City Without Stars

by Tim Baker

  ‘Can you trust me?’

  ‘I know I can trust you never to give me a straight answer.’

  And I never will, Fuentes thinks. ‘I trust my instincts. Why?’

  ‘The cop they arrested was Paredes, Gomez’s partner before you came along.’ Fuentes tries not to show any reaction but Valdez is sharp. He smiles maliciously at Fuentes. ‘You’re going to be tailed, you’re going to be photographed, you’re probably already being tapped.’ He slides a piece of paper across the desk: there is an address written on it. ‘So let’s be careful, shall we?’

  Fuentes stares at the paper, then lights it, dropping it into the ashtray. A section of the paper takes off, aflame, as though trying to escape before thinking better of it and spiraling back to earth with a bitter trail of smoke. It lands on the floor, crumpled into a fist of angry, curled embers. Fuentes steps on it on his way out, pausing at the door. ‘You know, no matter what I do, I can’t make you look good.’

  Valdez shrugs magnanimously, pulling a sad face. ‘Just don’t make me look bad.’

  12

  Pilar

  Juan Antonio is on the phone, absorbing the last rays of the sun outside on the balcony. As soon as it sets behind the hills, shadows will slither out of storm-water drains and slide off tiled roofs, staining the town with their cold gloom.

  He glances inside through the glass sliding doors. The women have all showered and changed, and Maria and Lupita are trying to distract Pilar, joking about something on the internet.

  Juan Antonio feels guilty about his outburst with Pilar. It’s the way he often speaks to her these days: harsh and critical; devoid of any encouragement. He’s only hard on her because he wants to help Pilar achieve her potential; to become not just a great union organizer, but a future political leader. A female voice on behalf of neglected women.

  Besides, it was the way he was taught and it worked for him. He was trained by survivors of the Tlatelolco massacre, veterans who knew the meaning of struggle and the strength of ideology.

  Thirty-two years later, it’s still Us against Them, only the Us has grown in size and the Them contracted into something much darker and more dangerous. In the old days, Them was the ruling coalition of corrupt politicians who owned everything and shared nothing – except on the eve of elections. They were smug, fatuous and supremely certain of their control. Nowadays, the politicians and their allies have become a part of Us, the coalition of the weak and fearful; of the powerless. Now Them is the narcos. They control everything, including the maquiladoras. They don’t just run the country, they’re running it down. They are sucking it as dry as the skull of a longhorn baking in the Sonora desert.

  Outside the building, a group of youths crosses the road slowly, looking up and down the street. They pause next to a black Dodge Super Bee. One of them puts his hand against the driver’s window and peers inside, then quickly takes out a coat hanger bent into a hook. Juan Antonio covers his cell phone and calls out to the gang. ‘Keep walking, assholes, that one’s mine!’

  The boys turn as one, looking up at the balcony and giving him a collective mentada before obediently moving on. Juan Antonio repeats a date on the phone as he cranes over the balcony, watching the gang disappear down the street.

  He goes inside. Pilar looks up at him from the computer screen. ‘Isabel Torres,’ he says. ‘She lived with her mother. In Anaprata.’

  There’s a sad silence. It is an added desecration. Isabel was second generation.

  That was all part of the original lie when the factories first opened. Back then there had been jobs, lots of them. The problem was they were mainly for women. The women were told they could go to Ciudad Real on their own, find work easily, save up; improve their lives and return to their families with money. Everybody wins.

  That had been the promise. But it rarely worked out that way. The work was regular but exhausting. The money was a little more than most places, but the cost of living was a lot higher. Especially housing. It was expensive and hard to find. The factories and sweatshops went up overnight but housing was much slower. Shantytowns sprang up in a desperate attempt to keep pace with the maquiladoras. Basic services such as electricity, running water and sewage were lacking, as was public transport.

  Almost all of the new female arrivals were young. Many fell pregnant. They needed help raising their children so they could return to work and start earning again. Mothers and sisters were drafted in. Housing and feeding one person became housing and feeding three. The numbers added up back home in Zacatecas or Durango or Chiapas. But once in Ciudad Real, they lost their easy elasticity. No matter how hard you tugged and pulled them, the numbers never seemed to stretch far enough.

  Ask any curandero: the fever dream of fortune is easily broken with brutal but effective medicine – the ice-pack of freezing mountain nights spent in a makeshift hut or women’s dormitory, followed by a hemorrhaging sweat induced by under-ventilated interiors ablaze with desert sun. The seductive mirage that brought hundreds of thousands of women up north quickly evaporated into a saltpan of tears and perspiration. And nothing grows in saline, not even bank accounts.

  Anaprata was one of the first shantytowns to go up and it is still one of the poorest and most dangerous neighborhoods in town. But what choice did Isabel’s mother have? Isabel Torres was born in Ciudad Real and that’s where she died. She was a poor woman from an exploited class. Pilar mourns her fate but is not surprised by it. ‘I’ll go see her mother.’

  ‘Do that. We’re going to time the strike with the funeral. Of course we’ll help out with expenses.’

  ‘When’s the funeral?’ Lupita asks.

  ‘In three days.’

  The women exchange nervous looks. Juan Antonio is annoyed by the sudden unease. ‘That’s what you wanted, right? To bring the killings into the strikes?’

  ‘Of course,’ Maria says. ‘But it doesn’t give us much time.’

  ‘That can’t be helped. If we don’t stay on top of events now, we’ll be left behind.’ He turns to Pilar. ‘If we can get you into another maquiladora, do you think you can shut it down in time?’

  Pilar stops and thinks, trying to find an honest answer: her reputation says yes. But what of her heart? It says maybe. ‘I’ll need an example. If Maria and Lupita can close their maquiladora, I know I can do the same.’

  Juan Antonio puts an arm around Pilar’s neck, pulls her towards him and kisses her on the crown of the head. ‘It will be a triumph if only four of us can close down two maquiladoras!’

  ‘How many other factories will strike?’

  ‘At least fifty. Maybe even a hundred. This time they won’t be able to ignore us. It’ll be—’ The air pressure swells and breaks across the room, heavy with the intent to harm. It surrounds them like an earth tremor, hammering at exteriors, before vibrating deep inside them, threatening to burst them all open with an expanding, internal traumatic shock.

  Pilar sways, nauseated by its power, the noise of the blast already filling the room, consuming her with its velocity.

  Then they are all on the floor, the air full of car alarms collectively screaming in panic, the rush of birds scattering shadows like shrapnel as they escape across the sky.

  Juan Antonio is the first up, stepping carefully through the glass heaped around the balcony. He looks over the ledge, catching a glimpse of body parts through the black smoke. One of the youths is sobbing, propped against a wall, blood pumping from where his foot should be. Juan Antonio hurries back inside. ‘Careful of the glass,’ he says, helping Lupita up. ‘Everyone’s okay, yeah?’

  Pilar helps Maria up. There is a single tear of blood on her cheek. ‘Don’t move …’ Pilar removes the glassy thorn from Maria’s face. It’s surprisingly long.

  Maria stares at it, amazed, then looks at Pilar. ‘Can you smell gas?’

  Pilar shakes her head. Behind her, Juan Antonio is snapping the laptop shut. ‘We can’t stay here tonight. We need to move.’ Pilar takes a broom and starts sweepi
ng, the glass rustling on the floor. Juan Antonio looks at her with disbelief. ‘What the hell are you doing?’

  ‘Cleaning up,’ she says, her voice shaking and sounding far away through the ringing in her ears.

  ‘We have to go.’ He takes the broom from her trembling hands and holds her close. ‘Don’t you understand?’ The first sirens are approaching in the distance. ‘That was my car they just bombed.’

  13

  Ventura

  The maquiladoras they pass look regimented and severe; more like internment camps than factories, with razor-wire fences and parade ground-size parking zones. ‘All the victims worked in these sweatshops,’ Ventura says to Mayor. ‘That’s why I need to get inside one.’

  He stares at the industrial parks stretching off into the distance, forming a Brutalist vanishing point. ‘But you have no experience.’

  ‘Nor did any of the women when they first arrived here.’ She turns her face away from the blast of a passing big rig.

  ‘Certainly exploitation is a great equalizer,’ Mayor says, waving the dust away.

  They drive on in silence, soon passing smaller, older factories set between garbage dumps, fuel depots and abandoned cars.

  And then there is nothing but the tan and brown countryside, with the olive sheen of vegetation in the distance, and beyond, the copper gleam of the border.

  Mayor glances inside Ventura’s camera bag, propped between them as she drives. All you need to know about a photographer is the type of camera they use. Nikon is professional but unimaginative; Canon is technique compensating for originality. Hasselblad is for control freaks, and Contax is for wedding photographers. But Leica is the really dangerous one. It’s for disillusioned artists or overconfident amateurs. ‘Leica …’

  Ventura smiles proudly. ‘Only the best, right?’

  Mayor looks away. On the horizon, the ridged hills begin to rise in the south, the mountains beyond dun-colored and raw, soothed by strands of violet shade lying clever and concealed between peaks.

  They are mountains that awe, mountains that threaten; not because of their height but because of their persistence, locked between the harsh topography and the blue sky, refusing to let go, to allow themselves to be eroded into more yellow and red desert, more sighing sand. They are defiant; reckless and noble as a bloodied fighter struggling to his feet on the count of eight.

  ‘Where did you say we were going?’ Mayor asks, his voice quavering as the car bucks over a stock gap.

  ‘To Kilometer Zero.’ Ventura turns back to the road, the sun reflecting off the vast whoosh of the red hood as it streaks over ancient bitumen curtained with gravel, with the slip and slide of shifting sand.

  She leans forwards and turns on the radio, singing along with the song that is playing, ‘Los caminos de la vida’. Mayor watches her. She has a lovely voice, rich and expressive. He claps when she finishes. ‘Do you always sing when you’re afraid?’

  She stares at him, both impressed and embarrassed. She decides to be honest. ‘It’s this countryside. It frightens me. Its isolation.’ Her isolation within it. ‘The number of young women who have died out here.’ Her need to explore this story and the fear of where it might lead.

  She pulls over suddenly, the air going quiet and hot as she kills the engine and with it the breeze. She looks around. There’s absolutely nothing out there … Except for the place they’re going to visit.

  Ventura gets out her camera, changing her 50 mm lens for the 35 mm. Falling back on the routine of professional expertise calms her and restores her confidence. She takes the flowers from the back and sets off into the desert, Mayor following her along a battered path. It leads to a sandy knoll crowned by a cairn and littered with offerings broken by the elements and time. She places the flowers on the ground, securing them with a rock. Her camera whispers in the dry silence. ‘This is where they found the body of the first victim.’

  He leans down and brushes a cracked piece of glass that has been set with cement into the stone. Under the stained plate is the smear of what was once a photo, before humidity and sunlight dissolved it into a blistered blur.

  ‘Have you ever been out here before?’

  Mayor shakes his head in shame.

  ‘It all started here. Ten years and more than eight hundred murdered women later, it shows no sign of stopping.’

  Mayor scans the arid landscape as though searching for clues, his face cast in bronzed sunlight. She shoots him fast, the memorial in focus over his shoulder, looking ragged in the rasping wind. ‘They dropped the first body here, far from town,’ Ventura says, putting her camera down.

  ‘They were afraid that they’d be seen.’

  ‘I think they were also ashamed of their terrible crime. But over the years, as the number of victims grew, so did the killers’ audacity. Now the bodies are left within the city limits.’

  ‘Impunity,’ Mayor says without hesitation.

  ‘Somewhere along the way, they have acquired total immunity.’ She crouches down, framing the sad shrine above her fresh flowers, her camera singing its song into the empty desert. She slowly stands, staring out at the malevolent landscape, and for a second almost catches a glimpse of it: the violence like heat haze, trembling a passage towards her.

  14

  El Santo

  Jaime Santiago was known to everyone as El Santo. He earned his nickname not because both his names belonged to the same Apostle, but because he once robbed a bar wearing a plastic version of the famous silver mask of the wrestler. El Santo was the most popular wrestler in Mexico, and when his mask was finally removed, it was he who lifted it himself to announce his own retirement.

  That was class.

  Santiago wanted some of that class to rub off on him and it did. He only ever wore his plastic mask once, but the name stuck.

  The Saint.

  Things could have ended right there in the bar. Santiago had no idea that it was owned by Amado Lázaro Mendez, the head of the Ciudad Real cartel. Amado was there during the robbery, and laughed so hard at the sight of the fifteen-year-old in the wrestler’s mask holding up the till that Santiago had actually thought of shooting the mocking bastard. Lucky for both he didn’t. The next day he got a message from one of Amado’s henchmen: Come work for us.

  El Santo started out as a lookout, in the unlikely event that a law enforcement official not in the pay of the cartel might stumble upon a transaction. The kid was bright, but what really led to his fast advancement was something Santiago had that most of the others in the cartel could only dream of: a US passport.

  Santiago’s mother came from Puerto Palomas and, like most of the women there, gave birth at the nearest hospital, which happened to be on the right side of the border in Lunar County, New Mexico. Santiago even went to school there, until his mother made him get on the bus with her and travel the two hundred kilometers to Ciudad Real. He may as well have crossed an ocean. Two years later, he was a dropout and a novice crook with a plastic mask. And then Amado came along. After a couple of weeks observing the kid, Amado gave Santiago very specific instructions: go home and finish your schooling.

  El Santo had helped move over five hundred kilos of coke into safe houses in Columbus and Deming by the time he graduated. One kilo a day. He was the cartel’s first lunchbox smuggler. In the greater scheme of things, five hundred Ks of coke was nothing – only sixty million on the streets after it had been cut. But Amado was all about planning. The little details. Five hundred kilos here, fifty thousand there. No matter how much you had, it was never enough. And each safe house was another silver stake in the greatest market on earth: the United States of Addiction. When it came time to run – and Amado was smart enough to know that time would one day come – he’d have his very own personal guide to How to Disappear Forever and the money to make it happen.

  El Santo was rewarded the way you were in the cartels: he was turned into a killer. After high-school graduation he was driven to a house on the outskirts of Ciudad Real an
d handed a cut-throat razor. What he did with it was his own business; he just had to obtain a name. What was surprising was how fast that name was delivered. And the next one, and the one after that.

  The thing El Santo hated most about those evenings in the house wasn’t getting the names, it was what happened afterwards. Digging the graves; hard work in the bracing night air, his lungs and arms aching. It was the way he felt when he used to shovel snow in Puerto Palomas, the sweat on his body warm then freezing cold. Worst of all was the lacerating stench of the lime; the way it got up his nose or worked itself into his open pores, so that his body would itch and even bleed from its bite.

  By the time the police found out, there were over a dozen bodies decomposing in the backyard. The papers called it the House of Death. If they only knew the real extent of the killing that had been going on. That house was like El Santo’s lunchbox. A drop in the fucking ocean.

  Amado came. Amado went. Now fifteen years after that first heist, El Santo was the head of the cartel. The fourth in as many years since Amado died – or staged his own death and disappeared. With Amado anything was possible. Although Santiago rarely killed people himself anymore, he still sanctioned their deaths. So why the fuck didn’t he know about this car bombing?

  ‘They were just kids heisting a car,’ El Feo tells him. The nickname is not meant ironically. El Feo is one ugly son of a bitch. Just having him in the room is enough to put you off your food. ‘They got unlucky.’ They sure did. ‘They heisted the wrong car. The bomb was meant for some CTON union organizer.’

  El Santo doesn’t like the sound of that. Two fucked-up CTON hits on the same day? You always have to be careful about weird. ‘I don’t care if it was meant for the fucking pope! Why didn’t they come to me for the job?’ He gets up and snatches El Feo around the throat. ‘This is still my territory, isn’t it?’