Sins As Scarlet

by Nicolas Obregon

That was the ubiquitous word for it: la inseguridad. The media used it for mass murders, mutilations, any imaginable human monstrosity. But that was like calling the Hanging Gardens of Babylon quaint. On TV the other night a controversial news panellist had used the phrase ‘Our president’s narcotheatre’ – it felt right to Valentín. Everything was for show now, even murder.

  At last, the door of the house on the corner opened and the Science Division guy emerged in white scrubs and a hairnet. Squinting through the rain, he gave Valentín the thumbs-up then ambled away. A murder like this might have been news in another city, another country. But here it would be just another shitty little footnote in the vastness of whatever this reality was being called now.

  Valentín stubbed out her cigarette and slung her coffee out the window. ‘Let’s go.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  The rain was lashing down on this sloping street lined with stacks of human shoeboxes. Rubble, smashed furniture and syringes collected in alleyways. Cacti plumed out of empty lots and abandoned building sites. The only billboards here advertised Christian ministries or Coca-Cola.

  ‘What’s for breakfast, Velasco?’

  ‘Victim is early seventies. No job listed.’

  The crime scene itself was little more than a cement hutch. On the wall there were various Madonna icons and prints of Christ: the Agony in the Garden, the Temptation in the Desert. Velasco took Valentín through, noting little details, eager to impress. In the front room he delicately pointed to the corpse with the end of his pen. ‘Cause of death is –’

  ‘One too many holes. I can count, you know.’ Valentín looked down at the dead sack of a man.

  ‘I heard about you,’ Velasco admitted. ‘But I didn’t think you’d be the joking type.’

  She grunted her reply. Of course he had heard about her. The woman. Everybody had heard about her. There was no denying she was old school – police via the military. She was just moving up when President Zedillo passed the law to create the Policía Federal back in ’99. For Valentín it had been throwing a lasso on a shooting star. Throughout, she’d suffered insults, slights and come-ons, but none of it got in her way. They’re just afraid of you, Chamaca. That’s what her father had said. They don’t like their geniuses to wear skirts.

  Valentín tried not to think too much about him anymore. She didn’t do well with feelings. After all, a father like that had been a blessing and a curse – that much love and wisdom set a high bar. Long ago she had realized normal men were not compatible with high bars.

  Valentín looked over at Velasco, who was gently lifting fingers with pencils and peering under tables with the delicacy of a proctologist on his first day. There was a time she would have treated him like the shit on her shoe just on principle. So obviously the collegiate type, so obviously from money.

  In the last two decades she had met only one man who’d been more than shrugged shoulders – Morel. He had been a strange man, pudgy yet slender limbs, black hair but reddish whiskers, constant laughter despite having the darkest world view she’d ever encountered. Valentín hated him at first: his stupid jokes, his habit of spitting nails in the car. But years had passed and somewhere along the way she began to look forward to the jokes, even found herself shaking her head affectionately as she picked out little nail clippings from her car.

  Morel had never saved her life. He’d never been much of a cop. But she had come to depend on him. Probably more than depend, despite their love affairs always fizzling out. Luis Morel had been a good man, whether or not anybody else saw it. Whether or not his ethics had wavered in the year before his murder. Now he was just a voice in her head.

  Conscious of being observed, Velasco looked up at her. Valentín wondered what he saw. Her mental image was of herself at around thirty – a dark, buxom woman with perennially short hair, quick to wink, with green eyes thanks to a Scandinavian grandmother. But now her skin was pale, her eyes sunken. Her clothes hung off her. She probably wouldn’t bother the scales at anything over fifty kilograms.

  ‘A friend discovered him this morning,’ Velasco offered. ‘Landlord said it doesn’t look like anything was taken. Not that there’d be much to take.’

  ‘The killer was here for him.’ She nodded at the old man. He was face down, his eyes half open. The last thing he would have seen before the bullets shattered through his brain was his own dirty floor. ‘No witnesses, I’ll wager.’

  ‘No, ma’am. Which I find hard to believe. Two gunshots and somehow nobody hears anything through these walls?’

  ‘Close-knit barrio doesn’t want to talk to the chota. Big shock.’

  Suddenly, Valentín was violently gasping for air, her collar sagging with sweat, her headache threatening to floor her. She staggered outside and gripped a road sign, grateful for the rain on her face.

  It had started with vomiting. Trouble swallowing. White patches on her gums. She ignored it, of course, but the work medical had been unavoidable. The test results had no interest in her career. The old man would be her last case and Velasco’s first. That was life: inauspicious beginnings, inauspicious endings.

  Valentín took refuge under some stray metal sheeting and lit up, protecting the small flame against the wind. Her drag was deep but she registered no nicotine hit. Hers was a body which no longer experienced pleasures, a gum with the flavour chewed out.

  Velasco sat next to her. ‘You okay?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘I think there could be something out back. When you’re ready.’

  She followed him to a back lot sprinkled with chicken shit. The tyre tracks were clear – thick, unmissable impressions. Valentín hunched over them, running two fingers through the warm wet mud. They were losing their shape in the rain. Same as me, she thought.

  The tyre tracks headed north. The killer left the city. Valentín didn’t know his name but she could picture him. The designer T-shirt, the SUV, the cellphone – all of it would exhibit his standing. Especially here. In this place, his wealth would have told everyone that he was a man to be respectfully left alone. A man who was connected. A man who was just here to do a job. Maybe he winked at the younger boys who marvelled at his truck, one day hoping to be like him.

  The socioeconomic theories modulated but, the way Valentín saw it, wanting to get out was wanting to get out. And there would never be a Bible passage fiery enough, or a prison sentence long enough, to deter that. Politicians talked of the narco groups as though they were simple criminal gangs, using black-and-white language. But those groups were made up of brothers. Cousins. Childhood friends. Of course they committed atrocities. She saw those every other day in Ciudad Cabral. But the slums saw the other side of them too. Covering the cost of a funeral for a widow too poor to pay. Schools built on their money. Handing out rice and water after earthquakes. They even threw festivals.

  So when situations like the dead old man arose threats were not required. The consequences were clear. Even so, Sicarios would openly kill in broad daylight, then turn to the crowd and say: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, you know how this works. The closed mouth catches no flies.’

  Valentín pulled her coat tighter around her body. She was cold all the time now, the chill deep in her bones. From here, she could see the corpse through the side door. Nobody would open their mouth for him. This was a city where nobody honked their horns. Most nights, the streets were empty. Every other door had a black ribbon tied to it. The sight of another one appearing overnight shocked nobody.

  As for the old man, Valentín already knew nobody would pay for him. Nobody would demand justice. Certainly not her.

  ‘Velasco!’ she called. ‘I’m heading back to the station now.’

  He nodded, concern in his eyes. Valentín wanted to wish him good luck. She wanted to warn him about the whispers in his ear that would soon come. She wanted to tell him to only ever keep his hands in his own pockets. To steer clear of the path she had taken.

  Instead, she just nodded at the body. ‘Good luck wi
th him.’ She smiled wryly. ‘And the rest of them.’

  Outside, the first few state police officers had arrived on the scene and were reluctantly cordoning off the area. A small crowd had gathered at the police tape. Detective Valentín knew from experience they would not stay long.

  16. Looking under Rocks

  The bus journey was long and Iwata drifted in and out of sleep. He listened to the portable radio of the old woman in front of him. Somewhere in Arizona it started receiving Mexican frequencies. He enjoyed the frequent usage of the accordion and found the awkwardly translated government messages interesting.

  An hour south of Tucson, the bus slowed. Iwata glanced at the billboard by the side of the road:

  – US BORDER PATROL –

  YOUR CAREER IN BORDERS. YOUR CAREER WITHOUT BOUNDARIES.

  The border fence came into view. It was of underwhelming height, no taller than two men, a rust-coloured vertebrae undulating over dry hills, repurposed Vietnam War landing mats.

  Iwata entered Mexico just before midnight.

  A few yards in, he got off the bus. Except for little shrouds of neon and streetlamps casting amber in convex, the city of Nogales was in darkness. Iwata could feel eyes following him, silent assessments being made. He had his gun, but it was still empty. Leaving the bus station, he stepped into the crisp desert night. At the nearest motel he paid for a single room, slipped his gun under his pillow and fell into a black slumber.

  Iwata woke early and squinted out of the window. The buildings were of varying size, each one painted brightly; marigold, jade, celeste. The street was lined with hotels and bars, a few sleeping mendicants in the doorways of closed bordellos. People were sitting outside having coffee, sharing the banal in-jokes of their day-to-day.

  In the dusty old courtyard Iwata ate spicy chilaquiles on a plastic plate and drank cold milk to calm the burn. Leaving the motel, he walked down the street and entered the pawn shop, where he asked for bullets. The man behind the counter rummaged around in the back and returned with two that were compatible with Iwata’s gun. He quoted an exorbitant price. Iwata paid and left.

  At the car dealership across the road he made an offer for an old Mazda sedan with a questionable past. Iwata was a foreigner paying cash but nobody was looking for long-term commitment here. In less than half an hour Iwata was, more or less, armed and mobile.

  A few miles clear of Nogales he stopped at a gas station by an abandoned farm. The land was a goulash of rough-hewn hummocks and wild greens. Dirty argentite clouds pressed down low. Sipping coffee with ground cinnamon, Iwata watched an old weather vane creaking in the wind.

  At 4.30 p.m. Ciudad Cabral appeared in the distance. The city crouched over a desert basin, a polluted river slicing through its centre and surrounded on all fronts by serrated mountains. On the largest mountain, a colossal message had been carved in lime, its white letters like a jagged Hollywood sign:

  LA HIERBA SE SECA Y LA FLOR SE MARCHITA, PERO

  LA PALABRA DE DIOS PERMANENCE PARA SIEMPRE

  The grass wizens, the flower withers, but the word of God lasts for ever

  Iwata entered the city from the south. On either side of the motorway ramshackle houses of sheet metal and plastic huddled together. He passed churches doubling as schools, hole-in-the-wall taquerias, a sprawling graveyard. The streets were practically empty, the only movement to draw the eye twines of black pigeons across the grey sky.

  Just before his exit Iwata noticed an object up ahead – something hanging from the massive concrete flyover. Swaying gently in the breeze was a naked male body. It had no head and no testicles, as though a butcher had cut away the inedible portions. It hung from broken ankles, a thick caking of blood and shit everywhere. A cardboard sign had been attached to the torso:

  Yo, José Velasco, follaperros, descuidé de las reglas. Con este gesto, quedo perdonado.

  – La Familia Cabral

  I, José Velasco, the dog-fucker, failed to heed the rules. With this gesture, I am forgiven.

  As the car passed underneath Iwata glanced up through the sunroof at the exposed stem of the man’s neck. It looked like a cartoon shank steak, something Tom and Jerry would eat. Shocked, Iwata made his turning and tried not to wonder who José Velasco was or what he had done.

  In a hotel near the old centre of the city Iwata hid his money under a loose floorboard and allowed himself a little rest in the hot gloom. Through the window he watched a rusty crane move, casting a dial of shadow over the square. From somewhere below he could hear Mexican ballads over lamenting guitar chords, and a football being kicked. As Iwata closed his eyes the building site’s end-of-day klaxon went off and a flock of pigeons scattered. It sounded like insincere applause.

  Cursing the universe, Detective Valentín slumped off the toilet without bothering to inspect the pink mess she had left behind. Between gritted teeth and tears she reached for the handle as though it would flush away what was happening inside her body. Every muscle ebbed between a constant ache and violent twists of suffering. Her breathing was feeble, her thighs and armpits were barnacled by a savage rash, her migraine was unrelenting.

  Valentín ran her hand across her bony ribcage now, feeling the small, quivering life beneath. She was at peace with death – as much as anyone could be – yet she would lurch out of bed screaming every night. While her mind accepted the end, her body was still only made up of simple animal parts. It was easier to be here during the nights, surrounded, at least, by other people. Even if they were cops.

  Valentín slipped her hand in her pocket and grasped the small knife Morel had given her. She had scolded him at the time: Bad-luck gift. But she loved its small solidness. It was real. He had given it to her. And it was still here. Still here.

  Valentín commanded herself to stand up now, knowing that if she closed her eyes there would be no getting up again. She splashed her grey face, tried to gargle away the vomit taste and left the bathroom.

  The precinct chief, a fat man with an agricultural face who addressed only men or tits directly, followed her with his eyes as she returned to her desk. It came as no great surprise when he shunted her on to the missing-persons desk. He might as well have tasked her with solving Fermat’s Last Theorem using an abacus. And so the last few weeks had drifted by in a haze of painkillers and laughably hopeless cases. She tried to limit the amount of times per day she glanced over at Morel’s empty desk.

  Valentín thought back to how it began – a drunken send-off for a colleague somewhere, a year after being paired together. They had staggered back to the car. When he tried to kiss her on the back seat, she surprised herself by not rejecting him. Without considering the madness of it, she had thrust his head downwards and closed her eyes as she felt his beard scratch the inside of her thighs, the prickling and the tingling indistinguishable, the tongue of this unattractive man against her suddenly imperative. After she came, Morel rested his head on her hip and she fell asleep running her fingers over his scalp.

  Nothing was said about it the next day. Externally, things carried on as normal but from then on the car itself was their own private chamber. Everything played out there. Exasperations, victories, laughter. Valentín loved being in that old car with him. Even silently sitting in traffic gave her pleasure. For a time, they were astronauts in orbit and Valentín had control of the stereo.

  But Morel had kids to put through college. An angry ex-wife and lawyers to pay. Ends had to meet. Valentín never confronted him about his moonlighting with La Familia. After a while she had even come to help him on a few jobs. But Morel had been caught with his hand in the cookie jar – over sixty thousand American cookies, to be precise – and nobody was surprised when he didn’t turn up for work one day. His rotting body was found a month later.

  The graveyard shift was when Valentín would look at his file – a few sparse pages pertaining to an unsolved murder – signs of torture, plastic bag over the face, buried in the desert. It wasn’t that she harboured any hope of his kille
r being brought to justice, that was beside the point for her; she just liked being able to see Morel’s face.

  Valentín looked out of the window, a dreary night stretching out. Little plats of streetlight, peach-coloured from the sodium vapour, twinkled against the swathes of darkness. Mist was crawling down from the mountains, swallowing what men had made.

  Outside the police station a small group of Honduran women stood in quiet protest. One woman in her sixties, no taller than five feet, wore a sandwich board with the photograph of a young man on it.

  ALIVE HE WAS TAKEN.

  ALIVE I WANT HIM BACK.

  The woman’s eyes were hidden by the brim of her Nike cap but the tears on her cheeks shone in the streetlight. All the women wore these sandwich boards, as if their existence had been reduced only to finding those faces.

  Valentín closed her eyes and thought of the beach cabin she’d grown up in. As a little girl, when she had nightmares she would creep out to the porch to look at the ocean. As night turned to dawn dove-grey cloud would roll in and the wind chimes would fuss. That was all she needed. In the mornings her father would wake her with a kiss on the forehead and a mug of chocolate.

  But the cabin was long gone. Her father was gone. Morel was gone too. All she was left with was Ciudad Cabral and missing persons.

  Her phone rang now. ‘Valentín.’

  ‘Front desk. There’s a guy here asking to look at missing-persons records.’

  In the waiting area of the central Ciudad Cabral police station Iwata was looking at the missing-persons posters that coated the walls. A large ceiling fan stirred the hot air. The Mexican flag hung limply behind the front desk.

  A door opened and a short woman with a pale face emerged. The desk sergeant gestured to Iwata and she sized him up before approaching. ‘You speak Spanish?’

  Iwata nodded. ‘I’m looking for some missing women. I think they came here.’

  Valentín led him out to the parking lot behind the station. In the shadow of a cottonwood tree she lit up. ‘I’m Detective Valentín. You a journalist?’