Pezoneros?” She looked at me as if that made no...