by Carmen Amato
“The Virgin is very nice, from a very old church in Guadalajara,” Tifani said encouragingly.
“It's nice,” Kurt said. “But ubiquitous.”
Tifani smiled uncertainly. “A very special piece,” she said.
Kurt picked up the repujado icon. “What do you think, Em?”
“It's beautiful, but I think it's too fancy,” Emilia said. The silver was inlaid with seed pearls and what she hoped were crystals and not real jewels. It was stunning but she could hardly see it in their plain little house.
“You sure?” Kurt asked.
“Yes,” Emilia said honestly. “Don't get that one. Word would get out that they had it and the house would become a magnet for burglars.”
“All right,” Kurt said and laid the work of repujado aside.
Emilia touched the tree of life. "I like this, too. But it's so fragile and Ernesto isn't the most careful person." She visualized the knife grinder's work-worn hands and the way he sat, elbows out, in his chair at the kitchen table waiting for Sophia to serve up his breakfast. "Maybe the Virgin is the safe choice."
"Look, Em, I don't want to sound godless," Kurt said. "But everybody has a Virgin of Guadalupe in the house. It would hardly be special."
With a jolt, Emilia realized that Kurt was nervous. She'd been so worried about others' reactions that it hadn't occurred to her that meeting her family and making a good impression were important to him. The thought made her feel happy and queasy at the same time.
"Wasn't there an icon of Saint Jude?" she asked, turning around in her chair to peer at the shelves across the room. "He's the patron saint of impossible causes. It would be fitting."
"Em," Kurt reproved her.
Tifani smiled desperately as if starting to see her sale slip away. "You like the saints, no?" she asked. "Saint Jude is very special, but we have some even more special items. Perhaps you'd like to see them."
"For a wedding gift," Kurt reiterated. "Something simple but elegant."
Tifani slid over to her colleague. Emilia watched out of the corner of her eye as the two girls had an urgent conversation in low voices. Lupita disappeared through a doorway behind the cash register. She came back a moment later with a box decorated in the traditional rayada carved lacquer technique. It was the size of a loaf of bread and the bottom was fitted with a small drawer with a tiny gold knob.
"This is a most special and precious item," Tifani said as she moved the other items aside and spread a velvet cloth over the glass-topped counter. Lupita placed the box reverently on the fabric. "A relic of the most holy martyr Padre Pro."
Emilia's breath caught in her throat. "Really? Padre Pro?"
"Who's that?" Kurt asked.
"Padre Pro," Emilia said, as her heart thumped. She was glad she was already sitting down. The rayada box was lacquered in blue and black with an etched design of crosses rather than the usual animal motifs. "He was a priest. A martyr of the Cristero War."
Kurt frowned. "The what?"
"You've never heard of the Cristero War?" Emilia was surprised. Kurt had lived in Mexico for nearly three years and although she knew he wasn't Catholic, it seemed inconceivable he had never heard of the religious upheaval that had taken place in the country during the late 1920s and early 1930s.
"No," Kurt said.
Emilia got her heart rate under control as she considered how to explain it to him. "In the 1920s, the Church was deemed to have too much power," she began. "The government tried to shut it down. Made it illegal for priests to wear their vestments. Placed quotas on the number of priests in each state. Eventually made it illegal for priests to even say Mass. Convents and churches were closed and the property confiscated."
"Here?" Kurt sounded incredulous. "This is the most Catholic country I've ever been in. Are you sure?"
Emilia nodded. "We studied it in school. It went on for a long time. Priests and Catholics who wouldn't renounce the church were arrested and executed. At first the protests were peaceful, but when the army started killing people there was an armed rebellion. Really tore the country apart."
"And this Padre Pro was caught up in it?" Kurt lifted his chin at the enamel box.
"He was a Jesuit priest who defied the government ban on priests giving the sacraments and saying Mass," Emilia explained. "He wore disguises. Used safe houses. Was a good actor, apparently, and had a lot of narrow escapes. He actually got famous as the priest the government couldn't catch."
"Until," Kurt said leadingly.
Emilia nodded. "They trumped up charges and blamed him for an assassination attempt on a famous general. Someone turned him in. He was executed by a firing squad after forgiving the soldiers. Right before he was shot he spread his arms and shouted Viva Cristo Rey. He didn't die immediately so a sergeant shot him point-blank in the head. The government publicized pictures of his execution. It was pretty gruesome."
"They wanted to make an example out of him," Kurt said.
"Exactly." Emilia glanced at the lacquer box and at Lupita and Tifani hovering protectively around it. "But it backfired. Viva Cristo Rey became the Catholic rallying cry and the Cristero War really blew up after that."
"So this Padre Pro is a saint?" Kurt said.
"I don't think he's officially a saint yet," Emilia said. "But he's famous to Mexican Catholics."
Kurt looked up at Tifani. "Well, let's see this relic of the famous Padre Pro."
Tifani and Lupita exchanged glances, then Tifani carefully opened the shallow drawer set into the bottom of the box. "These are the letters verifying the authenticity of the relic," she explained. "Please do not touch."
She took out four letters, each encased in a glassine archival protector, and laid them on the velvet next to the box. Through the cloudy glassine, Emilia could see that two were folds of paper nearly crumbling with age. The other two were envelopes; one with a broken wax seal on the flap and the other relatively new with foxing on the corners.
"The relic of Padre Pro is genuine," Lupita said softly. "The bodies of saints do not, how do you say, corrupt after death. The relic is proof of his true sainthood."
Tifani slid the drawer closed and opened the lid of the box. She took out two pieces of styrofoam and set them aside. She reached back inside the box and drew out a small rectangular display case. Lupita whisked aside the now-empty enamel box and Tifani set the glass case on the velvet pad and turned it so that the front faced Emilia and Kurt.
The sides and top of the display case were made of clear glass. The wooden base was stained a dark mahogany and bore a small brass plaque with an inscription that read A Relic of the Most Holy Martyr Blessed Padre Miguel Pro Juarez, S.J. 1891-1927.
The back was decorated with a color picture of a priest in a bloody cassock lying with arms outstretched at the feet of an officer holding a sword and wearing a garish Napoleon-style uniform.
But it was the object inside the display case that took Emilia's breath away. A long-lost relic of Padre Pro. Her life had come full circle.
Was she actually in the presence of something so holy? Was it proof he was a true saint? She started to make the sign of the cross.
"Damn," Kurt said, his voice stinging like a bucket of cold water. "I don't know much about saints and their bodies staying intact after death, but this is somebody's finger, Em. And they didn't lose it all that long ago."
Chapter 2
The body was folded up and partially hidden by the animal carcasses hanging from ceiling hooks in the big commercial freezer. Emilia snapped on a pair of latex gloves as her partner Franco Silvio shoved aside half a cow.
“Male,” Silvio said. “Maybe 30 years old.”
Emilia squatted down to look. The place smelled like a butcher store. She had on a canvas motorcycle jacket, jeans, and black loafers with heavy lug soles. Her gun was tucked into its shoulder holster and her hair was pulled back into its usual ponytail. The door to the freezer was propped open but her ears were already tingling from the chill. “I count two sma
ll caliber rounds to the head,” she said. “One exit wound, the other round is probably stuck in what’s left of his brain.”
“Execution.” Silvio shifted his weight to keep the animal carcass off the dead body. “What do you think? About 24 hours ago?”
Emilia turned the dead man’s head to the side and it fell forward. The two round black gouges in the side of his head were close together, between his eye and ear. The eye closest to the holes was closed, the other only partly so, as if the bullet’s path had severed one optic nerve but not the other.
The stainless steel wall of the refrigerator where the head had rested was smeared with dried blood. There was no dent that an exiting bullet might have made.
“Looks about right, but the medical examiner can give us a better estimate,” Emilia said. “Looks like he was shot somewhere else and dumped here.”
“Or else he crawled in trying to hide and the shooter found him.” The side of beef was starting to glisten with condensation. Silvio’s latex-gloved hand slipped and the beef carcass swung free. It bumped into the body, which skittered awkwardly toward Emilia.
“Shit, Franco!” She hitched herself backwards to avoid being knocked over.
“Make friends, Cruz.”
“Get the meat out of the way so I can check for identification.”
Silvio wore his usual outfit of jeans, white tee, worn leather jacket, and grim expression. Now Acapulco’s senior detective, years ago he’d been a champion heavyweight boxer and retained both the bulk and the menace. He pushed against the beef carcass again and Emilia scooted forward to rifle through the dead man’s pockets. She came away with 800 pesos, some cigarette rolling papers, and a sprinkle of white powder on her gloved fingertip.
She held up her finger to Silvio. He got an evidence bag and she pulled off the glove and dropped it in.
The body was clad in gray cotton pants and an expensive-looking alligator belt. The blue button-down shirt and navy zippered jacket looked cheap but new. The man wore no watch or ring and his hair was long and slick with grease. His high-top sneakers were a big name brand. A professional norteamericano basketball player’s signature was embroidered into the leather.
Emilia managed to turn over one of the stiff hands. The lines of the palms were etched with dirt. The fingernails were ragged and there was a rime of black under each one. “Doesn’t look like he was a paying passenger,” she reported. “Maybe he came here for work, never had time to change his address.”
Footsteps rang on the metal floor outside the meat locker. “You need a little help, there, Silvio?”
The crime scene techs stood in the doorway to the meat locker, cases of gear piled at their feet. The two detectives exchanged greetings with the techs; after more than two years as a detective Emilia knew all of the techs and had a lot of respect for their role. She stood up, Silvio let the side of beef swing back into place, and the two detectives edged their way to the door. Emilia felt cold dampness against her hair as she brushed by a carcass. The meat was starting to defrost.
Hector Bonilla stood next to the techs, seemingly annoyed by their big toolboxes. “Is this going to take a long time?” he asked.
Bonilla was the ship’s purser and seemed to regard it as his duty to play host to the visiting detectives. He’d met them at the head of the gangplank, a polished man with prematurely silver hair and liquid eyes who looked like a Latino film star in his crisp white uniform with its braided epaulets. He’d introduced himself in Spanish heavily tinged with an accent that suggested that he spent a lot of time north of the border.
Bonilla had taken Emilia’s hand in the way that patronizing men sometimes did, by pressing his fingers against hers, instead of offering a palm-to-palm handshake. It rankled even more when he’d vigorously pumped Silvio’s hand and said of course they were concerned about this unprecedented death aboard ship.
“It’ll take as long as it needs to,” Silvio replied.
“While the techs go over the scene, can you verify if this person was a member of the crew or a passenger?” Emilia asked. They all knew the answer but had to eliminate the obvious. “Have you checked if anyone is missing?”
“We did, but I’ll verify our findings.” Edgar Ramos, head of the ship’s security team, scribbled something in a small notebook. Emilia assumed that he and Bonilla had been assigned as liaison to the police because of their Spanish language skills. The Pacific Grandeur’s common language was English, as they’d been told by the captain in a brief meeting before they were taken into the hold where the body had been found. Emilia’s high school English skills had been polished by weekends at the Palacio Réal, where she was more apt to hear English being spoken than Spanish. She would have managed to get by, but it was a relief to be able to conduct the investigation in Spanish.
The corridor outside the meat locker was crammed with more people than Emilia would have liked. Silvio wiped sweat off his upper lip and she wondered if he was feeling claustrophobic.
The Pacific Grandeur was a Norwegian-flagged cruise ship that made a regular run from Los Angeles to the Panama Canal, with three days in Acapulco along the way. Full occupancy was 5000 passengers, Bonilla had explained as he had led them down a series of narrow metal stairs. Just as Emilia was beginning to think they’d walked across the Pacific, they arrived in the hold used as storerooms for the various kitchens that served the ship. The corridor he led them down was wide enough for two to walk side by side. Every few feet a sturdy metal door was labeled with the contents and which kitchen section of the ship it was for.
Ramos said something to Bonilla, and left. Emilia moved through the knot of people clustered near the open meat locker door, gathering up names and their positions aboard ship. Most belonged to the kitchen staff, including the head chef who made little clicking noises with his tongue as he watched his meat defrost. Two others were Ramos’s colleagues on the security team. All looked to Bonilla before answering her questions; the purser was clearly in charge.
“We’re not going to get any prints out of here,” the senor tech said to Silvio. He gestured to the interior of the meat locker. “Too wet. Probably wasn’t shot in here, anyway.”
“Okay.” Silvio shrugged. “Get him out.”
The techs pulled their cases away from the entrance and made room for the morgue body handlers to come in with their body bag and stretcher. Rigor mortis had set in and the body had to be wrestled into a bag with the knees still drawn up against the chest. The smell was a combination of cloying body rot, feces, and fresh butcher shop. One of the female chefs began to sob quietly and Bonilla said something to her.
The team from the morgue started cracking jokes as the zipper of the body bag caught on the dead man’s hand. The techs got more equipment out of their cases and started moving around the corridor, obviously chagrined at the crush of people in the way.
“I think it would be better if you sent your staff into another part of the ship where we can talk to them in a more private setting,” Emilia said to Bonilla. “The techs will have to look in this area as well.”
Ramos reappeared. “I can take everyone who needs to make a statement into the wardroom.”
“We’ll talk to Señor Blom first, the chef who found the body,” Emilia said. She’d taken only a brief statement from the head chef as they’d made their way through the ship. “And all the other members of the kitchen staff who were down here in the last 24 hours.”
“The wardroom will be fine,” Bonilla said. “I’ll bring the detectives when they are done down here.”
Emilia opened her mouth to thank him but Bonilla turned away, pulled Ramos further down the hallway, and bent his head to speak quietly to the shorter man. Emilia watched as they conferred, after which Ramos left with the members of the kitchen staff. The two security officers stayed with Bonilla.
“Silvio, Cruz,” the head tech called out. “You’ll want to see this.”
The tech flicked on an ultraviolet light and played it over the sh
adows created by the stair risers. A fine smear of blood decorated the wall under the stairway leading up to the next deck. “Somebody tried to clean it up,” he said. “But blood sticks, you know? Check out the angle.”
“He was standing there,” Silvio said. “Under those stairs?”
“Probably like this.” The tech guided Emilia to stand with her back to the wall and adjusted her chin so that she was looking down the corridor toward the meat locker. “Judging from the head wounds, I’d say the shooter wasn’t far away. Bang, bang. Like that.” He mimed shooting Emilia in the head.
Emilia shoved the tech’s arm aside and stepped away from the space under the stairs. Bonilla had been watching very intently but turned away as soon as she’d moved.
“Looks like he was hiding. Or maybe he planned to meet somebody.” Silvio indicated the pristine, well lit corridor beyond the stairwell. “Whatever happened, he got shot twice at relatively close range. Shooter or a friend dumped our boy in the freezer and cleaned up.”
“Time of death?” Emilia asked.
“I’m guessing midnight, early morning,” the tech said.
The rest of the walls were clean. No gouges, scratches or anything to suggest there had been a fight. The clean lines and spotless white walls made it easy.
Emilia motioned to Silvio with a jerk of her shoulder and they moved a few steps away from Bonilla and the two Pacific Grandeur security goons. “Murder weapon,” she said, keeping her voice low. “I think we need some warm bodies to help search the ship.”
“Who do you think is left to call?”
“Madre de Dios,” Emilia swore softly. Every uniform was pulling extra duty this week. Not only were thousands of passengers from the Pacific Grandeur in town, but there was also a two-day rock festival out at Punta Huarache. But the main event in Acapulco that week was a visit by a “pre-assessment” team from the International Olympic Committee. Only the dead in Acapulco didn’t know that the mayor, Carlota Montoya Perez, was determined that the city would one day host a summer Olympics.
