White Tombs

by Christopher Valen

  “You know,” Montoya said, “I remember what it was like living in the States. A society where everything has a price but nothing has value. One has to wonder about the long term consequences of this thinking.”

  “Ever been to Colombia?” Santana asked.

  “No.”

  “There’s your answer.”

  Montoya thought about it for a while. “It is true that corruption has no borders, amigo.”

  “What’s the crime rate in Valladolid?”

  “Nothing like Mexico City, or Texas for that matter. Although I think Texas operates under the same Napoleonic Code. Guilty until proven innocent.” He smiled.

  “Saves a lot of time,” Santana said.

  “So does a well-placed bullet.”

  Montoya took a long drag on his cigar and let the smoke out slowly. “I make no apologies for my country or myself. Unfortunately, when you combine a thirst for blood with poverty and corruption, it leads to many kidnappings. Especially of Americans.”

  “It is the same in Colombia.”

  “Ah, but Colombians are still more civilized. Your kidnappers do not send pieces of the victim to his family. Here it is common practice.”

  “Estamos cortados con la misma tijera,” Santana said.

  “Yes. We are all cut with the same scissors. I can see it in your eyes, amigo. Violence is like a shark swimming just below the surface.”

  The Kaluhas arrived and Montoya made a Mexican toast. “Arriba, abajo, al centro, pa’dentro.” Up, down, in the middle, inside.

  Montoya drank and then took a knife from the table and cut a narrow leaf from a nearby palm tree. In a few minutes, he had fashioned what looked like a green insect the length of his hand. He set it gently on the table directly in front of Santana.

  “I’m reminded of the tale of the frog and the scorpion, John. Have you heard it?”

  “No.”

  Montoya said, “The scorpion asks the frog to take him across the river because he cannot swim. The frog believes the scorpion will kill him and refuses. The scorpion explains that it would be foolish to kill him because then they would both die. The frog agrees. Halfway across the river, the scorpion stings the frog. The stunned frog asks the scorpion why he stung him, knowing that they both will die. The scorpion replies, ‘It’s my nature.’ Violence is in our Spanish blood, John. It’s our nature. But unlike the scum we deal with, we’re able to control it.”

  “Most of the time,” Santana said.

  They drank in silence for a while until Santana said, “I remember a quote I read once that said in violence we forget who we are.”

  “Perhaps during the act itself.”

  “And after?”

  He shook his head. “Afterward, if you forget who you are, you are lost.”

  Santana took a long drink of Kaluha, letting the thick coolness of it mask the alcohol that burned his insides. “My partner back in Minnesota killed a suspect in a murder,” he said.

  “Will your partner ever remember who he was before the shooting?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “This is not a surprise, amigo. Most species will not kill their own kind. Killing causes a fever in the soul. But sometimes,” Montoya said, jabbing the air with the cigar, “there is no choice. Men kill in war. Men kill to save their own life or to protect the life of another. You either learn to live with the knowledge you have killed or you die with it.”

  Santana knew Montoya was right. He knew it from the moment he first pulled the trigger and killed another human being. The shadow of death and violence had forever darkened his life and corrupted his soul. He lived with it because he had to. But living was never easy.

  “You know,” Montoya said, “humans have spent the last five million years being aggressive. It is hardwired into our brain.”

  “Survival of the fittest.”

  “Exactly. We are competitive and territorial. There are those who say they would never harm anyone. That killing is never justified. But you ask a mother what she would do to protect her child? If she is honest, she will admit that she would kill to protect the life of her child. Violence is in all of us. The only thing that changes is the justification.”

  “Violence is a much talked about subject in the States,” Santana said. “But not death.”

  “Si,” Montoya said. “It is a society in search of the fountain of youth.”

  He drank from his glass of Kaluha, puffed on the cigar, contemplating, before he continued.

  “Mexicans celebrate La Muerte. Even in the States, they celebrate the Day of the Dead. One of my favorite writers, Octavio Paz, said that death is our most lasting love. I believe Paz writes the truth.”

  Santana had not embraced death like Montoya, but he lived in its shadow whenever he carried his shield.

  A trio of Mexican guitarists moved through the restaurant under the canopy of night. They were singing, “Yo soy tú sangre mi viejo, soy tú silencio y tú tiempo, I am your blood old man, I am your silence and your time.” The music and the words triggered pleasant memories of Santana’s past before violence cleaved his world in two.

  “You like this music, John?”

  “Yes.” He was feeling the languid effects of the long trip, heavy meal and drinks. “It reminds me of Colombia and my father. He loved the old music.”

  When the trio finished playing, Santana thanked them and tipped them ten American dollars.

  “It is good to be a tourist,” Montoya said, “unless you are in trouble with the law. You can be kept in jail here for up to thirteen months without bail or a jury trial. It is a long time to be in jail in any country, but a very long time in a Mexican jail. The courts are very hard on drugs and firearms, John. I assume you are carrying neither.”

  “I’m looking for information, Carlos. Not trouble.”

  “Good. Then tomorrow we will talk to a priest. See if we can find Pérez and Mendoza’s names in the church register. But for now, we will relax.” Montoya sat back in his chair. “Have you ever been in a casa de piedra?”

  “A stone house?”

  “It is more than a stone house. The Mayans call it Temazcal. A secret bath.”

  “I’ve not had the pleasure.”

  “Then you must have one, amigo. It will cleanse your soul as well as your body.”

  The stone house was actually a small, stone hut with a palm-thatched roof and a blanket over the door located near the Xkeken Cenote, one of the cool, underground streams in Valladolid. Stones heated over a fire were placed in the center of the dirt floor and then doused with water creating a sauna-like effect.

  Montoya said, “The Mayans are a very superstitious people, you know.”

  “Just like Hispanics,” Santana said.

  Montoya laughed. “What do you expect? Valladolid was the ritual and ceremonial center of their civilization. They called it Zaci. It means white hawk.”

  They both were sitting cross-legged on the floor, wearing only a towel wrapped around their waists. Beads of sweat ran down Santana’s forehead and dripped into his eyes.

  Before entering the hut, they had been asked by an old Mayan Indian to make an offering to the gods to help guide them on their paths in life. The Indian stood over them now, striking them lightly with leaves made of sage and tobacco. The scent of each leaf permeated the moist, thick heat.

  Santana closed his eyes. The only sound was the gentle rustle of leaves as they brushed against his skin. Time gradually became as ephemeral as the steam rising off the stones. Soon, a kaleidoscope of strange images appeared before his eyes.

  And then he was on the bridge again.

  Flames from a burning river of oil below charred the crosses, which served as bridge supports, and melted the fog that seeped off the snow surrounding him. A woman’s anguished voice called to him as she had called to him in a dream before. She was much closer to him now. Still, he could not move or feel. Yet, he could sense that there was someone else lurking in the shadows, someone with the woman. He
knew he was neither awake nor asleep but floating just below the surface of consciousness. There were clues here in this netherworld if only he could see them. But as he concentrated harder, his eyes straining to see more than the shadows in the cold mist ahead of him, the delicate balance needed to remain in this state shifted suddenly, and his mind began the gentle ascent toward consciousness.

  Chapter 20

  * * *

  DAY 7

  SANTANA AWOKE WITH A START TO THE DIN of chirping birds. He was lying on his hotel bed, looking at the lasers of early morning sunlight that pierced the small spaces between the blinds.

  He sat up and placed his feet firmly on the floor. The sudden movement caused a blood vessel just above his left eye to begin pounding in rhythm with his heart. He remembered leaving the casa de piedra, swimming briefly in the cool waters of the cenote, and then riding back in Montoya’s Jetta to the hotel. He knew he had taken no drugs, yet his memory of last evening was like the lyric of an old, favorite song. Lost for the moment but not completely forgotten.

  He showered, put on a fresh set of clothes and ate a breakfast of juice, fruit and eggs before meeting Montoya in the hotel lobby.

  They were walking across the square near the hotel now, past flocks of flamingos, herons, cormorants and gray pelicans, and Mayan women selling handmade dresses, T-shirts, and silver and gold jewelry. The weathered, gray Cathedral of San Gervasio loomed like a mountain above the tree branches to the south. Like all Spanish colonial towns, Valladolid was built around a church and a square. The square was a large garden with cobblestone walkways and a fountain in the center. Narrow paths off the main walkways led to shady dead ends and white cast iron benches. Beneath large trees in the central square were chairs connected so that they faced each other. A young Hispanic couple was sitting in one, looking at one another, as if they were the last two people on earth.

  “Did you sleep well?” Montoya asked.

  “Like the dead,” Santana said. “Though my memory of what happened after we left the casa de piedra is a little fuzzy.”

  “Yours is not an unusual experience the first time in the Temazcal. But perhaps you learned something that might be helpful.”

  Santana thought about the recurring dream of the bridge again. He felt frustrated that he could neither solve the meaning of it nor the case before him. Instinct told him that the solution to both was right in front of him. He just had to keep his eyes wide open and trust his intuition.

  “There are seven churches in the eight barrios of Valladolid, counting El Centro or Zocalo,” Montoya said. “Only the Bacalar Barrio has no church. The church in the Sisal Barrio is called San Bernardino de Siena. It is the oldest in the Yucatán. There is a convent, but it is no longer used. Asking questions and getting no answers is what I like least about the job. So I called the priest this morning. I told him what we were looking for and that we were coming early, before most of the tourists. He agreed to meet us. It is a short walk from the main square.”

  The sun was like a flame in the brilliant blue sky, the air already thick with humidity and smelling of fried beans and tortillas as they passed a restaurant where a young woman sat on the tile floor beside a small fire making tortillas out of corn meal for the tourists, compliments of the restaurant. Santana wondered how many tortillas she made sitting here all day like a one-person assembly line.

  They walked along a narrow street, which Montoya called Calzada de los Frailes, or the street of the Franciscans. It had old-fashioned streetlamps and was paved with cobblestones and fronted by restored homes with pastel colors and colonial facades.

  The huge arches and thick walls of the San Bernardino de Sisal convent were imposing and appeared unchanged since its founding in 1552. The façade was a checkerboard pattern devoid of any religious symbols or art. Above the arches were a choral window and a Franciscan shield.

  Montoya explained that the convent and church were built to be self-sufficient and to withstand Indian attacks. The first word that came to Santana’s mind was fortress.

  “We are meeting Father Santos in the monastery garden,” Montoya said. “Visitors need special permission from the priest to see that area of the convent, so it will be quiet and we can talk in peace.”

  The priest was waiting for them near an ancient mule-powered water wheel and a stone-domed gazebo that covered a cenote well. A young woman wearing a sombrero and a white cotton blouse and pants was on her knees, tending to the red and white flowers tucked among the large leaves of the elephant ear plants in the garden.

  “I understand from what Detective Montoya told me, that you have come a long way for information, señor,” the priest said in Spanish. His hair was white, his mouth a dry line, yet Santana saw a light in his eyes that suggested he was more youthful than he appeared.

  “Two men are dead,” Santana said. “Two men who grew up in Valladolid in the sixties.”

  “How do you think I can help you?”

  “I’m looking for a motive for their murders.”

  The young woman tending the garden glanced in Santana’s direction, and then looked away quickly when their eyes met.

  “And you expect to find it here?” Father Santos said.

  “I don’t know. But I believe something ties these two men together. It could be something from their past.”

  The priest gave it some thought before responding. “The register shows that Julio Pérez and Rafael Mendoza were baptized in this church.”

  Santana’s momentary excitement at hearing the news was tempered by the knowledge that it proved nothing.

  “How long have you been a priest here?” he asked.

  The light changed suddenly in the priest’s eyes. “Not long enough to have known the families or anything about them.”

  “Is there someone else who could help us, Father Santos?” Montoya asked. “Perhaps someone you know who was born about the same time and who still attends the church?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  Santana saw the young woman’s eyes flick in his direction again, but she went back to her gardening the moment he looked at her.

  The priest turned and walked away, his body slightly stooped, as though he had carried the weight of the world and all its sins on his shoulders for too many years.

  “You think he knows more than he is telling us?” Montoya said to Santana.

  “Probably.”

  “We can ask around the barrio. Someone might remember Pérez and Mendoza.”

  “We could.”

  “What other choice do we have?”

  Santana walked over to the young woman working in the garden. Montoya followed.

  “You overheard our conversation.”

  She looked up at Santana, her brown eyes squinting in the bright sunlight. “No, señor.”

  “Maybe you can help us.”

  “I don’t think so,” she said. Tiny streams of sweat had formed tracks in the dirt smudges on her dark, pretty face.

  Santana squatted down beside her. “All I need is a name. Someone who grew up here. No one needs to know who gave it to me.”

  “I cannot help you,” she said.

  “I’m trying to bring a murderer to justice, señorita.”

  She put down the digging trowel, pulled a few weeds out of the ground and looked at Santana. “There is a woman who lives in the barrio. I work in her garden. She has always been kind and helpful to me. Perhaps she will help you.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Daniela de la Vega,” the young woman said.

  Montoya sucked in a breath, as if oxygen had suddenly gone out of the air.

  “You know her?” Santana said.

  “I don’t know her. But I know who she is.”

  Ten minutes later they were standing outside the door of a large house a few blocks from the railroad station and the Cine San Juan, the only theater in town.

  Santana was admiring the wrought iron grilles over the eight-foot high Moorish windows when a mai
d opened the door.

  Montoya showed her his badge. She asked him to wait. Shortly, an elegant looking older woman appeared, her still-shapely figure framed in sunlight.

  “Señora de la Vega. Buenas tardes.”

  Santana could tell by Montoya’s deference that he was in awe of the woman.

  “Señora. Soy Carlos Montoya. John Santana.” Montoya held out his badge. As he did so, he looked at Santana and said in English, “Daniela de la Vega was a famous Mexican actress.”

  “Not was, Mr. Montoya,” she said in perfect English. “I still am.” Her voice had a sultry rasp that suggested confidence rather than anger.

  She wore a simple cotton print dress, cut low over her large breasts and a plain beaded necklace around a throat that was just beginning to show a few wrinkles. Her black hair was straight and fell over her shoulders and down her back nearly to her waist.

  Santana made her for fifty though she easily could have passed for forty.

  Montoya said, “We hate to bother you, señora, but we are looking for someone who might have known a man named Julio Pérez. He lived in the barrio some forty years ago.”

  Her stunning indigo eyes looked Montoya over carefully and then, when they came to rest on Santana, he felt a sudden tingle along his spine, as if she had run her tongue down his back.

  “I knew Julio,” she said.

  Santana’s pulse quickened. He gave Montoya a glance and said, “I wonder if we could ask you a few questions about him? We won’t take much of your time.”

  She paused a moment longer before gesturing gracefully toward the living room.

  Santana noticed the few age spots that marred her delicate hand. He remembered his mother had called age spots flores de cementerio or cemetery flowers.

  Daniela de la Vega led them into the living room, moving with a proud elegance Santana associated with good breeding or royalty.

  The room had an eighteen-foot high-beamed ceiling and wrought iron chandeliers. Mosaic tile covered the floor. The double wooden shutters on the Moorish windows were open, and sunlight spilled into the room.