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  He had hated the name El Sanguinario had given him. El Fundidor. It sounded like a villain of Batman. It wasn’t until the cartel leader died that he realized its value. While later leaders controlled him and gave him his orders, they also feared him. After all, he had been the one to dispose of El Sanguinario’s body. He had dissolved a king. The stories spread from the barren ranch outside of Tecate to the cantinas and backrooms of Tijuana and Mexicali. His reputation was known throughout Mexico. El Fundidor was a brujo, a vampiro, the cucuy de la frontera de California.

  His prowess made him useful. His gruesome legend kept him safe. As long as he performed his distinct function, he was left alone. And so was his family. That had been the arrangement.

  He continued to send money home, even if he hadn’t heard from his family in years. He was losing his sense of purpose. The work no longer challenged him. The routine, the burn in his lungs, the living conditions.

  He hadn’t left the property in months, living on a diet of beans, potatoes, and tortillas with the sparse orange trees supplying breakfast and dessert. There was a television in the small trailer, but the rabbit ears only got XHBC from Mexicali, and even then he had to watch futbol through static and snow. He needed a vacation. He longed for a swim in the ocean. Something clean. But he was El Fundidor. The devil didn’t get time off.

  “Six of them,” the fat man said, waiting for his young partner at the back of the van.

  El Fundidor had interacted with the fat man before. He was one of the few men who made eye contact with him. The fat man didn’t look like much, but he was more than a lackey. He was familiar with death, comfortable among the dead.

  The fat man’s young partner looked even younger in his fear. Probably tougher in the city, the young man kept his eyes to the ground, glancing at El Fundidor when he thought the monster wasn’t looking. His hands shook enough for him to stuff them in his pockets.

  El Fundidor considered shouting “Buu” to see if he could make the kid piss himself, but he knew he wouldn’t. He wasn’t a cruel man.

  The fat man opened the back of the van. The bodies sat piled in a pyramid like rolled carpets. El Fundidor admired the fat man’s efficiency of space. Too often, the bodies were packed haphazardly, which could create rigor in unworkably awkward poses. El Fundidor preferred to do as little dissection as necessary. It was time-consuming and the last time, he had injured his shoulder trying to snap a leg from the hip joint.

  Usually the corpses were delivered concealed in canvas or plastic tarp. None of these dead were wrapped. It took a lot of cojones to drive around with six dead bodies uncovered in the back of a van. Even in Mexico. Something unnaturally bad had happened. Something unplanned or rushed. There had been no time for discretion.

  “All women,” El Fundidor said.

  The fat man nodded and threw a body over his shoulder. The woman was small, light. She would melt easily. He indelicately dropped the woman on top of the two-day-old body in the corral near the barn door. Flies billowed from the ground in a gray cloud.

  “Hijo de puta!” the fat man shouted.

  “Over there,” El Fundidor said, pointing to the other side of the corral. “I work in the order they arrive. And be more careful.”

  The fat man nodded, dragging the young girl’s body off the older corpse, displacing more flies. His young partner waited with a dead girl in his arms. When the fat man moved to the side, his partner gently set her next to the other girl.

  “Why women? What happened?” El Fundidor asked, unsure where his curiosity came from. He could not remember ever asking about the dead they brought to him.

  “I don’t know, carnal. I drive the van.”

  The men carried two more bodies, treating them more gently. One of the dead girls was nude. She was either very young or shaved. From the wounds and bruises, the death had been violent. From her suppleness, it had been recent.

  “Where did they come from?” El Fundidor asked.

  The fat man gave him a questioning look. He opened his mouth to answer, but before he did, a soft moan came from the back of the van.

  The three men looked at each other, then in unison they turned. Another faint moan filled the silence.

  El Fundidor and the fat man stepped to the van to get a better look. The young partner remained where he stood, visibly shaking.

  Inside the van, one of the two remaining girls moved impossibly slow, folding herself into a fetal position. Like a dying fly, her arms and legs receded toward her body.

  “She’s alive,” El Fundidor said.

  “She shouldn’t be,” the fat man said. “Kill her and be done with it.”

  “I don’t kill people.”

  “You are El Fundidor,” the fat man said.

  “I have never harmed a soul.”

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” The fat man laughed.

  He should not have laughed while standing near a frightened and suffering girl. It was cruel and disgusting. It lacked empathy and compassion. It was almost as if the fat man could not see that this person was in pain.

  “I will not kill her.” El Fundidor said. “It is not the gravedigger’s job to do the work of the executioner. She is alive. She has earned the right to live.”

  “A la mierda. I’ll get my gun,” the fat man said, walking to the front of the van.

  “Vale,” El Fundidor said and walked to the bone pile that had been overdue for disposal. The acid effectively disintegrated the meat, but only blanched and perforated the bones. Every two weeks, he had to grind the bones to be picked up and distributed throughout the desert. El Fundidor found half a femur in the pile, the shard at the end sharpened to a point. The tip drew blood across his palm. It would do. He met the fat man at the back of the van.

  Suso Rivas pulled down the steel grate and locked up. He appreciated the quiet after a long night. The bass of the repetitive dance music still pounded in his head. It was what every club played, but Suso didn’t know anyone who actually liked it. It wasn’t like people came to his place for the music.

  Early Sunday morning was the only peaceful time on Paseo de la Reforma. The cantinas and men’s clubs appeared abandoned without their neon and flash. Suso looked at his own establishment, Adelita Bar & Girls. In the day, the chipped plaster and pornographic graffiti were more pronounced. He considered calling Pepe to give the exterior a once-over, but it wasn’t worth it. It wasn’t like his customers cared about anything but tits and getting laid.

  He clicked the key fob and walked toward his car at the far end of the small parking lot. Two big men stood between him and the car. They dropped their cigarettes on the ground, crushed them underfoot, and met him halfway. He instinctively gripped the knife in his jacket pocket.

  “Jesus Rivas,” the smaller of the two men said. Smaller, not small. He was six foot five and thick, which gave a hint to the size of the other man.

  “I’m not carrying any money,” Suso said.

  “We’re not here for money. We’re looking for your brother.”

  “My brother?” Suso laughed. “I’m sorry. It isn’t funny. It’s that I forgot I had a brother. I haven’t seen Cesar in ten--no, twelve years. I didn’t know that he was alive.”

  The smaller man turned to the bigger man. “Do you believe him?”

  The bigger man moved quicker than Suso would have thought possible. Two seconds later, he picked Suso off the ground and lifted him over his head like a barbell. Only for a moment, then he slammed Suso onto the asphalt.

  All the air left Suso’s body. His wrist bent backwards underneath him, the crack both suffered and heard. It felt like his organs and brain had shifted inside his body. Suso’s mind told him to get up, to fight, to try to survive.. He was vulnerable on the ground, but his body did not respond. He could not breathe. His heart raced. He saw spots.

  “Where is your brother?” the smaller man said.

  The words came out in gasps. “I don’t know. He left when
I was fourteen. The last time I saw or heard from him.”

  The bigger man picked him up again, cradling Suso in his arms.

  “No. Please,” Suso said.

  “I’m going to believe you,” the smaller man said. “If you see your brother, call this number. Or we’ll be back.” He placed a slip of paper into Suso’s jacket pocket.

  Suso nodded.

  “Thank you,” the smaller man said and turned to his partner. “Let’s go.”

  The bigger man nodded, lifted Suso overhead, and dropped him to the ground again.

  Suso woke up in the back of a van. While the surroundings were strange and his vision unfocused, the smell was sharp and alarming. Familiar, but unreal. It smelled of a butcher shop, of the hair on a barber’s floor, of a sewer drain after a storm. It reeked of rot and decay. Of death.

  He rolled over and immediately recoiled at the sight of the young woman next to him. Her face was inches from his own. She looked half-dead, her breathing raspy and shallow. Dried blood matted her hair and covered her face. Her tattered clothes were stained with blood and other fluids.

  “Not all of the blood is hers.”

  Suso turned toward the voice. A man sat on a crate at the front of the van. His hair was grayer, his eyes sunken, his face gaunt, but it was most definitely his older brother. Cesar had been twenty when he had joined the cartel. The twelve years had aged him forty.

  . “Two men beat me. They were looking for you. What’s going on?” Suso pressed himself to a sitting position against the side of the van. His whole body hurt. His wrist was definitely broken.

  “I killed a man a few hours ago. He was cartel.”

  “You what?”

  “He shouldn’t have laughed.”

  “What do I say to that?”

  “I didn’t know they would send men for you,” Cesar said. “Family had always been forgiven.”

  “Who is she?” Suso pointed at the girl. Her shallow breath continued. One hand shook as if warding off an attacker.

  “A girl.”

  Suso waited for Cesar to say more. He didn’t.

  “Where have you been all this time?”

  “Close,” Cesar said. “Our mother? Is she?”

  “Yes. Buried with Papa.”

  “At least they are not in danger.”

  “Why are you here? Why come to me?”

  Cesar nodded toward the girl.

  “I don’t understand,” Suso said.

  “You need to take care of her. I cannot.”

  Suso looked at the girl once again. “She looks bad. Like really bad. She needs a doctor.”

  “There were men at the hospital.”

  “I can’t help her.”

  “She needs sanctuary.” Cesar held up the piece of paper the man had placed in Suso’s pocket. “Find her safety and I will call them. I will end this. You will be left untouched.”

  “Won’t they kill you?”

  “They’ll try.”

  With the young girl in his arms, El Fundidor followed his younger brother down the underground corridor.

  “They might be watching the front door,” Suso said, leading the way with the flashlight. “You’d be surprised at how many tunnels and connecting basements there are in Mexicali, especially near La Chinesca.”

  “Mexico is like an anthill. There are tunnels everywhere.”

  They walked through a tight doorway of broken bricks and reached a staircase. Spider webs stuck to their skin and clothes. Suso climbed to the top and unlocked a trapdoor. El Fundidor followed him into a large room. They stood on a stage with two poles on it.

  “Welcome to Adelita,” Suso said.

  From the stage, El Fundidor got a full view of the entire place. The room was filled with tables and chairs. A long bar took up the entire back wall. Mirrors decorated the remaining walls. He stared for a moment at his own reflection, not recognizing the man who stared back at him.

  “It is a strip club establishment,” El Fundidor said.

  “My strip club establishment. Partly yours, I suppose. I used the money you sent to open this place four years ago.”

  “You used the money I sent for this?”

  “After mama died, I didn’t know what to do. This was an investment. It didn’t take long to turn a profit, but the real money comes from the rooms upstairs. Come on.”

  El Fundidor followed. The girl was so light in his arms, he hardly noticed her. She didn’t weigh much more than a sack of lye. They went up a flight of stairs, down a long hallway, and into a bare room. A bed, one chair, and a toilet in the corner. No windows. He set the girl on the bed, pulling the thin blanket to her chin.

  “You are a chulo,” El Fundidor said. “This room is used for sex.”

  “It’s business. I treat the girls well.”

  “That money could have been used--should have been used--for something else, anything else.”

  “There were no instructions. I was alone when Mamá died. You weren’t here.”

  “I did things to earn that money. To protect you and Mamá.”

  “We did not ask you for that. I wanted my brother. She needed her son.”

  “I will pay for my sins.”

  “We all do,” Suso said. “You are asking for my help. This is the help I can give.”

  Suso walked to the girl and felt for a pulse in her neck. He lifted one of her eyelids. The glassy pupil remained unchanged in the light.

  “I need you to promise to take care of her,” El Fundidor said. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a handful of money. Most of it fell to the ground. He took the dead fat man’s gun out of his pocket and set it on the chair. “Please.”

  Suso nodded. “I will take care of her.”

  El Fundidor’s parents, Maria and Jose Luis Rivas, were buried in the old cemetery, El Panteon de los Pioneros. His father had won four grave plots in a game of La Viuda back in 1988. After marriage and two children gave him a family of four, the drunken win felt like fate. His father had provided so little in their lives, the least he could do was cover their deaths.

  El Fundidor had bought flowers from the woman that ran the stall at the entrance. He set them at his mother’s grave. His relationship with his father had reached its natural end when he had attended the man’s funeral. No more to say or do. The loss of his mother was new. He had thought he had felt the loss years back. A sense of change within his body, but it wasn’t a feeling he trusted at the time. He was disappointed with how little time he would have to mourn her.

  Kneeling on the hardpack—only the new cemetery had grass—he recited Padre Nuestro because it would have made his mother happy. On the “Amen,” he kissed his hand and placed it on the stone. “Adios, Mamá.”

  El Fundidor walked back toward the dead fat man’s van and took out the dead fat man’s cell phone. He dialed the number on the slip of paper that they had given to his brother.

  “Bueno?” the man on the other end said.

  “It is El Fundidor. The girl is gone. She is beyond your reach.”

  “What girl? I don’t care about a girl. You murdered my cousin.”

  “The fat man.”

  “You will die for him.”

  “We all die.”

  “Yes, but as long as you are alive, your brother is not safe.”

  “Then I must die sooner,” El Fundidor said. “Promise to leave my family alone and I will come to you.”

  “You don’t tell me what to do.”

  “I am not demanding. I am asking. For years of service.”

  “Return to Barranco Seco. It will end there.”

  “That is where it should end,” El Fundidor said. “One hour. There’s one more thing I have to do.”

  Until that morning, El Fundidor had never killed a man. Until he drove another human being’s femur into the fat man’s neck, he couldn’t think of any harm he had done to another living creature. He had let the fat man’s young par
tner go, left to run the eight miles through the desert to the main road. Even the flies in the old barn were never killed on purpose, but by their density. It was hard to lean on a surface without squashing one underhand.

  Looking down into the dry wash where his former compound was located, he counted at least a dozen men. An army to stop one harmless man, not a soldier, an amateur when it came to killing. They feared him because of superstition.

  El Fundidor backed down the hill and found the dead tree that acted as a marker. He pushed the dirt away with his fingers, slowly revealing the edges of the metal plate. His brother had been right. There were tunnels all along the border. It had taken six years for El Fundidor to dig this one. A man needed a pastime when he was left alone in the desert to dispose of the dead. A man’s life couldn’t only be focused on his career.

  The tunnel had been dug as a precaution. To escape from the barn, if necessary. He had never thought he would need it to break inside. It wasn’t fancy like the smuggling tunnels they had in Tijuana. This was a three-foot-diameter pipe buried in the ground. He would have to snake his way the one hundred meters.

  He had no light, but there was no way to get lost. At the halfway point, the air thinned. He panicked for a moment when he ran into an area where dirt blocked his way. He got his fingers and hands into it and realized it wasn’t a complete collapse. He managed to pile dirt to the side, squeezing through the narrower section and finding his way to the other end.

  Most of the soldiers had taken positions outside. Only two young men were posted inside the barn. They had been given the least crucial assignment, which telegraphed their inexperience. One looked frightened. The other looked bored. The bored soldier curiously inspected El Fundidor’s equipment. When he opened a three-day barrel, he fell backward and vomited all over himself. The other soldier laughed nervously.