An Easy Thing

by Paco Ignacio Taibo II

  “Nothing, I just asked…What were you doing between four-thirty and five-thirty that day?”

  “I got back from lunch around four, four-fifteen, and had a talk with one of the accountants, over in their department. From there I went straight to the lab and I was in the lab with the guys from quality control until a quarter past five. Then on my way back to the office I stopped in to have a cup of coffee with Fernández.”

  His answer was direct, delivered with perhaps a little too much confidence. But there was a hole in it.

  “Who did you eat lunch with?”

  “In a cafe on North Insurgentes.”

  “What was it called?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “You ate alone?”

  “Alone.”

  “Let’s start again: Who did you have lunch with?”

  The engineer didn’t answer.

  “I’m not in any hurry,” said Héctor, checking his watch: 1:48.

  “I had lunch with Alvarez Cerruli,” Camposanto blurted out. He seemed to collapse in the chair, and went on:

  “He was scared, I mean scared out of his wits. He was trapped between the two of them, and he couldn’t escape. I already knew what was going to happen, because he’d already asked me…I couldn’t stand it anymore, watching Alvarez eat himself up with fear, while I pretended…”

  If fatigue hadn’t dulled his senses, Héctor would have heard the noise at the door behind his back a little sooner, but it wasn’t until the door itself was forced open with a loud crack that he threw himself to the floor, taking the chair with him, and saw the flash of the pistol. He wrenched himself around into an awkward position, with his legs tangled up in the chair, and fired twice at the open door. A hand appeared holding a gun and fired one shot in Héctor’s direction. The bullet slammed into the rug an inch from the detective’s face. The door swung from one of its hinges. Behind him, Héctor heard the gurgling sounds of blood in Camposanto’s throat, like the sound of bubbles rising in a swamp. He was drowning in his own blood. Héctor hid his legs behind a column and fired at stomach height. The shot splintered against the door and ricocheted into the hallway. There was no one there. Belascoarán got to his feet, tripped on a lamp cord, and pressed himself against the wall. Sidestepping to the door, he jumped out. The hall was empty. His heart danced a wild dance inside his chest. Inside the apartment, Camposanto lay dying.

  “Who killed him?”

  “Pannhiaguah,” whispered the engineer, halfway to his grave.

  Héctor had never liked the man, but now he was dying, and there was nothing Héctor could do. Death confused him, intimidated him.

  “Sign here,” he demanded, taking out his notebook and putting his pen in the dying man’s hand. On the second try, Camposanto managed to steady the pen and scribble his name at the bottom of the sheet. Blood soaked through his shirt under the gray robe. Héctor took hold of his hand, and, dipping the engineer’s fingers in his own blood, pressed a couple of fingerprints beside the signature. By the time he lifted the bloodied hand from the page, it belonged to a dead man. Héctor pushed it away with a mixture of fear and disgust.

  Above the signature he wrote: “Commander Paniagua murdered Alvarez Cerruli,” along with the date and time: 1:55.

  There was blood on his hand. He wiped it on the engineer’s robe.

  If this was Paniagua’s work, the police would be waiting in the street to arrest Héctor for the murder. Unless they were already on their way up in the elevator. Héctor raced out of the apartment. The hall was still empty, but voices could be heard behind the other doors. He leapt up the stairs. On the roof, two women were washing clothes and a boy played with a wheel-less toy car on a highway drawn with chalk. Héctor jumped over the highway, then scaled a low fence that stood between him and the roof of the neighboring building.

  Back down in the street all was quiet; there were no police. Héctor walked back to his car and climbed in. He gunned the motor, and only then realized he was covered with sweat. And he wasn’t tired anymore. Two questions stuck in his mind: Why kill Alvarez Cerruli at his office if it would have been just as easy to do it somewhere else? Why hadn’t the murderer come in to finish Héctor off, too?

  ***

  The game had taken a turn for the worse—like when a little kid pokes out another kid’s eye by mistake. And then he has to try to explain to the adults that he was only playing, that it was just a game and nobody meant to poke anybody’s eye out, that the blood running across the floor is only paint.

  He dropped his shirt on the floor and washed his hands furiously. His face reflected back at him out of the mirror, pale, yellowish, stubbly, his eyes bloodshot. Like the face of a ghost. Dammit! Three dead men, and what for?

  On his cheek there was a small red mark, like a burn. Could it be from the bullet that had hit the rug a few inches from his face? he wondered.

  Elisa watched him from the doorway.

  “Is something wrong?”

  “They killed a guy I was with.”

  “What happened?”

  “Nothing. They killed him.”

  He would have liked a fresh shirt, but he picked up the one he’d discarded and put it back on. He buttoned it up clumsily while he stared at the ghost in the mirror.

  “Elena’s waiting for you. Do you want me to be there?”

  “Yes. And bring the package I gave you.”

  Elena sat reading a novel on the patio, with the sun falling across her legs, and a soda pop on the ground next to her chair.

  Héctor walked over to her and picked up the soda. One long swallow dissolved the lump in his throat.

  “What’s happening? You look like a ghost.”

  “Just yesterday I looked like a guardian angel.”

  “You’re too beat-up for an angel today. Look at your face.”

  Elisa approached them dragging a couple of chairs. Héctor went to give her a hand.

  “What’s that doing here?” Elena asked when she saw the package.

  “I had to go get it myself, since you wouldn’t show it to me on your own.”

  “Are you going to open it?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “What are you going to do with it then?”

  “You tell me.”

  “Nothing, how should I know? Burn it, put it back where I found it…Sell it, take the money and run…That’s what started this whole horrible mess.”

  “Does your mother know what you’ve got?”

  “I don’t think Mama even knows they exist.”

  “Enough already. Why don’t you just open it up and take a look,” said Elisa.

  “You’re going to be surprised,” warned Elena.

  “Nothing surprises me anymore,” said Héctor.

  ***

  There were seventy-two clear, glossy photographs. They would have been perfect as illustrations in a national Kama Sutra, or for the inauguration of a successful school for the study of human sexuality. There was only one woman in all the photos, recognizable over and over again by the mole on her left buttock, or the distant smile emerging amidst a flurry of breasts and pubic hair. She appeared alternately with three different men, each one easily identifiable as an important political figure from an earlier administration, whose noble names once filled the newspapers, and today still appeared occasionally in ministry press releases.

  Belascoarán smiled at the picture of the elastic and beautiful woman side by side with the three little gnomes, sweaty, feverish, and without grace.

  “I feel so embarrassed,” murmured Elena.

  “This is amazing,” said Elisa.

  “Does your mother know these pictures exist?” asked the detective.

  “She wouldn’t have let them take them if she’d known about it. Maybe she’s a wh
ore, but she’s still got class,” said the girl, biting her lip.

  Crowning the stack was a glossy of an ex-government minister pursuing a naked Marisa Ferrer across an enormous round bed. She held a pillow across her stomach, leaving her breasts to dance in the open air. All the man wore was a pair of socks.

  “Where did you get these?”

  “I stole them from Burgos’s car…One night when he was having dinner with Mama, I broke into his car with a wire and a screwdriver. I took a box that had these pictures, a tape recorder, and some other stuff. I didn’t know what I was getting, I just did it to play a joke on that idiot Burgos. I can’t stand him. I dumped the tape recorder and the rest of the stuff in a vacant lot, but I kept the package to see what it was. I couldn’t believe it when I opened it up; I mean I was scared. It made me feel sick.”

  “Was he the one who pushed you off the balcony when you broke your arm?”

  The girl nodded. She was crying now, openly, without trying to hide her face, unashamed of her tears. Elisa hugged her, and stayed by her side.

  “What about the second accident?” asked Héctor.

  “I never knew what happened. I guess it was just a coincidence.”

  “What did Burgos say to you?”

  “When he pushed me out of the window…I was reading, and he came into the room. I was scared of him, so I went out onto the balcony. He said he knew I had the pictures, and that I’d better give them back. I said I didn’t know what he was talking about, and he pushed me. I don’t think he meant to have me fall…”

  Héctor let out a sigh. At least it seemed as though Burgos was the only one who knew, the sole owner of this illustrated encyclopedia of political erotica. Only Burgos, and not the political wolf pack.

  “If the men in these pictures ever found out what we’ve got here, we’d be as good as dead. What are you, crazy? Who’d you think you were going to sell this to?”

  “They’re worth a lot of money.”

  “Yeah, right, plenty more than the 50,000 pesos it’ll cost you for a piece of ground at The Little Chapel of the Chimes. Did the fat man and his friends ever have any idea what you were trying to sell them?”

  “I showed them one picture with him in it.”

  She pointed to the top of the stack.

  “I think it’s time to have something to eat,” said Elisa. “If we keep talking about this, I’m not going to be able to sleep for a week.”

  “From fear or from erotic shock?” asked Héctor, laughing.

  “Both,” answered Elisa.

  Elena Ferrer smiled from behind her tears.

  ***

  He had snoozed away the rest of the afternoon in a movie theater, stalling for time and regathering his energies. Now, while he devoured an elaborate sundae made with six different flavors of ice cream, nuts, whipped cream, fresh strawberries, melon, and cherry syrup, he sketched his thoughts on a paper napkin:

  a) How did Paniagua get into the plant?

  Why did he kill Alvarez Cerruli?

  Why does R.C. want proof against Paniagua?

  b) Where did the old man go after he quit the market in ’66? Caves?

  c) Photos: Destroy them? Sell them?

  What about Burgos?

  He savored the last spoonfuls of ice cream, no less enjoyable for all their sickly sweetness. His personal theory was that the more complicated the dish of ice cream, the more calories it contained. Now it seemed to him that even if things had become a whole lot clearer than they were before, it was with a particularly dense and impenetrable brand of clarity.

  Evening fell over the city as Héctor stretched his stiff legs. He walked along Insurgentes through the waves of rush-hour traffic: office workers in their mass exodus, fleeing homeward like the chosen people, myriads of teenagers asserting their control over the streets, cars, cars, and more cars tooting out the sorrowful car-horn symphony.

  It was all very familiar to Héctor, who had been both witness and accomplice to this same scene many times before.

  The labyrinth’s paths all lead to the center. To the plaza of human sacrifice?

  Through the Land of the Minotaur, through the butcher’s playground, the three stories marched finally toward the finale.

  Finally toward the finale. He liked the way that sounded. Resuming his role as the solitary hunter, Héctor pushed his numbed body down the sidewalk, amidst the bewildering roar of traffic, searching for the threads that would lead him to the surprising finale.

  The first thing was to find a way out of the Delex mess. A way out without playing into the hands of either the murderous police commander or the omnipotent company president. And a way out of Burgos’s photo-pornographic imbroglio.

  That at least seemed straightforward enough, but something tugged persistently at the back of his mind. What had the fat worker said in the lonchería, his words beating like a club at Héctor’s unconscious until the detective finally sat up and took notice: “Packin’ a rod, shamus…”

  Burgos was like a little flea taking pictures of naked gnome-like politicians in a society that had institutionalized the idea of an artist’s career as one long bed-hopping marathon. It was a country where power was won and held at cock point. The big fuckers carve up the spoils while the rest of us look on.

  And if Burgos was a mere flea, then Paniagua was a routine and expedient functionary. One thing about Paniagua: he played outside the normal rules of the game, he lived his life on the edge of the system. But that’s just the kind of man the system turned to when it decided it was time to murder some more students or crack down on the independent trade unions.

  Out of all of them, the only one that really seemed out of place in the Mexican landscape was Héctor himself. Maybe that’s why they wanted to kill him. And maybe it wouldn’t be such a hard thing to pull off, after all.

  A loner like me, he thought, dies without making a sound. Nothing changes in the big picture when he’s gone.

  ***

  He pulled up in front of Marisa Ferrer’s house, threw the butt of his cigarette out the window, and breathed in the cool night air. Flowers. He could smell flowers somewhere. What kind? He’d never been able to tell one from another. Looking around he spotted some white flowers climbing a trellis. Rosebushes bloomed in front of the house next door. If he’d bothered to look over his shoulder he would have seen two men getting out of a newly painted salmon-colored Rambler station wagon.

  “Put your hands where we can see them, buddy,” said a voice at his back.

  Héctor turned slowly, with his hands at his sides. He’d ridden in the car with the window open and his jacket buttoned up. It would take him forever to get at his gun.

  The fat man stepped toward him, waving a knife in one hand. Just behind him was the young man who, earlier in this same story, had thrown the pop bottles at the girl’s feet. He held a .22 automatic. Esteban, was that his name? Esteban Greenjacket?

  “Well, if it isn’t the fat man, good to see you…and Esteban, I don’t think we’ve met.”

  “Shut the fuck up,” commanded the fat man.

  “We want the pictures,” said Esteban, pointing the gun at Héctor’s face.

  If the fat man moves in front of him, then…thought Héctor momentarily. But that kind of heroics was better left to the movies. Before he ever got to the fat man the kid would have blown off half his face.

  “I don’t have any pictures.”

  “Yeah, but she’s got them. You think you’re pretty tough. You like to talk big…”

  Héctor smiled. Silence was perhaps his only weapon.

  The fat man kicked him in the shin. He’d obviously picked up a thing or two from Héctor. The surprise attack, the art of striking out of nowhere. Héctor stumbled and fell, and the fat man kicked him in the ribs. Héctor’s shout never made it past
his lips. Esteban Greenjacket ground his foot onto Héctor’s ankle and Héctor screamed. Geraniums. Were they geraniums? The white flowers. Irises? Lilies? Orange blossoms? No, orange blossoms only grow on orange trees. The fat man let fly with a kick to the stomach. Héctor felt the air rush out of his lungs. It didn’t want to go back in, and Héctor fought against the feeling of suffocation, as the fat man ran his knife down the sleeve of Héctor’s jacket. The sharp steel pricked his skin and blood spurted out.

  “That’ll teach you not to fuck with us.”

  “What’s going on? I’m going to call the police!” cried a woman’s voice from somewhere down the street. The fat man and Esteban Greenjacket left Héctor where he lay and sprinted to their car. Héctor watched the dark boots pound the grass beside the sidewalk. Fighting to draw a breath, he heard the car start and pull away. His rescuer’s legs appeared before him, protruding from the bottom of her skirt.

  “Thangdz,” he muttered.

  “I was wondering when I was going to see you again,” said Marisa Ferrer, smiling at him from a hundred yards overhead. Héctor pressed his cheek against the grass, wishing he were still dozing in the movie theater, wishing he hadn’t abandoned Tarzan just as he was about to cross the dangerous mountain pass. All for a lousy dish of ice cream and some rotten flowers.

  ***

  “Where’s the room with the round bed?” asked the detective.

  She sat on a stool, her back to the oval-mirrored dressing table, looking at him with amusement.

  I’ll never get used to looking at this woman with her clothes on, he thought. A pair of bedside lamps emitted a soft light through their blue shades, and the blue-carpeted room seemed to go on forever without beginning or end. It was like being on the inside of an egg.

  “The round bed…It’s not here?”

  “Did they kick you in the head, too?”

  Héctor shook his head.

  “Is Elena all right?” she asked softly, smiling.

  She’s all right but you’re a lot better, he thought, but he just nodded his head at the woman and stretched out on her bed.

  “She’s not hurt, is she?”

  “No, don’t worry, she’s fine…You made love in a room with a round bed…”