Free The Rules of Wolfe by James Carlos Blake Page A

she says, there’s a toll station and no easy route around it. Forget that highway. There’s another good road that goes up that way, but not directly into Nogales. There are two branching roads to it.
    She holds the map up so he can take quick looks at it as he drives.
    No, he says, there’s no exit off either one. If they watch those, they’ll have us. Forget Nogales.
    He taps his finger on two places, one in smaller print than the other. There and there. Our only choices.
    She peers closely and tells him the smaller one is called Sasabe and looks like no more than a village. The other is Sonoyta, a small town. From Caborca they can go to either place. Sonoyta’s a little farther but the road to it is paved. The only way to Sasabe is a dirt road.
    We’ll decide in Caborca, he says.
    The Company will have people watching for them everywhere along the border, but even though he has never been to this part of the country Eddie knows a few things about border towns and the smuggling of people. Hordes of migrants who want to cross to the United States—chickens, they’re called by the traffickers who take them over—make their way to those towns every week. And in all those places are agents who can arrange for their crossing, the so-called coyotes, though the term is as often applied to the guides who lead them across. That’s how it will be in Sasabe or Sonoyta, whichever they decide on. Flocks of migrants and plenty of coyotes ready to serve them.
    We can hide among all those strangers, Eddie tells her, while we look for some guide who’ll be happy to take two more customers into his group. Then over the line we go.
    Very good, she says with a nod. As if some thorny problem has been fully resolved.
    But he knows they’re getting way ahead of themselves. They are only at the south periphery of Ciudad Obregón and it’s a long way to the border.
    It’s a long way to the other side of Ciudad Obregón.
    p
    At the outskirts of town Eddie spies a hardware store in a small plaza and makes a quick turn into the lot. He finds a parking spot near the store and backs into it.
    Hope you know how to drive, he says.
    For Christ’s sake, kid, I wasn’t living with the Indians before I met you.
    He tells her to get in the driver’s seat and keep the engine running and be ready to get them the hell out of there fast if it comes to that.
    He returns with a plastic shopping bag containing screwdrivers of different sizes and two sets of electrical wires with spring clamps at either end. They are all the tools he needs to avail himself of almost any motor vehicle. She clambers back into the passenger seat and he turns off the distraction of the music. And they drive into Obregón.
    7
    Eddie and Miranda
    The highway serves as a north-south thoroughfare through the city, and as on every Saturday market day Obregón’s traffic is thick and slow. Through a sequence of odd timing, they don’t come to their first red traffic light until they’re midway into town, but they catch every red light thereafter.
    Eddie curses at each of these stops, where the Escalade is immobile and easier for the surrounding world to scrutinize. With hundreds of eyes on the lookout for this vehicle, it feels to him as conspicuous as a circus wagon with flashing lights. He keeps checking all the mirrors, though he has no idea how he would recognize Sinas men except by intuition. He takes little comfort from Miranda’s belief that the bastards will have a hard time spotting them in this heavy traffic. All the other cars are like camouflage, she points out, and theirs is not the only black SUV among them.
    He’s keeping an eye out for a good place to snatch a vehicle, but Saturday morning on the city’s largest thoroughfare is not an ideal time or place to steal a car. Every parking lot they see is too open to view, too full of shoppers coming and going. He doesn’t want to