Velvet Was the Night

by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

  “Come on, there’s no need for that,” Emilio said.

  “Pull up a chair and look at the wall,” the man ordered.

  “What?”

  While still holding on to Maite with one hand, the man took a gun out and pointed it at Emilio. “I said pull up a chair and look at the wall.”

  Maite couldn’t move away, she couldn’t turn her head, not with him gripping her hair, but she heard the scraping of a chair against the floor as Emilio obeyed. The man released her and took a step back. His gun was pointed in Emilio’s direction, but his eyes were on her.

  “My niece. I need you to tell me where she is.”

  “You’re going to kill her,” Maite mumbled.

  “I will kill you if you don’t talk.”

  “I told you. I don’t know! I really don’t know!”

  The man hit her on the head with the gun, and it hurt so badly. The other blows had hurt, but not like this. She was going to weep. Blood trickled down her forehead, staining her lips.

  “I haven’t done anything,” she swore, but the gun came down again, making her scream.

  She thought that she’d been wrong. That Leonora was not the maiden who would be offered as a sacrifice. It was her, it was Maite, who must have her heart carved out. From the very first page, the very first line, the very moment this began.

  He pressed a hand against her mouth, as if to muffle her scream, and she responded, fueled simply by furious instinct, her teeth sinking into his fingers. He made a yelping sound, like a dog, before brutally punching her. She tumbled to the floor, clutching her stomach, tasting blood. She didn’t know if it belonged to her or to him.

  “Stop that,” a man said.

  Maite swallowed the blood and stared at the two strangers who had walked into the house.

  29

  THEY PARKED THE car outside the little white house. Even in the dark he recognized the other car parked right ahead of them, by the house’s gate. He would have known it anywhere: El Mago’s vehicle. For a minute he stood there dumbly, in the rain, until the Russian coughed.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I think my boss is here,” Elvis said.

  “Nice. A reunion. You’ve got the keys to this place?”

  “No, but I can pick the lock,” he said, and he plumbed the pocket of his jeans for the two little strips of metal. It wasn’t a difficult lock.

  They walked into the house, followed the sound of voices. He heard screaming, and they picked up the pace, reaching a large room with a very long table and many pictures on the walls.

  El Mago was beating the woman. Elvis had never harmed a woman in his life. That was for scum. For lowlifes. And Elvis was a thug, sure, but he wasn’t scum. It surprised him to see El Mago doing such a thing. He’d never imagined he could. So he spoke quickly, without thinking twice, using a tone of voice he had never dared to employ with El Mago until that day.

  El Mago was his boss, after all. El Mago was their leader. El Mago was everything that Elvis ever wanted to be. El Mago was the King.

  “Stop that,” he said roughly.

  A man was sitting in a chair staring at the wall. He winced when they walked in, but he didn’t say anything, and when Elvis spoke he lowered his head and pressed his palms against his eyes.

  “You’ve made it. Who is that with you?” El Mago asked.

  The woman’s eyes were huge, and there was blood on her lips. Those were the eyes of Bluebeard’s wife when she opens the door and finds the chamber filled with corpses.

  “It’s the Russian asshole,” Elvis said, looking away from the woman and at El Mago. El Mago’s eyes were calm. He’d done this, or something similar, something worse, many times before. Elvis thought El Mago was a gentleman, a cut above others, but he really was another little shit.

  A shit like all the other shits Elvis had ever known. Somehow he’d never realized that. Even when El Mago scared him, even when El Mago exuded danger instead of mirth, always, absolutely always, Elvis felt he was in the presence of a superior species.

  And Justo had accused El Mago, but Elvis wouldn’t believe it. He had pushed his doubts and his sorrow deep down, and he didn’t let himself dwell on it.

  “Have you switched sides already?” El Mago asked.

  “No. Arkady might actually shoot us both in the next five minutes.”

  On the floor Elvis saw strips of negatives. He bent down to look at the pieces of film. El Mago snickered. “They’re exposed. So if your Russian friend wants to start shooting, he can now. There’s nothing to see here.”

  Elvis brushed his fingers against the film. “Then why are you hitting her?”

  “Because I need to find my niece,” El Mago said, reaching for the woman and pulling her up, close to him.

  “I told you. I don’t know where Leonora is,” the woman said, but softly. Her voice trembled.

  She looked at Elvis, and Elvis stared back at her, into those tragic eyes of hers, now brimming with tears.

  “She said she doesn’t know. Let her go.”

  El Mago shoved the woman aside and turned to Elvis. She scrambled away from him, bumping into a side table, while El Mago straightened his coat, running a hand down a lapel then sliding it through his gray hair. In the other hand he clasped his gun. “It is not a good day to grow a conscience. Or to make new acquaintances,” he said, his eyes measuring the Russian before he fixed them on Elvis. “You were supposed to solve my problems, not make them worse.”

  Elvis thought of all the damn work he’d done, all the spying and the beatings he’d earned himself and the bullet in his arm. The way El Mago spoke, it didn’t matter. It was nothing. He should have known that would be the case. But he was dumb. A marshmallow, like El Güero said. Worse than that.

  “You were supposed to find the girl.”

  “You never said the girl was your niece,” Elvis replied, taking a couple of steps toward El Mago.

  “It was not important. Family matters, if you will.”

  “That’s fucked up. Killing your own family.”

  El Mago’s fingers were like claws as he again ran a hand through his thinning hair. “I did not want to kill her. I wanted to save her from herself. She was a fool, placing her trust in an informant. Sócrates! She might as well have telephoned Anaya.”

  “Then it was you,” Elvis said. “You killed Sócrates.”

  “One less rat in the world. It was not a great loss. At least you found out who betrayed her, who started this. You managed that much.”

  Elvis took another couple of steps. He had a knot in his throat. He slid his hands into his jacket pockets to keep them from trembling. “Did you also kill El Gazpacho?”

  El Mago actually seemed a little surprised when Elvis said that. So far his composure had been impeccable. Even when he’d been beating the woman, there had been little emotion. Now he frowned, his voice wavering. “Who told you that?”

  “Doesn’t matter. He’s dead, isn’t he?”

  El Mago didn’t reply. But he didn’t need to. Elvis chuckled and shook his head. He thought about poor Gazpacho, who loved Japanese movies and the songs of The Beatles. Dead. Tossed into a ditch like rubbish. People had to die one day, but not like that. Not by El Mago’s hands.

  “Fuck. Why?” he asked in a whisper.

  “The order came to disband the Hawks, to disband my units. They’re starting up something new.”

  His units. His boys. Elvis, my boy. How many times had he heard El Mago say that? My boy.

  “Disband doesn’t mean murder.”

  “You really think you get, what, a goodbye card in these cases? He knew things! Too many damn things, and I already had Leonora to worry about, to be also worrying about another damn loose end who could ruin me if he decided to cozy up to Anaya. I knew Anaya was out to hang me and I couldn’t let hi
m get hold of the rope. They think we don’t understand how to deal with guerilla fighters. Shoot them like dogs, is what they say. Shooting alone doesn’t fix things!”

  “Says who?”

  “These new shits! Shits like Anaya. And you know what they all want, don’t you? To get into politics. Gutiérrez Barrios, he was with the DFS and now he’s angling for something bigger. This is just a stepping stone for them, not a vocation. Or they want to steal, plain and simple. They’re thieves or they want to traffic drugs; they’re out to get what they can.”

  “And you’re clean?”

  “I’m no thief and no drug dealer either,” El Mago said, sounding affronted.

  “Anaya’s dead,” Elvis said dryly.

  “Is he?” El Mago laughed. A good, full laugh. Elvis always liked El Mago’s laughter. It was rare, but it was lavish, like the rest of El Mago. El Mago was so lavish, so big, so much. A god, not a man. El Mago wasn’t a coward who murdered his underlings because he was scared.

  El Mago was a figment of Elvis’s imagination. But El Gazpacho had been real.

  “Yeah. I guess we saved your ass in the end. You know, the Russian and I.”

  “The same Russian who will shoot us in the next five minutes,” El Mago said, smiling; it was like a raw gash across his face.

  “No,” Elvis said. Now he was standing right in front of El Mago, and he looked him straight in the eye. “He’s not shooting you.”

  His fingers curled around the screwdriver in his pocket, and he jammed it into El Mago’s neck. The old man gasped, his mouth wide open, but no sound emerged. In his shock, he dropped the gun he’d been holding in his hand, the gun he’d been using to beat the woman.

  El Mago was always telling them guns were a weapon of last resort, and Elvis had decided to follow his lesson plan, after all.

  El Mago fell to his knees and made a motion, one hand fumbling, attempting to retrieve his gun. Elvis kicked the weapon away and bent down, pulling the screwdriver out. Blood welled like a fountain, and El Mago scrabbled at his neck, tried to press his hand against the wound, but it was too much blood. No way of stopping it.

  He fell and lay on his back, his eyes fixed on Elvis’s face, and Elvis wondered if he’d had the decency to look into El Gazpacho’s eyes when he died. Elvis stared back at El Mago until he stopped shivering, then he dropped his own gun next to the screwdriver, on the puddle of blood that had formed by El Mago’s head.

  The woman wept, her tragic, lost face for once seemed to fit her surroundings, and in his corner the man who had been staring at the wall had pissed himself. Elvis looked at the Russian and wiped his nose with the back of his hand because he was also crying.

  “So,” Elvis said, “you gonna shoot me with that Smith and Wesson?”

  The Russian shrugged. “What for?”

  “To get even for your lost film.”

  “Killing you won’t bring it back, will it?”

  “No,” Elvis muttered. “It sure won’t.”

  “My professional advice is to get out of here and stay out of trouble.”

  “You’ll leave the lady alone?” he asked.

  “I have no problem with her.”

  “All right.”

  He looked at the woman again, and for a second he thought about saying something to her, but he didn’t know what the fuck to say or even why he felt that impulse to speak, to murmur a nice word in her ear.

  He wanted to tell her he’d seen her in a book about fairy tales once, when he was a kid, and he believed you could grow a beanstalk that might reach the heavens.

  He did as the Russian said: he left. He had no car, so he walked. It was raining and the water was icy against his skin, washing away the blood on his hands and chilling his bones. But nothing was ever going to wash away the rest, to rinse the past clean.

  He walked and let the rain kiss him.

  30

  HOW DO STORIES end? she wondered. With comic books it was easy to tell: the closing panels were clearly indicated, the words “final issue” were emblazoned on the cover. With life it was harder to figure out where anything begins and where it concludes. Storylines bled outside the margins of pages; the colorist didn’t apply final touches.

  She didn’t know how it would end, that first night, and she didn’t search for Rubén immediately. That first night, she went home. She was still afraid, and she had bruises and cuts that needed to be looked after. In the morning she called her job and told them she’d been in a car accident. Then she tried the hospital closest to Asterisk, and after a few awkward questions she got lucky: he was there.

  She didn’t know how he’d react when he saw her, but he seemed pleased, and even when she told him the photos were gone, he didn’t appear too upset. She supposed since he had survived two bullets, other matters were, for the moment, much smaller issues.

  “You did your best,” he said. “It’s not your fault.”

  “I still feel I should have done something more. Those pictures meant so much to you.”

  “Maite, you matter more than the pictures. They could have killed you if you didn’t turn them over.”

  He looked at her with such tenderness that Maite let out a sigh. “Is there anyone I should phone for you? Any family members?” she asked, determined to assist him any way she could. She’d failed him once, but it would never happen again.

  “God, no. Jackie already asked the same thing, but I don’t want my mother to know. She’s all the way in Guerrero, anyway. I don’t want to worry her. I’ll tell her later. Besides, I’m doing okay.”

  “It must be dreadful. The pain,” she said and brushed the hair away from his forehead. But he smiled and simply raised a hand to touch her cheek.

  “You don’t look too hot, either.”

  “I know. I have to go to work tomorrow, they’re all going to stare…but I’ll come and see you after work. Do you need anything?”

  “It’s fine, Maite. I’m fine. Well…maybe you can get me a newspaper. I’m bored.”

  “I’ll bring you half a dozen.”

  He chuckled. Although Maite had always hated hospitals, she lingered at his side even when the other patient sharing Rubén’s room shot her a poisonous glance because she’d come to visit rather late in the evening and the old coot wanted to sleep.

  Just as Maite had thought, her return to the office was odd. All the other secretaries wanted to know what had happened, and Maite lied, saying she’d been in her boyfriend’s car when the accident took place. Her boss was merciful and told her if she didn’t feel up to it, she could stay home for a week or two, though he was not so generous as to give her time off with pay.

  So she took off early from work, bought a couple of newspapers for Rubén, and headed back to the hospital. She pulled up a chair and sat next to him as he turned the pages.

  “Look,” he said, pointing to a short news story with a small black-and-white picture.

  Leonardo Trejo, the story said, had passed away peacefully in his sleep. The retired colonel had been sixty-four years old. His wake would be celebrated at Funeraria Gayosso. A time and address were provided.

  “That’s not how it really happened,” she said.

  “It’s never how it really happened.”

  “I wonder how Emilio explained the corpse to the police. Unless he moved the body. But even then, the man was stabbed.”

  The last time she’d seen Emilio, the coward had been pissing himself, and she hadn’t bothered asking how he was after that. He hadn’t bothered phoning her, either. She didn’t think he would drag a body out of his home.

  “Maybe Emilio is involved with the Hawks, in which case he simply called another one of them. Or he phoned someone else with enough pull to get the whole thing sorted,” Rubén said as he folded the newspaper.

  “They won’t come after us, will they?�
��

  “Why would they? We didn’t kill him and the pictures are gone.”

  “I can’t sleep well,” she admitted.

  “It’s over,” he assured her, clasping her hand. “We have nothing they want.”

  Maite brought more newspapers the next day, but although they looked everywhere, there were no more stories about the dead colonel. She wondered who the two men had been who had walked into Emilio’s house. She especially wondered about the man who killed the colonel and who saved her life.

  He looked familiar. She tried to remember where she’d seen him before. She remembered his eyes, very dark, but little else.

  “I feel like I’ve met him before.”

  “There’s not much point in thinking about that,” Rubén told her, and kissed her as if to erase any bad memories with that gesture.

  She wondered if he’d move in with her. It was senseless to keep two places. Maite’s mother would deem it all very inappropriate, to be living with a man, and a younger one at that, but Maite was frankly tired of listening to her mother.

  Maite’s bruises changed color. The one on her face, near her eye, was green and could now be covered with a sensible amount of makeup and wouldn’t stand out. She spent endless minutes in front of the mirror, applying mascara and doing her hair. Then, in a fit of inspiration, she decided to buy Rubén flowers.

  She realized it was unusual for a woman to get a man flowers, but his room was small and drab. She wanted to cheer him up, and since he still needed to spend a few more days in that sterile, cold hospital, she figured flowers couldn’t hurt.

  She picked a nice bouquet with daisies and a couple of yellow roses, which the flower seller tied with a ribbon for her, then rode the bus to the hospital. In the hallway outside his room she bumped into Leonora.

  The women stared at each other.

  “You’re here. I…how are you here?” Maite asked. She couldn’t think of anything else to say. She had not expected to ever see Leonora again. She was like a character from a story who has been written out, erased from the page.