Into the Beautiful North(49)

“Listen,” he said. “I feel bad you got caught. My socio here has been making me feel bad. So I’m going to do you a favor. It’s my first favor ever. So you’d better appreciate it.”

“He is Wino!” Atómiko announced, showing that he had diversified his usual train of thought.

“I’m going to take you to the hole.”



“The hole?” Nayeli said.

“The hole, esa. That’s what I said.” Wino nodded. “The hole. I had to call in some favors, you understand. This is big-money stuff, going to the hole. Homeboy says you’ll pay me one day, when you get money.”

“The hole?”

“Trust me,” Wino said, which made all three girls doubt him. “You’ll see,” he insisted. “It’s guaranteed.”

Atómiko held out his staff and tapped Nayeli with it.

“Guaranteed,” he repeated.

“Just remember one thing,” Wino said. “You will forget you ever saw the hole. ?Comprenden? Once you go through it, you were never there.” He sucked down the last of his cig. He studied the cherry at the tip. “Most people? They stumble into the hole? They don’t live to see another day.”

He flicked his cigarette away, and it bounced across the parking lot, unleashing showers of burning sparks.

“Bang, bang,” he said.

The cigarette butt smoked in the street.





Chapter Nineteen



They were out beyond the Tijuana airport. Fences and walls and the usual border boneyard vistas. They pulled up at a scruffy cluster of gas stations and bodegas and auto shops and warehouses. The building where they parked had a tin man welded together out of mufflers in front. His hat was a steel funnel. The sign above the closed door said mofles. It all stank of burning taco meat and dogs, spilled car oil and exhaust, trash fire smoke.

“What’s a mofle?” Yolo asked. She was always the scholar. She liked words. But she had never really heard Spanglish before.

“A mofle is a mofle, damn,” said Wino. “It’s, like—what do you call the pinchi thing in back of your car?”

“Silenciador,” Atómiko said.

“A muffler!” Yolo said.

“What the hell have I been telling you?” Wino snapped.

Vampi got out of the car and pointed at the tin man.

“He’so cute!” she cried.

Nayeli was tense. The girls apparently hadn’t taken note of the isolated nature of this nasty little clot of ruin. They could be on their way to being raped and killed. They could be kidnapped and forced into sexual slavery. They could be filmed being killed; she had seen stories about that in ?Alarma!

A Tijuana cop in a bulletproof vest stood on the corner, a matte black assault rifle pointing at the ground; his bottomless shades turned their way, and he regarded them coolly, then turned away.

She was jittery and angry—angry at the day and the border and the very buildings where they stood. But it was the presence of Atómiko that calmed her. She did not like him, but she did not believe he would allow them to be harmed. She looked at him. He had abandoned his campaign to woo Yolo and turned his attentions to Vampi. He was actually wiggling his eyebrows at her. Nayeli stifled a laugh.

She made a fleeting sign of the cross and muttered, “Ave María purísima.”

“Come on,” said Wino.

He banged on the steel-shuttered door of the muffler shop, and it clanged and rolled up. Smoke and rocanrol billowed out.

“Let’s go,” said a kid inside.

Wino hunched over and went in, so the girls followed. Atómiko held his staff across his chest and stooped through. The door slammed back down behind them.

Black Glocks in belts, small machine guns in hands.

“This is them, huh?” said a man in a running suit.

“That’s it,” said Wino.

“Who am I talking to?” the man asked.

“Excuse me?” said Nayeli.

“Who am I talking to?” the man repeated. He pointed at Atómiko. “You?”

Atómiko shook his head.

“Her,” he said.

The man turned to Nayeli.

“You! You’re the boss?” He smiled, not warmly. “This short girl?” He barked out one laugh. “All right.” He took her arm and led her to the back of the room—it was much bigger than it looked from the outside. “You were never here,” he said. “You don’t know anything about this shop. Right?”

“Right.”

“The vato with the pole led you across. Not us.”

“Yes.”

“We will not help you again. We do this only once. All right?”

“All right.”

She was confused and was answering the way she thought he wanted her to answer.

Wino gestured with his chin.

“Mota,” he said.

“?Marijuana?” Vampi cried.

Bales lined the walls.

The boys in the mofle shop stared at her.

“Big-time!” Wino said.

“?Coca?” Atómiko asked.

The man in the running suit said, “I knew a curious monkey that got his nose cut off.”

Atómiko shrugged.