Free The Execution by Dick Wolf Page B

immaculate, much nicer than the phone she carried. “We track the radio waves that come out of them. You, me, Major MacClesh—all of us—we have American machines that tell our exact locations right down to the millimeter.”
    The old man looked mutely at the phone as though he had never seen one before.
    “Please take no offense when I say this,” Garza said. “But your town . . . it is a miserable shithole.”
    The old man grunted. He agreed with her.
    “And yet, look!” She pointed to the one modern feature of the village, just visible past the steeple of the church: a huge galvanized steel tower that loomed over the town. “Your village has its very own cell tower. And a simple farmer such as yourself has the very latest phone in his pocket. And those trucks parked over there by those stores? Very nice trucks. Even my men can’t afford such nice trucks.”
    The old man shifted from one boot to the other, looked sadly at his plug of tobacco staining the ground in front of him.
    “What do you grow on your farm?” Garza inquired. “These phones? Those boots?” She stepped back, taking in the old man’s boots, smiling brightly. “Here we are in the very birthplace of darkness, at the ass end of the earth. And a simple farmer—and I mean no disrespect—but a simple farmer walks the town wearing beautiful new boots.” Garza made a long, slow sweep of the town with her arm. “Señor, I see no factories here. I see no mines. I see no groves of fruit trees. In fact, I must tell you, the fields as we were driving into this town . . . they did not seem well tended. Not at all.”
    The old man wiped at the saliva on his chin, trying to clear it off but instead smearing it more deeply into the hard lines etched in his face. If Garza hadn’t known better, she might have thought the tobacco juice was blood.
    Garza sighed. “We can play this game as long as you like, señor,” she said. “I can talk about this and that, this and that, this and that. And you can stand there pretending you don’t hear me. But in the end I’ll get what I came here for. We both know that. Don’t we, señor? Nod if you understand me.”
    The old man sighed, tremulously.
    “Please. Señor. Do me this simple courtesy. A nod. Or else my men . . .”
    The old man nodded. Almost imperceptibly.
    “Yes,” said Garza, “the good times are about to come to an end for this town. You know his name, señor. I’m certain you know where he lives.”
    The old man had stopped looking at his feet. Now he was looking intently at her.
    “I can’t,” he said.
    “But you must,” she said, moving closer—so close that she could smell the tobacco on his breath. “All you have to do is whisper it.”
    Still no response.
    “My men can go over there and take all those trucks. Major MacClesh can make a phone call and we can bring a bulldozer and knock over every house in the village. Even the church.”
    That made the old man’s eyes twitch.
    “The beautiful Virgin. We can box her up and carry her away. Perhaps to a town where they care enough for her to put her on a decent pedestal, even if they cannot afford phones, boots, and trucks.”
    She leaned her head toward him. His lower lip was trembling and his eyes were wet as though he were about to break down and cry. “Please, Doña Garza! Don’t make me say it.”
    Secretly, she was pleased that her reputation had reached all the way to this miserable and desolate place. But she didn’t let her face show it.

CHAPTER 11
    T he Suburban bounced along the rutted dirt track. It was a dry, barren country, the high desert of northern Mexico. Every rock, every blanched sage plant and twisted mesquite tree, every dusty scrap of ground seemed to have been punished by the sun, cooked into submission. The thermometer on the dash of the Suburban said it was 114 degrees Fahrenheit. This was a place where human beings were not meant to live.
    Even a killer like Chuparosa.
    She was close, very close.