Mystery Girl: A Novel

by David Gordon

  “Are you a cop?” I asked. “A detective?”

  “No,” he said, dropping his cigarette between his feet and grinding it into the sand with a metal-tipped cowboy toe. “I’m a taxi driver. You?”

  I shook my head. “Novelist.”

  71

  WE ATE. DESPITE THE VAGUE (or not-so-vague, given that several of our coeaters were armed and that a refusal to devour and effusively praise the cooking might be the last straw) sense of menace, we were hungry, and the food was delicious: tender, slightly charred slices of steak topped with wedges of thick, white cheese, grilled cactus, and whole scallions, scooped up in a fresh tortilla. I scarfed it down. Perhaps fear, like the country air, had sharpened my appetite, my appreciation for life and its fleeting pleasures, like consuming other once living things.

  It was with my wife (my ex?) that I had first eaten food like this, real Mexican food, at her favorite places all around the East Side and over in Boyle Heights, dollar taco stands and trucks that specialized in just one thing (pork carnitas, shrimp in a chilled red soup), ladies who made tamales in their home kitchens (meat or cheese with chilies, glued into the corn paste and steamed inside a leaf) and old school family-run restaurants, like La Serenada de Garibaldi, where the subtle and sophisticated dishes (the zucchini blossoms and frothed egg around the burnt pepper and cheese of a chile releno, shark soup in tomatillo sauce, the twenty-something ingredients, hand-ground in a stone mortar, that go into a basic mole) were served under the imperious hawk eyes of the boss lady, who sat at a back table, doing the books over hot chocolate and pan dulce, and occasionally calling over a waitress to excoriate.

  But what truly won my heart, was what I tasted again that night, with armed men and sleeping dogs around me, mouth numbed by peppers, cooled by rice milk horchata, gobbling down what tasted like my last supper: the deep allegiance to those primal, celestial tastes, hot and sweet. So, so hot and so, so sweet. Lala put chile on oranges, melon, cucumbers, corn, eggs. She put chile on sugar, buying a baggy of chopped cane from a pushcart and shaking it full of hot sauce before digging in, the burn of the first bite followed by the soothing juice of the cane leaking onto your tongue. And don’t forget, these people discovered chocolate. What contribution can a supposedly glorious European civilization offer to match that achievement? And coffee! Therein lies the ancient potency of Mexican food. Chocolate, chile, sugar, coffee: these are flavors we can feel as well taste, that enter us like drugs, through the nervous system, delivering pleasure and pain.

  Ramón let us know we were expected at the funeral in the morning, after which we’d get down to crime solving. I tried to squirm out of it, but he was clear: we were now honored guests and we’d do as we were told. Mourning, then vengeance. He pushed back his plate and lit a Marlboro. “But first, tonight, we drink.”

  72

  WE DRANK. THEY TOOK US to a place on the edge of town, more like a hut than a proper bar: just a concrete slab floor with a drain in the center and a roof of corrugated tin and thatch, with a couple of tarps lifting lightly in the breeze. There were cinder block walls on two sides, one of which had a long bar, and the rest was open. You could smell the fields out beyond the gravel parking lot, the moisture and the vegetation. A jukebox played sad Mexican cowboy tunes, and some beer posters featuring gigantic breasts and icy bottles, both beaded with sweat, provided the decor. It was empty except for a few old men nuzzling beers and staring at the TV and some truck drivers in caps laughing and playing dice at the bar. A dude with a long, droopy mustache and a big cowboy hat called for a beer, then lit a cigar and sat to read Alarma in a corner. No gringos and no women besides Nic. Shots of tequila and a round of Dos Equis arrived. We toasted.

  “To Maria,” Ramón said.

  “Que descanse en paz,” Nic said and all the men muttered their agreement and clinked her glass and we drank. It tasted like burning piss. I forced myself to gag it down, gasping and wheezing. The others laughed.

  “Wrong pipe,” I said, pretending to laugh along while I wiped my tears. “Can I get a water?” Coffee and Donuts pushed across a beer.

  “Thanks,” I said and took a small sip. More shots arrived. These were from the bartender, in sympathy for our bereavement, and we toasted his health. The truckers saluted us too. One was fat, in a jean jacket and with a chain wallet. The other was tall and boney in tight jeans, a leather vest, and a lot of fake gold. This time I was careful to throw my head way back and fire the alcohol straight down my gullet. It still killed, but I held it together and it poisoned my stomach instead of my tongue. The cold beer helped, but I really wanted a Coke.

  “El coco?” I asked. “Coca-Cola?” as more shots landed in the puddle at the center of our table. No one seemed to hear me over the music. Someone saluted something and we drank. Nic looked flushed and her voice sounded thicker.

  “I like it here. It’s like we’re in that movie.”

  “What movie?” My voice sounded weird too, but I wasn’t sure if the problem was my tongue or my ears.

  “You know, the one where they have to get to Mexico.”

  “That’s almost half of all movies.”

  “No!” She yelled a bit too loud and smacked my arm a bit too hard. “The couple. Ali McDraw and Steven Queens.”

  “The Getaway.”

  “Yes!” She grabbed my wrist. “I fucking love that movie. She has this great jacket and then he shoots that guy. Doesn’t it feel just like this? Who made that movie?”

  “Sam Peckinpah.”

  “See, I knowed you’d knewed.” She sneered. “You fucking nerd.”

  “But the movie’s not in Mexico,” I said. “They just cross the border at the end. Mostly it’s Texas.”

  “I thought they crashed into the river and drowned at the end? Or you think they did but he lives?”

  “You mean Convoy?” Ramón broke in suddenly. The blind uncle nodded in agreement.

  “Sí, está Convoy!”

  “You’re right,” I said. “Peckinpah made that too. During the time when he referred to himself as a whore.”

  “Cristo Cristo Fersoon,” Coffee and Donuts put in.

  “Sí,” I said, “Kris Kristofferson.”

  “Ten-four, good buddy,” he declared.

  “For me,” Ramón said, “the best of Peckinpah is The Wild Bunch.”

  “Sí.” Blind Uncle nodded emphatically. “La pandilla salvaje.”

  “Sí, Mapache,” Coffee and Donuts added.

  “You guys like The Wild Bunch?” I asked. “I thought maybe you’d think it was too harsh a view of Mexico and from a white guy too.”

  “We don’t like gringos so much,” Ramón agreed, “but we love Westerns. And you know that Mapache is acted by Emilio Fernández, a Mexican star?”

  “I know,” I said. “Here’s another thing. He posed for the Oscar statue.”

  “Fernández?”

  “Yes. That’s him, naked.”

  “All those blancos,” Nic said, “kissing his Mexican ass on live TV.”

  Ramón reported this news excitedly to the others. We joyfully toasted the fact that, for lo these many years, American superstars had in fact been worshipping a golden Mexican idol. The truckers seemed to be snickering at us, but a sense of goodwill pervaded our part of the room, so I forgot to worry.

  We agreed that despite, or maybe because of, Peckinpah’s macho, drunken, Romantic-nihilist vision of Mexico as a kind of combination heaven and hell where his characters went to live out their destinies, there was no denying that Peckinpah knew and loved the country. He was crude, bombastic, even insulting, but he got so many small details right, and this we know is how artists—who can have no truck with politeness or even fairness—show their love. We all adored Leone too, of course, who set his most openly political epic in Zapata’s day, A Fistful of Dynamite, a.k.a. Duck, You Sucker, a.k.a. Once Upon a Time in the Revolution, though in his case the love was purely symbolic: the Italian film was shot in Spain with white actors. I tried to bring up Bu
ñuel, who, exiled from Franco’s Spain, ended up living in Mexico for decades and turning out dozens of pictures, including the classic harrowing tale of barrio kids, Los Olvidados, but Ramón and the uncles didn’t know him: he never made Westerns and this was, after all, the West.

  “What about Touch of Evil, the Orson Welles movie?” I asked. “Do you know it?”

  “Of course,” Ramón said. “I saw it on TV as a kid and again at a rerun house.” He shrugged. “You know it’s ridiculous. Charlton Heston as Mexican police.”

  “Yes. Though maybe not any more than as Moses or Michelangelo.”

  “And the other Mexicans, the gangsters, are cartoons.”

  “True.”

  “And his Mexico is not even Mexico.”

  “No. You’re right,” I said. “It’s Venice Beach in LA.”

  Ramón shrugged. “But what can you do with a genius?”

  “Right. It’s a masterpiece.”

  “Sí. To Orson!” We toasted and the others joined in, the uncles and Nic equally oblivious of why they were drinking.

  “I have a toast,” Nic announced with drunken braggadocio. She lifted a sloppy shot. “To Mona Naught, may she rest in peace.”

  “To Mona!” Everyone drank.

  “Who?” Ramón asked with a grimace after he swallowed.

  “It’s the name your cousin was using,” I said.

  “And me, too,” Nic put in.

  “OK, to you too,” Ramón called, lifting another glass.

  “Si, to you, señorita.” We all drank. I sat back heavily, and took some deep breaths, determined to sit the next round out. My head seemed sealed in bubble wrap, my eyes and ears were blurred, and my lips had a hard time feeling each other. My thoughts also seemed to land softly from far above, like individually wrapped packages I had to open one by one.

  “To my wife!” I yelled, surprising everyone, even myself. They all looked. I didn’t even have a glass in my hand. Coffee and Donuts pushed one across. Everyone hoisted a shot.

  “To your wife, wherever she is,” Nic said.

  “To your wife, whatever her name is,” Ramón added.

  “May she rest in peace,” I said, and I drank. There was a moment of silence.

  “Ay cabrón,” Nic said, “I’ve got to piss so bad.” I winced but no one else seemed to care. She rose unsteadily, leaning on Coffee and Donut’s shoulder for support, and wandered toward the restroom. Laughing and drunk themselves, the truckers swiveled on their stools to watch her.

  “Hey, gringa,” they called. “Hey, puta, come here.”

  The skinny dude with the vest and chains got up and blocked her way. His trucker hat was on sideways now, in a B-boy-style or just from drunkenness, and he grabbed her wrist as she passed. She pulled back, trying to laugh it off and walk around him. He blocked her again. Ramón stood.

  “Oiga, amigo,” he called over, sounding reasonable if firm, but the fat trucker stood up and faced him. He was even bigger and fatter and uglier than he seemed sitting down. Bright boils throbbed like sirens on his forehead and neck.

  Red alert! Things suddenly looked very bad, and with the other two males in our party old and/or blind, I realized it was incumbent upon me to get my ass kicked for Nic’s dubious honor. I stood reluctantly and gripped the neck of a beer bottle, completely forgetting there was still beer in it.

  “Hey, cabrón,” I called out as I tried to wield the bottle bar-brawler-style, and the contents splattered over me and my friends. There was a dead moment as everyone, including me, stared. Then the fat trucker burst into laughter. His friend joined in, along with Ramón and Coffee, and even Blind Uncle, though how could he get the joke? I tried to smile disarmingly. Meanwhile, Nic pulled away from the creepy trucker, but he grabbed her arm hard. The fat trucker stopped laughing.

  “Pinche cabrón,” he said to me. “I’m going to take that bottle and cut your little white balls off.”

  Ramón made fists, the bartender ducked, and everyone was bracing for battle, when the crack of a shot erupted, so loud and so close that I didn’t understand what was happening when the skinny trucker’s cap jumped off his head like a frightened bird. He looked around, eyes wide in terror, as if his own hat had betrayed him. I froze, afraid to even turn my head, afraid to blink. Everyone froze, except for Ramón—he pulled his gun, a flat automatic, and poked it into the fat one’s gut. Then we all looked to see from whence the shot had come. Blind Uncle was holding a huge revolver, its mouth still steaming, aimed right at Skinny, although Blind Uncle himself was kind of staring off to the side at empty space. It was like his ear was cocked.

  Ramón spoke loudly in Spanish, then threw some crumpled bills on the bar and said, “We’re leaving. And you can all drink in peace. Just as soon as the señora uses the restroom.”

  “That’s fine,” Nic said. “I don’t have to go anymore.”

  “All right then, after you,” he told her. We all filed out, with Ramón and Blind Uncle in the rear. As we left, the mustachioed dude in the corner, smiling now and puffing a cigar, graciously tipped his hat.

  “Holy fucking shit!” Nic yelled as we scooted to the car. “How the hell did he do that?”

  “My uncle?” Ramón got the taxi going and steered us onto the road. “He’s a master marksman. He doesn’t need to see anymore. He can hear like a bat and sense movement and even feel the air currents and temperature with his face. Right?”

  His Uncle nodded in agreement. “Sí, sí.”

  “But he shot the hat right off his head!” I said.

  “I did?” Blind Uncle asked me.

  “Hell yes, you did.”

  He chuckled. “Lucky shot.”

  73

  RAMÓN PARKED IN FRONT of the hotel and escorted us in, greeting the proprietor and explaining that we were his friends in a way that politely assured both our safety and our surveillance. Still, it had its plus side: when Nic requested bottled water and some extra towels they appeared immediately. Ramón gazed out our window at the desolate square with its dry fountain and the tall old church facing us like a stale wedding cake, smoking thoughtfully.

  “You know you’re being watched, right?” he asked us.

  “I know. By you and the desk clerk. We won’t leave.”

  “No. By the hombre in the pickup.” He pointed out the window. The dark outline of a hat sat in a beat-to-shit pickup, parked in front of the movie house across the square. The last showing of Fritz had ended and the lights were off.

  “Who is he?”

  “Who knows? Police? Bandit? Maybe he followed you here from the north.” He threw his cigarette at the guy, but it just dropped to the street below, bounced once, and kept burning between two cobblestones. He grinned. “You better watch your step down here, gringo.” He winked conspiratorially at Nic. “Didn’t anyone warn you?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “They especially warned me not to trust taxi drivers.”

  Ramón laughed and punched me in the arm. It hurt but I managed to smile instead of flinch. He bowed his head at Nic. “Buenos noches, señora. It was a pleasure drinking with you. I will see you in church in the morning.”

  Nic locked the door behind him and went to the window. She stared out at the pickup, which sat in the shadows, the cowboy silhouette unmoved.

  “He’s just smoking,” she said.

  “Uh-huh,” I responded. I was sitting on the bed and my skull was spinning. It would rotate counterclockwise for a few turns, then lurch back.

  “I think I know him from somewhere,” she went on, peering over the sill.

  “You know he can see you, right?” I asked. “It’s dark out there and our light’s on. You’re lit up like a drive-in movie.”

  “Oh shit.” She ducked in drunken panic and clawed the drapes. They came clattering down and she yelped as they hit her. “The light, the light,” she whispered, as if suddenly he could hear us too.

  “Yeah, I’ll get it,” I said, rising carefully. “Just don’t wreck anything else.” I hit
the switch, and like changing the channel, our room was now black-and-white, the furniture gray, the corners shadowed, the light through the window silver. I stared at the truck across the way. Its headlights came on and it rolled off lazily, muffler burping. I lifted the curtain rod back onto the brackets and drew the thin cotton closed. Some light still filtered through and there was a line of yellow under the door.

  “He’s leaving,” I said. “I guess you scared him after all.”

  “Fuck you,” she said from her spot on the floor, then, “Help me up. I’m drunk.”

  “No kidding.” I grabbed her hand and hoisted her to her wobbly feet.

  “OK, I admit it,” she declared. “I’m not really as tough as I seem.”

  “You don’t really seem so tough,” I said, sitting back heavily on the saggy bed. “More kind of mean. Or cold-blooded, I guess. In a smart way of course.”

  “Now that’s mean,” she said, waving a loose finger of accusation around the room. “And unfair. And now I really do have to pee. I’ve been holding it in since that fight.” She tottered over and flicked the bathroom light on, stood in the illuminated rectangle. “You know,” she said, unbuttoning her jeans, “I’m not really mean, or cold and tough like you think. Just honest.”

  Then as if to prove all our points she used the toilet without shutting the door, kicking off her shoes and stepping out of her jeans. She sat and I heard her little piddle. I could see her feet, the red painted toes and the little blue panties binding her ankles. She flushed and stood, leaving the panties on the floor. She wriggled out of her t-shirt and unhooked her bra.

  “I think we should fuck,” she said. “It’s the only way I’m going to get to sleep.”

  “Um,” I said.

  “Besides,” she explained, moving closer, entering the glow of the window, which touched her hair, shoulder, nipple, hip. “We’re both tense and scared with a high level of adrenaline in the bloodstream. Which can actually add a real boost to the sex.”

  “Yeah, I’ve heard that.”