ENCOMIENDA
Chapter 12
My cell phone rang as Iris and I were leaving the motel room for breakfast the next morning. I answered. A female voice said, “Es usted el hombre que buscara los dos muchachos?”
“Sí, soy él.”
“Yo les vi.”
“Donde?”
“Tiene los cinquecientos dolares?”
“Sí.”
“Traigame el dinero y le decira.”
I agreed to meet her at a Mexican cafe in Immokalee.
On the way there, I called Lieutenant Suarez. “I got a bite on the flyers I spread yesterday. I’m going to meet her at the Caballero restaurant. Can you back me up?”
“Ok. I guess it’s huevos rancheros for breakfast. Give me a half hour.”
“If the info’s good, I’ll buy breakfast. Also, can you locate a homeless wino named James ‘Crickets’ Goodson? He’s done time for burglary and maybe some other things.”
“Ok, I’ll have a clerk look him up, and we’ll see what we got.”
Iris and I got there first to a one-story converted stucco house with a sign overhead announcing El Caballero, a green and red awning stretching the length of the house/restaurant and signs in the windows publicizing American and Mexican beers. I parked on the dusty street, told Iris to wait in the car and walked in bright sunlight toward the building.
Two figures stepped out of the shadow of the awning and stood in front of me. I squinted at them and shaded my eyes with my hand: one male, one female, Mexican, their bodies seemed young, but their Indian faces were hard and lined. The male wore a white T-shirt, blue cotton trousers, work boots and a baseball cap. The woman wore brown trousers, a denim shirt and tennis shoes. Her black hair was tied back in a ponytail. In her hands she gripped tightly one of the flyers I had spread around. Their eyes bore into me like little obsidian blades.
The woman said with a voice I recognized from the telephone, “¿Es usted el hombre . . .?”
“Sí, sí. Yo soy el hombre.”
“¿Tiene el dinero?”
“No estoy loco, sabe. Primero, tengo que estar satisfecho que su información es la verdad.”
The woman looked at the man with pleading eyes, but he remained silent and impassive.
Then I saw their eyes widen just before I heard a vehicle pull up and stop on the street behind us. They stepped back into the shadows and the woman dropped the flyer to the ground. I turned around. A large black Ford truck was idling in the street; a fishing pole and a shotgun rested in the rack on the rear cab window.
A huge white man got down from the cab and slammed the door and walked around, so he was facing us. A light blue jumpsuit barely encompassed his rolling flesh. A broad-brimmed straw hat rested on his broad scalp and muddy work boots held in his fat feet. I estimated his height, six feet four inches, and his weight, three hundred fifty pounds. His meaty, sunburned arms hung by his side. He was chewing as his tin-can eyes assessed me. A chill coursed over my body; I saw no human empathy in his eyes.
Then he looked past me into the shadow of the awning. “Juan, Teresa, I been wondrin’ when you were comin’ back to work. Come on. Get in. I’ll give you a ride.”
Teresa and Juan didn’t move. I said, “Excuse me, but we were talking. If they have to go to work, I can take them in a few minutes.”
He smiled, but the smile was insincere. “Well, we need ‘em to get to work now. Ain’t got all day. Vamos, Juan.”
“I told you I’d bring them in a moment. We’re discussing business here.”
He glared at me. “Bidness? What the hell kinda bidness you got wid ‘em? Who are you anyway?” He stepped forward. His hands rolled into fists and curled out again. “Look, mister. I ain’t got no truck wid you, so just min’ your own damn bidness. This ain’t got nothin’ to do wid you. But I need ‘em to come wid me.”
I readied my body for impact. I was sure he was going to take a swing at me.
Then Lieutenant Suarez pulled his car behind the truck, got out and walked quickly over. As he approached, he said, “What’s going on here?”
The butterball softened and stepped back like he remembered something he had to do. “Hi, deputy, nothin’s happenin.’ Jus’ lookin’ fer some a’ my workers. Got crops to get in.” He walked back to the truck, got in and rumbled away.
I said, “Who was that?”
Suarez said, “I don’t know his name, but I’m pretty sure he’s an overseer out at one of the farms.”
“Did you get his license?”
“Sure did. I’ll run it later and see if there’s any dirt on him. Did your informant show up?”
“Yeah,” I turned and found behind me a blank wall. “Well, shit, they were here a minute ago. Butterball must’ve scared them off.” I ran to my car and shouted back, “Gonna skip breakfast! Maybe I can still find them!”
As I climbed in, Iris said, “Whoa, who was that mountain? Was that the fat man? Was that El Gordo?”
“Don’t know. Crew boss maybe.”
I gunned the engine, scooted away from the curb and made a sharp right at the next corner. I scanned left and right for two small shapes, but saw nobody who resembled Juan and Teresa. I slowed to a cruise in second gear and the car growled down a street with fields on either side. I scanned again both fields. Each had undergrowth that someone could hide behind. I stopped the car and yelled, “Juan! Teresa! Venga! Tengo su dinero!”
Silence.
I motored slowly forward another thirty feet, stopped and yelled again the same plea. “Juan! Teresa! Venga! Tengo su dinero!”
Then I spotted on a parallel street Butterball’s black truck – pacing me. I knew the search would be useless as long as he was tagging along.
I did a U-turn and zipped back to the restaurant. Suarez was standing by his car. I stopped, got out and walked to him. He nodded and said, “No luck?” as if he knew the answer.
“No luck. But I know their names – Juan and Teresa.”
“Juan and Teresa what?”
“They didn’t say.”
“Well, with twenty-five thousand migrants in town, most of them Latino, how many Juans and Teresas do you think we have here?”
“A couple thousand?”
“Maybe.”
“But I’m sure they’re a couple.”
“That could narrow it to dozens.”
“In their twenties.”
“Ok, I’ll ask around.”
“Very Indian campesinos.”
I didn’t realize how intense I was until Suarez touched my arm and said, “Could you eat some breakfast now?”
“Yeah, that’ll settle my thoughts . . . and I’ll buy.”
“Then let’s don’t eat here. Bad rep. Follow me to a better place.”
We ate at a truck stop on the edge of town. I gave him all the details I could remember about Teresa and Juan. Suarez said that the fact that those two had shown up was a good sign, probably meant the boys were in the area.
For his part, he passed me a printout on James “ Crickets” Goodson. I skimmed it. Crickets had been arrested a few times for B and E, the last time over ten years ago. Since then he’d had arrests for disturbing the peace, possession of illegal substances and public intoxication. He had transformed from a professional thief into an alcoholic day laborer. His glory days were over.
I said, “Any chance locating him.”
Suarez said, “It won’t be easy, but I’ve got all the officers keeping an eye out for him. The thing is that he could be passed out in some thicket all day. What does he have to do with the missing boys?”
Iris said, “He’s seen them and he knows where they are. I talked to him yesterday.”
Afterwards, he cleared the dispatcher to do an all-points bulletin for Teresa and Juan, with a description. I liked him even more than I had.
While Suarez was doing his checking, I drove Iris around Immokalee to get a better feel for the place. It was busy. Busloads and truckloads of migrants heading out to the fields. Homeland Security personnel sitting in cars and checking the buses and trucks as they passed. Packing houses with trucks queuing up to be loaded, and loaders stacking crates of vegetables in each truck in turn. Trailer parks and the rows of small houses sat devoid of inhabitants, who were all hustling for their daily bread. I heard English – Southern and Caribbean – Spanish – Central American and Caribbean – and Haitian Creole among the voices filling the streets. Everyone hustled for all he or she could get.
And the missing boys were somewhere in the bustle. Buried alive. I felt sure they were alive and not far away. And my encounter with the fat man had shaken me up. What if he was part of what had gobbled them up? I didn’t like that. And I didn’t like the evil gloom that had passed as that man’s shadow.
Iris said, “That fat man gave me a chill. Do you think the boys are here somewhere?”
“Don’t know, but my gut is saying yes.”
My phone rang. Teresa’s voice pleaded once again for me to meet them at a convenience store on the edge of town and bring the money. I did. Nervous and shy, this time Juan handed me a packing label with a green triangle and the white letters AGG set in the broad base of the triangle. Teresa pointed east and said, “Alli estan sus hijos.”
“Traiga me.”
“No, no, señor. El Gordo es muy malo. Tenemos miedo.”
Their faces were taut sheets of terror, so I pulled out the five hundred and handed it to them. “Ok. Muchas Gracias.”
“Por nada.” They nodded unsmiling and disappeared into the bustle of that town. I never saw them again.
Iris said, “What did they give you?”
I showed her the piece of paper.
“It looks like a logo of some kind.”
As midday approached, we sat in the car and looked at the piece of paper with the green triangle. Suarez would know what it meant, so I went to his office. Iris sat on a bench outside the station and read her science textbook.
END of Chapter 12
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