The Case Runner by Carlos Cisneros

Author:Carlos Cisneros
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Arte Público Press
Published: 2008-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 23

ON MONDAY MORNING, after a brief visit with his grandfather, Alex and Romeo drove south on the two-lane highway away from Matamoros. They were on Highway 101 to Ciudad Victoria, the state capital of Tamaulipas. As Romeo drove, Alex called the office and left a message for the staff. He and Romeo would be driving down to Tepantitlán, Pilo’s hometown, and would return in about a week.

He read his emails and news reports on his laptop as Romeo negotiated the steep and deadly curves of the Sierra Madre. One of the emails was from Betty, wanting to know if she should sign for some documents a deputy sheriff had brought over. The documents were from a firm in Corpus Christi and were addressed to Alejandro del Fuerte.

MSN also ran a story about Harrow’s press conference in which it had announced that Tony “Slick” Stevens would be defending the meritless lawsuit filed by Alejandro del Fuerte. Stevens had not lost a lawsuit in five years. “Damn, now what?” Alex mumbled to himself.

At 10:00 p.m. they stopped to rest at a motel on the outskirts of San Luis Potosí. They were now getting into the highlands of Mexico, and they would continue their journey in the morning. Finding Tepantitlán would not be easy. The Mexican map given to them by Nicho, back at the fishing lodge, didn’t even show the place. The city of Teotihuacán was shown, but not Tepantitlán. Alex remembered Pilo saying his hometown was near the pyramids, and he hoped that would help them find it.

Early Tuesday, they headed to Mexico City. It was necessary to loop around the Mexican capital, avoid its bottleneck traffic, then drive southeast to Teotihuacán. By three o’clock in the afternoon, as Romeo crested a hill and the pyramids outlining the horizon came into view, Alex saw a sign in both English and Spanish:

BIENVENIDOS A TEOTIHUACÁN Y A LAS PIRAMIDES DEL SOL Y LA LUNA.

WELCOME TO TEOTIHUACÁN AND TO THE PYRAMIDS OF THE SUN AND MOON.

They were both relieved when Romeo spotted a barely visible sign to Tepantitlán, and they left the main highway in the direction it indicated. They took a rough drive in the mountains, during which there was no reception on the radio. After about an hour, they arrived in Tepantitlán, which looked like a ghost town. Romeo parked the truck next to the town’s main square. Wearing fishing khaki shorts and sweatshirts, roped sunglasses around their necks, and four days’ worth of beard stubble, they both stuck out like sore thumbs.

They walked into a tiny general store across from the square and grabbed two carbonated apple drinks from the icebox. The store owner asked them if they were hungry and both said yes. He brought out pork carnitas with a stack of handmade tortillas, and the pair devoured the succulent feast. The keeper couldn’t make the tacos fast enough. As he worked on the food, he kept giving the pair the lookover. The strangers sure had come to the wrong place to go fishing.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.