Burning Midnight

by Loren D. Estleman

  “The golem at the door never heard of him.”

  “Miguelito is overprotective. You have not had lunch, I hope.”

  “Never when I’m going to be in Mexicantown.”

  “Come dine with me. I have no business to discuss at present and since my daughter deserted me, I eat alone, and that is merely feeding.”

  I followed him into a private room separated from the rest of the establishment by heavy brocade curtains. Here were none of the Mexican movie posters or paintings of bullfighters that attracted the general population outside, just paneled walls and bright ceramic tiles and a certificate in a silver frame attesting to the fact that Emiliano Francisco Sorno was a naturalized citizen of the United States. Zorborón was an Anglo corruption of his surname, which translated as “cunning”; El Tigre himself seemed to prefer the one that had been hung on him by accident. A long time ago he’d fought under it professionally, until he’d found out the money end never entered the ring. He was a quick study, and his sense of timing was dead on. Police informants said he’d gotten out of gambling just before casinos were legalized and thrown over the dope racket when it fell under the jurisdiction of Homeland Security.

  For whatever underworld information was worth; that pipeline went both ways.

  “You know Nolo.”

  Manuel Suiz—Manolo, Nolo; which name you used depended on where you stood in the community—paused in the midst of laying out the flatware to turn his head my way and decline it a tenth of an inch. He bore no resemblance to the Tiger, and I’d never learned if they called each other cousin for reasons of family or friendship. He was pear shaped, soft through the middle, but the fat didn’t reach his face. He was completely bald. His eyes were large and liquid, with long silken lashes. It was a feminine sort of face except for the black beard beneath the skin. That made him more potentially dangerous than his macho countrymen, because it combined the more dreaded qualities of both sexes.

  That was too much to get out of appearances. Suiz ran one of the few four-star restaurants in town. For all I knew, pullets were the only ones who had any reason to fear him. So far, the stickup artists and shakedown crews left him alone because of his connection to Zorborón, but these new gangs weren’t long on respecting inherited traditions. That was an angle to take if I needed one.

  Zorborón did the ordering. I was pretty sure he was ordering off the menu, not because he didn’t have one—he’d have memorized it by then—but because that’s what you did when you knew the owner and you had a guest. My Spanish was a little better than I made out, just in case I felt like overhearing something he’d sooner I missed, but it was going at 78 rpm and I’m strictly 33 1⁄3. I got pollo and rellenos and nothing else until he got to cervezas; when it comes to beer and strong spirits I’m a polyglot. “I think you will like this beer,” he said, when Suiz left. “I import it from a very old friend whose family started the brewery during your—our—Prohibition. You can get it nowhere else in this country.”

  “Sounds fine. I always heard bootleggers were good company.”

  “Not this one. He is vain without reason and sensitive about his many faults. But none of us really chooses his friends. A tumbleweed has no say which fence he will come to rest against.”

  “It’s even worse with relatives. They’re why tu me ves ahora.”

  He arched his brows, splendid black ones plucked as neat as inverted commas. I’d tipped my hand as to Spanish, but if I didn’t get his attention we’d kill the afternoon making pleasantries and building metaphors. A Grand Jury had given up on him when he met every question with a homely platitude. “Tu familia?”

  “Not mine. Someone else’s. Sabe los Pasadas?”

  Which was a mistake. The brows came down and collided and he whittled off a long curl of vowels and consonants that zinged past my ear without grazing it.

  “English,” I interrupted. “Por favor.” I demolished the accent.

  “Forgive me. Spanglish is the local dialect. I despise it and become carried away when someone even attempts Castilian. Yes, I know of the Pasadas. In the pueblo where I was born, whenever one approached, you took off your hat and stepped aside from the pavement. If you stepped into horseshit, that was your misfortune.”

  “That was in the old country. The Pasada I met today is all about democracy. There’s a brother involved. He wears the tarantula.” I touched the back of my hand with a finger.

  He lifted a quarter-inch of lip. “I know of these as well. Hijos de putas.”

  “They may be sons of whores, but let’s not blame the putas just yet. He’s sixteen, the ideal age for carrion. The family thinks there’s hope for him.”

  “Please continue.”

  “They may have carried the melting-pot idea a little too far. Place he lives, the only Mexicans he sees are cutting grass and delivering takeout. So he skips school and comes here to explore his heritage.”

  “I came here to escape mine.”

  “That’s the story, except for one detail. His brother-in-law’s the son of a cop.”

  “How big of a cop?”

  “An inspector.”

  “Detroit?” When I nodded, he nodded. “This clears up a mystery for me. I’d wondered about the police presence here one day recently. It seemed unnecessary. The gangs have been quiet lately.”

  “Not so quiet. I saw a crime-scene photo taken on the field of battle.”

  “That was many months ago. The so-called Zapatistas came out on the short end. I did not disapprove of this outcome. Every time they parade around under that name they defile the movement.”

  I digressed. Delicate negotiations are zigzag affairs when cultural differences exist. “I saw a picture twenty years ago, a man with a bandanna on his face hoisting a rifle above his head. Someone told me it was you.”

  “It might have been. I never saw it.”

  “It was taken in Chihuahua, near the caves where the Villistas hid out from Pershing in l9l6. Ring a bell?”

  “One tires of hearing about Villa. A bandit with a cause is still a bandit. We named ourselves for Emiliano Zapata—my own namesake, I add proudly—an illiterate peasant born to la causa. Do you know what that was?”

  “I’m pretty sure it had something to do with liberty.”

  “An abstract concept, impossible to grasp the meaning of when you have never seen it in practice. He fought for land. Not conquest, not vast tracts to govern, but patches for growing beans and grazing milch cows, with proper deeds in the names of citizens of the Republic of Mexico—farm plots of eighty to one hundred acres, out of a land mass the size of Western Europe. For this he was called a Marxist. In one hundred years, nothing has changed. The land still belongs to the wealthy, and those of us who oppose the status quo are called terrorists. It is enough we have that to deal with without a band of psychotic children shedding the blood of their own and calling themselves Zapatistas.”

  I had a thought. “Are you by any chance bankrolling the Maldados?”

  Our food came, borne on a tray by a light-skinned youth in a green apron, who uncovered the dishes and set them before us, cautioning us not to touch the plates. Strips of rare steak sizzled and steamed furiously on beds of rice, tomatoes, and peppers, and a platter of tortillas kneaded and baked on the premises gave off their warmth through towels covering them. The boy filled our glasses with a long showy stream of water from a pitcher and set out frosted mugs and squat green bottles with an armadillo on the label. He asked if there was anything else. I shook my head at Zorborón, who dismissed him with a wave.

  “No. I do not subsidize activity that encourages police invasion. In older days I would purge the neighborhood of these gangs, but I am as they say a reformed character. A grandfather has too much at stake to risk bringing further scorn upon his name. If Carmelita were a man and did not take a new name upon marrying, I would counsel him to use Sorno. I myself cannot after all this time. It would be like Nolo deciding to start wearing a toupee on top of years of baldness. Questions
would be raised.”

  We ate for a while in silence. Mexican food prepared by Mexicans the way they prepare it in Mexico is a rare thing, even in many places in Mexico. Each village has its own cuisine, and the big cities serve up theirs the way the tourists are accustomed to. What we were eating might have been locked in an airtight clay pot in some mud pueblo unknown to maps, shipped to the nearest airport on the back of a mule, and flown directly to La Riata without going through Customs, still steaming when it arrived. I didn’t worry about what kind of parasites it may have contained; the cerveza from the stubby green bottles would have stopped an epidemic in full cry. It was as bitter as burnt cordite and there were hops floating on top. At least I hoped they were hops. The alcohol went up my sinuses like ammonia and filled my head with helium.

  “Try the rellenos,” said my host. “I turned down a princely offer to distribute them in cans.”

  “What did NASA offer you for the beer? Twelve ounces would put us on Mars.”

  Serious men ignore rhetoricals. “I have no influence with this spawn, if that is what you have come to ask for. They do not fear the police, and they certainly do not fear an old cockfighter.”

  I wiped my hands with a napkin and brought out Ernesto Pasada’s picture. I’d stopped at a Staples on the way and had copies made. “Ask your people to show this around, tell them the boy’s a runaway. Sabe Amber Alert? If he can’t stay here, he’ll go home. In theory.”

  “Perhaps you should stop trying to speak Spanish. Your atrocious usage is distracting.”

  I waved a hand and picked up my fork, grateful for the release. I couldn’t concentrate on conjugations and still enjoy the fajitas.

  “Es verdad, this Amber Alert?”

  “No, that decision comes from high up. His family expects him home today when school lets out. In theory. But I doubt even the Maldados would want to mess with a dragnet that big. That is, if they buy it.”

  He shook his head. “They will waylay the boy and offer to turn him in for a reward.”

  “Kidnap and ransom, they’d do that?”

  “They are animals. I need hardly spell out in what condition the boy will be returned once their demands are met. If they are not, he will simply have vanished. Desaparece.” He pursed his lips and blew a puff of air, gracefully dispersing it with the hand holding the picture.

  “Anyone can point out a problem. I’m looking for the solution.”

  “Is your job, no?” He was fluent in pidgin. “I will show this around. Anyone who spots the boy and reports it to me will find himself in good graces with El Tigre del Norte. Some of the older residents will consider that coin of the realm.”

  “You’re not a Tío Taco yet.”

  “You do not know us as well as you think. I sacrificed more than money when I went legit. Legit, this is a word?”

  “It is if you’re legit. I’ll see you semi and raise you notorious.”

  “I have heard this term applied to me and I am puzzled by it. Our nearest equivalent means ‘obvious,’ and yet I pride myself on my subtlety.”

  “It started out as another word for ‘famous,’ but it kept getting trampled over and turned into something else, like ‘alibi’ and ‘discrimination.’”

  “Such a difficult tongue.”

  “Isn’t it? I think the government’s in charge.” I drank some beer. I was starting to get used to it. “Have things changed that much in the neighborhood?”

  He sat back and stripped the cellophane off a black cigar with a portrait of a geezer in white side whiskers and a rusty black coat on the band; the founder of the tobacco company, or maybe just an early president of the Republic. He bit off the end and deposited it in an ashtray shaped like a pagan god who looked like Mickey Rourke. Even the presence of an ashtray violated state law. “Everything here is zoom-zoom. In the village where I was born, the water wheel is considered a great technological advance. You will hear from me regardless. Your address and telephone number, they have not changed?”

  “Nope. I’m saving up for a water wheel.”

  He chuckled in the midst of lighting up. I didn’t think the joke was that good. Another time I might not have gotten a reaction at all. He was still as easy to read as the temple of Quetzalcoatl.

  FIVE

  “What can you tell me about the Maldados?”

  Zorborón frowned and blew on his cigar tip, making it glow bright red. “The bull is merely out to pasture. He has not been made a steer.”

  “I thought you were a tiger.”

  He ignored that. I didn’t blame him; it was a pointless direction to go in. The Latin way of conducting business seemed roundabout, but it always circled back to the main thrust. I did the same.

  “Snitches are a glut on the market,” I said. “I’m not looking to make a citizen’s arrest. I just want to know what I’m up against.”

  He shrugged, a gesture with as many meanings as his language has dialects. “You know El Hermano?”

  I shrugged; in my case a gesture with only one meaning.

  “Luís Guerrera,” he said. ”They call him the Brother now that he has none.”

  “I know Jesus got smoked by the cops and that Luís is now the brains of the outfit, such as they are. Domingo Siete gives the orders, but that’s only because the rest of the gang is afraid of him. His parents must have been smoking Acapulco Gold when they named him Seventh Sunday. Guerrera’s the boy you go to when you want to do any sort of business here.”

  “It used to be me; but one does not stand in the path of a train that has gone out of control. Domingo’s a burning fuse. If Luís wasn’t handy with a bucket of water when it’s needed, the streets would be a river of blood. It was the same with Jesus; younger brothers are frequently of cooler temperament. I was one myself. I think El Hermano was down with the chicken pox when that fight took place with the Zaps.” He had difficulty calling them Zapatistas. “Luís can be reasoned with, if you show him the respect he thinks is proper. It is all respect with these muchachos; they profane its purpose with their insistence. A little humility benefits us all.”

  “Hermano’s new,” I said. “Keeping up with nicknames is a full-time job. I knew the rest. What about the others?”

  “Punks. Pushers. Cojones big as artichokes, which diverts circulation from the brain. What is true about all the other gangs in this city is true of them.”

  “With a salsa beat. Anything else?”

  He thought. “You know a new tattoo when you see one?”

  “All scabs. One look and the customer would bolt.”

  He showed me his thunderbird. “A despicably filthy parlor in Saltillo, behind a whorehouse. I thought when the scab fell off there would be nothing but brown skin beneath. I had been cheated out of twenty-five pesos, so I thought. But it is merely part of the process. It is a scarring after all, underscored with ink. When you see that particular ugliness on the back of a young hand, beware.”

  I waited. Impatience never got you far with a tiger.

  “It means they are new: not yet men, and not quite beasts, but eager to prove themselves as both. Hombre y lobo. You know this?”

  “Man and wolf. Wolfman. Werewolf.”

  “Sí. Beware the werewolf. Tread lightly when you see that mark, red and raw. It is the mark of the beast.”

  I grinned. He shrugged again.

  “I am melodramatic to make my point. Entiende?”

  “I understand, thanks.”

  He laid the cigar in the copper tray to smoke itself out and drank from a cup of coffee brewed the way you seldom found it north of the border. Anyone can make it strong enough to float a Beretta. The trick is to keep it from being bitter. “Where to next, amigo?”

  I blew on mine and parboiled my tongue anyway. “I thought I’d drop in on Sister Delia. She still around?”

  “She must be. Someone tried to set fire to the garage last week.”

  “It wasn’t her. Arson isn’t her style.”

  “Rabble-rousing is; and destru
ction always was the way of rabble.”

  “I thought you two might have kissed and made up after you got religion.”

  “I never did not have it. Because a man misses Mass a few thousand times does not make him an infidel.”

  “I meant went straight. Semi-straight, anyway.”

  “With her it is all or nothing. The world in which she lives is blanco y negro. I fear we shall never see things eye to eye.”

  “She’s not wrong. It’s the people who say the world isn’t black and white who got us in this mess.”

  “If such is your view I very much doubt you and I will see things ojo a ojo either.”

  “I can live with that. Usted?”

  “También.” When he gestured with his hand, the thunderbird flapped its wings.

  I thanked him for the meal and left. In the public area, the conversation was building to an ecstatic high. You can measure the popularity of a dining establishment by the decibel level at high tide. Nolo Suiz stood at attention by the passage leading to the back door, his liquid brown eyes prowling the room for diners who’d lost their waiters and employees who wiped their noses in view of the clientele. I was invisible. I hadn’t added a centavo to the till. He was just a hash-slinger after all, not a tiger or a werewolf.

  * * *

  In the old days, when DelRay was still DelRay, you could cross the Mexican part of the city in a few minutes on foot—faster if you ran, which was the recommended gait for Anglos in the Murder City years—but that was before Little Detroit and the exchange program that followed. Now, to get from the business heart of the community to the place where it worshipped, I had to burn dinosaur bones the way the locals did when they attended Mass. I fired up the Cutlass and fumed behind a UPS truck until it turned off, then found a thirty-minute spot around the corner from my destination. The population fell below one million a long time ago, but there seemed to be five cars to the person.

  Holy Redeemer is best known outside the Hispanic community for its Pewabic pottery tiles crafted by Mary Chase Perry Stratton, one of a pair of local institutions, whose workshop is still operating after more than a century. I doubt the tiles, fashioned from the same clay that fed the rich copper deposits in the Upper Peninsula, get much attention from the regulars. The same old sins get confessed in the booths, but in Spanish, not Hungarian, and the aesthetics can wait.