Tequila Blue

by Rolo Diez

  “Listen, but don’t speak,” I told him. “There’s two hundred dollars in it for you. I need you to come with me on an easy job. I’ll be waiting for you in twenty minutes on the corner of Reforma and Estocolmo, on the west side. Now get off the phone, but don’t hang up. Tell Mirabel I want to speak to the boss. And you, set off to meet me.”

  “Which is the west side?” asked Silver Bullet.

  I explained and repeated how urgent it was. Maribel was playing dumb, giving herself airs and trying to make me feel inferior. I had to be short and sharp to get her to put me through to the Commander.

  “For the good of both of us, I hope you’re in luck, Officer.” The Commander’s voice was gloomy and ambiguous, and that “good for both of us” sounded ominous.

  *

  Silver Bullet dresses as if he were his own father and stuffs his nineteen years into a body typical of someone who gets no exercise and eats nothing but tacos. He has a round face, round eyes and a rat’s tail moustache. I could tell he was really excited, because he had his hands out of his pockets.

  As he got into my Atlantic, I explained:

  “We’re going to get some dollars they’re trying to steal from the Commander in a money exchange.”

  “Where are my two hundred?” Silver Bullet demanded.

  “We’ll also get my commission and your two hundred.”

  He looked at me doubtfully.

  “You’re one of us,” I said, squeezing his shoulder to make my point. “DO. One hundred per cent Mexican. I specially asked you to come with me because I can recognize a man of action. You can’t go on forever spinning cobwebs as a junior.”

  “As soon as we get out I want my two hundred,” insisted Silver Bullet.

  Before I left the car in the parking lot I handed him a Beretta .22 and made it clear it was only to scare people with, not to use. We walked about two hundred feet to the polarized front windows of CAMBIMEX. The door was shut, but I knew there were people working in the offices inside. I rang the bell, and a big guy I had seen there before appeared. Someone they use as a guard when the morning cop goes off duty. I gestured to him in a friendly way through the glass, and he came closer to get a better look. I made more friendly gestures, with the result that he twisted his mouth and used a bunch of keys to turn the lock. He opened the door eight inches, showing he was a novice at this game and was frightened of showing he was worried.

  “What is it?” he asked, frowning.

  “I’ve come to see Perez Blanco, the accountant,” I said, still smiling. I always make sure I smile in cases like this. I flashed him my card.

  “I’ll go and find out if he can see you,” the big guy said, trying to shut the door again. He leaned forward and was slightly off balance, giving me the chance to push hard on the door. It flew open and smashed into his face somewhere between mouth and nose. He put his hands up and stumbled back groaning. I pushed him aside and grabbed his revolver from his belt. Silver Bullet showed his ID to a couple and two other men who were passing by the agency. “Police! Move on!” he shouted, then followed me inside.

  Two women and four men froze at their desks when we appeared.

  In another office I could see Red Rosenthal and another man I took to be Perez Blanco. I walked over to them, checking out an empty cubicle on the way.

  “Keep this lot covered!” I shouted to Silver Bullet. “If they cause any trouble, shoot them in the head!”

  I don’t like being messed about; I get annoyed when I have to go from pillar to post, doing overtime just to get what’s mine by right; I hate being made to look a fool. I was furious as I strode into the office. Red got up to come towards me. He was saying something, and waving his arms in the air. I hit him in the face with my gun, and he fell back into his chair. He tried to stand up again, his arm raised in entreaty. I gave him a good kick in the balls, and he fell writhing to the floor squealing like a queer.

  The other guy had gone so white he looked pure Aryan. I took a deep breath. I lowered my voice to make it sound even more threatening.

  “I want the money! R-i-ght now!”

  Paleface, who by now had grasped who I was and who had sent me, tried to calm me down.

  “How much do we owe you?”

  “A hundred million.”

  “Ninety million,” muttered Red, whose bloody face fitted in even more perfectly with his nickname. “Thirty thousand dollars, which I changed at three thousand, that makes ninety million pesos. I was always going to pay you, but I won’t forget this, I can tell you.”

  Paleface looked at me quizzically.

  “It was ninety, but there’s another ten in interest because of all the hassle you’ve put me through to get them,” I explained. “You’ll make up the difference in a few days. I don’t want another word. Either you hand over the money or you’re coming with me.”

  “We’ll have to open the safe.”

  “I’ll give you one minute.”

  While they were getting the money, I took stock of the situation. Beretta in hand, Silver Bullet had the office in his sights. In his other hand he was clutching a bag of crisps. Among the women looking on in terror, I caught sight of Red Rosenthal’s secretary-nymphette.

  With the money safely in my briefcase, I went over to her. Her pleading eyes showed she had been stripped of all make-up, disdain, all smugness and self-satisfaction. Thanks to the narcotic lucidity of action, I realized that Maria de los Angeles Esparza was no longer the vain little nymph who could look right through me while at the same time inevitably spotting the grease stain on my trousers, but was now a woman who would offer no resistance to whatever I might tell her to do. Hard as a god I came to a halt beside her desk. A brief sob rose in her throat. I tweaked her nipple just once, as hard as I could, and didn’t let go until she moaned. I liked seeing tears in her eyes.

  We got back into the car without problems. I took seven hundred from a bundle of notes and stuffed them in one of Silver Bullet’s pockets.

  “There’s more than two hundred there,” I told him.

  “Want some, boss?” Silver Bullet held out the packet of crisps he had found on one of the desks in CAMBIMEX.

  *

  I felt relaxed and pleased with myself. A job well done, words of praise from a superior and a nice pile of banknotes to keep me warm. All of this contributed to my happy state of mind. I had the Commander eating out of my hand. He passed up on the ten per cent in my favour. So that after paying him his cut and the money I’d given my sidekick, I still made more than four million straight profit.

  On my way home I thought I might open a bank account in Lourdes’s name. I’d put enough in so she could spend it as she liked, to buy shoes or dresses or perfumes. That would be a nice touch, and a pleasant surprise for her. The truth was I missed her a hell of a lot. I’ve grown used to her body, her voice, to having her always near.

  Seeing what time it was, and considering that nobody seemed to want to pay me overtime, I took some folders with me to look at outside the office. The gringo business was dragging on. I told the boss I’d work on it and he said I needn’t bother coming in the next day.

  As I was parking outside my home in San Pedro de los Pinos, I could hear the hoarse wail of Carlos’s saxophone. It seems as though at seventeen music is all he wants from life. I gave him a .22 pistol, but he didn’t even try it. It’s me who has to clean it and oil it every month. I took him to the Plaza Garibaldi to have some fun (despite the fuss Lourdes kicked up!) and to counteract any side-effects of his musical obsession. You don’t have to be a reactionary to be worried about the influence all the homosexuals and drug addicts who abound in that profession might have on an adolescent. It was cool. We danced with some of the girls there, and Carlos lightened up enough to say he was completely drunk on three rum and cokes and to tell me I wasn’t to worry, he was no queer, but that those mariachis hadn’t the faintest idea what proper music was. That’s how things stand. I’m just glad he’s getting good marks at school. That
’s hard enough.

  I found him wrapped in his sheepskin jacket and with his hair brushed back laboriously with a quiff to make him look like Pajaro Loco. His reply to my greeting was a whirl of the saxophone, so I carried on up to the bedrooms to find Araceli. The apple of my eye was putting on make-up in the bathroom, and she stopped any attempt of mine to get close with a “Hi there, Dad! Don’t even think of kissing me!” which pricked my enthusiasm like a balloon and led me to think yet again of that strange universal attitude that women have which means that their attempts to doll themselves up take top priority over everything else, all the problems of the United Nations included.

  Araceli is a doll whose beauty makes her father proud. What’s worrying is that she’s fifteen. I know what men are like, and that’s what worries me.

  The three of us embarked on a lively discussion as to what nationality restaurant we would choose. We decided we’d stuff ourselves on pasta and stew in a trattoria. The decision put us in a good mood that lasted all night.

  I used the meal to set them straight on a few misguided opinions their mother had about me, and my determination to prove her wrong. I encouraged them to be part of my team when they went to see her and to tell her that all the family was anxiously awaiting the return of the queen bee to her hearth and home.

  Chapter six

  The second beer was cold and delicious. That did not seem so hard to achieve. Not warm or frozen, just cold. It appeared so simple, I was tempted to believe even my own wife could do it.

  I checked the guns I had got for Luis: four parabellum Lugers. Beautiful weapons, with well-constructed sights, easy to strip and put together again. Designed to look good in salons and to be used in the muddy fields of Europe. Linked to elegant officers and to the rough hands of German peasants. Antiquities that have elegantly withstood the passage of time, objects a man likes having and using. And compared to all the fancy gadgets on other guns, just right for people who never thought that to hold up a pharmacy you had to be a watchmaker.

  I couldn’t get anything out of Amaya. The cheapest he was prepared to sell for was 520 dollars each. I told him I’d try to get others at a better price. There’s a market for guns, and the good thing is that you don’t have to go far to find it. There are so many goods being shifted through the public offices of this country ever day that more than one supermarket chain would be green with envy. From books to drugs, shoes to pornography, everything is bought and sold. Three phone calls, a visit to another office, and I found myself staring at these four beauties, a steal at 450 each, a special price just for me.

  “I’ve got what you ordered,” I told him by phone. “Six hundred each, as we agreed.”

  “I need to see them,” Luis cut in.

  “I’ll be there in half an hour. Have everything ready.”

  “I’ll be expecting you.”

  I called Estela Lopez de Jones and a voice with a broad Oaxaca accent told me: “Madam is having a bath.” I said I would be coming to talk to her in an hour and a half, and the Oaxacan voice replied: “I’ll tell the mistress right now, because I’m going out to do the shopping.” I imagined a woman of forty-five, weighed down with kids, and innocent enough to give all this information to a stranger. I said that if she was going to tell her straightaway, could she please give me the answer. The answer was “Madam will wait for you at home.”

  “Forgive me for asking,” – sometimes I like to check if my intuition is working properly – “but are you from Oaxaca?”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t be upset, but . . . would you be around forty-five years old?

  “I’m eighteen.”

  “Fine, thanks. Don’t forget to remind your mistress I’m on my way.”

  The business with Luis went as smooth as clockwork. He inspected the wares carefully, then beamed at me. When someone as suspicious as Luis smiles at you, it’s because everything is in order, and breakfast is on the house. I guessed he must already have a buyer at a very good price, and that if I had put the pressure on, I could have made more myself.

  On my way to Copilco I had an idea. I pulled up alongside the first public callbox. I have a personal test I apply to women who for whatever reason interest me. I call them up, I pant and make obscene noises just like a typical anonymous sexual pervert. In my book, only those women who get angry and insult me are the ones to trust. I’ve been surprised more than once, which only goes to show how effective the trick is. Every so often I try it on Lourdes and Gloria and am gratified to find myself showered in terrible curses. Lourdes is so vehement, furious and almost delighted as she lays into and humiliates me that I suspect she must know who is making the calls.

  Estela Lopez de Jones took the call, so I did my little number, taking care to disguise my voice and its highs and lows because I would be seeing her in a few minutes. She asked twice: “Who’s speaking?” and hung up. I called again. Experience has taught me that when a woman receives a porno call the shock and her cultural conditioning always lead her to hang up immediately. If you end the experiment there, all you learn is that they did not think much of it, but you don’t get any further than that, nothing you can evaluate or draw conclusions from. She picked the phone up, and I started off with my panting. This time she went on listening. I raised the volume several decibels and began a nose-ear-throat orgasm of Wagnerian proportions. The widow burst out laughing, and I started to cough. “Idiot,” she said, still chuckling. I insisted, threatening a second coming. “Idiot,” she repeated, in the same amused voice. She laughed some more, said “What an imbecile!” and hung up.

  The woman waiting to use the phone looked at me as if I were something dirty squashed on the pavement that might get stuck on her shoe.

  That’s the risk we run in our profession. I didn’t have to reflect too long to decide the result of my test. I think there are six kinds of woman: those who hang up at once; others who listen without saying anything; others who say “idiot-imbecile” but don’t seem too upset. Then there are those who get into an exciting conversation that leads nowhere; those who get furious and forget all female decorum; and those who take advantage of any silence to make a date with the anonymous heavy breather. Jones’s widow was in the third category: willing to cheat, the repressed orgiastic type, the sort who run rings round their husband.

  Pretty much what I had in mind.

  *

  I stopped at a household goods store and spent twenty minutes choosing an electric oven for Gloria. For some time I’d been thinking of buying one for Lourdes. But all’s fair in love and war, and if she was going to walk out on me, there was no way I was going to sing her a love song. When she comes back I’ll buy her a microwave. She’s going to be sorry for all the evil thoughts she had about Carlos Hernandez.

  At the Copilco house I was received by the Oaxacan maid. She had nice teeth and legs, and looked a long way from forty-five, perhaps because all maids are unaware that old age always creeps up on you unseen.

  A loose-fitting black sweater and skirt stood guard over Estela Lopez de Jones’s consolable body. In the living room three people were engaged in what looked like a conspiratorial meeting. A thirty-year-old couple, so alike they could only be man and wife – grey suit, grey tailored suit; matching tie and dark grey stockings; brown hair and lifeless eyes, both of them formal and polite, complete hypocrites – were presented to me as Jones’s accountant and his wife. I knew Valadez from his photo – Been tried five times. Must have good contacts to still be going around free. The Interior Ministry has its eye on him. One of his known frauds is the habit of pretending to be one of their inspectors in order to extort money from unsuspecting victims. Having a folder on current cases is useful: that way you know what kind of bastards you are going to run into. The question I wanted to ask Valadez was a simple one: what is the link between a Caribbean fraudster and a rich murdered gringo? Even if I didn’t know the Cuban from his photo, I would have recognized him. Impossible not to, with that shiny bald head, the
tufts of brilliantined hair above his ears, his scrawny body in a black roll-neck under the grey suit threaded with silver and the wary look he gave me as I walked into the room.

  No sooner had we been introduced, than Valadez asked me:

  “How is the investigation going, Officer?”

  “As you are aware, we are not at liberty to give any details while we are investigating.” I was trying to make them understand something people find so hard to grasp: it’s the cop who gets to ask the questions.

  I spent some time with them, without getting very far. The Cuban said he had been with Jones until eleven o’clock on Friday night. “Listen carefully to what I’m going to say,” he told me. “Jones was doing very well in Mexico. He had no enemies. I helped him with contacts and relations. That evening we had a few drinks and talked business. At eleven I left him. That’s all there is to it.” The accountant and his wife had been to the cinema that night. They saw Interiors at the Elektra, and both thought Woody Allen was not what he used to be. According to the accountant, Jones’s bank balances were in the black. Satisfactory and growing profits. The Cuban took advantage of this to boast how it was all thanks to his contacts. He managed to get in references to the former Soviet Union and the world situation, and to emphasize that it was thanks to them, the democratic Cubans who had begun the struggle back in 1960, that communism had finally been defeated. “Listen carefully to what I’m going to tell you,” he said again. “The bearded one is the toughest nut of all. But one of these days we’re going to overthrow him, though as ever it’ll be others who take the credit.” Estela Lopez de Jones admitted that “very occasionally” her husband “fell back” into the temptation of unimportant adventures, which did not affect the stability of their marriage, since both she and Jones were “modern, broad-minded” people (when she said “broad-minded” I realized that was the expression generally used to sell pornography, and I had a couple of fleeting images of Estela and the tortoise). She considered it impossible for her husband to be mixed up with transvestites. That must be gossip in the scandal sheets.