Crossers (26 page)

14

F
LORENCE WAS AN OLD MINING TOWN
settled beneath the flinty, saguaro-picketed hills between Phoenix and Tucson. The veins of silver and copper had been bled out long ago, and now its major industry, the industry that saved it from becoming one more western ghost town, was incarceration. It had got its start in the corrections business early in the last century with the building of the Arizona Territorial prison. From that modest beginning, Florence had evolved into a kind of desert gulag.

When Castle and Sally arrived, about noon, they saw one kind of cop car or another everywhere they looked: patrol cars, vans, and trucks emblazoned with the emblems of the Florence city police, the Pinal County sheriff’s police, the Arizona state police, the U.S. Border Patrol, the Department of Homeland Security. The town had to have the lowest crime rate in the world. Muscle-bound prison guards, employees of a private firm called the Corrections Corporation of America, crowded Gibby’s cantina downtown, where he and his aunt ate a quick lunch. After getting directions, they drove past the state penitentiary, a vast reservation of battleship-gray Quonset huts, cell blocks, and guard towers surrounded by high chain-link fences crowned with razor wire, and then the Pinal County jail, before crossing the Gila River, which was not a river but a wide, brushy swath of gravel and dust, to arrive at their destination, the Department of Homeland Security Special Processing Center.

Like a church built atop the ruins of a pagan temple, this state-of-the-art lockup for illegal aliens awaiting deportation had been erected (by the same private corporation that operated the penitentiary) upon the remnants of a POW camp for Axis troops captured in the North Africa campaign. Prefab barracks and buildings with blue roofs and geometric patterns on the walls—Castle guessed they were supposed to project a southwestern look—huddled behind yet more chain link twenty feet high and yet more razor wire, glittering in the sunlight like deadly tinsel. If not quite as depressing as the state pen, it was depressing enough.

He parked on the street. Sally freshened her makeup and patted her hair to be sure her bun was in place. They checked in at the guard station, gave the name of the inmate they wished to see, then were escorted into an administration building, where they presented their driver’s licenses to verify their identities and underwent a body search, to which Sally objected—“Do I look like somebody who intends to stage a jailbreak?” she said to the female guard who wanded her. Her purse was inspected, and to her further annoyance, the cigarettes and Power Bars she’d bought in town for Miguel were confiscated and placed in a locker. The woman assured her they would eventually be given to Miguel—after they were inspected, of course.

A male guard ushered them to a visitation room. One long row of cubicles divided by plastic partitions faced another through a wall of bulletproof glass. Inmates garbed in red jumpsuits sat on one side, their visitors on the other, and conversed through telephones. It was the first time Castle had seen the inside of a jail, and though this one did not call itself a jail, he felt its stifling embrace. Led by another guard, Miguel came in, walking with short, shuffling steps, as if he were in leg irons. He sat in the cubicle opposite Castle and Sally’s, while the guards stood nearby, hands crossed over their crotches, their postures suggesting that they could spring from complete immobility into violent movement in an instant.

Picking up the phone, Miguel said he was so happy to see his visitors, a statement belied by his slumped shoulders and the mixture of fear and confusion in his eyes. He had put on weight—evidently he was fed well. Sally, speaking in Spanish and then translating for her nephew’s benefit, told him about the cigarettes and candy bars and asked if there was anything else he needed. Miguel snorted. Yes, to get out of here! We can’t do that for you, said Sally. Miguel stared through the glass. I know you cannot. There is nothing nobody can do. Some people who said they protected the rights of migrants had come to the jail to interview certain prisoners. They told him the government could not hold him for such a long time and promised to take up his case and get him released, but so far nothing. More of his bad luck. All his life luck has been bad, but never so bad as now. God had abandoned him. Castle asked his aunt to convey his assurances that God had not abandoned Miguel, though he suspected that the Deity was indifferent to the matter of Miguel’s fate. No, I am abandoned by God, Miguel insisted. Twice he saved me, first from the killer, then from dying of the cold and hunger. But why, if I am to spend my days in this terrible place, like I am a criminal? I am kept behind bars, like it was me who killed my friends. He lit a cigarette. For what reason does this happen to me?

You are a witness to a crime, Castle explained, avoiding the larger metaphysical question. If the police capture the murderer, they will ask you to identify him if you can, and to testify in court. After Sally translated, Miguel’s nose twitched, as before a sneeze; it was a big, jutting nose, shaped like a toucan’s beak. Identify him? All he saw was a young blond man, tall and broad-shouldered, rough-looking, you know, like un boxeador. There must be a million men who look like that in the United States. If he were standing in this very room, Miguel could not say with certainty, Yes, that was the man he’d seen shoot Héctor and Reynaldo. He had told that to the police when they sat him down in the police station in Nogales and showed him many photographs, asking if any of the faces looked familiar. None did.

Miguel glanced sidelong at the other inmates, speaking to their visitors. Then, leaning toward his, he whispered that after he’d looked at the photographs, he’d been allowed to phone his wife, Esperanza was her name. He’d told her how he’d been robbed of the money he was to pay the coyote, how he’d agreed to work off the fee by carrying drugs, how his companions had been murdered. She also had bad news. That very day, before she’d heard from her husband, a man had come to the house to demand the money for transporting him over the border. This man, Miguel surmised, must have been sent by the coyote, the fat man of the ringed fingers. Esperanza had been very frightened and confused. Where was her husband? Hadn’t he paid the money? Miguel was in the United States, the emissary assured her, but the fee had not been paid. He would give her a week. If she didn’t have it when he next came by, there would be much trouble. What should she do? she asked Miguel. Borrow the money, he said. Get it any way you can. These people are very dangerous.

Some days later, following his transfer to Florence, Miguel was permitted to make another call to inform his wife of his whereabouts. Had she paid the debt? She had, borrowing some from friends, some from relatives. But now there was new cause for worry. When the man returned, he’d asked Esperanza if she had heard from her esposo. Yes. What did he say? She informed him of all Miguel had told her in his first phone conversation. Then the man said, When you speak to your esposo again, we have a message for him. He is not to say nothing more to the police of what he saw. If he does, it will go very bad for him and for you. He did not see nothing, do you understand?

“So you see, it would be bad for me to say anything more to the police,” Miguel said, his eyes welling up. “I would be in fear of my life! Of Esperanza’s life! The lives of my children! Is there no way to get me out of here?”

Castle exchanged glances with his aunt. He felt a helpless pity, and a connection to the man—after all, both their lives, each in its own way, had been wrecked by 9/11.

The visit came to an abrupt end when one of the guards tapped Miguel on the shoulder and said, “Time’s up.” Castle and Sally barely had a chance to say adiós before he was led away.

“Well, there must be a way to get him out,” Sally said when they were back in the car. “I’m gone to have a talk with Rodriguez.”

“Maybe I’ll go with you. I’ve got something I’d like to mention,” Castle said.

“What’s that?”

“You remember that Border Patrol tracker, Morales? When we were out at the crime scene, he speculated that the killer knew who and what he was after.”

“So …,” said Sally, creasing her brow.

“So the threat that was made to Miguel’s wife sort of confirms that. The killer and the coyote, the fat guy, were partners in using illegals to mule dope.”

She poked his arm. “You ought to leave the detective work to the detectives.”

S
HE PHONED
the sheriff the next day, Monday, and he agreed to make time for her. That afternoon she and Castle drove to his Nogales office, behind the county jail in a drab warehouse district across from the Southern Pacific tracks. A blocky, square-faced man with dense black hair graying at the sides, Rodriguez sat behind his desk, his chin cradled in a palm, and listened patiently as Castle, despite Sally’s advice, reported the threat to Miguel’s wife and presented his theory. “It does sort of suggest,” he said hesitantly, “that whoever did the shooting didn’t just stumble into those guys, that he was working with the coyotes.”

With a smile and a nod, the sheriff humored his amateur sleuthing. “We figured that out all by ourselves,” he said. “Soto’s questioned a slew of snitches. So far, nothing.”

“Soto?”

“The officer in charge of the investigation.”

Castle remembered the detective who’d questioned him at the crime scene. “Miguel is afraid there’ll be retaliation against his family,” he said.

Rodriguez pointed out that he couldn’t do anything about a threat made a thousand miles away in a foreign country.

“I realize that. But I thought maybe you could contact the police in Oaxaca to provide protection for his wife and kids?”

A look of impatience flitted over the sheriff’s face. “You’re not too familiar with Mexico, are you, Mr. Castle?”

No, he supposed he wasn’t. Well then, declared Rodriguez, he should know that in the murky world of Mexican trafficking, whether the commodity was narcotics or people, it wasn’t merely difficult to distinguish the cops from the criminals, it was impossible. “In other words,” he continued, “I wouldn’t let the police down there know that I know about the threat. Get it? We don’t want to make things worse for Mr. and Mrs. Espinoza.”

Castle nodded to say that he did get it and also the implication bundled into the sheriff’s educational comment—that good intentions can have bad effects.

“Thanks anyway,” Rodriguez said. “You’ve done your citizen’s duty.”

“That isn’t all we come here for.” Sally cocked her chin. “We’re not quite done with this Miguel business.”

The sheriff pushed his chair back, locked his fingers behind his head, and gave her an easy grin. “Had any second thoughts on my offer for those two horses, the dun and the bay?”

“I have not,” she replied sharply. “And don’t change the subject. It don’t seem right. Or fair, locking him up there in Florence like a common criminal …”

“He
is
a criminal. An illegal alien who was muling dope over the border.”

“You haven’t charged him with a crime, have you? He’s been in there going on three months it must be. He ought to be let go.”

“You sure are taking a personal interest in this mojado. How come?”

“I reckon because he fetched up on our ranch,” Sally said. “Kind of makes us feel responsible for him some way or the other.”

“But you’re not. He’s my responsibility.”

“Well then, isn’t there something you can do?”

“You’ll be happy to know there is. Miguel will be a free man within a week.”

Sally flung her arms out wide. “Why in hell didn’t you say so right off the bat?”

“Because I didn’t know that’s what you two wanted to talked about. The county attorney got a letter from some immigrant rights do-gooders, to the effect that their lawyer was going to file a motion for Miguel’s release. So our lawyer advised me that to save a lot of hassle, he was going to depose Mr. Espinoza. Then we inform DHS that we’re releasing him from material witness hold.”

“What’s that mean—depose him?” asked Sally.

“Take a deposition. A sworn statement about what he did, what he saw. It will be videotaped. Then we’ll turn him over to Immigration, and he’ll put be put on a bus and deported.” Rodriguez raised his palms as Castle started to speak. “And your next question would be, What happens if we catch a suspect? A whole bunch of ifs. If the guy confesses, no problem. If he doesn’t and if the attorney thinks there’s enough evidence to go to trial, we request the Mexican authorities to get Miguel back here to testify, taxpayers’ expense. That’s assuming our star witness stays in Mexico. Odds are, the second he’s on the other side, some enganchador will fix him up with another coyote and he’ll try again, and—”

“What the hell is an enganchador?” Castle interrupted.

“A broker who connects wetbacks with coyotes. Odds are he’ll find one and if—there’s another
if-
—he doesn’t get caught or shot or kidnapped or die of thirst, he’ll disappear into the U.S. And in that case, all we could do is have the deposition placed in the record, and the defendant’s lawyer will move for dismissal because his client was denied his constitutional right to cross-examine the witness. Is there anything else you’d like to know?”

The question was accompanied by a glance at the clock on the wall, indicating that the past twenty minutes had been about fifteen minutes longer than he cared to spend on this subject.

So Miguel Espinoza, thought Castle, this migrant who had endured Odyssean perils and hardships for a meatpacking job paying nine dollars an hour, this droplet in the human tide flooding northward, would soon be traveling in the opposite direction, back to the poverty he’d sought to escape in the first place. Either that, or face the hazards of one more run at the border.

“And there’s no other recourse?”

Rodriguez considered the question. “I suppose I could ask DHS to issue him a temporary stay permit, to keep him around to identify anybody we pick up. They’re usually good for about ninety days. But with one of those in his fat little hands, Miguel will do what he’d do if he got smuggled across again—disappear. He’ll find a job somewhere and disappear.”