City Without Stars

by Tim Baker

  ‘Ninety percent success,’ Oviedo says.

  ‘Why ninety?’

  ‘You were there. People saw you. Someone tried to kill you. That’s your alibi. Everyone will blame this on Tijuana. On Los Toltecas. All of El Feo’s people are dead. All of them. Plus you killed the death clown. You’re a hero.’

  ‘So why only ninety?’

  As if in answer to his question there is a low detonation, and a fireball rolls through the broken windows, flushing his face with heat. Oviedo steps on the gas. ‘Casualties look set to be excessive, even for us.’

  El Santo glances back. The fire’s raging through the lobby, just behind the last of his men who rush out of the Heartbreak, laughing hysterically; one step ahead of exploding glass. On the floors above, people are leaning out of windows, screaming for help. El Santo swears, then turns to Oviedo.

  ‘What do we do now?’

  ‘I’ll tell you what we do, boss. We escalate. We make this look like a church picnic. We make them forget this ever happened. They won’t even bother looking for us after tomorrow.’

  Smoke cyclones from the hotel’s roof. In the distance he can hear the first sirens finally approaching. ‘How the fuck could we ever do that?’

  ‘Simple. Today there were at least fifty fatalities. Eighty or ninety tops. Tomorrow, we make it hundreds. Why not even a thousand?’

  The thing about Oviedo is the way he speaks. His flat monotone makes him sound reasonable. Knowledgeable. Totally reassuring. But the more El Santo thinks about it, the more he realizes that most of what Oviedo says is totally fucking insane. Maybe it’s time to terminate him before his advice gets them all terminated. ‘It doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘It does if we blame today on Los Toltecas and tomorrow on Los Zetas. We make it look like it’s all-out war between Tijuana and Juárez, and poor fucking Ciudad Real is stuck in the middle, just a battlefield, not a player; you know, like Belgium.’

  Belgium?

  ‘So the government is forced to go after Los Toltecas and Los Zetas and leaves us the fuck alone.’

  El Santo’s beginning to get it. ‘And so Tijuana blames Juárez …’

  ‘And Juárez blames Tijuana … And they all kill each other, and that includes El Chapo and El Lazca, and we get to pick up the pieces at the end.’

  For a lunatic idea, it is kind of brilliant. ‘What do you have in mind?’

  ‘There’s going to be a big strike tomorrow with a march and a funeral and the whole box and dice. They’re bringing in professional agitators by the busload. It’ll be easy as hell to infiltrate.’

  El Santo turns in his car seat, the twist at the waist making his wound throb. Behind him everything’s going black from the smoke. A burst of noise and light shoots past them, the first of the fire engines arriving. He wonders if their ladders are high enough to reach the top-floor windows. ‘I don’t know …’

  ‘Leave it to me, boss. I’ll handle everything.’ A phone rings. Oviedo answers it super-fast, then hangs up, military crisp, ambulances roaring past. ‘They’ve just put El Feo up on the overpass,’ he says. ‘The narcomanta claims it on behalf of Los Toltecas.’ He turns and stares at El Santo with an intense, sundering stare, profoundly familiar, like a dream about prehistoric times when you recognize your ancestors. Sometimes Oviedo feels too good to be true and sometimes he gives you the creeps. This is one of the latter times. He turns away, staring back at the road. ‘Besides, it will distract attention.’

  ‘From the Heartbreak?’

  Oviedo turns and stares at him, and damn it, the intensity of his gaze sends a shiver down El Santo’s spine. ‘From you killing that doctor. It’s all over the internet …’ He nods down at El Santo’s wound. ‘You’re bleeding, boss.’

  El Santo touches his side. It smarts like hell. He looks at his fingers, all covered in blood.

  IV

  Los Caminos de la Vida

  DAY 4

  The Burial of Isabel Torres

  68

  Fuentes

  Fuentes works at his kitchen table, the shoeboxes on chairs beside him, their plastic ripped away and heaped upon the floor. He hadn’t wanted to bring the photos back to his own house. It wasn’t just because it was reckless. He can feel their contamination seeping into his home. Spores of evil and cruelty settling within the folds of curtains, thickening the grime inside drain pipes, saturating his clothes. His life is already infected by unimaginable horror. He doesn’t need more.

  He doesn’t need this.

  But it is the only way to end it.

  The phone rings again. He takes it off the hook. If anyone came through the door right now, they wouldn’t even have to set him up. He would have incriminated himself just by being in possession of such evidence. How could he explain it? He doesn’t even know how Paredes came across the photos in the first place. But he knows why Paredes hid them. The photos would never be secure at the police station. Someone would be bound to find them, no matter how well they were concealed. Then they’d be impounded, and locked away in a place where they’d be sure to meet with an accident. An electrical fire, or water damage from a mysterious leak. Simple, elemental solutions were always the first response to potentially lethal evidence.

  He finishes covering the table, the shriek of plastic wrap tearing across metal teeth the only sound disturbing the silence apart from the regular tambour of a leaking tap. When he’s done, he covers it with a plastic sheet, taping the edges under the bottom of the table. Pulling on a pair of latex gloves, he carefully unpacks the photos, handling them by the edges only. Some are in black and white, most in color. Many of them are Polaroids.

  He hasn’t worked up the courage to separate them into categories, let alone examine them.

  All he’s doing right now is counting them.

  Isabel Torres was victim 873. Mary-Ellen González had been victim 874 and was still officially Jane Doe 352. Gloria Delgado was victim 875 – and the first known survivor of an attack. Those numbers attached to their files weren’t abstracts or mathematical theories, but they weren’t solid physical realities either. They were something else entirely – a numerical challenge, because how do you count a loss? They weren’t aggregates, they were massive absences; stars inexplicably extinguished in a sky already veiling over with clouds. The immensity of the loss would only become apparent when the heavens finally cleared again. And when would that be?

  He finished the count. Nine hundred and eighty-nine. More than they were aware of. Or possibly there were some repeat photos. He still couldn’t bring himself to confront the images. But he was aware of what a colossal undertaking it would be. They’d have to cross-reference every photo against every known victim. That way they might be able to establish a chronological order. They would have to pay particular attention to correlating the Jane Does. An item of jewelry or clothing might be the key to a name. Then they’d have to cross-catalogue the photos according to any details apparent in the background. How many different crime scenes could they establish? Would any clues emerge that could point to actual locations – a specialized object or item of furniture linked to a specific profession; a glimpse of a landmark through a window?

  And there was the actual forensic value of the photos. Fingerprints. DNA. Hair or fabric traces. Blood, saliva. Sperm. It would be months of work, and the only person he thought he could trust enough to share it with was Gomez. But no one else seemed to trust Gomez.

  Could he?

  There was one alternative. He could take it all across the border. Put his faith in their superior forensics. Their police forces. Their FBI.

  Sell his own country out.

  It could get him fast results. Or he could simply be giving the gringos an easy way to extort a neighboring country. Could he really trust the Americans not to consider doing that to their so-called ally in the War on Drugs? After decades of public give and ambiguous take, why wouldn’t they see this as just another policy option; one to go along with the threat of withdrawing fundi
ng or imposing sanctions. A shadow route for that time when an extradition is required or negotiations hit a wall – la frontera.

  He isn’t a traitor to himself, or his country. This is our problem, he thinks, and we have to deal with it ourselves. We didn’t ask for it, just as we didn’t ask to be the neighbor of a rich nation with an impossible level of addiction and an intelligence service that exploits this to fund covert operations. Whatever the causes, whatever the obscure motives, it is our problem.

  Only Mexico can solve it.

  He steadies his breathing, then starts to examine the photos. Shots of naked or semi-clothed women tied up. Often unconscious; always having a sex act forced upon them. Even with restraints, bound with gags or blindfolds, their faces contort in silent screams of disgust, horror; fear and rage.

  Terror and disbelief.

  In each photo there is a clear, identifying image of a man committing the act, their faces clearly visible. Trophy shot and blackmail material all in one. He can’t be sure, but there appear to be no recurring photos of any particular victim, nor of any of the killers – meaning that possibly each female victim was raped by a different man. When Fuentes had first arrived in Ciudad Real he had been appalled by the anarchic state of the DNA collected from the victims. There were literally no matches. He had put that down to incompetence, technical failure, contamination and deliberate criminal obfuscation. He was wrong. But could hundreds of different rapists all have murdered their victims in the same way? That would be impossible. Paredes had suggested an initiation rite. Which in itself suggested entry into some kind of secret society. A gang, like Los Toltecas. Or a cartel. Or possibly some kind of black magic cult. That in turn could indicate a single controlling entity – a high priest; the implicit killer who controls as the keeper of tradition by honoring an historical culture of sacrifice, of lustratio: Huitzilopochtli; Xipe Tótec. Paredes had even said it himself once to Gomez: a lone killer.

  Maybe he knows.

  Fuentes’ thoughts slur to a stop with one photo, brutally similar to the murder of Isabel Torres. The victim is tied to a bed, naked except for a bra, her blindfolded face frozen in a scream. In the bottom corner he can see her ankle, and the black band of the strap of her shoe. A man is standing by the bed, holding the other shoe in his hands. The self-mutilating look on his face terrifies Fuentes. If he found this man, he knows exactly what he’d do. He would interrogate the rapist until he had all the answers. And then he would shove his head against a wall, put a gun barrel to his temple and blow his brains out.

  He takes a deep breath, trying to control his thoughts, then continues working through the photos, his habitually impassive face contorting for an instant before realigning itself at every photo that passes through his gloved hands. This is business. It has to be kept professional, otherwise Fuentes will snap, and he knows if he does, there will be no coming back. These images don’t put him on the edge of his faith in humanity, they take him way past it, out into a place without light or hope: a claustrophobic tunnel flooded with a mephitic cloud of despair. He knows he has to be careful. He is a man in a diving suit, walking along the bottom of the ocean when his oxygen starts to run out. Panic and he’s dead. Stay calm and there’s a possibility he might survive.

  He picks up the next photo and studies it. Then, very slowly, he does something he hasn’t done in years. He crosses himself. He’s not even aware he’s doing it.

  Fuentes leaps to his feet and throws two hard punches into the bookcase, books and framed photos falling; glass breaking. Now he fucking gets it. He gets it at fucking last.

  69

  Pilar

  Juan Antonio had promised buses from Ciudad Juárez, Santa Teresa, Matamoros and Tijuana. From Monterrey, Guadalajara, and even as far away as Iguala. But that had been before the Heartbreak Hotel.

  The first phone call came in just after midnight. Buses were turning back or simply not leaving. It was too inflammatory; too dangerous. It was just plain inappropriate. The nation was in shock. The city was in mourning. And the CTON had members amongst the dead.

  It wasn’t a suggestion.

  It was an order.

  Now was not the right time to go ahead with a disruptive strike that would tax the resources of authorities trying to deal with the aftermath of something they have never experienced before: total narco war.

  Pilar didn’t learn about any of the events until the following morning. She had gone straight to her room when they got back to Mayor’s and had fallen asleep soon after. Not so much repose as a suspension from reality; a disconnect from time. Her body was punishing her for the arrogance of three sleepless days.

  She plummeted beyond the realm of dreams into a potent and dangerous state inhabited by totemic mysteries. Archetypes. Pre-memories. She was wandering in a rainforest, the canopy so high that she could barely glimpse the sky through the swaying branches. Animals leapt from tree to tree, fifty meters above her, squealing and crying to each other with short, communicative barks. They were warnings, not threats. Exclamations of fear. She could smell the smoke clouds lofting above the jungle, the fire announcing itself the way catastrophe always does; harmonic chords ascending towards a fiery crescendo.

  Ignition. Combustion. Detonation. Eruption. Conflagration.

  She sat up in bed. Esteban was sitting next to her; afire.

  Pilar wakes from the nightmare, breathless, her body damp from sweat.

  She gets up and has a shower, leaning with her hands against the tiles, feeling the luxury of the regular hot beat pounding along her spine.

  Pilar soaps her body until she smells of lavender, touching herself for a lingering moment; enough to feel a soothing warmth she hasn’t felt for days, before turning on the cold water, strong as a sierra stream, her pores closing from its assault, protecting her from the intruding fog of her thoughts; her denied anxieties.

  Her fears about today.

  She dresses, surprised to see it’s nearly six. After making her bed, she goes downstairs, feeling her way along the dark steps, following voices towards the only room in the house that’s lit: the kitchen. She hesitates before entering, relieved to see that Maya isn’t there. The way she reacted yesterday shames her, but what can she do? It’s a reflection of the way she wants to live – uncensored; which these days too often means being brutally honest. No one said it would be easy, but it was still harder than she had ever expected.

  So she doesn’t attempt to hide her irritation when the first thing she sees is Ventura pouring coffee for Juan Antonio and Mayor. ‘Aren’t the men old enough to make their own coffee?’ Ventura smiles, embarrassed, and is just about to reply when Pilar cuts her off. ‘Or are you afraid they’re going to ignore you if you don’t?’

  Ventura turns the coffee pot so the handle is facing Pilar. ‘I was just making myself useful. The cups are up there …’ Ventura goes over to Mayor, who hands her a cell phone, explaining the buttons.

  It was a nasty thing to say, and on another morning she would have apologized. But this is a morning unlike any other, which is why she recognizes the silence all around her so quickly, and why its significance alarms her so much: bad news. ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘There was a shooting last night. Dozens are dead.’

  She sips her drink, watching Mayor over the steam rising from the cup’s rim. ‘I’m sorry. Anyone you know?’ Mayor shakes his head.

  ‘But there are already consequences … grave consequences,’ Juan Antonio says.

  The ring of porcelain startles her as she puts her cup down too quickly on the saucer. ‘Don’t you dare even think about it.’

  ‘The orders are from HQ. This is not the right time to act.’

  ‘It’s never the right time to act – that’s why we always must act. You taught me that yourself.’

  ‘The CTON won’t support us. Not after what happened last night. It’s too sensitive.’ Pilar swears. ‘They want to be seen to show consideration for the victims. Some of their own members have b
een killed.’

  ‘Besides, they know they will probably have to deal with Vicente Fox in July.’

  Pilar turns to Mayor. ‘Bullshit! Why would voters throw out the PRI just to elect PAN? Fox won’t win. The Alianza will win.’

  ‘They’ll vote out the PRI to punish them,’ Mayor says. ‘Who they vote in doesn’t matter.’

  She’s seen this before. Mayor is distracting them all with sophisticated political theory; with the possibilities of the future. She has to focus on action; bring them all back to now. ‘We brought the strike forward. We all made sacrifices. We can’t just cancel it.’

  ‘If we’re lucky, there’ll be four or five buses. If we’re lucky, we’ll manage to close down one or maybe two maquiladoras. And that will be seen as a defeat.’

  ‘They’re right,’ Ventura says.

  Ignition. Combustion. Detonation … Eruption. ‘Who the fuck even cares about your opinion?’ Pilar explodes. ‘You think one day makes you an activist?’

  ‘Not one day, one life. My life. A woman’s life.’

  ‘You are so full of shit.’

  ‘Pilar, please.’

  She wheels on Juan Antonio. ‘Don’t Pilar please me. What about the funeral? We promised we’d be there for the family.’

  ‘The authorities won’t allow a demonstration. It’s a question of public order after last night.’

  ‘One night does this to us? What about these last eighteen months of preparation, all that hard work? What about more than eight hundred unprotected women raped and murdered? What about my night, when I saw another woman taken with my own eyes?’ Her voice breaks. ‘A woman who could have been me. You’re saying one night negates all that? One night negates everything?’