“Who do you work for?”
“I’m a freelancer. I’ve got stuff in Time and a bunch of other places. I’ve been covering Mexico for two years. Before that, I was in Peru.”
The woman took another sip of her drink, another puff of her cigarette. Practiced, elegant motions. She had little wrinkles around the eyes and her skin was dull, but the journalist was still attractive. Maite recalled what Rubén had said—Emilio slept with anything that moved—and she wondered if this was another one of his conquests. Maybe Emilio had a picture of her manicured pinkie in his house, or the eye, blown up, magnified, until it didn’t look like an eye.
“You talked about the attacks in San Cosme. What else?”
“Your newspapers are saying the students were armed, that they instigated this. El Sol de México, many other places, they’re taking the government line. They’re trying to wash the government clean. Leonora wanted to change that. She said she had access, through a family member, to pictures which proved the Hawks attacked the students and they were doing so with presidential orders. Not only that, the CIA helped train them.”
“The CIA,” Rubén repeated.
“That’s what she said. It would make quite the story. The problem was that Leonora didn’t carry any evidence with her. No pictures, nothing. She told me she was keeping the negatives in a safe place but wouldn’t say where.”
“Maybe she didn’t know if she could trust you.”
Jessica chuckled and grabbed an ashtray made of barro negro, tossed the cigarette into it. “Maybe. Maybe she was getting cold feet. She kept insisting that she didn’t want the names of certain people in the story. She wanted to make sure no one in her family would be identified.”
“What did you tell her?” Maite asked.
“I couldn’t promise her that. If what she was telling me was accurate, then that family member of hers was a top-ranking military man who recruited and trained Hawks. His name was bound to come up.”
“What happened in the end?” Rubén asked.
“In the end, she said she needed time to think about this. I gave her my phone number, told her to call me. She didn’t.”
“And you heard nothing from her at all?”
“No. Frankly, I didn’t think she’d cooperate. You get a feeling for this stuff. The people who’re willing to talk and the ones who won’t give you anything. She gave me very little. It was a great story, but there was nothing solid behind it to make it stick. I figured I’d pursue other channels.”
“But you think she did have the photos?”
“Probably. She was scared. Very scared. Can’t say I blame her. There’s a reason why I live in Cuernavaca: it’s harder to be placed under surveillance outside of Mexico City.”
They were quiet. There was a low hum. Air conditioning, perhaps, for this was a nice house and it was cool inside. The journalist was not a starving one. If she’d had the chance, Maite would have loved to steal something from this place. A little figurine from the bookshelf, or the ashtray. But she was clasping her hands together, and it was impossible considering where she was sitting.
“Did Emilio tell you Leonora would be visiting you the day she came?”
“He had mentioned something about a girlfriend of his who had a story I might be interested in, but no. We didn’t speak that day.”
“Afterward, did you talk to him?”
“I didn’t. I’ve been busy.”
Maite looked at Rubén, frowning, wondering why he was asking about Emilio. He’d had nothing to do with this.
“Was there anything Leonora said that struck you as odd?”
“Aside from the fact that she was being secretive and nervous? Come on.” The journalist smiled and grabbed her glass again, letting out a low chuckle.
“We’re trying to look for any clue that might allow us to find her.”
“You might ask the man who dropped her off here. After all, he was driving your car.”
They both stared at the journalist, too stunned to reply. Finally, Maite licked her lips and spoke. “Our car?”
“Or one that looked very much like it. I’m pretty sure it’s that one, though. It was red, at any rate. The man didn’t come in; he waited for her and then they drove off together.”
“Can you describe him?” Rubén asked.
The woman nodded. “Yeah, a little. I got a quick look. He was young. Brown hair, glasses. He was wearing a bandana and had on a blue jacket. Does that help?”
“It does,” Rubén said, getting up quickly. “Thanks. We should head back.”
“Wait, let me give you my card,” the woman said, standing up and going to the bookcase, where she took a business card from a plain, white cardboard box. “If you find your friend, tell her to call me. I can help get this story out.”
“Sure,” Rubén said, stuffing the card in his pocket.
“Tell Emilio I say hi.”
“We will.”
Rubén placed a hand on Maite’s back and ushered her out of the house, the gesture insistent.
When they were back in the car, Maite turned to him. “How could it be this car? Isn’t it Jackie’s car?”
“Yeah, but she lends it to us when we need it.”
“Then it could have been anyone from Asterisk?”
“Oh, she doesn’t lend it to everybody,” Rubén said, turning the key in the ignition. “It’s a handful of people. And Sócrates is the only man with glasses and a bandana in our group.”
She recalled that young man from the previous day. He seemed to be friendly with Jackie and all the other people there. He had even gotten into a bit of a verbal sparring match with Rubén.
“But then that means he didn’t tell you he drove Leonora to Cuernavaca.”
“Yep,” Rubén said.
“What do we do?”
“We head back into the city and ask him why he had the sudden memory lapse.”
19
BY THE TIME Elvis returned to their apartment, El Güero was foraging for snacks in the kitchen. When El Güero saw him, he grinned.
“You’ve got blood on your shirt. What happened? They figure you out?”
“Bad luck,” Elvis muttered, opening the refrigerator door and taking out an aluminum ice-cube tray. Rather than carefully prying the cubes he slammed the tray against the sink, and the cubes bounced out. He wrapped them in a rag.
“You must be real upset that they messed up your hairdo.”
Elvis didn’t reply and pressed the rag against his cheek. Let El Güero chuckle if he wanted. It’s not like one could expect solidarity from that piece of shit. Never had and never would.
“That’s what happens when you don’t carry a gun, marshmallow boy,” El Güero said, waving a fried chicken leg in Elvis’s face.
“El Mago says no guns.”
“Sure, sure thing. And you’re such a good little kiddie you do everything El Mago tells you.”
Elvis elbowed El Güero away. “We’re up at five sharp. Morning call.”
“Fucking five? What for?”
“Morning call, I said. Go switch places with the Antelope, then come back at midnight, and at five you’re up again.”
“Fuck you. You’ve got us round the clock!”
“Whatever El Mago needs. Unless you want to complain to him. I’ll even dial the number for you. Want to?”
El Güero didn’t reply, instead gnawed at his chicken leg.
“Good,” Elvis said, tossing the rag with the ice cubes into the sink.
He locked himself in the bathroom. The warm shower was a damn blessing on his aching muscles. Eyes closed, chin pressed against his chest, he let the water slide down his body. How the hell did you get yourself involved in this shit? he asked himself. But the truth was he was going to get involved in bad shit of one kind or another. He didn’t know any be
tter and could admit it. And like El Mago said, no sense in wallowing. Keep your priorities simple and stick to the rules.
The rules were El Mago was the boss and he’d assigned him a job. He was there to fulfill it.
After a long time Elvis closed the tap and stood before the mirror, wiping it with the palm of his hand and examining his face. He had to admit the Russian was good. He’d beaten Elvis thoroughly but didn’t leave many marks. For that, he was grateful. He wasn’t terribly handsome, but Elvis didn’t want to lose the few points in his favor.
He grabbed the clothes he’d tossed on the floor. The t-shirt was useless, and the jacket also had bloodstains. He tried washing the blood out and hung the jacket to dry from the shower rod.
He ran his hands through his hair and stepped back into his bedroom, plucked a record from the stack by his bed, and let Sinatra soothe him. He opened the folder El Mago had given him.
He scanned Emilio’s file, which consisted of a bunch of snapshots and the usual dry information. Age, height, full name. He recognized his address as soon as he saw it: it was the same place where the woman had gone, that house in Polanco.
Elvis considered that tidbit. Maite was now paying visits to Emilio Lomelí, the boyfriend of their missing girl, and she was also at Asterisk. Was Emilio worth checking out? He was going to pay either Emilio or Sócrates a visit the next morning, and although a rich kid wasn’t his usual target, he was willing to change things around if that’s what it took.
But Emilio looked dry. Nothing sticky he could find. His record was clean. A wannabe artist with no teeth. His associates were writers, journalists, cultural critics, other photographers, but none of them were the sort that attracted the attention of the authorities. They worked for papers toeing the official line. He wasn’t palling around with agitator cartoonists like Rius; instead he had dinner with editors of El Nacional and was good friends with boot-lickers like Denegri.
He turned to Sócrates, pulling out the pages from the report and checking it line by line. In his short twenty-one years of life Sócrates had had several run-ins with the police, all because of his activist leanings—he’d marched in several demonstrations, distributed dissident leaflets, that sort of stuff. If anyone could be harboring the missing girl, it would be a lefty radical like Sócrates. Plus, Sócrates and his buddies were hanging around with Russians.
That, then, would be their next target. Elvis took out his dictionary and flipped through the pages, looking for a good word to encapsulate the next day.
Maite had a Larousse, like the one he owned. Lots of people had such dictionaries, but it made him pause and consider the woman again.
He grabbed the picture he had stolen from her house and held it up, wondering if it wasn’t time to have a talk with the little lady too. But El Mago hadn’t said anything about intercepting her.
He kind of wanted to talk to her, though. He wondered what her voice sounded like. Bluebeard’s wife, with her startled eyes. Sometimes, when they were watching someone, marking their comings and goings in a ledger and snapping pictures, Elvis got bored and tried to build a profile of the targets via the details he knew about them. It was fairly easy and often accurate. He imagined their voice or pictured their kitchen drawers.
He’d been inside the woman’s apartment, so there was no need to imagine her surroundings, but the voice nagged at him. Would she have a nice voice? Or would it be squeaky, high-pitched? Or lower? Would the voice match the face, or would it be one of those wild tricks of nature where the voice is a sultry delight and the person is as plain as rice?
Cristina hadn’t had anything close to a nice voice. But she’d been pretty as hell, and Elvis was a sucker for a pair of dimples and a smile.
He wondered about the woman and thought about asking her out sometime, for kicks. When all this was over. Maybe.
Sinatra sang about the foolish things that remind you of a lover, and the record spun.
He liked crooners because he thought they sang the truth. And he liked Elvis because Elvis was simply fun. A true rock-and-roll hero, with music in his blood. Back when he’d lived with Sally and tried his hand at the guitar, he half believed he could make something of himself like that. Singing in lounges or bars. But they’d closed the singing cafés down, and it wasn’t like he’d ever had any talent, anyway.
Elvis picked the word necrology and went to bed. In the morning, he tucked a large knife in his jacket because they had business that day, and you can’t scare anyone with a screwdriver.
The Antelope was still on watch duty over at Maite’s apartment, so El Güero and Elvis caught a taxi. The traffic hadn’t reared into motion, and they reached Sócrates’s neighborhood quickly, paid their fare, and installed themselves across from the building, tucked behind a low cement wall surrounding an empty lot. A stray cat stared at them as they leaned against a withered tree and lit their cigarettes.
It was drizzling. Elvis repeated the word of the day in his mind, then drummed his fingers against his thigh, to the rhythm of silent music. Presley, singing “Can’t Help Falling in Love.” Half note, half note, sweet as honey. Life should be a slow song, affection should be a melody. The word of the day was necrology, and he was thinking about fate and lovers.
He hoped Sócrates didn’t take long. His body ached, and there was the danger someone might spot them, though they might assume El Güero and Elvis were simply a couple of homeless men camping in the lonely lot. Still, it was chilly, and the drizzle was turning into full rain.
Around eight Sócrates exited the apartment building, and they began tailing him. He didn’t go far, sliding into a coffee shop and sitting at the bar. After he’d sat down, Elvis and El Güero walked into the establishment. Elvis took the stool to the left of Sócrates and El Güero grabbed the right. Sócrates still looked half-asleep, and Elvis had to practically jab him in the ribs to get his attention.
“Huh?” he muttered.
“Come on, buddy, we’re going back to your place for a talk,” Elvis muttered.
“What?”
“It’s a fucking knife I’ve got here; get up and get walking and don’t you dare yell or I’ll slice an artery so fast you won’t even feel it.”
That seemed to do the trick. Sócrates jumped to his feet, giving Elvis a worried look. He opened his mouth and groaned but didn’t speak, as if, at the last second, he’d suddenly remembered there was a knife pressed against his body.
They walked out together while El Güero took out a few coins and tossed them on the counter, paying for the coffee the young man had ordered. The three of them walked back toward the building, Elvis next to Sócrates and El Güero ahead of them. This way, there was nowhere for the guy to run to, but he wasn’t a runner. Elvis could tell.
“Who are you? What do you want?” Sócrates whispered.
“Don’t matter much,” Elvis said. “You live alone? Is there anyone back at the apartment?”
He was hoping there wasn’t. It would make things easier. The man shook his head, glanced at El Güero and back at Elvis. In no time they were walking into the young man’s apartment, which was on the top floor of the building. No elevator.
It was a studio, crammed with books and boxes and a hot plate on a table instead of a proper kitchen. On a shelf Sócrates kept cans of Choco Milk, a jar of Nescafé, and cans of sardines next to piles of papers and more books. If you sat on the bed, you could see the bathroom, which lacked a door. Instead, a curtain made of wooden beads served as a divider. There was no couch, and the room smelled of incense and also the faint sweetness of marijuana.
Elvis motioned for Sócrates to sit on the bed, and when he did the bed creaked, as if uttering a complaint. For a moment Elvis felt weird standing there with the young man staring at him. This room, this setup, wasn’t so different from where Elvis had lived when he was younger, and it made him uncomfortable. Maybe it would have been b
etter if he’d gone to see Lomelí. It might have been fun to slap a rich fucker around. Right now, he didn’t feel too great about torturing this kid, just as he hadn’t felt good about beating the priest, at least at the beginning.
But then he remembered how the priest’s buddies had grabbed him and the Russian slapped him with the newspapers, and Elvis’s sympathy was drained.
“Look around for the camera,” Elvis told El Güero, and then he turned to Sócrates. “You try anything, I cut off your dick.” He traced an arc in the air to emphasize his words. Sometimes people were real stupid and needed visual aids, a fucking diagram to tell them what was what.
Sócrates raised both of his hands. “I’m not trying anything. I know your type!”
“Do you, now? Well, Mr. Know-It-All, what do you know about Leonora then?”
“Leonora?” he repeated, staring at him stupidly, as though Elvis had spoken in Chinese.
“Yes, Leonora. You’re friends, no?”
“Yeah.”
“How good a friend are you?”
“We know each other.”
“You recite shitty poems for everyone you know?”
Sócrates blushed. The hands, which had been in the air, came down to rest crossed against his chest. “Who told you that?”
“People say you have a hard-on for Leonora. Lots of people.”
“They’re exaggerating. It’s not like that.”
Which meant it was like that. Not that Elvis blamed the guy: the girl was pretty. Her friend, Maite, was not, although to be honest he found her more interesting than Leonora. It was the eyes that did the trick. There was a spark of pain in them, there was shock and something cloudy and lost. As if she’d been dreaming and had suddenly been awoken by the clapping of thunder. It made him curious.
But Leonora. Leonora was the one he needed to be focusing on, Leonora was the lost lamb.
“Would you hide her if someone was looking for her?”
“Hide her where? In the bathroom?”
El Güero smirked at that. “He’s a joker,” he said and kept fiddling with a pile of books by the bed, opening and closing them. “It’s gonna be real funny when we stab you in the balls.”
Velvet Was the Night Page 19
