City Without Stars

by Tim Baker

  But she is no longer aware of the exterior world, of her external body moving across a hostile environment; of the stones teething through the soles of her shoes. She is focused on the internal: the suffering of thirst and exhaustion. Her anger. And the furtive fear that this time she doesn’t have the resources to surmount her vulnerabilities.

  Pilar remembers all the painful walks of her life. Going to school in the morning against her father’s wishes, with only the flutter of the grasshoppers to keep her company. The inhuman drone of traffic on the way to catch the bus to university, men jeering at her in slowing cars. Moving down the prison corridors after her first sentencing, the blunt prod of a nightstick pushing against her trepidation. The graveled path of the cemetery road after her mother was buried, and the feeling she couldn’t live with such grief.

  The march towards riot police, gripping a banner in her hands.

  She remembers these walks, not so much as specific memories, but as something more profound – recurring, internal emotions stockpiled within her very being; the way antibodies are stored. It is an immune-system response, not to disease but to suffering. Not to illness, but to defeat. And it is this organic reaction that keeps her on her feet; that propels her forwards, step by step. That prohibits collapse.

  She is passing a long chain-link fence topped with razor wire. Behind the fence are rows of stacked drums covered in tarpaulin. She must be getting closer to town now. A guard dog pads along with her on the other side of the fence. Both are grateful for the company.

  The dog whines, freezing in its tracks. Pilar stops, alert; frightened. The sound of a car wafts towards them, a magic trick conjured out of the confused and empty night. The next thing she hears terrifies her. It’s not coming from the car, but from the dog: a low, deep growl.

  The sound of fear.

  Pilar ducks behind the abandoned wreck of a car, low to the ground and waiting, her heart beating against the corroded steel carcass, the approaching vehicle bearing down upon her, fast and certain. The dog starts to bark, a savage protest against what is about to happen.

  The headlights slap them both, then rush past with a violent velocity. Something keens across the night with it, so frightful that it silences the dog and makes Pilar slowly stand, staring in horror as the Navigator absconds across the empty street, one taillight burning bright.

  The scream of a woman.

  She watches the killers escaping, the dog whining next to her on the other side of the fence, cleaved with anxiety. What Pilar does next surprises her.

  She starts running after the car.

  III

  The Other Side of the Mirror

  DAY 3

  Victim 875 – Gloria Delgado

  47

  Gloria

  Gloria pulls away from the man, trying the car door again, and that’s when she sees Pilar, standing behind a wreck. She screams out to her, but then they have her by the hair and rip her down to the floor, their feet stomping, as though her body’s on fire and they’re trying to extinguish it.

  She passes out.

  *

  Gloria only regains consciousness when they open the car door and lift her roughly under the arms, marching her across the terrain the way the police march demonstrators; half walking, half dragging her.

  She screams, her voice resonant and loud, filling the night with her anguish. But no one comes to her aid, no one reacts. It’s like a dress rehearsal in front of an empty auditorium.

  They follow the beam of a flashlight past a strange rock formation, like steps leading up to a demolished building, the ground uneven with puny creosote bush and the crumble of abandoned ant nests.

  On the other side of the rocky outcrop is a ranch house surrounded by parked cars. They pass through a perimeter fence. A dog barks from inside a truck, the Rottweiler’s face pressed against the glass – a savage captive.

  The house’s windows are papered over but light still manages to ooze from them, like blood through bandages. ‘Please!’ she sobs. Her captors act as though they can’t hear her.

  As though she were already a ghost.

  48

  Pilar

  Barefoot and wearing only a pair of shorts, Juan Antonio hurries out of the bedroom, the thumping at the front door getting even louder. He picks up a baseball bat lying in the corner, and leaning towards the door, passes its tip across the spy hole.

  The knocking stops. He waits a moment, moving further away from the door. ‘Who is it?’

  ‘It’s me, cabrón. Open up!’

  Juan Antonio slides the latches, then turns the deadlock. Pilar rushes in, slamming the door behind her. Juan Antonio looks at his watch. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Motherfuckers!’ Pilar angrily pushes past him, pacing up and down. He pours her a shot of tequila, trying not to stare at her dust-covered legs. Pilar gulps the drink down, coughing at the force.

  ‘Pilar?’

  ‘They caught me.’

  ‘Fuck. Did they hurt you?’

  ‘They threw me out. That’s when I saw it. Walking back. The car.’ Pilar’s voice trembles. She takes a moment to compose herself, and when she speaks again, it’s in a rush, trying to get it all out while she still can. ‘They came looking for me. I hid until they were gone. Later, they came back. There was a woman. She was screaming …’ Pilar starts to cry. Juan Antonio enfolds her in his arms, but after a moment she pushes angrily away from him. ‘Don’t fucking touch me!’

  Juan Antonio backs away from her, giving her space. She begins to shudder with short, half-controlled sobs, speaking through her tears. ‘I saw the car. It was them, the killers.’

  ‘You said the car was coming after you?’

  ‘It followed me from the maquiladora. I saw it coming back and I hid. I heard the woman screaming. I heard her!’

  ‘Did they find out who you were?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘At the maquiladora. Do they know your real name?’

  ‘Fuck the maquiladora! They’ve kidnapped a woman. What does it matter about my name?’

  ‘If they know who you are, they’ll find out where you live.’ Juan Antonio is hurriedly pulling on trousers. ‘We’ve got to get out of here.’

  Pilar feels inside her hip pocket and pulls out a card. ‘We need to find Fuentes.’

  49

  Fuentes

  Mary-Ellen González. Born in San Diego in 1975 to a Mexican mother and a Colombian father. Life co-ordinates that just happened to form the narco Golden Triangle.

  Fuentes skips the geometry and goes straight to the calculus: Paredes was apprehended in a car registered to Mary-Ellen. A direct link between a corrupt cop, drug trafficking and the murder of a woman. A murder that conformed to the exact pattern of the others in all but one respect: the victim was a college graduate, high-end escort with a US passport instead of an uneducated, impoverished maquiladora worker. She did fit the physical profile of the other victims, but … It was no mistake. Her killers wanted the police to think she was just another victim in an endless line of femicides. And they set it up so well, following the exact patterns of all the other rapes and murders, that it proves they were behind all the killings. Because no one knows what they do to all the victims at the end. No one except the police. And when was the last time the police ever kept a secret like that …? Try never. The only logical explanation is that they are covering up their own crimes.

  Fuentes slides back to the geometry part of the puzzle. It isn’t just a narco triangle. This is a circle that’s being drawn and its ends are closing. The narcos own all the geometric forms. They are the master masons in this criminal construction. Silent. Secretive. All-knowing.

  In order to infiltrate a covert operation, you need an opening. And the only one he has is Paredes. He has to find a way to talk to him. Gearwheels of possibility turn in his head. None clicks. They’ll never let him near Paredes, unless he can offer up something in return.

  Something immense …

  He pulls
the drapes open. Eastern clouds bank, explosive with daybreak, as though the sky itself can’t abide the notion of another day just like the one before. All the windows of Fuentes’ apartment throb with celestial anguish, inflamed by the reflected dawn, the frustration of his new-found knowledge, and another sleepless night full of waking nightmares. The accident. Abarca’s stables. The hands of Adán, tumbling in the oil.

  And now Mary-Ellen will be added to that gallery of horrors. He’ll need to notify US authorities eventually, but he wants to gain access to her home first. The car with Texas plates that has been tailing both him and Byrd might be connected to her. Might even be driven by some of the people who killed her. Only one thing is certain. Mary-Ellen isn’t just a lead, she is now the key, and he isn’t going to hand such a valuable discovery over to anyone he doesn’t trust.

  He slides a Glock 26 out from the hidden cradle he installed under the bookshelf, checks the mag, then slips the weapon into an ankle holster, the added gravitational tug offering some kind of stability in a world lacking any.

  He takes his Colt Python from his bedside table and glides it into his shoulder holster. He slithers a four-inch knife into its belt sheath, next to his handcuffs, then pockets a couple of moon clips. This is his waking routine, as fixed as morning coffee. His promise to the day: get in my way and I’ll kill you.

  Fuentes looks around the room, like a traveler about to leave a hotel room, wondering if there is anything he has left behind; anything that could be fatal to forget. This is a difference between youth and middle age that could prove to be a lethal one – that moment when routine replaces instinct. He goes out to the kitchen and opens the cupboard. He takes the drawing at the top: a beach, the sun’s yellow rays almost lost against the white paper. He puts it into the inside breast pocket of his jacket. Fuentes opens the front door, peers outside for any trouble, then closes it behind him and triple-locks it.

  Parked cars. Passing early buses. Women on their way to work. He takes it all in slowly. He knows he’s getting close. It’s not just Mary-Ellen; it’s something in the air. A sense of finality. That’s when you have to be most careful. It’s always in the home stretch when you fall. It isn’t only fatigue, it is vanity; self-satisfaction – a sucker response.

  It’s never over till it’s over.

  He looks up and down the street. There are signs you need to recognize. Men reclining in the front seats of unfamiliar vehicles. Windowless vans parked within frequency distance. The backfire of an approaching motorcycle, the rider’s helmet mirroring back your stare. Shadows fast on your peripheral vision. Anyone in uniform – any uniform. Uniforms stand out – which paradoxically is what makes them invisible.

  His is a quiet street. Therefore potentially dangerous. Assassination is born in the mundane; it requires habit, not chaos. He opens the trunk of his car, takes out an inspection mirror and sweeps underneath the vehicle. No brake fluid leak. No wires. No tight cluster of detonators within nests of C-4. He doesn’t bother with the hood. He always uses an exterior double brace to jack it down safe and tight. He is safe, at least for one more day.

  And it’s in that self-congratulatory moment – when he has lost his carefully cultivated sense of awareness to smugness – that he hears the footsteps behind him and their swift approach to target. He spins around, but there’s not enough time to even draw his pistol before Pilar grabs his wrist and pulls him towards his car. ‘We have to hurry.’

  ‘What is it?’

  Pilar tries to open the door. It’s locked. ‘She’s seen them,’ Juan Antonio says between gasps of breath. ‘They tried to kidnap her.’

  He doesn’t have to ask who. Fuentes unlocks the car, fast. ‘How much of a lead do they have?’

  Pilar pushes past him. ‘Almost two hours.’

  ‘It’s not enough,’ he says, getting in.

  Juan Antonio hesitates, then joins them in the car, slamming the door, Fuentes already accelerating dangerously away, talking to Gomez on his cell phone. ‘I’ll be there in five minutes.’

  Pilar swears. ‘You’re wasting time.’

  ‘He’s on the way. Besides, we’re going to need help, and …’ Fuentes tightens his grip on the wheel, not looking at her. ‘He’s all I’ve got.’

  50

  Padre Márcio

  Like the Vatican itself, everything that Padre Márcio possessed was thanks to a single crucifixion – or rather the physical manifestation of it. But the funds from the sale of the bishop’s palace gave him the opportunity to go beyond the limits of his stigmata and forge a destiny of his own.

  With the proceeds, he’d built orphanages in Ciudad Juárez, Tijuana and Matamoros. In all three cities he was received, if not quite as a savior, at least as a saint. Anxious to tap into his growing status, politicians and business leaders offered him support, contacts and access to donations. Even the most cynical amongst them were forced to admire the energy and effectiveness of Padre Márcio. He established orphanages that were safe and secure for the children, and hired lay professionals instead of clerical predators to teach and care for them.

  Yet the revolutionary changes that he brought to the orphanages never satisfied him, because he was only partly driven by the notion of progress. What really consumed him was the idea of revenge. His goal was nothing less than the destruction of the Roman Catholic Church. He simply lacked a coherent plan for bringing it about. That began to change the day he encountered opposition from the archbishop of Santa Teresa, Cardinal Degoutta. The city already had an orphanage, His Eminence told him. If they opened another, it would only encourage homeless children from other parts of Mexico to throng there, with the inevitable rise in street crime and sexual promiscuity.

  Padre Márcio was intelligent enough to know fraud was a double-sided glass. The more he practiced it, the more he began to believe in the lies he told others. That side was the mirror, which revealed only what you wished to behold. But if someone attempted to deceive him, Padre Márcio would instantly see right through them. That was the side which was a transparent window. The difference was very simple: looking in and looking out. He could delude himself, but no one else could deceive him.

  Especially not another priest claiming to be speaking on behalf of God.

  Cardinal Degoutta’s family had fled Barcelona for Mexico at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, not long after he was ordained. They were not nationalists, and they were certainly not loyalists. They were obscure, arch-reactionary Catholic monarchists to the extreme right of Alfonsism, who intuitively understood that no matter which side won, the family’s morbid worldview would condemn them as zealots and doom them to the fate all radicals suffer during any civil war.

  Luckily, the family had a relative living in Michoacán, where the young Degoutta found work in a local church and where he acquired a taste for alcohol, underage women and money. It was only a matter of time before he gravitated further north to the optimistic frontier of the new maquiladoras and their impoverished but hopeful female workers. Easy pickings for a corrupt cleric on the rise who knew how to share his taste for luxury with senior regional officials.

  After only nine years he was promoted to bishop, and was seen by the Vatican as a rising star from the New World. He was an old-style fire and brimstone preacher who taught intimidation – not liberation – theology. The fact that he was European and not Mexican by birth helped him on his meteoric rise to cardinal, as did his medieval instincts. He sanctified the rich and persecuted the poor. He denied birth control to exhausted mothers and divorce to beaten wives; at the same time he arranged marriage annulments for movie stars. He even sold posthumous indulgences to the credulous widows of corrupt politicians and businessmen.

  Cardinal Degoutta had the natural command and confidence only a sincere fraud can ever exude. He congratulated Padre Márcio on his stigmata and wanted to know how he ‘did’ his hands. If it wasn’t too painful, he’d like to arrange the same for a pious nephew of his – and perhaps both feet as well. He�
�d make it worth Padre Márcio’s while. There’d always be a seat for him at the cardinal’s table – only in this Last Supper tableau, all the Apostles would be clutching bags of silver. Padre Márcio didn’t take his leave of the archbishop’s palace so much as expel himself from his company. A familiar hate flowed through him and it told him one thing only: the cardinal had to be stopped.

  Padre Márcio contacted Joaquín, who naturally proposed a solution.

  A few days later, one of His Eminence’s very young ‘chambermaids’ paid her usual visit to his quarters after dinner, only to make a terrible discovery: the cardinal had hanged himself.

  The alarming suicide note confessed to crimes so archaic that the police captain in charge of the investigation had to resort to a dictionary. Worse still were the allegations made against other members of Santa Teresa’s elite. Scandal simmered, on the very cusp of conflagration – like a naked flame held above an open barrel of turpentine.

  So when Padre Márcio proposed an emergency meeting with the Santa Teresa authorities, everybody came because every single one of them was in fear of exposure. A fish rots from the head down, Padre Márcio announced. Nervous eyes flickered about the room, avoiding contact.

  Luckily, the sinful cardinal had severed his own head in time. The rest of the fish was still edible, so why throw it away when so many were hungry?

  The group muttered excitedly amongst itself, sensing, if not divine intervention, at least damage control. Padre Márcio held up his blessed hands, calling for silence. He proposed a modern-day version of the miracle of the loaves and fishes; a feeding of the multitudes. If the assembly so desired, he would take on the onerous task of saving the reputation of Santa Teresa and its ecclesiastical resources.