"Both. But she's bought more than she's sold. Nothing out of this world, really. A very nice sapphire once. A Russian pearl tiara, a pair of diamonds in the rough, a topaz necklace. All gifts, I suppose... Nothing out of this world, like I said... I'm afraid you're mistaken, gentlemen. The only thing I have to do with this whole story is that I'm the one who had to pay for the broken window."
They left the car in front of the Bank of London and walked along, covering their cigars with their hats to keep them out of the rain. Verdugo had insisted they arrive on foot at the Arana Cantina on Netzahualcoyotl Street, one door down from the bakers' union local. "A bulletproof Packard'd be in bad taste around a place like that," he'd said.
In the Arana, the poet discovered the remarkable popularity his streetwise friend enjoyed in certain quarters of the city. Grifters, hookers, rumrunners, small-time hoods all greeted him with affection, or at least with respect. A player piano stood abandoned in one corner of the room and the shouts of the customers and the tobacco smoke were all the atmosphere there was to the joint. The Arana was the kind of place where you could just as easily be served rubbing alcohol cut with sugarcane juice as a glass of authentic Napoleon brandy.
Verdugo greeted the proprietress-a disfigured paralytic woman serving drinks from behind the bar-with a kiss on the cheek, and then glanced around for his source of information.
"What's the haps, licenciado? You buying or selling?"
"Neither, One-eye. I'm looking for someone mourning the loss of a couple of dead friends. We can talk price later."
"I don't give nothing for free, not even to my own mother."
"I'm sure we can work out a fair exchange. How about some information today in exchange for future legal services? You get the best lawyer in Mexico City free at your disposal the next time you need him."
"Two for one."
"Two for one it is, One-eye... The dead men I referred to are Gallego Suarez and Felipe Tibon."
"You want a name or you want the man in person?"
"In person'd be better, One-eye."
"Stick around half an hour and I'll have him for you," said the serape'd One-eye, and without another word he walked out of the dive and hurried down the street. The two friends leaned back in their chairs and called for a bottle of English gin, lemons, and a pitcher of water, and settled down to wait. But fifteen minutes hadn't gone by before the one-eyed man reappeared, dragging along a soaking-wet and sickly looking fellow dressed in a suit that hung limply off his shoulders, the rain dripping off the sleeves and forming a puddle on the ground at his feet. He was about forty years old, with his forehead wrinkled into a permanent frown, his shiny black hair plastered just above his eyes, and a dirty black tie that danced across his shirt, now and then brushing against the bulge of his gun.
"The Gypsy, at your service, lawyer," said the one-eyed man, gesturing toward his companion. Then he disappeared into the surrounding hubbub.
The new arrival set his wide-brimmed black hat down on the table next to the bottle of gin and, dragging over a chair, sat down with his elbows resting on the chair back.
"What can I do for you, licenciado Verdugo?"
"Do we know each other?"
"Not personally, but once a while back you defended a cousin of mine in court."
"In other words, I've already worked for the family."
"You could say that," said The Gypsy and, after glancing at the lawyer for permission, poured himself a shot of gin.
"About a week ago Gallego Suarez, Felipe Tibon, and another man whose name I don't know tried to kill me and three friends of mine. We'd never had anything to do with them before, so it stands to reason that someone else paid them to do the job. I want to know who."
The Gypsy looked from the poet to the lawyer and then spoke in a low voice that could only just be heard over the noise from the nearby tables.
"They weren't gunning for you, licenciado. They were after your friend the reporter. It wasn't you they wanted."
"How do you know?"
"What's it matter? Maybe I was the one who fixed them up. Maybe the third stiff was another cousin of mine. What difference does it make? You know how much a man's life is worth in this town? Now, I don't mean any offense by it, but it costs three hundred bills to off a gentleman like yourself. You just put six hundred pesos on the table there and I'll personally take care of the man who hired Gallego and Felipe. I'd enjoy it, too, because the man in question never even bothered to tell those poor boys that you fellows knew how to shoot. They went off to hunt rabbits and ended up with a bunch of Apaches."
"Why six hundred, friend?" asked the poet with a smile. "Because the guy what hired them isn't any John Doe, and he's no fool either. He can shoot as good as you, maybe better. Or maybe we should just say that the rates are going up."
"I'll give you the six hundred just for the name," said Verdugo.
The Gypsy thought for a minute. Then he glanced nervously around the bar.
"Six hundred and a promise, licenciado."
"Sure, if I can."
"Promise me you won't miss, because if you do I'm not going to be around long enough to enjoy all that money."
Verdugo and the poet exchanged glances. The lawyer took out his wallet and drew out six hundred-peso notes from what was left of his lottery money.
"I'm all ears."
"Hell, if it wasn't so hard for a man to make a living out there, I'd beat it for Zacatecas or San Luis Potosi."
Verdugo folded the bills and slid them across the table toward The Gypsy.
"You don't have to hide it, lawyer. There's more eyes in this joint than in a movie theater. More than one of these stiffs's already heard everything's been said without hearing nothing at all." The Gypsy poured out another glass of gin, tossed it down, and said, "You all want to have a chat with Colonel Martinez Fierro."
MANTEROLA LOWERED HIS EYES from the Virgin with her lilac-and-yellow mantle to the nineteen-year-old painter standing beside the figure, and it dawned on him that he was looking at a man in possession of the truth. How could he describe to his readers this sudden realization of another man's absolute con- viction?-this young man, dressed in shirt and tie, with thick lips, a pale face, interrogative eyebrows, who seemed to concentrate all his energy into a pair of intense black eyes...
"Senor Revueltas..."
"Call me Fermin."
"What's an atheist doing painting the Virgin of Guadalupe?"
"You think she's a virgin? Look at the colors. Maybe she's not a virgin at all. She is very Mexican, though, isn't she? And she's dressed for a party, her and the people worshiping her, too. And the worshipers are the people. I'm sorry, but I'm not explaining myself very well, am I?"
"No, you explain it just fine. I'm just not so sure I can explain it to my readers that clearly. I'm really an action writer at heart. I write about accidents, gunfights, crimes of passion. I didn't really come here to talk about murals."
"Do you like Tintoretto's virgins, Botticelli's winged women? What would you think if we erected the Eiffel Tower in Alameda Park?"
"Is it true that Rivera's painting the Creation in the amphitheater?"
"Don't let the title fool you. Just take a look at his women's thighs. 'here's more than one road that leads to Rome. Mine is color."
"I understand you studied painting in Chicago."
"For all the good it did me," said the young artist, contemplating his brightly colored Virgin of Guadalupe, for which the Ministry of Education would pay him four hundred pesos when the mural was finished.
"I hear there's been some shooting in the halls."
"There's been more insults than bullets. The students get all upset because we're covering the walls with ideas. They paint over our work, throw gum, spitballs, that sort of thing. And sometimes we've exchanged more than words, if you know what I mean... Do you like it?" asked the painter, motioning toward his work.
"Very much," said Pioquinto Manterola who, say what you will, was highly receptive to any ac
t of passion, not just the day's sanguinary headlines.
Manterola left the young painter gazing at his Virgin from a scaffold buttressed to protect him from the students' attacks.
He wandered through the halls of the National Preparatory School. Charlot, the Frenchman, was working on a group of Spanish conquistadors looking like metallic monsters in a fight against Aztec warriors. Rivera wasn't on the scaffolds today. Stomachaches, romantic troubles, back pain kept him shut in at home.
When the reporter circled back, he found Revueltas armed with an enormous brush dripping yellow paint, fighting off a pair of dandily dressed but rather effeminate-looking students.
"If you don't like it, you've got your ass to look at instead, gentlemen," shouted the muralist.
"Instead of painting that kind of crap, you should leave the wall painted white. This is a house of study. And that's the way it ought to be," said one of the students whom the reporter recognized as a certain Salvador Novo who brought his ingenuous poems by the newspaper every now and then.
"Need a hand, painter?"
"No, I can hold them off, thanks. Come on by some evening after the light's gone and we'll go have a drink."
"Have you wounded any students yet?"
"Three so far, scratches, nothing much, but these two jackanapes are going to make it five," said the painter, advancing on his attackers. A small dark-skinned helper came to his aid armed with a spatula instead of a dripping brush.
The reporter smiled.
ALTHOUGH THE AFFINITY GROUP Fraternity was small, its members filled Tomas' tiny house to the seams, occupying the bed and the few chairs, leaving no room for them to pace up and down as they talked. Each man took his place and stayed there until the meeting was over. The group had no rules. No affinity group did. They were drawn together by chance and sympathy of ideas, and they took an active part in the movement according to agreements arrived at during their interminable meetings. There were groups dedicated to promoting the idea of free love, the concept of rational education, violent direct action, groups dedicated to propagating the classic anarchist texts, and simple discussion groups.
Six men made up the group Fraternity. They made no effort to recruit more members, but if someone else happened to join it was fine with them-the same as if one of their members left the group due to a conflict of ideas, travel, or boredom. Their main concern was propaganda work to further the cause of radical unionism. Besides printing an occasional pamphlet, they'd taken on responsibility for the distribution of the CGT newspapers in the southern part of the city, the tabloids Our Ideals and Solidarity. But the group had another distinguishing feature. Its members were widely recognized in union circles as "men of action." They were armed and always ready for a fight, and they'd taken to the front lines in the growing conflict between the anarchist-led unions and the police and the CROM's hired gunmen. If you were to ask them their position on violence, each of these men-Varela (who hailed from Veracruz), the gimp-legged Paulino Martinez, the pastry cook Hidalgo (born in Badajoz, Spain), Hector (a sixteenyear-old black from Tabasco), Manuel Bourdillon (the bastard son of a French mill foreman who worked as a machinist at the Santa Teresa Mill) andTomas Wong-would tell you that violence on the part of the workers had to be a function of the masses, a defensive weapon-a protective shield for mass demonstrations and strikes, a righteous and just violence that would allow the movement to spread by protecting its flanks from the violence of the system. There was a time when they'd debated the need for individual acts of violence, especially in the summer of 1920 following Gomez' bombing of the archbishopric and the Recuerdo costume jewelry factory. The group had unanimously agreed that this sort of action could never help to advance the movement, its ideas, and the organization of anarchist unions-and that it would only serve to scare off the weaker segments of a movement that was just then gaining strength and which, a few months later, would bring about the creation of the CGT. So Tomas regarded the presence of San Vicente and his friend Lefty, just in from Puebla for the meeting, with cautious skepticism.
"Hell, Tomas, you know me well enough... I'm not crazy," said San Vicente without wasting time. "I'm not the kind of guy who preaches individual action and propaganda of ideas just for its own sake. I'm against assassination as a basic tool in the struggle. I'm a union organizer, you know that, but everywhere I go I see that what we need's a real newspaper, a daily newspaper, and that's something we'll never be able to pull off without a full staff of writers earning a decent wage, and without buying our own printing press. What happened during the railroad strike last year? They shut us out of the presses. What happened in Atlixco a few months ago? Every time we need our own propaganda the most, we don't have the money to make it fly. Now Lefty and I made up some figures..."
Lefty carefully unfolded a single sheet of paper and read out loud in a mechanical voice. "Two-year budget for organization newspaper. Wages for three reporters, one typesetter, one compositor, one pressman, two distribution men, one administrator: nineteen thousand six hundred pesos. Two used German Stein linotypes, type, lead, paper, ink, typewriters, telephone, furniture: one hundred and eighty-two thousand pesos. Mailing costs for two years: six thousand pesos. We'll start out with a run of five thousand copies and expand to twenty thousand. Also one pamphlet per month, and a weekly magazine like La Protesta puts out in Argentina. For office space, we could use the ground floor of a union local, the upstairs can be used for meetings: five thousand pesos. Total expenses: two hundred thirteen thousand pesos, give or take a few."
San Vicente looked out at his listeners, their shining eyes.
"Where are you going to get the dough, San Vicente, and how are you going to explain where it came from?" asked Bourdillon.
"We'll say it comes from the inheritance of a Turkish millionaire, distant relative of some imaginary comrade who gave it all over to the movement. 'hat's not the problem, we'll work the cover so it'll stick."
"Yeah, but whele's the money going to come tom, Sebastian?"
"Lefty, the other paper," he said with a smile, lighting up a filterless cigarette.
Lefty took another sheet of paper out of the pocket of his patched vest and read to the group.
"Mail train from Puebla, stopped at kilometer eleven in Apizaco. Three men make the hit, we need one more at the Apizaco station, one driver, and a man for the horses. Six comrades in all. Estimated take: eighteen thousand six hundred to twentyone thousand pesos. The American Smelting Company payroll in Aguascalientes. Paymaster collects the money from the bank every Friday along with two armed bodyguards. Four men make the hit, one more drives the car. Estimated take: nineteen to twenty-three thousand, depending on the time of the month. Mexico City Central Post and Telegraph Office..."
"We get the idea. How many more are there?"
"Nine," said Lefty. "I've got another sheet with details for each operation. We can pull off all the jobs inside of two months. All of them in different towns, no dead or injured, nice and clean. Isn't that right, Sebastian?"
"Hell, man, that's how we want it. I'm not too hot on the idea of taking out some paymaster or innocent bystander, myself. You always hope that things'll go the way you plan them."
"Yeah, but if for some reason we get caught and they can connect the robberies to the organization, that's all the government needs to declare the CGT illegal and sink the movement."
"It's a risk we'll have to take. I'm not trying to fool anyone. I've thought about that myself," said San Vicente, losing his smile.
"I don't like it," said Tomas, with his head propped between his hands. "I don't like any of it. This newspapel idea is like a favol we'd be doing fol the wolkels. But it's not the kind of thing we need to move things ahead any fastel. Don't get me long, I'm not aflaid of violence, and it's not like I think the money, the mail tlain, the payloll, leally belongs to them. It's just as much outs as anybody else's, they lobbed it off the wolkels in the filst place. It's not that, but I still don't like it."
"
I don't like it either," said Hector.
"Me neither," said Paulino Martinez.
"I'm not so sure," said Hidalgo. "Seems like they've got it pretty well thought out."
"I think it's a good plan," said Varela.
"If the majority says no, will you abide by our decision?" Bourdillon asked San Vicente.
"And if the majority says yes, does that mean all of you will come in?"
"Thele's eight of us. We'll go along with the majolity, but I don't think we should decide light now," said Tomas. "Let's take a week to think it ovel."
The other men agreed. After that they spent a while talking about propaganda distribution around the Abeja Mill, which was still on strike and surrounded by marauding gangs of CROM gunmen. Finally the meeting ended just as it had begun, without any kind of ceremony or ritual.
"Hell, man, I'm not going to offend you by trying to convince you if you're dead set against it. I said what I needed to say already. Here, I'll help you clean up a little bit," said San Vicente. "What happened to your lady friend? Did you tell her not to hang around while the meeting was going on?"
"I told hel to go out fol a while. She said she was going to see a pictule show," said Tomas, emptying the ashes off a plate into a garbage tin.
After a few minutes San Vicente stretched out on the bed with a sigh.
"Looks like I got myself a gig at the Providencia. I used the name Arturo Reyes. I think it would be better if the rest of the comrades called me Arturo from now on. It wouldn't do for it to get around that I was in town."
Tomas nodded, putting away a pitcher of water.
"They got her, Tomas! They got her!" shouted a young boy bursting into the house. The open door swung back and forth on its hinges.
"Who'd they get, boy?" asked San Vicente.
"His Chinawoman, mister. Tomas' Chinawoman. They took her away."
"Where? Who?" asked Tomas, his face suddenly tense.
"In front of the Aurora Theater, Tomas. When she was leaving the show. They took her and put her in a car. There was three of them in all, in a white car with wooden strips on the side. I was with her, Tomas, she took me to the movies and when we were coming out they got her. She was holding me by the hand, and one of them kicked me so's I'd let her go. I grabbed onto her but then her dress ripped. I did what I could. Honest, Tomas."
The Shadow of the Shadow Page 13
