At first, Bellacosa got the feeling he was being shaken down and listened carefully for any tone of aggression. He hesitated saying anything and tried looking into Paco Herbert’s eyes as he drove along and finished the story. Bellacosa thought of staying silent, then under his breath said, “Father Canchola, ey? Pinche Rogelio, cabrón.”
Paco Herbert took his eyes off the road and looked at Bellacosa. In turn, Bellacosa stared at an abandoned, rusted tractor as they passed it by. He noticed his hands had been sweating profusely and lightly wiped them on his pants.
“I knew about Freddy’s death. Everybody did. It was in the papers a lot at the time, and how they found his body in such a gruesome manner. Damn. I haven’t thought of those guys in some time, to be honest.”
It suddenly struck Bellacosa that he never caught the goons following him with his own eyes. It had been Paco Herbert who’d noticed and warned him and led him to this trap.
“You’re the one chasing me around, then. And not those goons? Was this some kind of dirty trick?”
“No, no, please don’t get the wrong impression,” Paco said. “Just so you know, I never printed your name in any of those articles. But I know Father Canchola well, and consider him a friend. I’ve spent Christmas at his house. He may have done all those crazy things with you, but he’s a changed man. Funny, that’s one of the highest compliments you can give a man, that he’s changed. But that man’s a changed man for the better, like a worm turned into a butterfly. Except, what do we say when they turn for the worse, do we say he went from worm to maggot?” He paused.
“I’m driving us somewhere, Esteban Bellacosa. Somewhere I’ve been curious to check out. I came to South Texas from Buenos Aires on a totally different assignment, and I want you to know it was an act of chance when we met at the counter in Baby Grand Central. I heard one of the waitresses call your name once, and to make sure I just had to do a little asking with Miss Colleen Rae back there. I’m thirty-three and single now. Sometimes I think I need a woman again. But most of the time I don’t know what it is I want. I like my job, meeting new people. Maybe I get a little obsessive about getting into a story, maybe I talk too much, but it never gets me in trouble because I’m good to others. Now, about the job I mentioned earlier. I wasn’t kidding around with that. The connections I made in the case of Father Canchola, when your name came up, they had nothing but good things to say about you. You did well in the screen-printing business you started down here, they tell me. With your wife?”
“Yes.”
“And most of all, you kept your mouth shut. All this time. Nobody has ever found you. I tried tracking you down for an interview back then. Everybody I talked to said you stayed in Mexico. In Reinahermosa. I never thought to look across the border in South Texas, especially after the United States Border Reform. Because, well, these boys were Mexican boys. I never would’ve thought that you were a Texan-born Mexican, a citizen of the States. Ho-lee shit. And that I found you without really looking for you, that’s the real wonder of it.”
They were somewhere along the border in the small town of Rio Hondo, on a two-lane narrow unpaved road at a high elevation, and about half a mile down was a Border Protectors watchtower with its green sensors flashing. Paco Herbert parked just close enough to look down toward the border walls and they could see the sparkling Rio Grande flowing eastward. He sprung out of the car as if anxious for something, and Bellacosa followed.
Paco Herbert said, “The watchtowers, look at that. Didn’t know they’d built one there. It wasn’t labeled on the map. I checked. They got them every five miles from here to Southern California.”
For a moment Bellacosa remained silent, walked toward a dry mesquite tree with musket branches, and took it all in. He could easily imagine how the area was in his boyhood, even in the presence of the border walls and the distant watchtower.
Visions from those days then came to him with the power of an ocean liner returning to shore. As if unable to believe certain details himself, Bellacosa said, “This is the first spot where I’d cross with Rogelio and Freddy in those days. We all must have been twelve or eleven years old. I’d pick up a heavy-loaded mare from the man who offered us the job, named Charly. It would always be a mare. With bags packed tight so the merchandise wouldn’t soak. Charly had a mustache like the silent film character from the streets, so everybody called him this. One of us kids would ride the mare across, and the other two would swim along, to help the mare in the river’s deeper pockets. On this side, where we’re standing, waited the Americans. They’d unpack the bags and hand us the money. Can you believe grown men handing kids all that money? They did. This is quite funny to me now, seeing all this. I’m glad there’s a watchtower over there. I think I’m glad. But I still don’t understand what you want. You want an interview with me? For a running story you’ve been working on, about my old friend Canchola, the priest?”
“No,” Paco said. “Not at all, actually. I told you these things more than anything to point out the series of coincidences that have happened to lead us here. My assignment here now has nothing to do with you. I came to South Texas for research. I finally have the lead I’ve wanted. The biggest lead, probably, in my entire career. Tickets for an underground dinner. You know what I’m referring to? It’s being held the next county over, in Calantula. The only way to get tickets is by the pair, so that’s how my people managed it. Believe me, I thought about asking that pretty punk rock waitress at the Grand, but don’t really think it’s the kind of thing to spring on a first date. I’m not a member of the Government Daily or anything like that. I’m not looking to get anybody in trouble. I’m a journalist, like R. Murrow, abiding by the Truth-perception standards of the day. I would go alone if I could. But these people that put these dinners together are suspicious of singles. They fear those who can stand to eat this dinner alone. It’ll probably be glamorous and all that. Swanky. And we will have to eat and try everything they serve, no matter how disgusting it is in reality. A high-class affair, in other words. De etiqueta. And I have the feeling I can trust you. Right, Esteban?”
“What kind of journalism is this, what are the ethics with you blackmailing me?”
“Hey, I know how this looks. You can say no and we can forget about this. But you have to understand I’m in a bind. I don’t know anybody else down here. My previous connections have moved on. I’ve lost touch. You don’t have to help me, but I have to find somebody quickly. By this evening. I’m offering you two hundred dollars in American. What do you say?”
* * *
BELLACOSA AGREED to the job on the drive back downtown, under one condition: that he be the driver. Paco Herbert had no objection, since it was a long drive and he was unfamiliar with those remote parts of South Texas.
Bellacosa picked him up at exactly 7:00 p.m. on the corner of Sixth and Giuletta in south-central MacArthur. The first thing Bellacosa noticed was Paco Herbert’s beige-and-brown shined shoes, in a style he associated with the Mexican actor Tin-Tan. He also wore a trench coat with blue jeans and a long-sleeved, pearl-snapped western shirt, also blue.
Paco said, “Coño, amigo. You have one of those stereos from way back in here. I wasn’t expecting this, I made a CD for the occasion. It’s one we’ve had going around at the office in Argentina of old propaganda songs from the old American wars. A lot of them are pretty poppy and good, you’d be surprised. The wars have sponsored some nice catchy hits.”
“Wait a minute here,” Bellacosa said. “I have a device, actually, my wife made me get a device installed down here. Here it is, see. You can control it from those buttons there.”
Paco Herbert popped in the CD and brought the levels down to his liking.
“My condolences, by the way. About your wife.”
There was silence for a few road signs, then Paco Herbert said, “Can you tell me something about what it’s like? To be a widower?”
“What do you mean? About what? About how it feels? That’s an inappropriate quest
ion to me.”
Silence stared down on them like a gargoyle. Paco Herbert took a crooked cigarette out of his coat pocket and played with it in his fingers.
“I mean, what have been your overall feelings after her passing away? Besides sorrow, the things that come when our loved ones leave us. I don’t mean to be pushing this on you, not trying to be intrusive. Answer only if you feel comfortable. This is probably just me going into robot mode and trying to read the present moment as an assignment.”
“What kind of an accent is that you have?” Bellacosa snapped.
Paco Herbert laughed. “My accent? I was born in Yugoslavia, cabrón. I can speak four languages. Was raised in a community of women, so I grew up with many mothers and sisters. My biological father was an ethnomusicologist. Didn’t see him a lot growing up until I got interested in the university. Things in Yugoslavia got pretty bad by then and I had to leave anyway. I wanted to be a writer when I was younger.”
“What about your mothers?”
“My Mama Tila and Mama Yulia live down in Cuzco, in one of those eco-communities with my Mama Lux and my sister Xochitl. Mama Sol and Mama Silvina we buried. Last year. They died within a few days of each other. That happened to you, too, right? With your daughter, then your wife dying so close together?”
“I don’t know,” Bellacosa sighed. “I wouldn’t put it quite like that. My wife, when she had our daughter, it was in the years of the food shortage. Before the filtering and all that. We’d been trying to be parents for a long time already. Our daughter, Yadira. She was born with a vitamin deficiency in her blood. That worsened as she got older. Of course we didn’t find out until it was too late. When she passed away nothing could be the same. She was only four years old. My wife took it the hardest. And died of grief. I thought that phrase was an exaggeration before, but I’ve seen it happen in my life. Because my wife died of grief.”
The old Jeep was the only idling automobile at a railroad intersection with no traffic light at the edge of the city, waiting for the last boxcar of a freight train to pass by. When it did Bellacosa made sure there wasn’t a chaser, stepped on the gas, and drove over the tracks. Paco Herbert had already lit his crooked cigarette. Bellacosa pinched a Herzegovina Flor from his pack and used the vehicle’s built-in lighter to spark it.
“Tell me more about this. About the assignment you are working on,” Bellacosa said, exhaling smoke.
Paco Herbert got taller in his seat and cranked the volume a notch on the stereo.
“Of course, yes. I’m glad you agreed to this, first of all. I would’ve got into a little trouble if I didn’t find anybody, since I don’t know if this opportunity will ever come again. It cost my bosses buena plata; they got a loan from a big investor for these tickets, a rich believer in the cause. I’ll pay for all your gas, and here’s the promised cash. In advance. I trust you. I want you to know that, Bellacosa. My people scored me these tickets, like I said, after two years of infiltrating circles of the black-market culinary world, and getting deep in it. But this should be, believe it or not, a pretty regular and safe affair, from the accounts that I’ve gathered. I myself am not worried, but it’s okay if you are, and if you want we can talk about it.”
“I don’t think I’m worried, but tell me more about all of it. About these black-market dinners.”
“Well, what do you know?”
“I suppose I only know what other people know. What they’ve been saying in the news and you can read in the papers.”
“Okay, all right. That’s totally fair. Where do I begin? The rules,” Paco said, suddenly serious. “The important thing to know is that no matter who is there and who talks to you, and if you get into a conversation with anybody at all, you can’t ask them about who they are, personally. Nor what it is they do for a living. That one especially. There’s probably gonna be all kinds of big shots and motherfucking fat cats. But that’s also the best part, because nobody is going to ask us anything about ourselves, either. It’s great, that way we don’t have to get our story straight or anything. This is a complicated network, where the money funnels through a certain channel where only the necessary information is disclosed. I just got the address a little over an hour ago from my people. They’re always moving, always having these dinners in different spots. And guess how much each pair of tickets is. Guess. Seven hundred ninety-nine million cubic pesos. That’s how much I would make in twenty-five years, Bellacosa. If I’m lucky. And if they don’t retire me early. So these are some serious high rollers we will be surrounded with. In other words, respected people in society. High-class types. You can talk about the food, even the order of the day, as long as it’s not too outlandish or offensive. But I don’t have to tell you, you understand all this, right? I only bring it up in case somebody there is a fast talker, you never know when it comes to rich strangers.”
“What is the actual address to this place?”
Paco Herbert read the address aloud from a torn piece of notebook paper.
“I think I know that place. Strange, yes. I’m familiar with that area.”
“Is that right? You been there already? How?”
“I had some business near there not very long ago. Was there to get a rig, you know, one of those used to dig through thick surfaces, like asphalt.”
“Or some kind of rock, maybe. The side of a cliff,” Paco mused.
“I imagine it could, yes. I have a client who does construction down in Mexico who needed one.”
“Yes, you’re like a scout or something.”
“I find equipment. Cars. Even motorcycles, for people looking for something specific and have the money. I take a small cut.”
“Excuse me,” Paco interrupted, “but I’ve got to tell you another thing. About the meal again. Whatever it is, we have to eat it. Did I already mention this? We can’t have them giving us the wonky eye for leaving our plates half-full. I need to know your ethics with this.”
“Ethics?” Bellacosa asked. “Okay. Then I need to ask you in plain terms. What we’re doing now is, we’re attending one of those underground feasts? Connected to the filtering syndicates? Where they prepare meals of filtered animals, like the chicken ancestor birds and pandas?”
Paco Herbert fished another cigarette from his coat pocket, this one crooked almost at a forty-five-degree angle, and with his fingers tried to straighten it before lighting it.
“In essence, yes. They rotate the chefs and people working the kitchens in this network. Everybody gets paid big bucks. Word tonight is they got some chefs from northwest Spain running the joint. You ever been to Spain, Bellacosa?”
“Wait, I don’t understand. What is your purpose? Why do you even want to come out here and get involved with all this?”
Paco Herbert turned to Bellacosa, leaning his elbow on the passenger door, and made a face as if trying to remember a famous speech.
“Well. That’s a good question. I don’t know. Look at me. You think my job pays me shit? You think I’d rather not be out at some bar trying to tell a pretty young thing how I always carry The Portable Coleridge and know his vision of ‘Kubla Khan’ by memory? There’s a bunch of other things I’d rather be doing. Also, if you knew quite well where we were going and what was expected to happen, then why did you agree to come along? Maybe for the same reason that I’m this far into doing this, too. Knowing the rumors and obscure facts, you and me are the kind that don’t mind the unknown. We are the people who face the world, and not simply for the challenge, or to prove a point. But to witness it, to know the facts at least for ourselves. I just happen to be in a position where I’m able to maybe communicate those facts and get them out on a wide level, to expose the corruption hindering our collective spirit in its continual ascent. We can’t let this evil slow it down. It’s my job to report our setbacks and celebrate what makes us flourish. I’m not here just getting my kicks. At least not as far as the meal ticket goes. I need to be there, inside, to properly communicate it. I need to see for myself what
it’s like and how it works, and then expose it. Lay it bare. And the meal, well. It will probably be one of the greatest dishes I’ll ever have. Certainly the most expensive, coño, like I said. Damn. But. As far as the moral and possibly karmic consequences of eating an animal that is not natural, that God intended to be dead forever and ever, I’m not even thinking about that. I’m already past it, in fact. And you? Do you stand all right with it? If not, please talk to me.”
“I think … that I’m okay with it,” Bellacosa said. “The worst that can happen is I die, and that’s fine by me. But it just occurred to me now when you said these animals, that should be long dead from this planet, weren’t made by God. If you think about it, we are God-made. You and me. Humans. Everyday people. Even these people in the filtering syndicates. So even if they are creating these animals artificially through filtering, then God has a hand in that, too. The animals have to be God-made as well. Wouldn’t you think so?”
Tears of the Trufflepig Page 8