Velvet Was the Night

by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

  He looked at the kitchen and the dining room. He was quick, though it was as pointless as the search inside Leonora’s apartment had been. No camera, no film, and nothing that resembled communist literature in the least. If this woman was a pinko, she hid it well. But he doubted it. As far as he could tell, this was a nobody. He would have been tempted to think El Mago had asked him to look into her as a joke, but El Mago didn’t joke with this shit.

  Well, then he’d have to put a tail on her. The Antelope and El Güero would have to manage that, since he needed to see about La Habana.

  As soon as he reached the street, Elvis lit another cigarette. He thought about what El Mago had said, pictured roosters with silver spurs.

  11

  SHE GOT UP for work earlier than usual and phoned Emilio Lomelí as soon as she reached her office. Instead of speaking to a secretary, she was connected to an answering service. This threw Maite off. She had been ready for a slightly different scenario, but managed to blurt out her message and left both her home phone number and her office number, explaining at what times she might be reached at each location.

  As morning turned to noon, she found herself trapped behind her desk. She didn’t want to go to lunch for fear the phone would ring and she wouldn’t be there to answer it. Diana asked if she wanted to get a torta, but Maite shook her head no, and soon all the secretaries had streamed out of the building, eager for the chance to grab a bite or smoke a cigarette in peace.

  Maite was hungry and thirsty. It was too warm inside—the tall windows regularly turned the office into a greenhouse—and they weren’t allowed to open the windows because of the rumble of traffic. What she wouldn’t give for an office with air conditioning. The lawyers had ceiling fans, but the secretaries were not awarded such a luxury. Maybe it would rain later and that would cool down the city and chill the building.

  She pictured the ride back home, the crushing pressure of bodies against her own and the simmering heat of those bodies pressed together; the suffocating stench of the passengers. She wanted her car back, but she couldn’t even think of showing her face at the mechanic. He’d start phoning soon, she thought. He’d start asking what the hell was taking so long with her bill this time around.

  She didn’t want to think about that. Better to think about Emilio Lomelí, about the possibility of a meeting with him.

  Maite brushed a strand of hair back into place and took out a compact from her purse, examining herself in the mirror. There were lines under her eyes, but then they’d been there for a long time. Worry lines, sadness lines. She touched her neck; at least it was still smooth. She hated the wrinkled necks of old women: they looked like turkeys. She pictured herself ten, twenty years older. The thought depressed her.

  “Excuse me, you’re Maite Jaramillo, aren’t you?”

  She looked up at the man. She hadn’t noticed him approaching her desk, and he caught her by surprise. “How do you know?”

  “It says so right there on your desk.”

  Maite glanced at the little plaque with her name. She sighed and snapped her compact shut.

  The man standing before her desk wasn’t dressed like a lawyer or bureaucrat. You could always tell which one was which, the bureaucrats with their ugly ties and cheap-smelling colognes that boasted scents such as “English Leather,” the more well-to-do lawyers recognizable by their imported cigarettes. This guy had a gray jacket and a striped dress shirt. He looked older than her by some ten years, though maybe it was the mustache that aged him.

  She assumed he was a client. He was out of luck. The boss had taken the day off. “Mr. Costa is not working today. Do you want me to make you an appointment?”

  The man shook his head. “I’ve come to talk to you, not him,” he said.

  “Me?”

  “Yeah. I’m Mateo Anaya. Dirección Federal de Seguridad,” he said and took out his ID, showing it to her.

  Maite was poorly informed about many things. Politics, government, crime, she tried to ignore the world’s ills. But even an idiot knew what the DFS was. And like any Mexican with two brain cells, Maite also knew it was a lousy idea to talk to the police. Cops were more fearsome than robbers—and sometimes they were robbers too. But the secret police! The secret police were terrifying.

  She had always lived with one simple philosophy: keep your head down and stay out of trouble. Now here was trouble looking for her.

  She licked her lips and managed not to stammer. “What do you need, Mr. Anaya?”

  The man took off his jacket and tossed it on her desk, on top of her typewriter. On his index finger he wore a ring with a big green stone. “It’s hot in here. Feels like you’re a lobster being boiled, don’t it? Well, I’ll try and be quick. I’m looking for a missing girl. Leonora is the name. Now, I understand you’re friends with her. You have any idea where she might be?”

  He pulled up a chair, sitting down and leaning back, a grin across his face. Then he took out a box of cigarettes from the front pocket of his shirt.

  “I take care of her cat,” she mumbled as she watched him light his cigarette.

  “Sure, but maybe you’ve talked to her and stuff. Maybe you know where she is right now. Because, like I said, the girl is missing. Hasn’t been seen for days and days, and that’s pretty worrisome. Help me out, would you know where she is?”

  “Oh, no. I wouldn’t know. I hardly know her.”

  “Maite, come on.” The man took a puff from his cigarette, spreading his hands. “You’re hanging out with people from Leonora’s crowd. They’re a rowdy crowd too. Not nice folks, like you. Because you look pretty nice. Good, stable job, no issues with the law. It’s the way I like it. Those hippie kids? They’re bananas, Maite.”

  “What?” she asked, so dumbly that the man chuckled.

  “You’ve been seen in the company of subversive elements, darling, is what I’m getting at,” he said, as if he were spelling a word out for a child.

  “Subversive elements? I don’t—”

  “Rubén Morales? Ring a bell?”

  “I’m not sure. I watch Leonora’s cat.”

  “You’re not sure?” the man asked. “Weren’t you at a print shop recently, a shop where Morales works? And then, weren’t you having coffee with him? Do you want the addresses where you’ve met him? I got them here somewhere in my jacket.”

  “No…I mean, yes. Yes, I’ve met Rubén.”

  “Then you do know Mr. Morales. Tell you what, Mr. Morales has a file. Soon you’re going to have a file too. Unless you’re friendly. I like friendly people. I’m real friendly myself. A real chatterbox. Or so my colleagues say. What do your friends say? Leonora’s your friend, no? And Morales?”

  “No! I barely know him…her. Both of them, I barely know her.”

  “Her sister said you know her.”

  “She’s mistaken.”

  “Is she?”

  He held the cigarette between thumb and middle finger and stared at her. She recalled, incongruously, that she’d once read an article in a woman’s magazine that said you could determine a man’s personality by the way he held a cigarette. But she couldn’t remember the personality types. She noticed the yellow nicotine stains on the tip of his fingers and wondered if those could also hold a secret meaning, like a zodiac sign.

  Anaya waved his cigarette in the air. “So you’re telling me that you’re a casual acquaintance of Leonora and somehow the both of you know Mr. Morales? It’s a pretty big coincidence.”

  “It’s because of the cat.”

  “What about the fucking cat?” he asked. He was still smiling. It was a mockery of a grin. Suddenly he leaned forward, stretched out a hand, and caught her right hand with his own, his fingers tight around her wrist. He might be a chatterbox, but clearly he was growing tired of her inane answers.

  She began to babble. “I told you already, I’
m watching her cat. She said she was going on a trip and I should watch the cat. That’s what I’m doing…it’s a cat. That’s all it was about, that’s all we’ve talked about. I live in her building. I have no idea what she’s up to.”

  She really didn’t, and the more the man looked at her, the more her brain became a blank slate, the scant details she did know about Leonora erased from her mind. She stared at him. Her silence seemed to irritate him, and he twisted her wrist. She winced but didn’t speak, and he waited, impatient, his fingers digging hard into her flesh.

  “You sure you don’t know her better than what you’re saying?”

  She shook her head no.

  Diana and two secretaries walked in, laughing. Anaya released her hand and stood up, snatching his jacket and placing it under his arm.

  “That better be the truth,” he said. “If you’re holding out on me, I’ll know. See you around, Maite.”

  He walked out of the office. Diana and the others secretaries gave her curious looks. Maite stood up and with shaky legs managed to make it into the bathroom, where she sat on top of the toilet seat and waited for a good ten minutes. When she returned to her desk she fiddled with a stack of papers. She couldn’t concentrate. She was famished and anxious.

  “I’m not feeling well,” she told Diana, after she gathered her things. “I’m going to head home.”

  “What’s the trouble?”

  “My stomach,” she lied. “Can you cover for me? Just in case Costa phones and needs something, could you? I’ll see you Monday.”

  “Sure.”

  Maite smiled and left before Diana could ask about the fellow who had been speaking to her earlier. On Monday, if Diana still remembered him, she’d invent a lie.

  When she reached the street, Maite looked everywhere, fearing Anaya might be around, watching her. But she saw no one suspicious. Of course, that didn’t mean anything. Surely secret agents didn’t dress like in the James Bond movies, with a full tuxedo. Anaya certainly didn’t resemble Sean Connery. An agent could look like practically anyone.

  What nonsense is that Leonora mixed up in? Maite wondered. It had to be something bad if DFS agents were looking for her.

  She needed to hide somewhere in case they were following her. She needed to think. She went into a café de chinos and ordered a bistec and a soda. She rubbed her wrist, feeling the place where the man had dug his fingers into her skin, and wondered if she’d have bruises in the morning.

  There, seated at a table and with the soothing noise of a radio playing “Bésame Mucho” softly in the background, she was able to calm her nerves. Maite took out the issue of Secret Romance she was carrying in her purse and flipped through it, looking at all those lovely faces and the sentences suspended in speech bubbles. She’d already read the issue, but she read it again.

  She gazed at the face of Pablo, the playboy with a heart, and folded and refolded a paper napkin a dozen times absentmindedly. She needed to do something with her hands when she was like this.

  A long time passed before she tucked the comic book back in her purse and paid the bill. When she opened the door to her apartment the telephone was ringing. She grabbed it and spoke loudly into the receiver. “Yes? What is it?”

  “Miss Jaramillo?”

  “Who is this?”

  “It’s Emilio Lomelí. Sorry to bother you at home, but I called your office and they said you were gone for the day.”

  She dumped her purse on the kitchen counter and opened her mouth, not knowing what to say. It was him! With Anaya’s intrusion and the excitement of the day she’d forgotten about Emilio. She’d hoped he’d call, and now he had. It was such a wonderful moment; she closed her eyes.

  “It’s no bother, Mr. Lomelí.”

  “It’s nice of you to say that. Anyway, I got your message, and I’m phoning you back. You needed to speak to me?”

  “Yes. I was hoping in person, but if you’re busy I can understand. I’m sure you—”

  “That shouldn’t be a problem,” he said, interrupting her, and she could feel him smiling through the phone line. “Why don’t you stop by my place tomorrow? Say around noon?”

  Maite’s breath was a ball of fire, caught in her throat, burning bright. She held it there until her tongue felt as though it had been scalded and she spoke. “Yes, yes, of course.”

  “Do you have a pen?”

  She grabbed the pad by the refrigerator and the pen, scribbling the address. When she was done he said a polite goodbye and hung up. She stood there with the receiver in her trembling hand and slowly returned it to its place.

  12

  EL GÜERO AND the Antelope were not too pleased to learn they had to tail a woman. They had been blissfully enjoying their downtime at the apartment, and now it turned out they needed to do real work, and it wasn’t even fun work, like breaking bones. It was the tiresome old watch and report.

  “I got a molar aching and need to visit the dentist,” the Antelope said. “Was hoping I could go soon.”

  “You always have a tooth aching when there’s surveillance to be done,” El Güero muttered. “Take an aspirin and fuck off.” Then he turned to Elvis. “Who’s this bitch, anyway?”

  “I don’t know,” Elvis said. “It’s tied to some other woman who’s got the pictures El Mago wants.”

  “And we’re supposed to babysit her.”

  “El Mago’s orders.”

  “Surveillance is a crock of shit,” the Antelope intoned glumly, and he rubbed his cheek, where his molar was aching.

  Elvis couldn’t deny that. There was nothing fun about spending hours in a car, pissing into a Coca-Cola bottle and watching someone’s door. But there was nothing Elvis could do about that, and he shrugged.

  “You grab the first shift, then let the Antelope take the next one,” Elvis said.

  “Where you going?”

  “I got something else to take care of.”

  El Güero and the Antelope needed the car, so Elvis hailed a cab and asked the driver to drop him off a few blocks from the Café La Habana. It was located on Bucareli and Obregón, therefore assuring itself a steady stream of journalists from the nearby papers, all of them wannabe Hemingways with dubious pedigrees who, on payday, drank too many beers and stumbled home to sleep away their hangovers. There were also Spanish refugees nursing old wounds, wannabe novelists and poets, and plenty of pinkos lured by the specter of Che Guevara, who had once sat in a corner with Fidel Castro and planned a revolution.

  As Elvis rounded the café, he noticed the agents watching the building. There were always people keeping tabs on that place due to the clientele. He supposed it was almost a game: every patron knew they were being watched, but the constant watching also ensured a certain safety net. Better to be watched here than to have an asshole putting on binoculars and trying to peep through your window. Maybe it was force of habit. Someone’s got to spy on someone.

  Elvis had never been inside. It wasn’t his type of haunt, and El Mago made them keep a low profile. But there he was. It was a large café, the ceilings were high, the tables were small. Black-and-white pictures on the walls spoke of the charm of Old Habana, perfumed with the stench of cheap cigarettes and stale dreams. In a corner there were excited chirpings about Allende, who they said was transforming Chile, and in another corner someone spoke reverently about José Revueltas, who’d been jailed in Lecumberri a while back—he was a hero! But the mood was somber, and the sound of the dominoes slapped against the tables couldn’t hide the plain truth: lots of people were still spooked about the stuff that had gone down on June tenth.

  Spooked or not, the place was packed. No matter what was happening outside, people needed a drink, and the reds drank as much as anyone else.

  Elvis spotted the guy he was looking for pretty quickly, cigarette tucked behind his ear like El Mago had said, and a noteboo
k on the table. Next to the notebook, a pack of Faritos, a glass ashtray, and a cup of coffee. Elvis had imagined that the man would be one of those fossils who wander around the universities all the time. Long in the tooth for a student and obviously enrolled for the sole purpose of beating activists. But the fellow didn’t really look like a fossil; he was baby-faced, with horn-rimmed glasses and attired in a nice but not too flashy plum-colored velvet jacket. As far as informants went, this one had, at the very least, a little taste, and Elvis felt immediately a bit shabby in his old leather jacket and his hair slicked back with too much Vaseline.

  “You Justo?” Elvis asked.

  The man had been scribbling in his notebook, but now he looked up at Elvis. “Yes. And you are?”

  “Elvis. An associate of El Mago.”

  “I know the guy. So what?”

  “I also know El Gazpacho,” Elvis said, trying that line.

  The young man frowned. “Why isn’t he with you, then?”

  “He was shot. I dropped him off at the doctor’s place. Not sure where he is now.”

  “Which doctor?”

  “Guerrero,” he said, which was the name of the colonia where the doctor’s office was located, not the actual doctor, but Justo nodded slowly, as if he knew who he was talking about.

  Elvis pulled out a chair and sat in front of Justo. He pointed at the pack of cigarettes. “Can I bum a cigarette off you?”

  “Go ahead.”

  Elvis grabbed a cig and lit it. Fuck, he was also hungry. He’d hardly had anything at all that day, running from one place to the other. On the table, a waiter had left a menu. But he didn’t intend to make this a dinner. Justo closed his notebook, resting both hands atop it.

  “What’s up?”

  “I need help.”