Free Murder City: Ciudad Juarez and the Global Economy's New Killing Fields by Charles Bowden

from truck tires beam plants and flowers into my face. Fluted Greek columns hold up the porch.
    It is one of those mornings when the world brushes against me, says nothing, but sits there waiting me out. In Juárez, a gang of killers now operates and calls itself the Murder Artists. There is an abundance of new art. I am far from Juárez. I have come a long way to meet the secret part of Ciudad Juárez. And so I wait in a rough barrio down by the river.
    A drunk comes up the lane.
    He is asked, “How many times have you been in jail?”
    He cannot recall.
    “Why do you keep doing dope and booze?”
    “I like living this way.”
    He takes fifty pesos and leaves with his morning thirst.
    I return to waiting. I knew he would not be at the café but would send new instructions. I suspect he was watching me in the café parking lot, but I cannot be sure. I suspect he is watching me now. The phone rings about every half hour. He says that he has been delayed but will be there shortly.
    Then twenty minutes later it rings again. And so forth.
    He is watching me now. And I think he will never arrive until I leave.
    This will take time.
    Waiting fills my life, a ribbon of motel rooms, cafés, parking lots, bars, and street corners. Time always belongs to someone else and they portion it out in slabs and I simply wait. Two groups in my life have shared my interest in the subject of waiting: drug dealers and narcs. They can never have control and can never be impatient because fast moves lead to nothing at all, the case busted, the deal gone cold. There is an empty book waiting to be written by those who wait listening to the roar of air conditioners in motel rooms and staring at silent phones.
    He lives in fear.
    He has killed thirty-four people for hire. Or more. Sometimes the number is exact and sometimes the number is a blur because of the nature of the life.
    Now fellow professionals are hunting him. They nearly nailed him three months back, it was very close, and so his caution has grown. He was at church when he was spotted. He fled a thousand miles.
    So he moves carefully, but he knows that all his caution can only delay the inevitable.
    He is a rumor that keeps crossing my mind. He belonged to a crew and they traveled in Mexico killing people for money. They had three sets of uniforms, nicely starched—municipal police, state police, federal police. Also, they would have cars with the proper police insignia on them depending on whatever area they were operating in at the moment. Ambulances also would be mimicked. They would pull you over in their police uniforms and police cars, murder you, and then haul your body away in their faux ambulance.
    They traveled constantly, sometimes only being in a city or state for two or three days. The prices varied. For his part, he would earn one grand a killing or five grand or twenty grand. Or more. They had abundant arms.
    I walk up to the top of the levee, and a great blue heron lifts off the river and pumps its wings slowly as it courses downstream. The barrio is very poor, the houses often built of scrap materials. The sun feels warm on my face.
    I have waited many years for this meeting. Before, I have had glancing blows with contract killers, brief words over beers, they would make vague references to their toils. These were always accidental collisions as we hunted the same ground for our varied prey. They never seemed strange enough. They simply seemed like everyone else, a fact I could not abide.
    I am certain he and I agree on some facts. One, if he meets me he is taking a risk because this can only work if he trusts me, and trusting another human being is dangerous. Two, he will be killed, today, tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, no matter, he will be killed. I have come to this place I cannot name to meet a man who will never have a name. We are on the line, but the line is over eighteen hundred miles long.
    It must be intriguing for him to be prey after so many years of being