Elizabeth Lowell - The Wrong Hostage

Grace glanced once more at the shrine. The other woman clearly had been the inspiration for the painting of the Virgin.

“Good morning, may God bless you,” the woman said in clear, unaccented California English. She came down the aisle between the benches, moving gracefully toward her visitors. “I’m Sister Maude.”

Her handshake was firm and her smile gracious. She dismissed the courier and invited them into her quarters at the rear of the chapel. A propane gas ring burned beneath a teakettle. She poured hot water into three chipped, cracked mugs and added powdered coffee. She put the mugs out on a table, gestured to the mismatched chairs, and sat down facing her guests.

“Dimas Quintana warned me you don’t have much time,” Sister Maude said. “How can I help you? You may speak freely here. This is a house of God.”

Faroe looked around with the eyes of a man who didn’t trust much on earth and less in heaven.

“Excuse my bluntness,” he said, “but we’ve had mixed results with some of God’s representatives here on earth.”

Sister Maude studied the two of them over the rim of her cup. “The church is a human institution, as well as a holy one. There are errors. There are sins. There are realities that require even the most devout of Christians to conceal their full intentions from the worldly forces that work to see God and his believers fail.”

For several moments, Faroe studied Sister Maude, who was studying him in return.

“We have to trust somebody,” Grace said.

Sister Maude’s smile made her look a decade younger. “God’s message is that, precisely. What is your problem, senora?”

“My son is being held prisoner.”

“Here?” Sister Maude asked, surprised.

“No. Close to Ensenada, at All Saints School.”

“Hector Rivas Osuna is holding him,” Faroe said, watching the nun closely.

At the mention of Hector, Sister Maude’s serenity vanished. “Him,” she said, the word a curse on her tongue. “I often wonder why God has not seen fit to include Hector Rivas in our La Mesa congregation. He has many enemies here. I doubt he would last one night. Then I would gladly wash his body as I have so many others.” She sighed. “And I will say my rosary a hundred times for that uncharitable thought.”

“I know a priest who treats Hector Rivas with great respect,” Faroe said. “This priest has even agreed to act as Lane Franklin’s jailer. Father Rafael Magon.”

The nun turned her head as though to spit on the floor. Then she shook her head. “God’s will be done. Father Rafael Magon ministers to monsters. As long as traffickers give suitable amounts to the church, he permits traffickers to mount shrines to the saint of traficantes, Jesus Malverde, and Santa Muerte, the demon saint.”

“Magon isn’t the first,” Faroe said.

“No. God’s ways are beyond my understanding.” Sister Maude bowed her head briefly. “Some of the men and women who come to this chapel are as much pagan as they are Christian, so I must make allowances for their uneducated beliefs. But Father Magon is beyond belief. He ministers to those who murdered a great man of God-Cardinal Ocampo.”

Grace frowned. “I’ve heard that name.”

“He was the cardinal of the borderlands, all of them, from sea to sea,” Sister Maude said. “He was assassinated in the Guadalajara airport in ’93.”

“Why?” Grace asked, shocked and not hiding it.

“Cardinal Ocampo had begun denouncing traficantes, particularly ROG. Hector Rivas arranged his murder.”

“I remember the…incident,” Grace said carefully.

“It was investigated thoroughly,” Faroe said. “Both the government in Mexico City and the church in Rome cleared ROG of any wrongdoing. In fact, the federal police determined that the cardinal’s death was accidental, a case of mistaken identity.”

The nun’s hands trembled with anger that was human, if not charitable. “A cardinal in a limousine mistaken for a rival trafficker? They open the door and pump fourteen bullets into the cardinal’s red robes by mistake? That is murder.” She straightened and looked Faroe in the eye. “But sometimes the church must bend to government pressure. Hector Rivas goes free and even takes communion.” She crossed herself quickly.

Faroe knew enough history to be certain that the church didn’t bend easily.

Or for long.

Sister Maude took Grace’s hands in her own. “If Hector Rivas has your son, I will pray for you. Beyond that, I can’t help.”

“You can introduce us to Ascencio Beltran,” Faroe said.

“Are you sure?” Sister Maude asked, shaking her head. “If Hector Rivas is the devil, Ascencio Beltran is his chief rival in hell.”

Faroe smiled. “May the enemy of my enemy lead a long and fruitful life.”

LA MESA PRISON

MONDAY, 6:25 A.M.

WHEN GRACE WALKED THROUGH the prison alley again, she was braced for whistles and catcalls.

Not one rude sound came from the men.

Whatever these inmates had done outside the wall, they respected Sister Maude. Men took off their ball caps when she walked by. Some inmates approached her shyly, kneeling by the bars and asking her blessing.

Faroe and Grace followed the nun out of the main yard and through a gate watched by two burly men wearing designer exercise suits and high-crowned Stetsons.

“Welcome to Shangri-la,” Faroe said softly to Grace. “Private apartments for the dudes who can afford it or who have the raw physical power to hold on to real estate without paying rent.”

They followed Sister Maude into another alley with a dozen wooden doors opening onto it, like an auto court without a parking lot. The ramshackle buildings were made of corrugated plastic sheets and plywood. Makeshift plumbing dripped water and sewage. Electrical cords looped from apartment to apartment like orange and yellow spaghetti. At the far end of the alley, a man sat on a three-legged stool.

There was an assault rifle across his knees.

“That’s the first La Mesa guard I’ve seen down here,” Grace said.

“He’s not a guard. He’s a prisoner,” Faroe said. “The guards own the top of the walls but the yards belong to the inmates.”

“That’s a form of prison management we haven’t tried in the States.”

“You’d be surprised.”

Sister Maude led them to the front door of a two-story hooch with a television antenna on the front corner. She knocked and waited. After a moment, a scowling man came to the door. He had reddish hair and a wide scar that ran from the corner of his mouth to his forehead.

She spoke to him in Spanish, gesturing to Faroe and Grace.

He said he would ask el jefe and closed the door.

It popped open a minute later. The red-haired man invited them inside. The interior of the apartment was clean and well furnished, a surprise after the slapdash exterior. A large-screen plasma television hung from one wall. The screen showed a Mexican soap opera whose leading lady was in real danger of falling out of her tube top and breaking an ankle on her four-inch spike heels.

A gray-haired man with a big belly and a face that looked like it had been flattened with a two-by-four sat in a leather recliner, staring at the television.

The man with the red hair disappeared down a short hallway that led to another room.

“Jefe Ascencio,” Sister Maude began.

The man in the recliner held up his hand. In a few moments the screen faded and a commercial came up.

“Begging your pardon, Sister, but I had to see what kind of hellish problem my poor Amelia would find herself in,” Beltran said wryly. “Those poor, sexy ladies always have a big problem at the end of each episode, as if they believe we watch for more than the moment her top slips down.”

He looked past her to the two Americans. He glanced at Grace and dismissed her. Then he looked at Faroe and grunted.

“Some gringos are very brave,” Beltran said. “Or did you think I would forget you, you son of a bitch.”

Faroe smiled. “Not likely, jefe.”

“You two know one another?” Sister Maude asked.

Beltran pursed thick lips and nodded. “He is the reason I am here.”

“Hey, we offered you Terminal Island and you ran south,” Faroe said.

Beltran chuckled thickly. “The gringo prisons up there are much cleaner, it is true, but the warden down here, he is very understanding. So are the guards. I pay and they let me live and work as I wish.”

“Work?” Faroe asked. “I thought Hector Rivas had run you out of smuggling.”

“Rivas!” The old man turned his head and spat in the direction of a wastebasket. “That bastard has tried to kill me three times. I have one of his bullets in my head and another in my left kidney.”

“Hector Rivas is our enemy too,” Faroe said. “He has taken this woman’s son and threatens to kill him. We ask for your help.”

Beltran scratched his belly through a gap in his loose shirt. “Why would I help you? You are no friend of mine.”

“I’m the enemy of your enemy, and sometimes that’s enough,” Faroe said.

Scowling, Beltran gestured toward the leather sofa that sat at a right angle to his recliner. “I will listen but don’t expect more.”

Grace and Sister Maude settled onto the sofa on either side of Faroe while he gave a quick sketch of the kidnap, deliberately leaving out what Franklin had that Hector wanted.

“Aiee, chingon. Hector Rivas. He kill a boy as quick as a man. I have lost much to that son of a bitch. He owns the police, he owns the politicos, he has an army, he has the load cars and the tunnels, all the plaza, at his disposal. Most of all he has Jaime, the real brains. No balls, but…” Beltran shrugged.

“Tunnels?” Faroe asked casually. “The Chinese ones?”

“Tunnels?” Beltran said, smiling like a cat. “I know nothing of such things, the eighth wonder of the underworld, ROG’s great secret.”

“The Chinese tunnels were shut down a long time ago,” Faroe said.

“Si, but Jaime built them again.”

“You mean the one the DEA shut down a while back?” Faroe asked. “The one that was good for forty tons of cocaine?”

“That was one of them, yes. A half mile long. It goes from a pottery warehouse in Mexico to a farmer’s barn in Campo, on the other side.”

That was one of them.

Faroe was glad his game face had had a lot of practice. “Too bad they found it. A blocked tunnel doesn’t help me kill Hector, so it doesn’t help you get out of La Mesa alive.”

“There is another tunnel,” Beltran said.

Grace looked at her hands and prayed as she hadn’t since she was thirteen years old.

“Is it open?” Faroe asked.

“Like the plaza, yes, it is open.” Beltran grinned, showing off some gleaming stainless steel teeth. A rich man’s smile, because only the rich in Tijuana could afford a dentist.

“Where is it?” Faroe asked.

“Ah, that is the mystery.”

“The men who built it know where it is.”

Beltran’s smile was darker this time, shaded with something close to respect. “So quick. You would make a good jefe.”

Faroe waited.

“ROG found a small village of hard-rock miners, brought eighteen of them in under guard, and used them to construct two tunnels,” Beltran said. “Later he killed the men.”

Sister Maude crossed herself and murmured, “Eighteen souls.”

“Innocents,” Beltran agreed.

“Even for Hector,” Faroe said, “that’s a lot of bodies to hide in the desert all at once.”

“You remember the massacre three years ago, the men in the mountains east of Ensenada?” Beltran asked.

“They were members of a tiny ejido, a communal settlement,” Sister Maude explained to Grace. “Armed men stormed the village at night, rounded up all the men, and murdered them with machetes and machine guns. No one knew why. It was just assumed they were smugglers or marijuana farmers.”

Beltran shook his head. “They were miners, all of them.”

“The men who dug the two tunnels,” Faroe said. “Makes sense, if you’re Hector Rivas.”

Again, Beltran smiled in approval. “When the first tunnel was discovered, Hector thought someone had talked. To protect the remaining tunnel, he sent men into the village. The executioners were sloppy. One miner survived.”

“That’s quite a story,” Faroe said. “Too bad I can’t verify it unless I talk to the survivor.”

Beltran laughed with delight. “If you get tired of being poor, I would make you my second-in-command. But I need much money to introduce you to this miner. For me, for my courier, and for the poor miner, you understand.”