Down Beside the Rails

Exploring themes of legacy of familial obligation and violence amidst systemic failings.

ONE

         The City View Hotel was even worse than the last two, and they had been some of Phoenix’s shitholes of shitholes. The kind of shitholes where crackheads lay in puddles of their own bile and piss, date rape dumpster babies littered the darker corners of dark alleyways reeking of some foul unnamable scent that lingered between decomposing trash and regret, and girls like her became fantasmas daily. After being drugged, beaten, and raped. And not always in that order.

         Those kind of shitholes.

         So-called because the haze-haloed fingers of downtown Phoenix lay clustered and barely visible on the northeast horizon, with expanses of shady warehouses, shadier strip clubs, and even shadier barrios clustered in between, the City View Hotel was a dingy little shithole tucked along the Grand Avenue Rails and the foot of some black razor’s back of a no-name mountain. The shadow of the Grand Avenue overpass was an eerie monochromatic pall that Sol, despite his molten pewter-yellow eye of pagan rage burned bright through the late afternoon haze, seemed trepidant to scathe with his fiery fingers. Unlike the prestigious Camelback or Thunderbird Mountains – or even the beautiful saguaro-dotted desolation of South Mountain, the largest public park on the planet she had read about and wanted to see, where she imagined walkers, hikers, runners, and cyclists had been milling up and down the dusty escarpments and trails since dawn – the mountain looming from the haze beyond the motel and rails made Maria think of some grotesque bruise rising from the dirty desert grit. High above the mountain’s jagged steppes the only sign of life, the dark form of a huge bird, soared in listless circles; it momentarily vanished in the haze then reappeared in its circuit, waiting for whatever carrion it had espied to take its last breath before swooping down and rending flesh from bone.

         It was fifty-two degrees, an abnormally frigid late afternoon for any native desert-dwelling creature, the end of October and the days short. Stirring those dusty routs of the Kaan Ilk from their lull - the Wind Serpents of her Maya cousins - dust-devils danced and writhed around the galley-style parking in their angry cantor, vanishing as quickly as they had manifested; when Maria stepped out of David’s old Caddy, she could feel the bite of the wind as it swept across the valley, a burning-cold rush of dread that something was not right and something worse was to come gnawing deep into her bones.

         “It’s room twenty-four,” David said, pointing along the drive-up accommodations. Trash flittered and rolled across the parking lot; a man in dirty ragged clothes accosted a Black woman taking long draws from a crack pipe outside a room; a mangy stray dog meandered down the hotel walk, stopped to sniff the air here and there, hiked its leg at a door to piss, then continued in its search for whatever scrap had caught its nose. “Down there. At the end.”

         “Why are we doing this here?” Maria asked, her soul feeling dirty as her dark eyes took in the Skid Row bank of what she presumed were pay-by-the-hour rooms, her shoulders slumping as what little dignity she had sloughed off them like the shedding of second skin. The roar of traffic from the Grand Avenue Overpass above proved a steady growl, disrupted only by the blaring of a horn, wailing sirens, the THU-DUMP! THU-DUMP! of a stereo system, the sharp report of what might have been a gunshot in the distant barrio. The shithole hotel brought her pause; down by the rails, no one would hear her scream.

         David replied with a snort of loser’s arrogance that made his pale jowls jiggle. “For fuck’s sake. Can’t have the same background every time. We’re ‘On Location,’ as they say. Don’t you know what that means?”

         “I - I guess,” she replied, her voice low and subdued from the condensation that saturated his words. If that cold-hearted perra, experience, had bequeathed to her one token scar over the past two years, it was that her father had been right about one thing in his cruel fanaticism; even in the 21st century Americanos thought Mexico a third world country, its people uneducated, primitive. It was a mentality she knew any argument she put forth to the contrary would prove futile and elected to change the subject.

         “But –“ whether from the wind’s frore or a deeper chill that she could not place, a shiver scurried up her spine and she pulled her fuzzy jacket tighter, wrapping her arms around her petite frame. “But I’m freezing.”

         “Lighten up. We’ll be inside in a minute, so…” David said in an annoyed breath that oozed from his lips, his face reddened from the wind as he fumbled his camera bag out the Caddy’s trunk.

         Maria could not remember when it had begun, but as any female with a keen intuition, she could sense, in every conversation they had in recent months, the venom in David’s words. Like he had tired of her and she was a burden on his life, a weight dragging him down into the depths. He’d never tried to make a move on her - not that she would put it past him, the pervertido that he was - nor had he ever raised a hand to her - not that she would put that past him either - but for months now there had been a lingering, nauseating sense of the two of them as a bickering couple, as ‘ball and chain’ as the Americanos would say. It made her think of those miserable couples she would see on The Sydney Trent Show when shut away in her room at David’s trashy Peoria apartment.

         María found him insufferable at times – the jowl-jiggling pig’s snort basked in his loser’s arrogance, the way his beady pigeon eyes would undress her, and the poser’s maschismo he wielded as if it were his Sunday’s Best – and loathed herself for being so naive and gulliable as to allow him to have become her benefactor.

         What was a girl to do? It wasn’t like she’d had any viable options before her. She had no education beyond a few months into preparatoria. No real skills of value to any legitimate would-be employers. No amigas or familia, save her padre. No connections that might help her.

         She had thought about breaking away from him so many times, packing what little belongings and money she had hoarded away, a copy of the key to the lock on her window in hand, prepared to run as fast and as far as she could. That had not been an option either; being her father’s daughter - for all the hate she harbored for him, she had learned some things from him María knew that she lacked the contacts or resources to do so. She considered going to a modeling agency or a photographic studio, maybe a real talent agent – as she had planned when she left her father’s villa to make her own path, not one built upon the blood and bodies of innocents - but that dream had begun to fade over a year ago; she had no real sense of how to even begin the process. She could head out to California on her secret cache of saved money – two hours west on the I-10 to the state line, the smoggy Land of Red Carpets a few hours more beyond – but she needed contacts there, in L.A. Without contacts she was viscously spinning around in a perpetually revolving door that had opened when she'd left her father's villa: sixteen, alone, on the streets in a country that hated her people because of men like her padre.

         Despite all the promises to the contrary, all the pledges to introduce her to this big person or that in L.A. and make her a star, after two years she knew that David wasn’t going to give her even one.

         If the pendajo has any at all, she questioned, a once sparse notion that had become a reoccurring theme in past months. Wrapping her fuzzy coat tight around her, María followed David to the room, unable to shake a feeling of dread that had dug deep in her bones.

         She’d been haunted lately by the daytime talk shows she’d watch in stolen moments when David was passed out drunk, the somber segments squeezed between makeovers and weight-loss success stories, the ones that delved into the grim realities of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women – MMIW, they called it. The statistics were horrifying, etched into her memory like a brand: Latina and Native American women disappearing at disproportionately high rates in the US, Mexico, and Canada , their cases often ignored or mishandled. She knew the numbers by heart, each digit a hammer blow to her sense of safety.

         Today, the feeling in the pit of her stomach was a swirling vortex of dread. Was David capable of it? Could he actually hurt her, dispose of her body in the vast, unforgiving desert that surrounded Phoenix, leaving her for the coyotes and vultures to feast on? The thought was sickening, a grotesque image that played on repeat in her mind. She tried to reason with herself, to dismiss it as paranoia fueled by too much television and only hints of real-world threat. David was a shitbag, sure, but the venom in his words, the coldness in his eyes, felt undeniably real. It was a slow burn of terror, a premonition that refused to be extinguished. She envisioned her bones bleaching under the relentless sun, her story lost to the vast, indifferent landscape and she wondered if she should try to escape if the opportunity arose or if today was the day she became a fantasma.

TWO

         Among the sun-scorched barrens of their Sonora Mexico villa María had grown up in the shadow of the Comacho Vila Cartel, whose loyalty under her father, Pascal Moreno Saez, fell to the Sinaloa Cartel. Despite the opulent trappings of her upbringing and the facade of love from her father – she had not been the nino that he had wanted - from a young age María had renounced every attempt at being groomed to inherit his criminal empire. The last of those attempts, a specter that haunted both her sleeping and waking states.

         The terrace of their luxurious Phoenix villa was warm that evening, the day’s heat radiating from the flagstone as Maria and her father, Pascal, sat across from each other at a small Mexican tile-topped bistro table. The sounds of the distant city rollled across the valley from the east and drifted up the mountainside to them, a stark contrast to the serene and peaceful setting of their Hacienda in Mexico’s Desierta Sonoran.

         ‘This is the way things are in our world, María,’ her father said calmly, taking a sip of his drink.

         Her eyes narrowed as she responded, her tone laced with bitterness. 'I do not want any part of - of this! I remember telling you that I wanted to be a doctor, to help people. OUR people! And - and do you remember what you did, what you said to me -‘ her expression twisted into one of anger and resentment, “- You scoffed at me. You said that ‘blood is thicker than water.' She shook her head, her frustration evident. ‘Sangre? Pfft…La muerte tiene mas honor que tu!’

         Her father’s posture remained relaxed, but she had clearly seen how his face hardened as he replied, his tone subtle but forceful. ‘I was just trying to protect you, María. Our enemies would love nothing more than to see you vulnerable and weak.’

         Maria scoffed, crossing her arms in front of her. ‘OUR enemies? No: your enemies. And this ,” she waved her arm about the villa, “this is what you want for me? All this bloodshed and violence that has consumed our family.’

         His expression softened, his tone taking on a hint of sadness. ‘No, mi hija.’ He sighed. ‘But it is our way of life, Los Familia Saez. And you, as my only child, are meant to continue it.'

         María's anger boiled her blood. She stood up from her chair, leaning forward on the table, her dark eyes glistening with tears and pity as they locked onto her father’s cold soulless eyes. ‘I refuse to continue this cycle of violence, father. I will not be another pawn in your games.’

         Her father’s calm demeanor never faltered as he responded, his words carrying a subtle hint of warning. ‘You may think you have a choice, but you are bound to our family and our legacy. You will come to realize that eventually.’

         By the age of fourteen, she had already borne witness to a lifetime's worth of unspeakable violence and corruption inflicted upon her people. As any devout Mexican Catholic, María loved her father, but she had long known him to be a malevolent force. She yearned for a life far removed from the one he intended for her.

         Two years ago, her father’s work had brought them to southern Arizona – some murky affair involving a ranch along the border and both the American and Mexican governments. Longing for a normal life, her own life, fed up with the constant peril and confinement, forced to be shuttled around in armored caravans and escorted to her new school by armed guards (the looks on her peers’ faces voicing the words they were too frightened to say aloud), María made a bold and reckless decision. Not her brightest moment. A foolish act, if she was to be honest with herself, considering her father's status as one of the most powerful men in North America, backed by the resources of the largest, most powerful cartel.

         She had promised herself that the first opportunity she had to get as far away as she could, she would; she would not be the monster her father was. Nor have any damn thing to do with his criminal empire.

         What began as childlike wonder, the fantastical notions of youth, quickly ebbed, and with no money or connections, she found herself alone and vulnerable on the unforgiving streets of Phoenix. Desperate to survive, haunted by the memory of lavish meals and the ceaseless whisper in her mind urging her to admit defeat, to steal a phone and call her father to take her home, María fell prey to David, a repulsive, overweight gringo who posed as a "Talent Agent."

         Her recollection was vivid - the bus stop on south Central Avenue past the South 1st Street rail tunnel, the slow predatory advance of his baby blue Cadillac, the cheaply tinted window rolling down, nauseating waves of stale smoke and sun-cooked sweat seeping from the interior, his greasy features and beady eyes peering out from his sweat-slimed potato head, the invitation to lunch and insidious promises of a modeling career and a better life. But reality

         What had begun as the hope for a new and better life, had revealed itself to be far more depraved, exploiting her vulnerability and innocence with callous impunity.

THREE

         María shivered as David opened the door, her teeth chattering, “D-D-D-i-o-s-e-s-s-s M-m-mi-o, hace f-f-frio.”

         “You’re the only person I know can be cold in the goddamned desert,” David said as he stepped into the dark room, dust motes dancing in the few rays of sunlight that had made it past the overpasses shadow to the doorway.

         The room was as cold as it was outside. The drapes were drawn over the single window, a slight draft around the sill fluttering the thin fabric, casting deep mocha-hued shadows in the corners. Rather than opening the drapes to wash the room in what little sunlight there was down beside the rails, David crossed the small room and turned on one of the end table lamps beside the bed nearest the window; washing the room in a sickly jaundiced hue, the lamp buzzed with the surge of electricity. The tamped-down carpet seemed completely beaten of its color, but that could have been an effect of the eerie yellow light. The beds were concave beneath threadbare covers that bore the dark stains of God only knew what manner of biologicals; she choked back a sudden surge of bile thinking how they would want her on those beds.

         David turned the heater under the window to High – it gurgled and clanked, the portent of a Death Rattle; roaches and scorpions scurried from the dust-filmed vents. María screeched and jumped. Shaking his head at her, David stomped on what stragglers that he could, their spindly legs twitching and alien insides glistening, adding to the stains on the carpet. Not bothering to clean up the corpses and oozing entrails, he then strolled back across the room to find the remote and popped on the old tube television. A game show was on.

         María sat on the bed with her faux fur coat on, questioning her motivation.

FOUR

         “This place totally sucks,” María said. “Why are we here?”

         As if he found her impossibly dull and was tired of having to explain, David let out a breath seeped in something that lingered in the shadows between annoyance and over-dramatized exhaustion. “It’s a ‘location,’ like I said. We are here because it sucks. It’s not wise to go digging into the dark fantasies of men.”

         She answered him only with a roll of her eyes and turning the channel to Montel.

         María had become something of a talk show addict, sitting on her bed learning the currency of empowerment, a sex-positive lifestyle, and having the courage to dream. If she told David about those dreams, he would probably laugh at her. Nada. No “probably” to it – he would. A couple of months ago, he would have told her that he’d get her there. That he would introduce her to this big name or that one out in L.A. Make her a star. A lot of talk and no action.

         On the TV, its color-faded image flickering, Montel revealed to a young husband and wife that they are, and unbeknownst to themselves, half-brother, and sister. The audience gasped and shrieked.

         David opened his camera bag, NIKKON blazoned across its face in bold red lettering, and began getting his equipment ready. He popped the flash a few times and screwed the camera body onto a tripod. He then turned to look at her, in her furry coat and gray sweats and heavy boots.

         “Why don’t you go in the bathroom and get yourself ready?” he said. “The guy will be here anytime.”

         She took her coat off and threw it on the bed, began to kick her boots off, then thought twice about her bare feet on the dingy colorless carpet, and what frigid horrors the bathroom tile floor might harbor. Revolt, masquerading as a shiver, scurried up her spine at the thought - she decided to leave them on and stepped into the bathroom.

         Regardless, the dirty Mexican-tiled floor was like ice to her feet, it’s frore clawed through the soles of her boots and nipped at the marrow in her bones. She held her breath imagining what secreting larva and scurrying insects might be revealed when she flicked on the light but – gracias a la Virgen María - there was none. She placed her bag on the small vanity, the piss-yellow linoleum veneer chipped and cracked along the corners and edges, and stared at it, her face placid; inside it she had the requisite costuming – the stockings, the red lace bustier and thong panties, the stiletto stripper heels – and the stolen gun. Loaded. Which she had become less afraid of and carried just in case.

         She decided not to put on her costume until the shithole room got a whole hell of a lot warmer, and started with her makeup, laying it on thick and heavy. Her habit was to paint her right eye completely, then her left, her lips. Though scratched and tarnished like the mirrors in a prison movie, the small bathroom vanity light hummed as it cast a jaundiced luminance and deep shadows about her face, she loved the transmutation she saw in the mirror at those moments. People from her past life would probably never recognize her in one of those photos – part innocent girl next door and part the whore married men masturbated too on the shitter while their wives lay dry and untouched, the adaptation into a more amplified version of her own essential self.

FIVE

         María had one eye finished when she heard the knock, and David’s muffled greeting, then the slam of the door – it startled her, and she jumped with a gasp. Then silence. A cold vacuity that caused her heart to flutter painfully in her chest, jagged shards of ice suddenly coursing through her veins. The last time she had heard a silence like that –

- her eyes, seemingly of their own volition, glanced at her bag, reeling her from her thought.

         If push came to shove, could she use the gun? Could she take another person’s life? To do so would be to become the monster her father was. Even in self-defense.

         Despite the fantastical portrayals of Mexican and cartel life found in the cinema and network dramas, most Mexicans were not criminals. And those few who happened to be raised by criminals did not grow up with a natural inclination towards firearms and violence. María’s experience had been the opposite; having witnessed the carnage, the wrent flesh, the glistening entrails, and puddles of blood that a bullet could reduce the human body to more times by the age of fourteen than most would in a lifetime, María was against guns.

         She could still hear the heater in the throes of its Death Rattle – ca-LINK! CLACK! CA-link! – it had not kicked in and David had lost his gringo mind if he expected her to undress before it did. She stepped out the bathroom, halfway into character, the half-face of “Sasha Sensual” atop the sweats-clad body of María Saez, but the room was empty. She stepped to the window, pulled back the dingy curtain, and looked out to the parking lot. Next to his Caddy David stood in discussion with her apparent co-star, a skinny, middle-aged gringo who was vaguely unappealing. He shifted on his feet, head twisting this way and that as his eyes darted back-and-forth behind his old wire-frame glasses. She had seen the same look in men’s eyes as they stood before her father, in others along the dirty allies as they tithed their souls to the Dioses of their addictions.

         He is overly nervous, María thought. Or hopped up on some drug.

         David held out his hands, as if to calm the man; their voices, muffled through the window like words being spoken through dirty gauze, dropped and she watched as they bowed their heads in toward each other. The man looked around, like a crackhead scouring the surroundings for el policia, then took a clump of cash from his pocket and handed it to David.

         “¿Qué diablos?” Maria gasped, her stomach making a sickening flip.

SIX

         As the two men re-entered the room, María was sitting on the edge of the bed. Her appearance was disheveled; black hair loosely tied back in a messy bun and her face sporting the stark contrast between her two eyes - one was heavily made up with dark, smoky eyeshadow while the other was bare and natural.

         It was clear that she had started getting ready but had not quite finished.

         “Why aren’t you ready?” David asked, eyeing her with the scrutiny of an abusive parent.

         Despite her disheveled appearance, María's gaze held a sense of determination and strength that David had never seen in her, as if she were preparing herself for whatever was to come, that she was not one to be taken lightly, and David could sense that the shit was about to hit the fan.

         “Donde esta sus ese tu denaro?” she inquired in return, all venom and ice.

         The man looked instantly alarmed. “Hey, what? What the hell is - is this?” he said nodding at María, dressed in her sweatpants, a worn-out t-shirt, fuzzy faux jacket, and face half-painted, his gaunt face twisting into a mask of disgust. “You - you said she was classy, spoke English. You didn’t say anything about some savage wetback half painted up like some crackhead gothic geisha” he said to David.

         “Espalda mojada salvaje? Estúpido puto americano.” She hissed at the man, spitting at his feet. She turned to look at David, her face twisted in anger, eyes tightened into dark vorpal dirks and asked, voice still all venom and ice. “Why is he giving you money? Why is he paying you if you’re selling these pictures on the internet?”

         “You’re – you’re selling these pictures on the internet?” The man said, his nervous eyes bulging beyond their limits like those of some alien deep-sea fish as he realized that the arrangement was not as anonymous as David had led him to believe. “You said only I would get them.”

         “Fuckin’ A,” David said, groaning out a breath.

         “Who the hell are you?” María glowered at the man.

         “Me? I’m leaving, that’s who the fuck I am,” he said.

         “WHOA! Hang on there, buddy, le-let me explain,” David plead, his palms up in that American Politician’s gesture he would always use to try and placate an angry client. But María knew it was not so much an act of placation as it was the act of a pathetic, desperate man on the defense.

         “No - no need,” the man said. “Please give my money back.” He continued to nervously glance from David to María to the window and door, as if expecting a raid by el Migra or the FBI.

         “Look, it-it’s fine, Ok?” Davd said. “Just, uhm…just wait.” David straightened, a weak attempt to regain what little dignity he had, and turned to María, anger burning in his eyes. “You’d do this to me? Disrespect me like this? After all I’ve done for you?”

         “Qué has hecho por mí?” she snapped back, knowing he did not understand Spanish, and that it pissed him off when she spoke it. “NOTHING!”

         “Oh? You’re making a huge mistake, saying that. I may not know what you said, but I understand what you meant,” his squealing voice flat and monotone, an icy whisper that made his words even more menacing. “You don’t want that kind of trouble.”

         “You - You’d be the one in trouble,” she said. “This wasn’t the deal, what you’re doing. How many of these pendajos have been paying you?”

         “A lot.” David said flatly. “What? You – “he chuckled. “You think I’m making this money on the internet? There are a million girls out there. Half the girls from your fucking high school class are showing their tits and asses on the internet these days. For Free!” David snorted. “That’s a good joke, whatrver you just said. I did what I had to do to help you not be living on the damned streets.”

         “Take - take me home right now,” María demanded, standing, and stomping across the room to the bathroom, packing her bag.

         “I’ll take you home when you stop mouthing me like a little bitch who doesn’t know her place.” David shouted at her.

         “I’ll mouth you all I want!” She snapped back, her voice echoing in the tiny bathroom. “May-maybe I’ll tell el policía. Then go to California on my own. Maybe I’ll tell mi Padre.”

         “I’m tellin’ you only one more time that you’re making a huge mistake with this,” David said through clenched teeth and tightened fists.

SEVEN

         As María packed her bag in the bathroom, she couldn't shake the feeling of despair that had settled in her chest. She had been a young girl when she first met David, a predator who had lured her in with false promises of a better life. He had exploited her vulnerability and turned her into a pawn in his twisted game, forcing her into a life of unspeakable horrors. The false hope of a glamorous future had led her down a path of darkness that she could never escape.

         When she stepped out of the bathroom, she saw David standing in front of the door, blocking her way.

         "Move, David," she said, her voice filled with rage and fear. But David didn't budge.

         "You're not leaving, María. You belong to me," David growled, his eyes filled with malice; he lunged at her. María's heart pounded in her chest as she realized the danger she was in; her mind flashed back to the day she had first encountered David, a manipulative figure who had preyed on her innocence and sold her body for his own monetary gain. She had been a mere child, lured in by the false promises of a better life, only to be trapped in a cycle of degradation and despair. She had tried to break free from his hold before, but he had always managed to drag her back into the abyss of his depravity.

         "Let me go, David! You have no right to keep me here," she pleaded, her voice filled with desperation as he overpowered her, meaty palms clasping like vices around her arms.

         David sneered at her, tightening his grip on her, his cold eyes filled with a sickening sense of control, the fetidness of his breath, sour and moldy, washing over her face in hot waves that made her stomach roil more. He forced her to the ground, the weight of his malevolence crushing her spirit.

         "You think you can just walk away from me? I made you, . You owe me everything," David snarled, his eyes burning with a vile sense of entitlement.

         She had no way out, no one to help her. In a moment of desperation, she reached for the stolen gun in her bag, but before she could even grasp it, David knocked it out of her hand and threw it across the room. María was defenseless against his brute strength.

         "Please, David, don't do this," she begged, tears streaming down her face.

         David ignored her pleas, his hands closing around her throat, squeezing. María fought for air, her struggles became weaker, her desperate gasps for breath growing faint, her vision blurring and David's sinister laugh was the last thing she heard as darkness closed in around her.

EIGHT

         They’d brought in construction lights, running on gas generators, to allow the work down in the dark and the shadows beneath Grand Avenue where it hurdled past the railway tracks. The noise of equipment gave his own mental workings a machinelike drone, as if the throbbing valves and gears were inside the casing of his skull. Yellow police tape ran out along the rails, strung from huge, rusted fuel tanks to the char of abandoned cars to leaning phone poles, and then to a coterie of police cruisers beyond that, their red, white, and blue lights strobing in the background.

         El policía had allowed him down beside the rails because it was possible that he was familia.

         Family.

         The Captain from the Peoria Police Department who was overseeing the scene – a fat gringo chinga de Madre who had kept telling him “Don’t jump to conclusions; we’re not even certain what we have yet, other than its human remains.” His tone had been unconvincing.

         Pascal Moreno Saez stood with his hands in the pockets of his leather frock jacket; no gloves or hat to fend against the desert’s “Withing Hour” chills, just the imposing style of his 19th-century Caballero progenitors. He had his iPhone in his pocket, but decided he would not call his wife until he knew exactly what was going on. He refused to make her suffer such a slow unveiling; that was his burden to bear. He hadn’t even bothered his most trusted Tenientes, bringing none with him. Not even his driver.

         Pascal stood alone. The fact that he’d been allowed down there beside the rails had not only been the result of who was, but because of who it may be in the poorly covered grave, apparently sniffed out by a vagrant’s dog on its late evening walk. They had known that someone had to get him, more than two months after he had finally put the words out through el policía that he wanted his daughter located.

         It is in these moments, in which the past might be irretrievable, that we must want to retrieve the past, the notion rolled through his mind as he reflected on the events that had brought him here, down beside the rails.

         Pascal had let her go from their home for one reason: with her, went the chaos. Following her departure there had been peace, and he’d found it surprisingly easy to accept. At first, he’d suspected that she was probably down on west Cactus Avenue and 141st Street with her American white-trash boyfriend, and while he might have gone and dragged her back by her hair kicking and screaming, he resolved that it would be best to simply let it play out. He wanted her to come back, cowering like a beaten perra with its tail between its legs, and beg to be forgiven. A tactic that had served him well over the years; in his position he had to show that he was both magnanimous and the one who made the rules. Even if that magnanimity were a façade, a means of control.

         And hadn’t that been one of the many truths behind why he had found himself nearly hating her, his only child? His absolute inability to control her. From his early days in Sonora with the Mexican Sureuño gang, Los Wonders, Pascal had spent the better part of his life learning how to clamp down on men; he had learned to intimidate, to strike fear in the hearts of men, to take control and then he did it. But this child, she refused to be brought into line by all the threats, retribution, or withdrawals he could bring against her.

         As always, Pascal played the Hard Guy. El Jefe.

         After a month his wife had finally sat him down and demanded to know where her hija was; he’d sent one his Falcons looking, and it turned out she was not living with the boyfriend as they had assumed – as if Miguel’s unwillingness to accept the niño blanco, the white boy, had been the purported reason for her departure.

         His wife had laid into him on that one and still he played the hard guy; he would not her the satisfaction of seeing that he had begun to worry a little as well. He would make looping drives through the barrio, checking with his men down at the industrial park docks, the Teamsters’ Hall, those over in Little Mexico in the West Valley, and crossing the side streets, meandering, keeping an eye out. But there had been no sign of her, his María, that furious girl in her too-short tank top and sneakers and hair so black that even Sol could become lost (or perhaps extinguished) within its obsidian depths.

         He remembered stopping at the Circle-K and watching from his Navigator, parked across the street, as the boyfriend listlessly attended his daily labor of stocking the walk-in with cerveza. How he had wanted to storm in the trashy convenience store and beat the kid to bloody bruise of a person, demanding to know things that he knew would be denied. But whatever impulses he’d had were suppressed both by the fact that the Circle-K was territory in which even he needed to tread lightly, as well as the fact that for him to show such desperation was to lose the most intangible and valuable thing he had – namely the perception by all that there was not a hint of desperation in him.

         Without that, he could not be.

         Well beyond la Ahoras el Bruja, the Witching Hours, and nearing dawn, the starless desert night had grown deeply cold, but the ground beneath would not freeze; the earth – the monotonous gray-tan dirt, gray-brown grit, and gray-black rock that was the Sonoran Desert – turned easily under the trowels of the forensics lab rats. After some hours of their archeology, the body came out of the hole – he could not think of it as a grave - wrapped in heavy-gauge plastic contractor bags, one bad over the head and another over the feet, taped at the waist with duct tape.

         The work of an amateur.

         The detectives had told him that the Maricopa County Coroner had used a scalpel to make a small incision along the bag to ascertain that it was indeed a body, one of recent vintage, and more likely than not a female. Pascal had come as soon as he had heard, and although he never filed an official report, the policía let him stand and wait, there, down beside the rails.

         “As I’m certain that a man of your stature and repoire is aware,” the captain had also told him, “There are a lot of lost people in the desert, both listed and not, both local and not. It could be anybody in that bag.”

         So, Pascal stood, alone. Thinking of how he might have done so much differently and did not. Thinking of what had happened to his hija. And thinking of who would have done such a thing, and why, and what he would do to make things even again.