City Without Stars

by Tim Baker

Before the economic crises and the currency collapse; the devaluations and the inflation and the recessions.

  Before NAFTA.

  Now most of the decorative tiles on the front facade of the building are missing and rust stains from broken guttering streak the exterior. Now times are not so good, and it doesn’t look like they’ll improve in this generation. The women take the stairs. The elevator is broken. For good.

  Pilar taps twice on a door and sees the light from the peephole eclipsed for a brief moment. There is the sound of a chain unslotting, two deadlocks turning and then the door springs open, afternoon sunlight blinding them, Juan Antonio ushering them in quickly, then locking the door. Pilar tries to speak but he silences her with a finger to his lips. ‘Not without a drink.’

  The women look at each other as he rattles beer bottles out of an ancient refrigerator, passing them along. ‘I don’t know about you but, puta madre, I need one.’

  ‘It wasn’t her fault,’ Lupita says.

  Juan Antonio snaps the cap off against the edge of the kitchen table, foam erupting in outrage at the violence. He takes a long swig of beer, then sighs. ‘It was entirely her fault.’

  ‘Fuck you!’ Pilar gets angry the way she always does when she’s made a mistake. ‘We still have Maria and Lupita in there.’

  ‘I wanted you! That’s why we brought you in from Tijuana. We need you here.’

  ‘What else could I have done?’

  ‘Shown some discipline for once and stuck with the plan.’

  ‘They dumped her body outside – was that part of the plan?’

  Juan Antonio takes another long drink, then slams the empty bottle down on the table. ‘A year’s work, fucked in a single morning, wasn’t part of the plan either.’

  ‘She was just lying there, in the trash.’ There are tears welling in her eyes. ‘I couldn’t just …’ Leave her there like that; pretend not to see her. Pretend it didn’t happen. ‘She was put out like garbage. You want us to ignore that?’

  ‘Jesus, Pilar, that’s not what I’m asking you to do.’

  ‘It sounds like that to me.’

  ‘There’s only one way to stop the killings and that’s to humanize the maquiladoras. Once the women have unions, they have protection. Cause and effect. Until that happens, they will never be safe because no one will fear harming them. You of all people know that.’ Pilar gives him an agonized look and turns away.

  Lupita gestures behind Pilar’s back for Juan Antonio to calm down. He goes over to Pilar, putting an arm around her shoulders, his voice softening. ‘I understand how you feel, but we have to be strong. We have to be exemplary at all times. We have to prioritize our actions.’ Pilar nods, martyred to the logic of the Cause. Again. ‘But now we have no choice. We have to bring the strike forward.’

  Pilar glances helplessly at Lupita and Maria. ‘That’s impossible.’

  Juan Antonio takes the untouched beer from Pilar’s hands and pops the lid. ‘Emotion renders our tasks more difficult, but it should never stop us from reaching our goals.’ He pauses, staring out at the balcony, spider web phosphorous in the glare of the sun. ‘We need to take the force of all that emotion and make it work for us.’

  ‘How do we do that?’ Lupita asks.

  He takes a sip of beer, thinking, then smiles with the answer. ‘We find out when the funeral is …’

  10

  Ventura

  It’s the last place you’d ever expect to find Mexico’s most famous writer eating lunch. Raw concrete floors. Corrugated-iron roof; next to a wholesale automobile accessory store. Felipe Mayor is more Michelin than Goodyear.

  Mayor was born into a wealthy family with land holdings in Jalisco, Sonora and Chihuahua and banking interests across Spain and Latin America. His father had profited from close contacts with dictators on both sides of the Atlantic in the period after the Second World War until his mysterious death in Santo Domingo in 1964. The trust fund he’d established for his only child kept Felipe Mayor at a safe legal distance from the origins of the family’s fortune, allowing him to turn his antiseptically clean hands towards more interesting occupations than making money: writer; diplomat; international libertine. A perennial candidate for the Nobel Prize for Literature, some see him as too controversial to win, others as too commercial. He’s been poured into the same middlebrow alphabet soup as Mailer, Moravia and Malraux.

  But here he is, sitting in a steak house in Ciudad Real wearing jeans and riding boots, looking more like a ranchero than a literary aristocrat. The only outward sign of his true identity is the neatly maintained, elegant moustache – a fastidious monument to the vanity of a silver-haired man content to spend hours of his life in front of a bathroom mirror.

  A flash of sunlight slaps his face as a door opens, the restaurant going quiet with the intrusion. Ventura is younger than she sounded on the phone, with long, sun-bleached hair carelessly pulled back into a loose ponytail. She wears a white tank top, the air-raid siren of jungle camouflage pants and the surprise of a gold Rolex. Taking off her sunglasses, she surrenders her eyes to the restaurant’s gloom. When she spots Mayor she gives him a relaxed smile. She’s been behind the scenes of enough fashion photo shoots not to be intimidated by fame.

  ‘Ventura Medina, I presume.’ Mayor rises from his seat with a courtly bow.

  ‘Thank you for seeing me, Señor Mayor,’ she says, sitting down opposite him. ‘I really appreciate your time.’

  ‘When you get to be my age, you’ll appreciate it even more.’ Her laugh is a relaxed caress. He smiles, pleased as any author who has found his audience. ‘I was very impressed by your portfolio. Especially your portraits.’ Mayor holds up two fingers to the waiter. ‘You mentioned that you’re a friend of Francesca Ellis?’

  ‘We went to art school together in Italy. She was the one who gave me your contact details.’

  ‘Of course. I spent a lot of time with her parents.’

  ‘Francesca told me all the stories – especially the outrageous ones.’ She gives him a knowing grin.

  He sighs nostalgically. ‘Times were different back then. Everything seemed so … innocent.’ He leans back, nodding thanks to the waiter who places two large frosted glasses of beer in front of them. ‘Every generation makes its choice about the way it wants to live – and it doesn’t always have to be with war.’ He raises his glass and they toast. Ventura doesn’t normally drink at lunch but her parting with Carlos makes her grateful for the icy needle of alcohol puncturing her annoyance; her concern about him, and the way he has changed. She looks up, realizing that she hasn’t been listening. ‘… brings you to Ciudad Real?’

  ‘Apart from you?’ He grins, pleased with her mocking fearlessness. ‘I recently moved back here from Mexico City.’

  ‘Your first mistake.’

  Again that caressing laugh, a flutter of lightness in a heavy city. ‘My partner’s business is based along the border. I wanted to spend more time with him.’

  Mayor is disappointed to hear mention of a companion so early in the conversation. ‘It’s a typical story, I’m afraid: a woman forced to sacrifice her own career so that her husband’s can flourish.’

  ‘I know, only we’re not married, and—’

  ‘And you are not a typical woman.’ He smiles with perfect teeth. ‘I can see that from your work. You mentioned an interview and taking some photos?’

  ‘It would help me enormously.’

  His eyebrows rise with feigned modesty. ‘May I ask what magazine it’s for?’

  ‘It’s not for a magazine, it’s for a book … And to be frank, I need your name to help me sell it.’

  He laughs, delighted by the confession. Unlike most powerful people, Mayor still values honesty. ‘Splendid. That makes us partners.’ Two rare steaks appear, the meat overlapping the rims of the plates. Mayor picks up his knife and fork, carving with gusto. ‘My father bought land up here. Not for the proximity to the border. Not for the incentives. For this. The finest steak in the world.�
� He takes a bite and gives a hum of satisfaction. ‘My father would cook it straight on the coals. Just toss the meat in and watch the flesh char black.’

  Ventura slices through her steak, the bottom of her plate running red. She hasn’t had a meal like this for years. Carlos refuses to eat red meat. There is so much stress in his life, he says, the last thing he needs is to worry about cholesterol. She takes a bite and is transported back to Sundays at Las Altas and communal barbecues around the swimming pool, juggling plates in laps and brushing away flies.

  ‘I can see you’ve got spirit,’ Mayor says, watching with satisfaction as she eats. ‘So what is this famous book of yours about?’

  Ventura glances around then leans forwards, whispering, ‘It’s about the murdered women of Ciudad Real.’

  Mayor slowly crosses his knife and fork, his appetite suddenly gone. ‘Like you, I grew up in Ciudad Real. And like you, I escaped; only to return here. So perhaps you’ll understand when I say that home is the first place you ever want to leave but the last place you’d think of finding the end of the world.’

  ‘You can trust me to get to the heart of this story,’ she says, not paying the slightest attention to what he’s just said.

  ‘I don’t doubt it,’ he lies.

  ‘I’ve already done a huge amount of research.’

  He takes a sip of his beer, pausing diplomatically. ‘Research is just the opinion of others, and in this case, mostly of people you shouldn’t trust. If you really want to face this challenge, you must free your mind from everything you’ve heard or read. But most of all, you must be careful.’

  Ventura has some idea of what she is up against. Over eight hundred murdered; zero suspects. Numbers that don’t add up. Her instincts tell her the government is to blame, the way it is to blame for all the other massive numerical failures: the trade deficits, the exchange rates, the tax increases. The spiraling inflation. But where should she start with all these numbers? That’s the real reason she has reached out to Mayor; not because it is frightening, but because it is so overwhelming. ‘How should I begin?’

  ‘The way we always do: by asking questions.’

  ‘Who is behind the killings?’

  ‘Think about it: the simplest questions are always the hardest to ask.’

  Ventura takes a deep breath, not so much wanting to impress Mayor as afraid that she won’t. She puts her fork down and tries again. ‘How do I find a question that nobody wants to answer?’

  Mayor drains his beer with satisfaction. ‘I am so glad you asked.’

  11

  Fuentes

  It’s not the way you might imagine. No matter how many autopsy reports you read, you never become desensitized. The opposite actually happens: each new report impacts at a higher emotional level. Scientific and medical euphemisms offer no protection from the underlying savagery of the murders; from the despair of not being able to stop the killings.

  Hundreds of victims; dozens of different locations, yet the specificities of the crimes are nearly always identical. Rape. Strangulation. Signature torture signs, most of them kept secret. If you let out details like that, people who would never even think of killing might be tempted to do so. Contamination, followed by compulsion. It’s like Guinea worm. Once it burrows in, you can never get it out. It just keeps boring its hole until you both die.

  Hardly anyone knows about these concealed acts of obscure mutilation, yet they have been performed on almost all of the victims. The most obvious conclusion is as dramatic as it is impossible: a lone serial killer, with perhaps one or two inept copycat killers to explain the occasional fluctuation that chance or circumstance cannot.

  Fuentes knows what all good detectives quickly learn: that with homicides the most obvious conclusion is usually the right one.

  Three out of ten murders are domestic disputes. Five out of ten are professional criminals settling accounts amongst themselves; these days mainly about drugs. Another ten percent are the accidental outcome of spontaneous, opportunistic crimes. How many times has Fuentes heard the sobbed phrases?

  I didn’t know anyone was in the house.

  It was an accident, I swear.

  He wouldn’t stay down.

  Criminals rarely think about the consequences because they rarely think. Most do what they do because there is nothing else that they can do: they are uneducated, unimaginative; without hope. Neglected or abandoned children, crushed by poverty, often abused physically or sexually in institutions or on the street. Forced out of school. Escape becomes break in. Climbing through a window is instinctive, not logical.

  Whatever the cause, the solution to the crime is usually lying right next to the murder weapon. Which nine times out of ten is covered with fingerprints.

  Nine times out of ten you don’t have to be Columbo. It’s that ten percent margin that makes all the difference. The crimes that are premeditated. The crimes where risk has been carefully weighed against consequence. Crimes not of passion or opportunity but of calculated precision. Crimes of intent and therefore decipherable.

  Solvable.

  Convictable.

  And then there are the black hole crimes, outside all statistical reference because of their scope and savagery.

  Crimes like the murders of the women of Ciudad Real.

  Over eight hundred women murdered in ten years. Not counting the hundreds who have disappeared. Argentina and Chile didn’t teach the world what the generals wanted everyone to believe: that when there are no bodies, there are no victims. Instead Argentina and Chile taught us that when there are no bodies, the conspiracy reaches to the highest levels of the State.

  Whatever is happening in Ciudad Real, powerful men have to know about it; are perhaps even involved. It is the lesson of the Juntas. Fuentes chose to transfer here because he knows what so many other policemen don’t: exactly what he is up against. It awes him. It overwhelms him. But somehow, in a way he never understands, it doesn’t frighten him because he knows in his gut he is going to solve these murders.

  Starting with Isabel’s.

  His desk phone rings. He picks up the receiver, listens for a moment, then glances across the room to a glassed-in office. He hangs up without a word, then gets up and crosses to the office, entering without knocking.

  Captain Valdez indicates one of the chairs facing a huge oak desk empty except for two telephones and an overflowing quartz ashtray. The universal prerogative of all bosses. No work. ‘Where’s Gomez?’

  It’s not because he’s his superior that Fuentes doesn’t trust Valdez. And it’s not even because of the way he looks – the aesthete’s high forehead exaggerated by the receding hairline; the cruel inquiry of his wire-rimmed glasses that balance the weak chin, bestowing the scholarly scorn of an aging yet still canny dictator. It is the disdainful distance all foot soldiers and field men maintain from the bureaucrats; the mutual knowledge that Fuentes is in another, higher moral orbit and there is nothing Valdez could do about it, even if he wanted to – which he doesn’t. Why would he? Why cross the border of that expensive empty oak desk to the seat on the other side? Where risks are measured not by press releases and signatures on cables but by bullets and booby-trapped front doors. They work in the same office but they may as well be on opposite sides of the globe.

  ‘He’s eating, why?’

  ‘One of our men has just been picked up in El Lobo. He had forty-two kilos of cocaine inside a car.’

  Every time Fuentes hears about a corrupt cop, it feels like it’s a personal insult. Cops take huge risks every day and for what? Everybody still hates them. They get paid fuck all and there’s so much money out there, available just for turning a blind eye. It’s tempting. It’s understandable.

  But it’s unforgivable.

  Because every corrupt cop places pressure on the honest ones; puts their lives in jeopardy. Why waste your time trying to bribe someone who doesn’t want to be bought? Just put a bullet in them and move on to more reasonable relationships. ‘Was i
t an official car?’

  ‘Be thankful for small mercies. It was registered to an American woman, Mary-Ellen González from San Diego by way of Matamoros. Fifty percent gringa, hundred percent good-time girl.’

  Fuentes accepts one of Valdez’s cigarettes, even though he hates filters. They don’t stop the cancer, they just make the slow death taste drier. ‘She’s being held too?’

  ‘He was on his own. We don’t know where she is.’ Probably dead, Fuentes thinks. Unless she was an informer? Could even be entrapment. He wouldn’t put it past Washington. He keeps his ideas to himself. It’s safer that way. ‘Agents of the DEA are in town even as we speak,’ Valdez says, ‘exercising their extraterritorial right to investigate corrupt Mexicans while doing everything in their power to ignore corrupt gringos.’

  Fuentes taps dead ash onto the floor. Valdez speaks like a politician because that’s what you have to be to hold down a position like his. He waits what he considers a respectful time before asking: ‘What’s this got to do with me?’

  ‘You’re going to have to wait a little longer for US forensic assistance.’ Fuentes swears. Valdez shrugs. That’s the real difference between a field cop and his admin superior. ‘This arrest has … well, changed their priorities.’

  ‘As long as they’re not gringas, they don’t give a fuck about the murders. The only thing they care about is making it as hard as possible for their rich children to buy drugs.’

  Valdez raises his eyes to heaven. ‘They don’t have a choice, you know that. They have to follow the lead of their congressmen and senators.’

  ‘Who don’t care about the kids in the ghettos.’

  ‘And if they don’t even care about their own poor, why should they care about ours? Look at it from their perspective. They didn’t really trust us even before today’s arrest.’

  ‘And they’re sure as hell not going to trust us now.’

  ‘Exactly. And speaking of trust …’ Valdez leans forwards, peering over the rims of his spectacles, his eyes alert, testing for lies. ‘Can you trust Gomez?’