The Voting Machine

Checkpoints

Annabelle looked so exhausted. It was past midnight now. I offered to drive for a while so she could rest. I was actually starting to worry she might fall asleep at the wheel.

"It must wear you down to do all this driving," I said.

"I'm OK," she said. "You shouldn't be driving with the DUI count. That was one of the terms of your release to my custody."

"Yeah, but we're out here late at night in the middle of nowhere. And I am sober. So who's going to pull us over?"

"Good point," she said. We switched seats and I could see she was relieved to recline in the passenger's seat. I kept my eye on the speedometer, careful not to go past sixty-five miles per hour, even when there wasn't another car in sight. I knew how many drivers got stopped for speeding between LA and Las Vegas. I would ensure my driving was absolutely perfect in every way.

We continued through the barren, lunar landscape between Barstow and the Nevada border. Traffic slowed along a pass behind a truck stopped in a ring of flashing patrol car lights. We crawled along in spurts for ten minutes until we reached the source of the congestion. At close range, we had a better view of the reason the truck stopped. It was surrounded by two California Highway Patrol cars, a Drug Enforcement Agency van, and two more government sedans.

It didn't take a genius to realize what was in the back of the truck

"Los Empresarios," Annabelle said. "They break the shipments up and spread them across the NAFTA trucks coming through the border. The police and the DEA are trying to set up more checkpoints, but they can only catch a few of the deliveries. There are too many shipments, too much product and money moving around in different ways. The cartels send it everywhere using every method you can think of. They use trucks. They use cars. They use tunnels."

"You know a lot," I said as we passed the traffic and resumed cruising speed. I also knew a little about how the distribution worked. My late friend Flytrap told me how Los Empresarios moved product from Mexico to retailers across the US. There was no way the government could stop the drugs and cash from circulating. It would be like trying to stop the weather.

"I used to work for them," Annabelle said in a low voice, looking ashamed.

"You worked for Los Empresarios?"

"I didn't know it at the time. I had a friend when I was nineteen. He knew a guy who would pay us to drive to Seattle and stuff our car completely full of cash. He'd give us wads of twenties and hundreds, we'd put it in the trunk, under the floor mats, the glove compartment, the lining of the seats. Then we had to drive our car stuffed with cash down to San Diego where they removed all the money and carried into Tijuana through a tunnel. We were just doing it so we'd have a source of income to get high. I knew other people who would stuff their cars full of drugs, but we only moved cash. Drugs are too risky. The dogs can smell drugs."

"Wow, do you know what happened to your friend?"

"I don't stay in touch with anyone from those days, Temo. I am totally clean now."

"Do you think he's still using? Maybe he could go to one of your clinics?"

Annabelle looked away at the desert moon, which seemed to be following us down the dark, empty highway.

"Los Empresarios caught him running money for someone else and they killed him."

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have asked."

"That's OK. There's no way you could've known."

Annabelle fell asleep in the passenger's seat. It was still hard to believe the way she'd come out of nowhere and rescued me. I still wondered how she heard about my arrest so quickly, but I didn't want to ask again. I guessed that there could be any number of reasonable explanations. I knew her work with clinics would've brought her in constant contact with people on both sides of the law.

She would know the policemen and prosecutors and jailers who ushered thousands of suspects through the system on drug charges. She would also know the dealers and users they prosecuted, many of whom spent their life in churning back and forth between jail and the streets. So Annabelle might know any of the people whom I'd met since last night who could tip her off. She might know the cops or the jailers. She might even know Juan Ricardo.

Still, I couldn't figure it out. How did she find out so fast that I was in the Twin Towers? Who could've told her? What could've triggered it?