Virtual Virgin

Chapter Twenty-nine

WHEN THE LOVE of your life insists he’s going off with his one-time FBI mentor to find his demonic worst enemy in “the murder capital of the world,” a city that boasted almost five thousand murders last year alone, and you will damn well stay home safe in Las Vegas, what’s a modern woman to do?

Argue herself pink, purple, and puce to no avail, and then say, “Yes, dear.”

So he soaks up the supersteamy farewell sex while you soak up his mushy vows of love and a swift, safe return.

Then you check his cell phone and email in the middle of the night when he’s sleeping sounder than an exhausted sultan after you gave him his third orgasm.

And then . . . you wait a few hours after he heads for the airport, take your hundred-and-fifty-pound wolf-mix dog and ex-reporter savvy, and follow the cocky son-of-a-gun right on down to Mexico and Door Number Three, the murder capital of the world, Ciudad Juarez.

Just for the record, and I know where to find hard facts, Las Vegas averages fewer homicides in one year than the City of Juarez averages in one month.

I MADE THE twelve-hour drive on Highway 93 and I-10 to El Paso in ten hours flat.

No way was Quicksilver shipping in the belly of an airplane. Besides, he was great company on a road trip and loved riding shotgun.

And no way was I leaving my Cadillac Eldorado convertible parked at the border, so I found Dolly a good long-term garage in El Paso for the duration and stored Quick’s car-riding sunglasses in the glove compartment.

Before moving on, I tipped the garage attendant royally. I trusted Vegas’s valet parking demons more than the usual humans, but Quicksilver had shown this guy the size of his shark-worthy fangs.

His friendly parting grin had turned the Anglo attendant a whiter shade of pale. He definitely got the message about what would happen if we came back to find Dolly violated in any way, including a joyride.

Twilight was stretching long shadows even longer as we walked the mile to the border. I hated splitting with Quick a couple blocks from the international bridge. I’d have to walk over the Rio Grande River alone.

“Sorry, boy,” I knelt to tell him. “It’s swim or confiscation.”

For the first time ever, I unbuckled the black leather collar he’d been wearing when I’d adopted him at a shelter event in Vegas’s Sunset Park so soon after arriving in town that I didn’t even have an apartment yet. The volunteers had me when they said such a large dog was so tough to place he was slated for so-called euthanasia right after the event.

Quick was a major reason I’d accepted Nightwine’s offer to live in the Enchanted Cottage on his estate. I couldn’t rent anywhere else with a big dog in the package.

As I slipped off Quicksilver’s collar, he growled, the first time ever at me. My fingertips polished the silver moons that circled the wide black leather.

“I don’t want that death-ridden river tainting your lucky charms, amigo. Bad enough you have to swim it.” Given the strife of the border wars, I wouldn’t be surprised to find the Rio Grande a bloody boiling expanse sweeping thousands of visible corpses along.

Quicksilver arfed eager doggie agreement to my scheme, narrowing his eyes at the stream of cars and pedestrians crossing the bridge. Being mostly gray with touches of beige, I knew he’d blend into the water in the fading light. I hoped my copped ID would also pass better muster at twilight.

“Ric was right. We’re both taking a big risk being here,” I whispered into Quick’s wolfish perked ear. “You don’t have to go with me. Ric and you came into my life on the same day, and I couldn’t forgive myself if harm came to either of you through me.”

Yeah, dogs don’t talk, but they do sense more than we can know.

Quicksilver was not a smoochy dog, but he answered by head-butting my shoulder and taking off at a trot, losing himself in the throng of people, heading right for the banks of Rio Grande . . . Rio Bravo to the natives on the other side.

Too late for me to get cold tootsies. Besides, that was hard to do in the cut-down ankle cowboy boots I’d bought to look touristy-fashionable and harmless. They’d still protect my legs from the brush I expected to encounter. I’d stuffed denim jeggings into them, tough enough for a tromp in the desert but not as hot as heavy-duty jeans in this heat-and-dust soaked climate.

In ten minutes I was filing forward in a line of tourists wearing shorts and sandals, visiting Juarez no matter the death toll and time of day, drawn by cheap prices on Mexican tooled leather, sterling silver, and dentistry.

My silver familiar had tarted itself up as a cuff bracelet inset with lurid blue glass ‘stones’ instead of turquoise . . . nothing anyone would want to steal, but useful proof of presumed previous jaunts to Juarez.

I slung my backpack over one shoulder like a hobo bag and clutched the laminated key to the city in my right hand. My tan-shy white skin wore an air-brushed patina of bronze. Gray contact lenses hid my vivid blue eyes.

With my thick black hair, I looked Latina on first glance, which was important not only for general undercover purposes, but because I held the passport of a Poxx TV News researcher named Ashley Martinez.

An American crew fresh from Juarez had been purging their minds of the horrors they’d seen there in a dim El Paso hotel bar. An ex-reporter like me could blend in and ask questions.

“Plan on paying mordida—bribes,” said a woman who was a smidge heavier, older, and less blonde than most female oncamera TV reporters. “Tell me you’re not a stringer or freelancer?”

“My crew’s already in Juarez, but this is my first trip down. Delilah Street, WTCH-TV, Wichita.” We shook hands.

“I’m Louise Dietz,” she said. “So Kansas is sending crews to Juarez?”

“The drug lords’ smuggling routes cut through the heartland, and so do the addiction and gun-running problems these days.”

“That’s for sure.” She sipped a spiked lemonade. “That’s another thing: buy bottled water or canned pop and drink only that.”

I pulled an Aqua Fina bottle out of the backpack at my feet, which was loaded with high-protein energy bars and foil-packaged dog food.

“You look prepared,” she admitted. “I’ve been doing news for more years than you’ve known how to write your pretty first name, Delilah. I anchored in Santa Fe in my glory days, but I like hard news reporting better. I live to expose the bad guys. You’re not driving in?”

“No. Walking the bridge.”

“So you’re meeting the crew muscle right on the other side?”

“That’s the plan.” News crews on dangerous turf hire locals as guides-cum-bodyguards. Quicksilver didn’t speak Spanish but he sure spoke intimidation, and he was waiting outside the bar.

“You’re lucky your dark hair passes around here. Still, I wouldn’t send a woman crew member on foot alone across the street in Juarez,” Louise said. “If the pollution from the burning tires and junker cars don’t get you, the crazy traffic or the kidnappers will. You’ve got nerve.”

“I’ve got a mission. Like you say, there’s a lot of pollution in Juarez that needs to be exposed. And stopped.”

She was silent for a moment, measuring me. “Most of it’s human. Or are you one of these New Agers that think a bit of the unhuman is messing in our world since the Millennium?”

“I think bad is bad, whatever its origin.”

“Look for it at every step, in every face, and you’ll do all right down there, kid.”

Meanwhile, I’d been watching a young Latina woman about my size who’d been flirting with the beach-boy handsome videographer.

“Thanks for the tips,” I told Louise in good-bye, in pursuit of my oblivious prey. She should have been watching every step, every face. Especially mine.

I followed her into the ladies’ room.

Señorita Martinez had closed her eyes to reapply Urban Decay Zero eyeliner to her lids, a faux decadent beauty product line so appropriate to this time and place. I was heading into the Zero Zone all right. Zero safety. Zero protection. Zero humanity. First I had to get in, so I slipped the tourist card out of the passport in her unzipped purse while her eyes were closed, getting pretty. Back out in the still-sizzling late afternoon sun, I collected my furry escort.

Tourists from the United States weren’t subjected to as much scrutiny as those wanting in. Still, me and Ashley’s tourist card, which allowed a stay of more than seventy-two hours, merited a hard look. My small backpack got a total feeling up. Martinez was a surname that could cut both ways.

“Researcher?” the border guard asked.

“I hope to become a reporter, meanwhile I tote and type up things on my laptop for the glamour guys and gals on camera.”

My notebook computer was getting a thorough check too.

“A woman crossing over alone with night coming on . . . that’s beyond dangerous.”

“I’m meeting the crew right on the other side.”

“Anybody who goes into Juarez these days is crazy.”

“I get you. Hopefully they’ll give me a ton of stories to file and I’ll be back over tomorrow.”

“Trust no one.”

“Thank you, sir.” I accepted custody of my phony tourist card and backpack. “I don’t.”

Crossing the bridge, I was charmed to see Mexican children of all ages wading in the Rio Grande shallows as the shadows lengthened. I paused to enjoy the evidence of kids playing in these brutal times in this godforsaken city.

I noticed a small boy holding a squirming puppy maybe six weeks old. How cute, how sweet . . . I’d never seen Quicksilver at that age. A lump thickened in my throat to see innocence in a war zone.

The boy hefted the pup and threw it far out into the river.

No!

I breathed again to see the tiny head surface. The pup swam hard back toward the shore and the boy . . . when it got there, it was again picked up and thrown into the current. Again blind instinct homed it right back to its tormenter.

I curled my fingers in the cyclone fence towering over the walkway. “No!” I cried.

The child looked up, grinned, bent to pluck the tiny pup from the water, and threw it in farther. Even at such a young age, the puppy regarded a human as its pack leader and would return, no matter what.

Already the cultural divide was staring me in the face. Small boys could be cruel, but moreso in a land where families were gunned down and men dumped in acid and beheaded and young women tortured and raped and buried in the surrounding desert. This was where Ric had been sold into slavery by his own kin at the age of four, long before the cartels had become so unbelievably brutal and bold.

“No,” I screamed again, pulling American bills out of my backpack and rolling them up to stuff them between the twisted wires, hoping they’d drift down to the kid, bribe him to be good. He knew he was upsetting the privileged americana. The puppy would soon tire, sink, and be swept away.

In the middle of the broad river another puppy paddled along, it too heading for the tormenting boy. Was an entire litter being slowly drowned? With human life so cheap, I was witnessing the ghastly trickle-down effect.

The next dog-paddler finally reached shallower water. The forehead I’d spotted rose slowly out of the water. A huge canine body came lumbering onto the shore, the water-logged pup a dripping, scruff-of the-neck burden in the big jaw’s delicate grip.

Quicksilver!

Quick dropped the exhausted puppy on the sandy shore, then stood to his full height and shook the water from his fur until his wolfish hackles stood high and almost dry. His jaws grabbed the boy by the scruff of his T-shirt, and, with one toss, hurled him into the river deep enough to sink and rise and tread water, then swim furiously for a distant shoreline.

A preteen girl who’d been watching the entire drama got the courage to wade ashore and cradle the rescued puppy.

Quick gave one wolfish howl that made every playing child pause in saucer-eyed awe. He spun and streaked away, the sunset haloing his fur with an eerie rose-silver light. I was sure the kids had a new legend to report to their families: seeing the guardian spirit of the river who tolerated no rough play with helpless animals.

Awesome work, dude.

Since Quick was my guardian spirit too, I wondered how or when we’d reconnect.

I finished crossing the bridge, newly wary. This was not Texas anymore. Soon I was swallowed into the crowded commercial streets of the city. Restaurants along the main drag were lighting up for the evening, with hookers appearing in shady doorways. I wondered that they dared, but need drove them to risk being inevitable targets. Or their pimps did.

Low-rider cars, rusted and burned-out American classics like Dolly, and taxis loaded with American tourists, cruised by the women, seeking sex, or even a murderous desert rendezvous, for the night.

I walked briskly, hunting the motel I’d found on the Internet.

Sounds of merciless male laughter and gunshots punctuated the growing dusk.

Cars idled alongside me, male passengers shouting out words I’d seen only in my street Spanish dictionary, mostly puta for prostitute. How did the young women who had to work in the border’s American factories put up with such nightly harassment? Puppies and women didn’t fare well here, and the cartels’ Reign of Terror only upped the atrocities.

No wonder Ric hadn’t wanted me here, but he didn’t realize how far I’d gone to save his life. I wasn’t going to let him lose it now. I’d probably already crossed any normal line between life and death to keep him here and with me.

A scabrous nineteen-seventies Chevy had blocked my path.

“Get in,” a voice ordered in English.

Uh, no.

“Puta!” another male voice labeled me.

I looked around. People filled the street. Nobody glanced toward the calls or the car. Or me.

Okay.

I kicked the opening passenger-side door shut on the emerging man. He yowled at his smashed hand, cursing with impressive bilingual zest. Meanwhile, I dashed into the slow-moving traffic, doing the paso doble through a sluggish parade of big old heavy cruising Detroit metal, ending up on the opposite side of the thoroughfare and down a side street.

Cars thronged the main streets. Here people crowded these narrow side streets, too many to permit rapid changes of direction. I returned my attention to locating the Motel de los Flamencos Rosas. That echo of the Strip’s venerable Flamingo Hotel had somehow seemed comforting.

Someone bumped my backpack. I whirled, ready to fight for my vital belongings.

Quicksilver, dry and bright-eyed, grinned back at me.

No one would dare call me puta now.

Ducking into the doorway of a closed dentist’s office, I pulled his collar from the backpack.

“Here’s your brand of silver mojo,” I said, buckling it around his neck.

Under my fingers, the silver circles swiftly shrank to three-quarters full to mimic the moon’s current phase. The collar’s “coins” tracked the moon’s phases, a phenomenon I didn’t understand but accepted, like many eerie happenings these days.

“Come on,” I told Quick, standing. “I’ve got a motel reservation. You’ll have to wait outside while I claim it, but then you’ve got an inside bunk.”

ACTUALLY, I’D LIED. I just wanted to claim a roof in Juarez with a key to a door. Sleep wouldn’t come until much later.

“Quick, I need you to track down Ric and Leonard Tallgrass,” I said after I sat, gingerly, on the one lumpy armchair in the motel room. “I couldn’t bring any weapons across the border into Murder City, so it’s just you and me.”

I pulled my leather workout gloves from my pack while the silver familiar arranged itself into a major spiked forearm band on my left arm. The left one. I knew why: so I could grab cartel killers with my right hand and put their brutal faces through the cheese-parer of metal on my opposite arm. Mean place, mean weapons.

Seeing Ric’s childhood enslaver, El Demonio Torbellino, in Wichita recently, I knew I’d viewed the ugly face of ultimate evil. If I ever encountered it again, I would not leave it unmarked.

Quick was turning circles on the battered linoleum floor and eyeing the door, slavering.

He either needed a potty break bad, or to sink his teeth into some handy murdering gangsters, and this was the place to do it. Killers teemed only blocks outside our door, where the native Juarez cartel and the Sinaloa group dueled each other to commit the worst atrocity of the day.

Torbellino was probably planning to make them all look like hothouse flowers of evil. Flora di mal. The Spanish I’d learned when Ricardo Montoya came into my life and love life seemed natural.

We had to save ourselves for the main event.

“Just find Ric,” I told Quicksilver. “We make it up from there on.”

I undid the three door locks, fastening my secondhand cop duty belt and black leather motorcycle jacket around my hips for the certain cool of the night coming to hot Juarez.

Quicksilver trotted ahead of me through the thronged streets, tourists even now hunting food, bargains, and prostitutes. I figured we were headed for the outskirts. Juarez, aka El Paso del Norte, housed one-and-a-half-million people, most in poverty, fear, and corrugated steel barrio shacks. Juarez remains the most violent site in the world outside of declared war zones. UN intervention had been called for years ago.

The beige-uniformed police had been the only middle class in a town where rich Norteamericanos had set up factories and fancy homes since the forties and fifties. Now the cops were not only corrupt, but any honest ones were an endangered species.

Quicksilver and I dodged patrolling army troops as we passed through mingled commerce and squalor, barely sensed shadows ourselves. We were silent, fast, and broadcast a Don’t Tread on Me message to both human and canine as we passed the slums.

Thousands of young women who worked in the hundreds of border factories traveled by bus at night. They had died here for two decades, some said as many as five thousand. Most were rape victims who’d showed signs of “torment and torture,” news stories reported, making me shudder to wonder what the possible difference between two such dreadful words could be.

Most were presumed to be prey of human and unhuman traffickers like Torbellino, the ones who refused to go quietly into that degraded slavery. Ric hadn’t been in Torbellino’s brutal hands then, having been rescued as a “wild child” by the right upper-middle-class Washington professionals before the “femicides” began.

The other most likely suspects were the drug gangs with initiation rites of raping and killing a girl or woman, no matter how young or old. The Mexican police either joined the gangs in their brutality or were targeted by them for death if they didn’t.

Miserable, starving dogs slunk around the thinning buildings and hovels, too cowed to attack living prey. No children haunted the darkening streets, all corralled in whatever homes they had. The homeless ones were in the brighter, all-night border streets, selling themselves. This place made my traumas at the hands of mid-America’s children’s services seem minor.

Quicksilver was leading me into the so-called city suburbs where the femicides had taken place near dirt roads. In the desert beyond, most of their bodies had been buried and later discovered. This place was so crammed with human evil and darkness it must have kept even the predatory supernaturals out.

Quick whimpered beside me.

“Yeah, it’s a dark time in a dark place. You picking up any scents besides rotting things?”

His gait, always a fluid trot, kicked up into a hard-driving cantor. I began jogging, glad for the Dr. Scholl’s insoles in my motorcycle boots.

Don’t call me wimpy; call me prepared. I’d gone solo on some dicey crime scenes when reporting on paranormal activities back in Wichita. Some would call me crazy for going alone into this meat grinder of a landscape, but when your partner goes off to the crime capital of the continent, you’re supposed to do something about it, according to noir detective Sam Spade. Unlike him, I wasn’t waiting until my partner was dead. Or dead again.

My boot heels beat out a rhythm. Ric-is-just-around-the-bend. Come-on-creeps-and-meet-your-end.

Quicksilver had lived up to his name. Our feet were already pounding into the hard-packed sand of the countryside. Away from the glare of city commerce, my only guide was the moonlight winking off of his collar. A high-intensity flashlight was tucked in my backpack but I wasn’t slowing down in rattlesnake and scorpion country to crouch and dig for technological help.

I heard lightning crackle in the distance and stared up at the starless night. We were still close enough to Ciudad Juarez that the city lights made stars hard to see.

The lightning snapped again and again. I slowed my pace, Quick idling with me.

Was it lightning I heard, or the crack of El Demonio’s thirty-foot bull whip? He must be encamped near the city. And Ric, of course, would be hunkered down right on top of his immortal enemy.

My boot soles scraped sand as I hustled up a sage-covered hill, realizing Quick’s feathered lower legs would be picking up burrs and cactus thorns. No insoles or ankle boots for dogs. I wished for the booties the search-and-rescue dogs had used at Ground Zero in 9/11, but my idea came a little late.

Quicksilver would have scorned such niceties, anyway. Now on the scent, his churning legs were kicking up sand and rarin’ to breast the brow of the hill. I charged up alongside him, only to teeter on the brink of a pit. I surveyed a stretch of shifting, sizzling, hissing sand quivering with nocturnal desert life, moonlight scintillating off scales and shiny shells.

Leaping lizards and tarantulas and scorpions and rattlesnakes! It was a desert vermin convention. What would have the local toxic nightlife scrambling to escape en masse?