“Of course there’s not,” Coughlin interrupted. “But I’ll damn sure establish one, and man it with the rest of you. Do I make my point?”
There was a chorus of yessirs.
“All right, then. When he gets here, Henry, send him in. It’s my order, so I’ll break the news to him.”
IV
ONE
826 Sears Street, Philadelphia Wednesday, September 9, 7:55 A.M.
Paco Esteban, a bloodstained gauze bandage on his forehead, walked swiftly toward his South Philly row house. The two-story flat-roofed structure-like the row houses on either side and many others up and down the street-had a fa?ade of old red brick with dirty brown corrugated aluminum awnings above the door and windows.
In his left hand, Esteban carried two packed grocery bags, the sheer plastic stretching with the weight of their contents. He grabbed the black iron railing of the brick stoop and pulled himself along, quickly taking the three shallow steps up to the front door.
At the door, he nervously looked over his shoulder as he juggled the grocery bags and reached for his keys to open each of the door’s three locks. About the time he got the second one unlocked, he heard the familiar metallic clunk that told him someone on the other side of the door was unlocking the third, a deadbolt.
As he pulled out the key from the second lock, the door swung open.
Standing there in a dingy beige sleeveless cotton dress was his wife. As much as El Nariz’s head hurt, he still managed to think: My beautiful Salma. My Madonna. It is not fair that she should suffer such pain and worry…
Se?ora Salma Esteban was a swarthy black-haired twenty-nine-year-old who stood five-foot-four and weighed 160 pounds. Her face was puffy, the eyes somewhat swollen from crying. She clenched a wadded used tissue in her right hand.
On her left shoulder she held a toddler, the Estebans’ three-year-old nephew, who had a thick mop of unruly black hair and wore only a diaper. He was sound asleep and snoring.
Se?ora Esteban, sniffling, motioned for El Nariz to quickly come inside. When he had, she pushed the door shut and rushed to relock the doors.
“How is she doing now?” El Nariz asked his wife in rapid-fire Spanish.
“Better,” Salma Esteban said softly.
“Bueno,” El Nariz said, nodding thoughtfully.
He carried the bags into the cluttered kitchen
. His wife followed.
She watched her husband, his coarse face still showing a mix of anger and fear, wordlessly unpack the bags with a heavy hand onto the counter. One bag held packs of flour tortillas, cans of frijoles negros and corn, and other staples of a heavy-starch diet. From the other he pulled out a pack of disposable diapers and handed them to his wife, then a box of gauze bandages, a bottle of hydrogen peroxide antiseptic, and a bottle of aspirin.
“While you were at the store,” Salma Esteban said softly, “Rosario did say she wanted to tell us more.”
Paco Esteban looked up from the bags. “More?” he said. “We know what she said about her being forced…”
He could not bring himself to repeat the sexual slavery part of her peonage.
He then shook his head and added, his tone incredulous, “There is more? Madre de Dios.”
“I will go and put the baby down,” Salma Esteban said.
On the loading dock of the laundromat nearly two hours earlier, El Nariz had had to slap a wildly hysterical Rosario Flores twice across the face. Not that he necessarily felt that she was overreacting to the severed head and the shooting. He himself was in shock from that-and from his bloody forehead, which throbbed beyond belief. But he had made the immediate decision that anywhere else would be better for them to be than at the laundromat.
And her banshee screams were about to attract some unwanted attention, if the sound of the gunfire hadn’t already accomplished that.
At least I hear no sirens, he’d thought.
At least not yet.
All of the other workers in his crew already had fled. He was not really worried about them. They knew how to take care of themselves, and for now that meant lying low, out of sight. He knew he would see some of them back in South Philly-particularly the ones who lived near his house, and especially the sister-in-law of his wife, who lived in his house with her husband and three-year-old son.