That kind of thing couldn’t be a mistake or a coincidence.

It was him. There was no doubt about it.

She moused over to the second data packet that had been marked for her and opened it.

She nearly fell off her chair.

Pictures, too?

There were two: front and profile. In the first, Milton stared out into the camera. His eyes were the iciest blue and his expression implacable. He had a full beard and his hair was unkempt. The second offered a clear angle of the scar that curled down from his scalp. He was holding a chalkboard with his name and a reference number. Again, the board was written in Spanish. It was marked Ciudad Juárez.

“Hello, Milton,” she said. “I found you, you sneaky ublyudok. I found you.”

DAY THREE

Desperado

“There is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never care for anything else thereafter.” Ernest Hemingway

“If Juarez is a city of God, it is because the Devil is scared to come here.” Street dicho, or saying.

32

Adolfo González slammed the door of the hotel behind him and stalked to his car. He had been furious and the girls had borne the brunt of his temper. There were two of them this time, just the right age, plucked from outside the car park of the maquiladora that made the zips for the clothes that bargain retailers sold over the border and in Europe. His men had called him and told him that the two were waiting for him in the usual place. He had bought the hotel a year ago, just for this purpose, and it had earned back the hundred thousand dollars he had paid for it. Earned it back and then some.

Esmeralda and Ava.

They had struggled a little. More than usual, anyway. He preferred it like that.

He’d leave the cleanup to the others.

He took off his bloodied latex gloves and dropped them into the trash. He opened the door of his car and slipped into the front seat. His ride was a 1968 Impala Caprice, ‘Viva La Raza’ written across the bonnet in flaming cursive, the interior featuring puffy cream-coloured cushions and a child’s doll on the dash, dressed in a skirt bearing the colours of the Mexican flag. The car seats were upholstered in patriotic green, white and red.

He took off his dirty shirt, took a replacement from the pile on the rear seat, tore off its plastic wrapping and put it on. He opened the glove compartment, took a packet of baby wipes and cleaned his face. His movements were neat and precise: the shallow crevices on either side of his nose, the depressions at the edge of his lips, the hollows in the corner of his eyes. He pulled a fresh wipe to mop the moisture from his brow, tossed the shirt and the wipes into the trash, took a bottle of cologne and sprayed it on each side of his throat, then quickly worked a toothpick around his teeth. Better. Once he was finished, he enjoyed his ‘breakfast’ — a generous blast up each nostril from the cocaine-filled bullet that he carried in the right-hand hip pocket of his jeans. The cocaine was unadulterated, fresh from the plane that had brought it up from Colombia. It was excellent and he had another couple of blasts. He hadn’t slept for two straight nights. He needed something to keep him alert. That should do the trick.

Adolfo was always angry, but last night had been unusually intense. His father had been the cause of it. The old man had castigated him as they drove back to Juárez yesterday evening. The gringo bastardos had angered him and so he had taken out that anger on his son. He had told him — ordered him — to find the journalist and the cook. They were to be found and killed without delay.

Fine.

With pleasure.

He started the car and crossed town, the traffic slowing him up, cars jamming behind the big busses that took the women to and from the factories. The busses stirred up layers of grey dust that drifted into the sky and rendered the sun hazy, settling back down again on the lanes and the labyrinth of illicit electricity cabling that supplied the colonia shacks. When he pulled into the vast car park that surrounded La Case del Mole he was hot and irritated. He shut off the engine and did another couple of blasts of coke. He got out. He took a pistol from the trunk, slotted home a fresh magazine, pushed it into his waistband, pulled his shirt over it and walked across the asphalt. There was blood there: a pool of blood so thick that it was still sticky underfoot, two days later, the still congealing red glistening in the sunlight.

He climbed the steps and knocked on the glass door. Nothing. He turned to look out at the city: the belching smokestacks, the traffic spilling by on the freeway on the other side of the border, the heat haze. He turned again and tried the handle. It was locked. He took a step back and kicked the glass; it took another kick to crack it and a third to stove it all the way through. He reached through the broken glass, unlocked the door from the inside and stepped into the lobby.

He paused, listening. He sniffed the air. He heard someone in the other room, hurrying in his direction.

“What the fuck you doing?”

He was a fat man, his belly straining against a dirty t-shirt.

“You in charge here?”

“What the fuck you doing, man, breaking the fucking door like that?”

“Are you in charge?”

“Who’s asking?”

“Better just answer the question, friend.”

“Alright, yeah, sure — as far as you’re concerned, I am in charge. And unless you tell me what the fuck you think you’re doing, busting the door like that, I’m going call the cops.”

Adolfo pulled back his jacket to show a holstered Glock. “Wouldn’t do that,” he said.

“Oh Jesus, I’m sorry — I didn’t mean to cause offence.”

“You didn’t?”

“No, sir. I’m sorry if I did. I’ve had a hell of a couple of days.”

Adolfo fingered one of the lobster pots that had been fixed to the wall. “What’s the point of this? We’re nowhere near the sea.”

“Just a bit of decoration.”

“It’s plastic. It’s not even real.”

“It’s just for atmosphere.”

Adolfo let the lobster pot fall back again. “What’s your name?”

“Gomez.”

“Well, then, Gomez. I’m looking for one of your cooks.”

Gomez looked at him anxiously. “I don’t ever get to know them that good. We get a high turnover here — in and out, all the time, there’s always someone new practically every day.”

“But you know the one I want to find.”

“The Englishman.”

“English?”

“Sounded like it. The accent—”

“What else?”

“That’s all I got.”

“What does he look like?”

Gomez thought. “Six foot tall. Muscular, but not too much. Black hair. Scruffy. Had a beard. And cold eyes — no light in them.”

“What else?”

“He just started Monday. He was pretty good on a fryer, but, you know, I—”

Adolfo let his jacket swing open again. “Come on, Gomez,” he said. “This is poor. Really — very, very poor.”

The man turned away and scrubbed his fist against his head. “Oh, shit, wait — there is something. He asked if I could recommend a place to stay and so I told him about that place on Calle Venezuela. Shitty place, bums and drunks — just a flophouse, really — I could give you the address if you want.”

“I know where it is.”

Gomez spread his flabby arms. “That’s it — I ain’t got no more.”

“That’s it?”

“I don’t know what else I can tell you.”

A toilet flushed somewhere.

“Who’s that?”

“Maria. Front of house.”

“Tell her to come through.”

The man called out.

“Jesus, Gomez, it’s dark in here.” A woman stood in the doorway. Her hand drifted slowly away from the switch as she saw him. “I knew this wasn’t done with,” she said.