An Easy Thing

by Paco Ignacio Taibo II

  For the time being he felt a stronger obligation to the Ferrer girl than to this woman with the ponytail who was at once so near and so far away. But when he thought about it, it seemed to him that his disastrous love life fit quite well into the three-pronged labyrinth he was caught up in. Hey, not a bad title for a detective novel, he thought, The Three-Pronged Labyrinth, by Héctor Belascoarán Shayne.

  He lit a cigarette.

  “We won’t think twice about blowing the dump sky high. Believe me, buddy, I’ve got the dynamite right here…”

  It would make a good detective story, if it weren’t for the fact that he was sitting right in the middle of it already, if he weren’t so caught up in the role in which he’d been cast.

  He opened the first letter:

  I guess your letters must be following me out there somewhere. I hope you don’t think I’m running away from them, it’s just that I’ve picked up the pace, and these days I’m moving faster than the light that comes from Mexico. How would you like to stay in a different hotel every night? Doesn’t that sound wonderful? Fortunately, my money’s running out, and of course, I’m not going to ask my father for even one cent. Some time soon I’ll have to decide if I want to burn my bridges and spend the money I was saving in reserve, and start a new kind of trek, as a sort of Mexican hobo loose in Europe; or if I want to decide that the trip is over and I can go home to Mexico.

  Either way, I’ve got ten dollars set aside to send you a telegram letting you know what I’m going to do.

  How are you, mi amor?

  Same as before? My lonely little puppy dog? I’ve been seeing you a lot lately. My shrink back in Mexico would say that I’m exhibiting symptoms of paranoia. Yesterday I saw you on the ferryboat in the Bosporus, and last week you were in a shepherds’ bar in Albania, and just the other day, on the sports page of France Soir. I swear it. Your doubles, your alter egos, are following me all over Europe.

  I suppose they’re out chasing stranglers just like you, or maybe they’ve only come out to witness my misbehavings.

  How do you spell solución? With an s or c?

  I love you even as I run from you. I wait for you every night in my empty bed, and in my dreams.

  —ME

  “…If they don’t give her up, I’m going to blow that lousy hotel of yours sky high. Yeah, it’s that bad, buddy. So hurry up.”

  Included in the letter was a photograph of the woman wit the ponytail, on a boat, leaning on the handrail, and looking out over the sea with a half smile lighting up her face. Her hair blew in the wind, she wore a plaid skirt, stockings, and a sheen blouse.

  The second letter was dated three days later.

  I’ve been leaving clues everywhere I go, I’d make a hell of a suspect. I leave instructions at every hotel to forward my mail on to Paris. But I want to know now, I need to know.

  I want some kind of concrete reason why I should come home. I’m waiting for some word from you. I’ll be at the Hotel Heliopolis in Athens on the 27th. Write to me.

  I love you…Absence makes the heart grow…farther away. That’s what I think. Being so far away doesn’t give me a sense of closeness, it just makes me feel incredibly distant. That’s the way it ought to be.

  Tell me all the crazy things you’re doing. I want to share them with you. Everywhere I go it’s the same: the bonfires are burning and everyone’s either a dancer or a martyr.

  Send me a picture of yourself, will you. No one believes that the man I tell them I’m in love with is a real person, not the taxi drivers, or the restaurant owners, or all the friends that I keep making and unmaking—they all think you’re some kind of myth. Sorry, but that’s the reaction I get here in the Old World whenever I say the words “Mexican detective.”

  —ME

  “That’s all of them. Now what?” said the engineer, hanging up the telephone and crossing the last hotel off the list.

  “Life goes on,” Héctor said, drinking off half his soda in a single gulp. He was thirsty, and he felt like celebrating. “Thanks for the help, neighbor.”

  “Hey, any time, buddy, any time. I got a kick out of it.”

  “Are you going to be here all night?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “Can you do me a favor? If someone calls and leaves a message for me, will you call radio station XEFS and give the message to El Cuervo Valdivia? Here, write down the phone numbers.”

  He handed him El Cuervo’s card, then picked up the telephone and dialed a number.

  “Señora Ferrer, please.”

  “Just a minute. Who’s calling?”

  “Belascoarán Shayne.”

  A brief silence before the actress’s voice came on the line.

  “Do you have any news about Elena?”

  “We ought to find out pretty soon…I hope. If she comes home, can you call me at this number”—he gave her his office number—“and leave a message with Engineer Villareal? There’s a chance she might be home around one in the morning.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “No, I’m not sure. It’s a long shot, but there’s a chance it’ll come through.”

  “I heard that you were over here the other night.”

  “I was just passing by…” he said, and hung up.

  Next he called the radio station and asked El Cuervo to act as his liaison. El Cuervo liked the idea, and he agreed to transmit the cryptic message that Héctor dictated over the phone.

  “Are you serious about blowing up a hotel, neighbor?” asked the engineer.

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Because I could get you a couple of sticks of dynamite, if you want it…I know where there’s some blasting materials stashed at one of the jobs I work at. I could get you two or three sticks.”

  “Do you know how to use them?”

  “Yep.”

  “It’d be great if you could get me a few, and show me how to use them.”

  “There’s just one condition.”

  “Fine, whatever you want.”

  “You tell me what you want them for, and if I think it’s okay, then you can have them.”

  “That seems fair enough. We’ll talk about it later. Have fun.” Héctor hung his trench coat across his shoulders and went out.

  A light rain had fallen, and the street smelled fresh and cool. Héctor walked through the crowd of people getting out of the last show at the Metropolitan Theater, got into his car, and drove out toward Insurgentes and Engineer Camposanto’s apartment. When it came to stubbornness, he was becoming a real star.

  He switched on the radio.

  …this collection of Vietnamese poetry I was telling you about. There was one poem in particular, several lines, really, I was reading them and all of a sudden I felt like they’d been written specially for me. I brought it with me tonight. The poet’s name is Luu Trong Lu, and he writes:

  “Do you talk on the radio? Do you work? We will always return to find each other in the thick of the struggle.”

  Isn’t that a beautiful idea?

  But enough of that for now. I’ve got something special for anybody out there that’s too much in love, who’s fallen too deep, everyone who’s lovesick, and for all those lonely hearts out there as well. A dose of melodrama, to help you laugh at yourself just a little bit. This is a bolero by José Feliciano and Nosotros.

  It seemed as though Valdivia had gone to the bathroom but was constipated, because the first song was followed by a second, and then a third. At twenty to twelve, Héctor passed the traffic circle at the Insurgentes Metro station. The smell of tacos and barbecued meat almost turned him from his destination, but he resisted the temptation.

  And now, a personal message for some boys holed up in a certain hotel on Zaragoza Boulevard:

  You’re in a very d
angerous situation. You’d better hand over what you’ve got that doesn’t belong to you. It’s not good to hold on to something against its will. If you don’t give it up, you’ll be paying a very high price.

  Moving on, I’m happy to report that the wind tomorrow will be out of the east, and there are smooth conditions predicted for Xochimilco, Lago de Chapultepec, and Nuevo Lago.

  An African ritual melody surged through the car speakers.

  A group of drunks were playing soccer in front of Camposanto’s building and Héctor realized it was Saturday night. The engineer drove past Héctor just as he was about to park, taking him completely by surprise.

  Camposanto had a full block on him by the time Héctor turned his car around, but he managed to keep up, maintaining the distance through a full set of danzones, a couple of blues tunes, and a ration of Swiss mountain songs played by request for the graveyard shift at a watch factory who called in to say they were falling asleep on the job. In between, El Cuervo put out a request for help in combating an infestation of rats in the Guerrero district, communicated the complaints of a group of neighbors against a Chiapan student whose wild parties disturbed the entire neighborhood, asked if there was someone who knew how to give injections and could help an elderly diabetic woman, read passages from Philip Agee’s book on the CIA, and warned his listeners about the adulteration of ingredients at the Imperial Candy factory. Finally he came on with the message Héctor was waiting for:

  Here’s a few personal messages for the folks out there: For Gustavo, from Lauro: The School of Sciences meeting for tomorrow has been canceled.

  To my friend the detective: The woman in question says that Elena is home, safe and sound; they’re waiting for you there.

  For Maruja, from Julio Bañuelos: If you’ve moved out for good, at least come and take your junk away with you.

  And Alvarado says, “I have African stamps to trade for triangular stamps from any country. P.O. Box two thousand three hundred fifty-four, Postal Delegation number twenty…”

  Composanto turned off Viaducto onto Zaragoza Boulevard, and Héctor chewed on the end of his last cigarette. Where the hell’s he going now, he wondered. The engineer finally stopped in front of a cheap-looking hotel called Gemini 4, and Héctor waited for him to disappear inside the building before he got out and searched the block for the Rambler station wagon. He bought a pack of cigarettes in a late-night taquería, and returned to his car where he kept watch until six in the morning.

  He was starting to develop a real grudge against this engineer who never seemed to sleep.

  He followed him out toward Santa Clara in heavy morning traffic.

  The city unleashed an army of humanity onto its streets. The city gave no quarter, made no allowances for lack of sleep, the encroaching cold, frigid limbs, bad moods, breakfasts caught on the run, acid indigestion, halitosis, upset stomach.

  Every morning, in the same way, the city sent its soldiers out to do battle. She sent some out with power in their hands, and the rest with the everyday blessings of the street.

  The city was a holy mess.

  Once he was certain Camposanto was headed for the factory, Héctor stopped at a post office, and, leaning on the counter, wrote the letter he’d been carrying around in his head since the night before.

  I’m waiting for you. Caught up in a triple mystery involving the murder of a gay engineer, a teenage girl with her arm in a cast, and a dead hero threatening to rise out of the grave.

  —ME

  He marked the envelope special delivery and covered it with stamps. At the last minute, he included a picture the upholsterer had taken with the janitor’s Instamatic. The soles of his shoes filled the foreground, propped up on the edge of the old armchair, and behind them, the office in its usual state of chaos, crowned with a view of the coatrack where his thirty-eight hung in its shoulder holster alongside his wrinkled coat. He scribbled across the back of the photograph “A work of art,” and inserted it in the envelope.

  He drove on to the Delex plant, and left his car parked opposite the car he’d been following all night long.

  He waited outside Rodríguez Cuesta’s office for ten minutes, contemplating the virtues of the same secretary whose legs he’d been so taken with the last time. “Nice ass,” he thought, and then tried to assume an objective and purely scientific attitude, by calculating the area of her buttocks in square inches. He was offered coffee and doughnuts, and listened to a joke about the former President of the Republic.

  There was a rarefied atmosphere to Rodríguez Cuesta’s office, and while the company president, after waving Héctor to a chair, sat signing papers, Belascoarán was overcome with a strange sensation. They were mortal, too, these captains of industry, he thought. They were mortal, too, and death could penetrate even the high walls that surrounded their middle-class existence. When all was said and done, there were limits to the impunity of the bourgeoisie.

  “What’s on your mind?” asked the Delex strongman, looking at Héctor.

  “I want to know what it is exactly you want me to find out. I’ve been wanting to ask you since the other day.”

  “I wouldn’t presume to second-guess you in your work, Señor Belascoarán,” answered Rodríguez, smiling.

  “I’ll put it another way: What is Delex afraid of, other than its problems with the union?”

  “I’m not sure what you want to know. Or maybe I just don’t want to answer the question…I’m sure you’re not interested in our analysis of the current economic situation.”

  “Not in the least,” said Héctor, standing up.

  “I hope you’ll have the good sense to maintain a purely professional attitude regarding our adversaries in the union.”

  “I’d like to collect that advance we were talking about the other day.” Héctor ignored the president’s comment.

  “You’ll have to talk with Guzmán Vera.”

  Héctor left the factory with a check for fifteen thousand pesos in his pocket, and the feeling that he was walking away from a mountain of unanswered questions. The morning mist wrapped itself tenderly around him, ignoring the nervous tics that rippled around his bloodshot eyes with a variety and an intensity previously unknown.

  Chapter Seven

  “Do you believe in love at first sight?” asked the girl. “I believe in confusion,” said Paul Newman.

  “Hi,” said Belascoarán from the doorway.

  The girl smiled from where she lay in the bed under the blue comforter.

  “What’d you do to scare them like that?”

  Héctor shrugged his shoulders.

  “They sure were surprised. They kept asking me who you were, who’s that son of a bitch who shot at us the other day, who kicked me in the jaw…I just told them you were my guardian angel, and they only got more pissed off.”

  “Did they hurt you?”

  “They hit me a couple of times when they kidnapped me. It wasn’t bad. After that they were just trying to scare me…Threatening to rape me, lock me in a room with a rabid dog, burn the soles of my feet…Just a lot of talk.”

  She looked extremely fragile, with her arm in its cast resting on the comforter, her hair falling across her face, a Margarita Gauthier smile. The soft morning light filtered through the blue curtains and fell at the foot of the bed.

  “Sit down,” she said.

  Héctor sat on the rug, stretched, and then lay down. He pulled a cigarette from his pocket and set fire to it. The girl handed him an ashtray.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Just tired.”

  “Were you really going to blow up the hotel?”

  Héctor nodded.

  “They sure were scared all right. They’re not professionals, you know.”

  “What are the professionals like?”

  “Oh, I don�
��t know. More efficient, I suppose. Meaner. Those guys didn’t believe what they were saying.”

  Héctor smoked quietly, watching the columns of smoke rise toward the ceiling. He could have lain there for hours, watching the rising smoke, resting, letting the soft morning sink into his veins, maybe have drunk a cup of coffee or a soda pop.

  “Are you going to tell me what’s going on?” he asked suddenly.

  “Not yet.”

  “What do you think about going to take a little vacation where those guys can’t find you?”

  She said she’d like it.

  “Come on, then.”

  The girl jumped out of bed.

  “Can I go like this or should I change first?”

  “It’s up to you.”

  “Close your eyes.”

  Héctor did as he was told. Luxuriating in the softness of the rug, he started to drift off to sleep. There was the sound of drawers being opened and closed, the rustle of cloth against skin.

  “Okay, I’m ready. Isn’t Mama going to be angry?”

  “Let her,” said the detective, as he lifted himself slowly from the floor.

  ***

  The pressure was off for the moment in the race to find the fifty-thousand-peso-whatever-it-was, and with the added certainty that Elena was safe in his sister’s hands, Héctor was able to turn his attention back to the search for Emiliano Zapata.

  Using a geologic map of the state of Morelos he tried to isolate the areas where caves were most likely to be found. He began by ruling out the zones where Zapata had enjoyed his strongest influence. If Zapata were there, the people would have found him on their own, and wouldn’t have needed Héctor’s help. If Zapata’s cave existed at all, it would have to be somewhere outside his traditional stomping grounds. So far so good. It soon became clear, however, that while certain rocky formations were more promising than others, caves could be found in practically any geographic area whatsoever, with the obvious exception of the open plains. After four hours of careful study he realized he was getting nowhere fast. So he went on to consider the possibility that the same Emiliano Zapata that had cast his lot with the Sandinistas in Nicaragua would have gone on to participate in the 1932 uprising in El Salvador, and later gone to fight with the International Brigades in Spain. Héctor scanned books and photographs, and read through lists of names, but there was no record of any fifty-seven-year-old man who even remotely matched Zapata’s description among the brave Mexicans who had gone off to fight in the Spanish Civil War.