Velvet Was the Night

by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

  Rubén hadn’t answered her question. That could mean he was really a terrorist, after all. One of those radicals the papers mentioned. If only she paid more attention to that sort of news. But Maite was forever skipping the front pages. And yet, he didn’t fit with her, albeit limited, knowledge of those people. If there were guerillas, they were in the countryside, in places like Guerrero.

  Bandits. That’s what one of the papers had said one time. Bandits in Guerrero.

  Was she having lunch with a modern-day Robin Hood or someone more sinister? A cold-blooded killer, a kidnapper, a lurid, cartoonish monster. A villain! She shouldn’t be messing with villains, bad guys who tied women up with rope that scratched their soft wrists. And the villain’s lair…

  The thought of meeting Jackie, of seeing the place where these people hung out, excited Maite. Maybe they were cigar-chomping outlaws with rifles. She wondered what would happen if there was a guerilla in Secret Romance. Funny, she’d never pictured such a thing. This turmoil was impossible. The island of her comic books was replete with melodrama, but distasteful reality didn’t intrude there.

  “You didn’t tell the guy from the DFS anything, did you?” Rubén asked.

  “As if! I grew up in the Doctores. You don’t ever tell cops anything, it makes it worse,” Maite said, and she sipped her soda.

  He seemed surprised by that answer. “That’s good,” he said.

  “It’s not like I know anything, either. Will you have to blindfold me when we go to see Jackie?”

  He chuckled. “No need for that. It’s not top secret.”

  The building Rubén took her to was quite ordinary. There were no sentries, no vicious dogs barking to announce their arrival. They went up the stairs and into a gallery space that appeared equally mundane—a little sign on the door proclaimed this “Asterisk Art Gallery and Cooperative.” An art gallery. Not Maite’s sort of place. She’d gone to the National History Museum on school trips a couple of times but never set foot in an art gallery.

  There was a party at the gallery, judging by the number of young people milling around, drinks in hand. Maite wondered if there were parties every weekend. Maybe Leonora attended these events regularly, together with Emilio.

  A couple of women glanced at Maite. She wondered what they must think of her, in her too-young yellow dress. Fussy. She looked fussy. Maybe they weren’t looking at her, maybe they were looking at Rubén.

  “Where are we going?” she asked him.

  “Told you, we’re looking for Jackie,” he said, glancing around the room.

  “You sure she’s here?”

  “She should be. She must be in the office. Come on.”

  The gallery’s office came with the expected contents: paintings leaning against bookcases, small sculptures on shelves, a tall pile of boxes. Two desks had been placed together in the center of the room with two typewriters on them. Rickety tables and chairs were scattered all around. The room was hot, even though the window was open and a fan whirred in a corner. It was also smoky from many cigarettes, five people crammed inside smoking for god knew how long. Three men and two women.

  One of the women sat behind a desk and was busy going through documents while the other one was standing in front of the fan, trying to cool off. Two of the men were sitting on the other side of the desk. One of them had recently been in a serious scuffle. He had two black eyes, and his arm was in a sling. It was an alarming sight.

  “Hey, this is Maite, that friend of Leonora’s I was telling you about,” Rubén said as they walked in and the five people in the room stared at them.

  Maite nodded. The woman who had been sitting behind the desk stood up. She wore a white shirt with flowers embroidered around the neckline. Over this she had a vest; its pockets were also embroidered. Her hair was in a messy braid. She didn’t look much like a revolutionary. None of them did, and they were all very young.

  “I’m Jackie. That’s Luz,” the woman said, pointing to the other woman in the room, who gave Maite a tiny smile. “This here is Sócrates,” Jackie continued, placing a hand on a young man’s shoulder. He wore a bandana and was drinking from a pocillo, which he put down to wave at her.

  “Hey,” Sócrates said.

  “And this here is Casimiro.”

  The man with the arm in a sling nodded at Maite. Jackie didn’t introduce the fifth person in the room, the man in a suede jacket and a turtleneck sitting in the back, smoking a cigarette, his legs stretched out.

  Maite smiled at them, the smile tense, trying to keep the corners of her lips from wavering. “It’s nice to meet you.”

  “Maite talked to Emilio earlier. Tell them what he said.”

  When she hesitated, Rubén gave Maite a reassuring pat on the arm. “He didn’t say much,” she began. “He hasn’t seen Leonora. She told him she wanted to meet with a journalist who lives in Cuernavaca. Lara. But Emilio couldn’t give her a ride. That’s all he knows.”

  “You know any journalists called Lara?” Jackie asked, turning to Luz.

  The young woman shook her head. “Doesn’t ring a bell.”

  “Anything else?” Jackie asked.

  “Maite caught Emilio poking around Leonora’s apartment.”

  Maite turned to look at Rubén, aghast. “I didn’t say that!”

  “You said he was looking for a camera.”

  “But he wasn’t really poking. He was worried. He was worried that Leonora was getting into a mess,” Maite said. “And you’ve got to admit he’s right, what with that man from the Dirección Federal de Seguridad talking to me and all.”

  “Wait, what man?” Jackie said, whipping her head up and looking at Rubén. “There’s a guy from the DFS involved?”

  “That’s why we stopped by. We thought you ought to know.”

  “Shit,” Jackie said, rubbing a hand against her forehead and shaking her head. “Does this guy have a name?”

  “Anaya,” Maite said. “He wanted to know where Leonora was, but I have no idea. I told him so. But somehow he knew I’d talked to Rubén, and he mentioned you too.”

  “They must be watching her,” Sócrates said. “It was a mighty fine idea to bring her here, Rubén.”

  “Oh, shut up,” Rubén muttered. “It’s no big secret where you can find me. Where you can find all of us.”

  “I’m saying maybe you shouldn’t leave a fucking trail of breadcrumbs for them to follow, asshole.”

  “We get it,” Jackie said, shushing Sócrates and pressing her hands together, resting the tips of her fingers right beneath her chin as she sat down again on the chair she had been occupying when they walked in. “Emilio was looking for a camera, but he didn’t find it. Are you sure? Did you look through Leonora’s apartment?”

  “There was nothing there,” Maite said. “Leonora phoned me and wanted me to take her cat and a box to her, but the box is garbage.”

  “You went through it? You’re sure?”

  “Yes. You’re welcome to go through it too.”

  “Maybe Lara has the pictures,” Rubén said. “Leonora could even be with that journalist, in Cuernavaca. She could be hiding there.”

  “If there’s a journalist,” Jackie muttered.

  Rubén tensed immediately. He had been leaning against a bookcase, but now he stood up straight, his eyes fixed on Jackie. “What are you saying?”

  “She’s saying none of us have seen those pictures,” Sócrates replied, setting his pocillo down atop a pile of books.

  “Then where the hell is Leonora? Why is the DFS interested in this? There’re pictures, I know it. You can’t think…she’s not the mole, Jackie!”

  But Jackie didn’t seem convinced, and the rest of the people in the room gave Rubén equally dubious glances.

  “Fuck, Jackie, not that again,” Rubén said with a sigh. “You don’t even know for su
re there’s a mole.”

  “I know,” Jackie said.

  “How?”

  “Look, it doesn’t matter,” Sócrates said, interrupting them. “We have more important stuff to worry about now.”

  “What’s more important than finding Leonora?”

  “Someone, maybe from the DFS, treated Casimiro like a punching bag.”

  “Yes, and they could be beating the living shit out of Leonora right now. And there’re the photos to worry about too.”

  “Leonora was never trustworthy,” Luz pointed out.

  “That’s not true.”

  “Just because you slept with her doesn’t mean she’s really our friend,” Sócrates piped up.

  “You should talk,” Rubén said, raising his voice. So did Sócrates. Then it was a jumble of back and forth pronouncements and recriminations that Maite couldn’t even begin to follow.

  “Fuck!” Jackie said, lifting her hands in the air dramatically, then letting them fall and resting them against her knees. “Sócrates, why don’t you and the others let me chat with Rubén and his friend for a bit? There’re too many damn people in the room.”

  They obeyed. Out went Luz, Sócrates, then finally Casimiro and the man in the suede jacket who had not spoken a single word. He tossed his cigarette in an ashtray, and when he walked by Maite he gave her a wink.

  Rubén moved to stand by the window, arms crossed, looking outside. He was frowning.

  “I know what you’re thinking, but it’s not my fault she’s missing,” Jackie said.

  “She was supposed to meet you. You were supposed to keep her safe,” Rubén replied.

  “I did meet her. And then she said she couldn’t give me the photos after all, that she wasn’t sure. She jumped out of my car, Rubén. I didn’t make her do that.”

  “You told her she was the mole.”

  Jackie raised her chin, her eyes hard. “I told her it was time she proved herself. She didn’t.”

  “I need to borrow the gun,” Rubén said coolly. “Maite and I are going to pay that journalist a visit.”

  “I don’t want you getting in trouble.”

  “We’re all in trouble already. We need to recover those photographs. If agents from the DFS are out there looking for them too, then I better be prepared.”

  Jackie frowned, but she grabbed a set of keys from her vest’s pockets and unlocked a desk drawer. She took out a gun and held it in her hands, looking carefully at it.

  “What if she destroyed the pictures?”

  “You’ve got to have more faith in people, Jackie.”

  “I suppose you want faith and my car for the weekend, on top of my gun.”

  “I’ll have everything back to you Monday.”

  She handed the gun to Rubén, who nonchalantly grabbed a paper bag that was sitting on a corner of one of the desks and stuffed the weapon in it, as though it were his lunch.

  The door opened, and Luz rushed back in. “Arkady caught the guy who beat Casimiro the other night! He was here!”

  “Here? Where?” Jackie asked.

  “Here, right here! Arkady is taking him to the storage room.”

  “Let’s go,” Rubén muttered, grabbing Maite by the arm.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Maite looked over her shoulder at the women who were talking excitedly, but Rubén was leading her out of the office at a quick pace. Rather than exiting the way they had come, he pulled her to the back of the room, where there was a door that led to a narrow set of stairs.

  Rubén moved so fast Maite almost tripped and fell. She protested, but he didn’t relent. They got in the car. He tossed the paper bag on the dashboard, and she asked him what was wrong again, but he didn’t reply.

  The idea of villains who tied women with a thick rope returned to her, perversely knotting itself around her brain. She eyed the paper bag and bit her lip, turning her head to look out the window.

  16

  IF IT HAD been one of the bozos from the art collective with a knife, Elvis would have chanced it and tried to fight him off, even with the threat of a close-range attack. But when Elvis got up and raised his hands, he realized three other young men had come running down the stairs.

  “Come on, son of a bitch,” one of the men said, and Elvis allowed himself to be taken to a storage room, because he could do basic math and one against four guys and one of them with a knife would have been stupid, especially when the fucking knife was pressed against his neck. A knife against your neck wasn’t negotiable.

  Once they reached the storage room, one of the men told him to take off his jacket, which Elvis did, and the other two ordered him to sit down and tried tying him to a chair. They had no idea how to do it, and Elvis almost chuckled at their fumbling fingers as they pinned his hands behind his back.

  Meanwhile, the guy who had been expertly holding the knife against his neck began emptying the contents of Elvis’s jacket and carefully setting them on a table with a lonely radio. Something about his bearing, about the way he worked—cool, composed, while the other two were still trying to tie a knot—seemed out of place.

  The storage room was full of boxes. There were no windows. Once Elvis was tied, the man with the knife tucked his weapon away.

  “I want to talk to him alone,” the man said. “Step outside and don’t let anyone bother me until I come out.”

  The men closed the door behind them. Elvis could hear the muffled sound of music and loud stomping coming from the floor above. He looked up at the ceiling, frowning.

  “Dance studio,” the man said, still looking at Elvis’s possessions. He was holding up his driver’s license. It was a fake, of course. “You dance much?”

  “Not really.”

  “No, I didn’t peg you for a dancer, and I don’t think you’re here for the art gallery. So, what’s your angle?”

  “Sorry?”

  “Your angle,” the man said, putting the driver’s license down and turning to Elvis. “Who do you work for? DFS? Or you a judicial?”

  “Who do you work for?” Elvis shot back. “You speak Spanish like you learned it from a Spaniard, but you’re not from there.”

  “How would you know?”

  “I knew a real Spanish dude,” he said, thinking of El Gazpacho.

  “There’re several regions in Spain, you know. Not everyone sounds the same,” the man said, swiping a newspaper from a tall pile and opening it, his eyes scanning the contents instead of focusing on Elvis. “But I’ll give you a point for being observant. And maybe I’ll even tell you where I’m from if you answer my questions. What’s your name? Your real name.”

  “Elvis.”

  “Your real name, I said.”

  “It’s as real as it gets.”

  It was true. There’s nothing that Elvis loved more than being Elvis. The loser he’d been before was best forgotten. Elvis wasn’t a code name, like it might have been for the others. Elvis was him. His interrogator must have appreciated the honesty in his voice, because he nodded.

  “You can call me Arkady,” the man said. He was tall and dressed nicely in a suede jacket and a turtleneck. Sharp, but not overly fussy. His shoes were of shiny patent leather. With that fashionable outfit he could as easily fit in at a trendy cocktail party or a hippie’s birthday bash.

  “Sure, Arkady.”

  The man plugged in the radio. “Who do you work for, Elvis?”

  “It’s all the same garbage. What difference does it make?”

  “Ah, you think you’re clever, don’t you? Answering my questions with questions. Well, I can’t waste all my day with a sloppy man like you.”

  “Sloppy,” Elvis repeated.

  “The way you beat Casimiro was sloppy. Too messy. I can’t stand messy interrogations. You probably are messy all the time,” the man said, raising
his hands in the air and sighing. “Three guys to beat a skinny priest? You couldn’t do it on your own?”

  “You handle it any better in Russia?”

  “How’d you figure that one out?” the man asked. He didn’t sound surprised. Just pleased that Elvis had caught on quickly. Maybe he’d assumed Elvis was a fucking idiot and he wouldn’t even guess right.

  “You sure aren’t from Peralvillo. Arkady’s a Russian name. It’s from Crime and Punishment.”

  “Are you studying literature?”

  Elvis chuckled. “I like to read.”

  “Good. Everyone deserves an education. Now, what’s your angle?”

  “I’m guessing that yours is to try and scare me by telling me you’re KGB and then waving your gun at me.”

  He probably had a Makarov somewhere on him, fucking commie spy.

  The man smiled and switched on the radio, turning up the volume pretty damn high. “White Room” was starting to play. He rolled up the newspaper he was holding, his hands tight around the paper. “No, by keeping it simple. Not sloppy. Simple.”

  Arkady whacked him in the face with the newspaper, like Elvis was a damn dog. And shit, it fucking hurt. Arkady whacked him again and again and again. Elvis tried to focus on something else. That’s what El Mago told them when they were hurt, focus on something else. But there wasn’t much to focus on in that gray storage room filled with boxes.

  “Scream if you want, by all means,” Arkady said. But of course the radio was blasting, and who the fuck was going to hear Elvis anyway? Better to bite his tongue instead of whimpering like a baby.

  He thought of the woman. Maite. With her startled eyes, the face like Bluebeard’s wife. The way she’d craned her head that morning when the hippie had been speaking to her in front of her building, before they got into the car. Her dress was yellow with a flowered print.

  Elvis blinked, looking up at Arkady. The man had stopped hitting him and was now looking down at him, still smiling. His teeth were very white. He probably brushed them after every meal, the fucker. Combed his hair very nicely, made sure not a strand of it was out of place. Even now after hitting Elvis eight times in a row he looked pristine.