City Without Stars

by Tim Baker

  A corpse lies hidden under a sheet on one of the autopsy slabs. A hand protrudes from one of the corners of the sheet, charcoaled from forensics. They painted her, palmed her, printed her; then left the ink residue to dry, staining her. It wasn’t just careless or disrespectful, it was negligent. Any evidence on her hands has been contaminated.

  Perhaps that was the point.

  Fuentes unfolds the sheet down to the shoulders, revealing the face of a woman in her late twenties. The skin is a blanched olive, the eyes dark-ringed in death. A gold crucifix lies cradled inside the hollow of her throat. Fuentes puts on latex gloves, then slowly, almost reverentially, unclips the crucifix and slides it into an evidence bag. ‘She was christened once, when she was a baby. And now she’s waiting to be christened again, aren’t you, Jane Doe?’

  Fuentes knows the parameters of what will happen next. A mother will visit in the next few days, praying not to find her daughter here. Or three months from now, she’ll sit down in front of folders of photos at a police station in a different state. Or she’ll write another pleading letter, hoping to receive a response in an envelope with a US stamp.

  He lifts the dead woman’s hair, revealing areas that have been shaved along the temples, so that it could be worn either exposed or covered. She was no maquiladora worker, but perhaps someone who worked in an upmarket shop or an office; someone who was required to dress conservatively but who possessed a rebellious flair. A person keeping a secret; maybe leading a double life. Responsible by day, wild by night.

  Her ears have multiple piercings through the lobe and helix, although there is no jewelry there. Some killers keep jewelry as a trophy, but the ones he’s after are different; theft has never been a motive. They’re disciplined, as though always adhering to precise directives. As though there might be consequences if they don’t. The absence of jewelry most likely indicates that she was in her conservative environment when she was kidnapped, perhaps going to or coming from work.

  A bank or law firm maybe?

  There is a tattoo of the Virgin Mary on her right shoulder. ‘Nice work,’ Gomez says, ‘real professional.’ And easily concealed if need be. Fuentes folds the sheet down to her waist. Both nipples support silver barbell piercings, and the breasts show signs of recent bruising. They confirm Fuentes’ hypothesis: public conformity – the crucifix; private mutiny – the piercings and tattoo. Fuentes delicately unclasps the piercings and drops them into a second plastic evidence bag. However unlikely, there could be latent fingerprints on them.

  There’s telltale scarring around the trans-axillary and peri-areolar regions and inside the inframammary fold. Breast augmentation surgery. Another unusual detail taking Jane Doe even further away from maquiladora worker. Tattoos tell stories, but scars tell entire histories and it’s his job to interpret the chronicle being revealed to him.

  She had money. She invested it in herself. Was the tattoo of the Virgin for contrition, or an ex voto offered up for an answered prayer? Perhaps the cash to pay for her breast surgery? He stares down at her face with a patient regard, as though awaiting a response to a whispered question.

  Fuentes folds down the sheet to her knees. Gomez whistles. ‘Check it out, boss.’ There’s an ornate tattoo of a butterfly on her shaved mons pubis. For her own sense of beauty or to excite a lover? Or maybe clients? There are no signs of the rashes, lesions and track marks you’d expect to find on the body of a narco sex worker. He is sure Jane Doe was leading a double life, but one she controlled herself. The butterfly speaks to him of something outside the pleasure of men. It speaks of transformation; of flight. He’s thinking money laundering; maybe even blackmail. That would provide a motive. Compared to all the other victims she is atypical; asymmetric – in every way except the manner and signature of her death, which was identical to that of the other victims. She is their first link between two worlds. ‘We need to photograph the tattoos and get them to all the parlors. Someone’s bound to recognize the work. We need to get photos of the deceased to all the clinics that perform cosmetic surgery, even the ones that don’t do mammoplasty. Someone referred her. Someone must know her.’

  ‘What’s the point?’ Gomez asks, defeated by the work before it’s even begun. ‘We’ve got her prints.’

  ‘Fuck the prints. Look at her. She’s not someone with a criminal record. We need to be smart here. We need to do the rounds of her photo with every bank, every law firm, every chartered accountant in town.’

  ‘You think she worked for the cartels?’

  ‘I think she stumbled across information she shouldn’t have. I think she’s our breakthrough.’

  The doors swing open, making Gomez jump. A doctor enters in a hurry, reading from a clipboard. ‘She’s O positive.’

  ‘Have you heard back about the blood samples from the crime scene?’

  The doctor looks up at Fuentes. ‘A positive.’

  Fuentes rushes out, slapping the doctor on the shoulder as he passes, speaking to Gomez in an excited rush. ‘Ten to one we get prints on the jewelry. That’s the way it always works: when you get one lucky break, you get them all.’

  They push through the doors out into sunshine, brutal and punishing, traffic deafening after the silence of the grave. ‘We get a photographer over, pronto.’ Car keys gleam like a lucky charm, Fuentes pulling out dangerously in front of a bus, its horn pounding with murderous rage. ‘We prioritize the toxicology tests.’ Gomez leans out his window, gives the bus driver a colossal mentada de madre. ‘We subpoena the medical records of every municipal employee, every state employee, every federal employee in Ciudad Real.’

  Gomez turns back to Fuentes. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because the killers, or at least some of them, are cops.’ He studies the look of surprise. ‘You never figured that?’

  ‘I’ve heard what people say, but … I never wanted to believe it.’

  Fuentes adjusts his rearview mirror. The car with Texas plates is almost hidden by a truck behind them. ‘You can believe it. The big question is, which cops?’

  ‘Municipal or state?’

  ‘Think again: Mexican or American.’

  40

  Fuentes

  Gordillo dozes in front of the wheel of a parked car while Byrd watches a lit window through binoculars.

  Gomez and Marina bustle in the kitchen. Gomez puts his arm around her, squeezes a breast. She drops her head to one side, kisses his arm. Gomez presses a cold beer against the back of her neck. She yelps silently, pulling away, laughing, then turns and holds him around the waist, her hands dropping to grab the cheeks of his ass, squeezing as they kiss. ‘No wonder nothing works down here,’ Byrd says, waking up Gordillo. ‘Everyone’s too busy fucking.’

  Gordillo accepts the binoculars and watches as Gomez puts his hand up the back of Marina’s T-shirt. ‘What are we doing, staking out this moron? He’s got nothing to do with anything.’

  ‘The boss wants it done.’

  ‘El Santo’s full of shit. If you ask me, this is just some kind of distraction.’

  ‘From what?’

  ‘I have no idea, but neither does El Santo. These hits on union targets. They don’t make sense. But something big is going down. And whatever it is, I want to be a part of it.’

  That’s the trouble with Gordillo. He wants to be a part of everything, which is not just greedy but impossible. Byrd stretches in his seat. His legs are aching from inactivity. Before he knows it, he’ll have thrombosis. The sooner he can get back on a golf course, the better.

  On the other side of the road, Fuentes stands behind an oleander, out of sight of a car with Texas plates that’s watching Gordillo spy on Gomez. He turns, walking silently back towards his car, keeping to the shadows.

  The drive to the last tattoo parlor on the list is long and depressing. Fuentes had stopped by Gomez’s house to see if it was still under surveillance and had also witnessed the display of affection between the couple. Gomez and Marina reminded him of his own life. Before Ciudad Real
. Before Tijuana. When everything seemed clear. Understandable. Normal. When he still believed in the bigness of little things: love and sex. Marriage and children. Family and the sanctity of the home. Trust. The nobility and purpose of a career. Being a cop and making a difference.

  One by one, all those beliefs have been stripped from him until the only thing he has left is being a cop and the possibility – just the possibility – of putting a stop to one last thing. And his one last thing is the murders of the women of Ciudad Real.

  It’s just like Fuentes to have chosen the biggest thing he could possibly think of. But he knows from nine years in Mexico City and three in Tijuana that it never really matters if what you care about is tiny or huge; at the end of the day it’s so hard to change anything, it requires such a massive effort, that you may as well aim for the big instead of the small. And if he is unable to effect change, to initiate something positive and fresh in a harsh world, at least he can still try to end something vast and ugly; something incomprehensible. So saturated in evil that politicians, police and the press will do anything they can to ignore it.

  To maintain their silence surrounding the murders of hundreds of women.

  It isn’t the silence of the grave. It’s the silence of an entire cosmology. A mute acceptance of an unspeakable ritual, which has been re-enacted not just over centuries but over millennia. Human sacrifice. Devil worship. The tzompantli demands of an insane deity.

  Burnt offerings under a red Aztec sun.

  It’s an outlandish explanation. Inconceivable.

  Preposterous.

  But the only one that makes sense. The only explanation that can embrace the savagery and the horror of what has been happening in Ciudad Real.

  The only one that stands up to logic.

  He accelerates, flashes of worn earth torn up from either side of the road by his headlamps then discarded backwards into shadow, like graves being exhumed then hurriedly refilled. A car thunders around a curve, switching on its high beams when it sees him, slapping him with velocity and light. Fuentes curses and swerves, catching a glimpse of the car in his rearview mirror, a single red taillight flashing fast as a gunshot before disappearing back into darkness.

  He pulls over, humping the car off the road, and gets out fast. Leaning with his hand on the open door, he throws up. It’s sudden. Violent. It hurts him; sucks the breath from his lungs. Leaves him gasping and in pain. He’s finally able to slowly straighten, looking up at the road ahead. Just in front of him, revealed on the stage created by his headlights, are hundreds of moths, swarming, flickering and colliding; frenzied by their desire to extinguish themselves within the burning light.

  *

  The tattoo artist is wreathed in swirls of ink and coils of color – his body landscaped by portraits, symbols and expressions of devotion. His fingers move slowly, heavy with rings, as they follow lines in an appointment book written in an elegant copperplate. ‘Here she is.’ He turns the book upside down so Fuentes can read the name: Mary-Ellen. There’s a phone number beside it.

  ‘Did she use a credit card?’

  ‘I don’t accept them. They fuck you over with their commissions.’

  ‘What can you tell me about her?’

  He lifts an eyebrow against the weight of a stud, thinking; remembering. ‘Good taste in music. Rage Against the Machine. Chimaira. Stone Temple Pilots. We’d sing along sometimes. I remember the butterfly. I tried to talk her out of it, but …’ He shrugs the way a sommelier would over an excellent suggestion that’s ignored by a diner. ‘She wasn’t a mariposa kind of person, know what I mean? Yeah, Mary-Ellen …’ The way he draws out the name, soft and spirant, gives him pleasure. ‘Sorry to hear about her, man. Real sorry.’

  ‘Did she come here alone?’

  ‘House rules. It’s only ever me, my client and the ink. That’s the way I’ve always worked.’

  ‘Did you ever see her in the company of others?’

  He looks around the walls of his studio, covered with his artwork. Psychedelic. Totemic. Abstract. Pictorial realism. ‘I don’t get out much.’ He taps his temple. ‘I don’t need to, understand?’

  ‘Did she ever talk about a boyfriend? Any problems at work?’

  The artist gives a sigh of disapproval. ‘The thing about my studio? It’s a sanctuary, man. You don’t bring your problems inside, you bring your dreams. This is a space for creation. The negative shit stays out there. I insist on it and my clients prefer it like that.’

  Outside, the sky trembles with the mustard-colored haze of sodium backlit smog. He feels strangely peaceful. Perhaps it is merely because he has thrown up something bad he had eaten. Something poisonous. Perhaps it is because he finally has a solid lead on a case that has eluded resolution for so long. Or perhaps it was the atmosphere inside the tattoo studio. A refuge for dreams and imagination.

  A sanctuary in a city devoid of one.

  He gets back into his car. When he arrived fifteen minutes earlier, he thought he’d be going straight home after this interview. He thought he was exhausted. But he won’t be able to rest now. Not when he has a telephone number that will provide a family name. An address that might open a path and take him all the way to the killers. Maybe what the tattoo artist said about Mary-Ellen is true. Maybe she wasn’t a mariposa. But she has already undergone one massive metamorphosis that evening. From Jane Doe back to Mary-Ellen. From a person without a past to a person with a history.

  41

  Ventura

  Pilar and Juan Antonio sit opposite Ventura and Mayor in a restaurant booth, their table covered with empty plates, empty beer bottles; the ashtray a cemetery of cigarettes. A group of young men at the table opposite can’t take their eyes off Ventura and Pilar. If it were only one man gazing continually at them, it’d be disconcerting enough. But their collective focus is powerful and intimidating. It implies both a right to stare and a need to dominate; to take whatever they want. Ventura glances at them, then turns quickly away.

  If Pilar has noticed the youths at the next table, she hasn’t shown it. In fact, she’s reacted to very little throughout the dinner. The only moment she ever emerged from her exaggerated state of boredom was when she was first introduced to Ventura and was pointedly sarcastic. Now she’s visibly wilting, her elbows on the table, nursing her left cheek in her palm, as though cradling the head of an infant.

  Her obvious lack of interest must be vexing to Mayor, but he doesn’t seem to mind. He has his audience. Juan Antonio is riveted, hanging on every golden word. And his words are devoted to one thing: selling Ventura. No wonder Pilar greeted her with hostility. Anyone’s conclusion would be the same: she’s sleeping with Mayor to get ahead in the world.

  And, Ventura has to admit, how many other women has she known who have done something like that? Her best friend – her former best friend – Antonia had slept with her supervisor in a clerical department of a law firm, after months of being subjected to his harassment.

  Ventura was appalled. How could Antonia have fucked a man she hated, a man who had gone out of his way to treat her badly – not once, but every day. A man who had destroyed the love she’d had for her work.

  Ventura railed at her at first but then Antonia started to grow angry, not with her boss but with her. Ventura persisted, pleading with Antonia to end the relationship for her own dignity. She explained that women were denied power and equality in the workplace precisely because it made them vulnerable. Antonia had to stand up not just for herself but for all female workers. But in the end, what business was it of hers who Antonia slept with? Yet still she felt Antonia had let herself down. She even felt that she had let Antonia down. It was so complicated, like having a friend who was the victim of domestic violence and not being able to get her to do anything about it. Powerlessness is contagious. So is self-doubt. They saw less of each other, and when they did, Antonia avoided the subject of her work.

  The Christmas after she had started her affair, Antonia was the only one in her s
ection to get a bonus. Ventura begged her not to accept it. They had a terrible argument. Ventura didn’t see Antonia for several weeks. Then she got the news. Antonia’s boss was leaving. He had been promoted to another section. And Antonia decided to go for his job. She asked him for a reference. He refused.

  She didn’t get the job.

  Antonia had been Ventura’s best friend since high school. She loved her; she would have done anything for her. And then suddenly she was estranged from her. And nothing would ever bring them back together.

  So Ventura understands Pilar’s attitude towards her. Her suspicions. But she also resents them. Because she has seen the damage that Antonia’s behavior caused. Not just to Antonia, but to her colleagues; to all women. Of course the odds are stacked against women in the workplace. They always have been. But that is no excuse. Above all else, in this masculine world, a woman needs to show solidarity with other women, and pride in herself. And it grieves her that Pilar refuses to grant her that based on a false assumption.

  Mayor is finishing his pitch. ‘Nothing else counts in this country,’ he says, more to the attentive gaze of Juan Antonio than to the passive one of Pilar. ‘Until we fix this, we won’t be able to fix anything. Believe me, I know what I’m talking about. I know this country better than anyone.’

  Pilar sparks up at these last words. ‘You only think you know this country because you spend all your time explaining it to the gringos.’

  ‘Pilar!’ Juan Antonio exclaims, but Mayor calms him down with a wave of his hand.

  ‘It’s true,’ the writer says, ‘there’s no denying. All of us who live here begin to accept things the way they are, just because we’re used to them.’

  ‘I don’t,’ Pilar says, draining a bottle of beer.

  ‘But imagine if you had to start explaining everything to others,’ Mayor says. ‘The way we think. The way we believe. Why we live the way we do. How we live the way we do. The way we treat death. Impossible!’