Phoenix Noir

A shadow behind the door moved. My eyes flicked to it, and Pamela made a little throaty noise. “Oh, don’t even try that …” she began, and then went “Uk!” as a slender Hispanic guy in dark jeans and a black T-shirt stepped out and hit her on the head with the butt of his gun.

Pamela’s weapon spun out of her hand as she went down and hit the washing machine with a booming noise, but I didn’t try to dive for it.

“Who the hell are you?” the Hispanic guy said, looking me over.

“A newspaper reporter. Should I ask who you are?”

“No, that wouldn’t be a good idea.” He spoke good English, but it wasn’t his first language. He glanced at the body and shook his head, then peered back at me, thoughtful.

“Okay,” he said, making up his mind. “You going to help me get him out of here, all right?”

“Er …” I raised an eyebrow at Pamela, who was groaning on the floor.

“Yeah, right. Put the lady in the closet.” He waved the gun toward what looked like a broom closet—though you don’t usually see broom closets with deadbolts on the outside.

Pamela was bleeding from her scalp, and vomited when I dragged her up onto her feet. It was a messy business, but I got her in the closet and the door bolted. I was streaming with sweat by the time I finished, and wondered whether there was any air in the closet. Then I looked up and saw small holes drilled through the wood—ventilation.

“For troublemakers,” the guy said with a shrug. “Just in case, you know?”

I looked at the body, and wiped the back of my hand across my mouth. His stomach had swelled up like a balloon, and it was too damn easy to imagine what it’d be like if he popped.

My friend was thinking along the same lines.

“Garbage bags,” he said, gesturing with the gun toward the door to the garage. “Move slow.”

The garage was crowded with filled garbage bags, some of them broken and spilling. Fast-food wrappers, fragments of stale tortillas, empty refried-bean cans. Several small furry things scuttled out of the pile, and the guy kicked at one but missed.

“Rats,” he said with a shrug.

“Ground squirrels.”

My pal shrugged and motioned to an open box of giant leaf bags. I took two, and, holding my breath and keeping a grip on my belly muscles, slipped one over Jaramillo’s head and the other over his feet. The guy with the gun tossed me a set of keys.

“Back the truck into the driveway.”

The truck might have been Jaramillo’s; it was a pickup with a ratty trailer made of white wire mesh, rakes and shovels in holders at the back, piled with garden trash. I wrestled Jaramillo’s body into the trailer, then got behind the wheel, at my friend’s urging.

“Drive.”

Within ten minutes we were headed south on the 101. The pickup had good AC and my hands and arms were freezing in the blast of cold air, but I was still drenched in sweat.

“How did you get them in there?” I asked at last, breaking the silence. A SWAT negotiator I’d interviewed once told me that what you do in a hostage situation is get the perp talking. Keep them talking, because if they’re talking, they aren’t shooting.

My captor blinked.

“The illegals,” I said. “You’re a coyote, right?”

“Yeah,” he said softly.

“Heck of an idea. Hiding them in Scottsdale, I mean. How’d you get them in and out of the house?”

He lifted one shoulder, off-handed.

“Yard trucks, hoopties. You drive a truck like this down any street in Scottsdale, three, four Mexicans in the back—who looks at yard guys? Everybody’s got yard guys. A beater car pulls up at the end of the street, two women get out—domesticas, nannies.” He smiled, but there wasn’t much humor in it. “They belong here.”

“How many people were in that house when the cops came?”

“Sixty-three.”

“Jesus.” Sixty-three people huddling in that house, afraid to move for fear of making a sound. Probably afraid of more than the cops too.

“Was he—” I jerked a thumb toward the trailer behind us, “in there, then?”

He sighed and shifted his weight a little. “Yeah.”

“Dead?”

“Yeah.”

Conversation lapsed until we hit the 202 and turned west.

“You kill him?” I asked, trying to keep it casual.

“No.” His eyes widened a little in surprise, and he shook his head. “I don’t kill people. Unless I have to,” he added.

I figured a coyote probably had to, sometimes. I hoped he wasn’t figuring this was one of those occasions.

“Who shot him?”

“My partner. Go I-10, south.” He waved the gun at a highway sign. A big raindrop hit the windshield with an audible splat! and we both jumped. I pressed, to keep him talking.

“Did he stumble into it—Jaramillo? If anybody was going to notice extra yard guys in the neighborhood, I’d guess it would be a gardener.”

My friend made a little sound, maybe surprise, maybe contempt. “No, he was part of it. How you think we found those—that house?” He’d started to say “houses.” There were more of them.

“Dangerous, wasn’t it? For him, I mean. Having it so close?”

“Yeah, it turned out pretty dangerous for him.” He glanced through the rear window at the trailer. It was starting to rain in earnest now, and I switched the wipers on.