Velvet Was the Night

by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

  “I think Duke is hungry,” the young man told her. He was smiling a little.

  Maite blinked. For a moment she didn’t know what he meant. Then she realized he was talking about the damn cat. Of course he was hungry! Maite was hungry herself.

  “Do you have any idea where I could find Leonora? I need to deliver the cat to her.”

  “Sorry. I mean, if she’s not home…” The young man scratched his cheek. “Could be she’s at her sister’s house. It’s near here.”

  “Do you know the phone number for her sister’s house?”

  “I’ve got the address. I’ve delivered flyers to her there.”

  “Can you give it to me?”

  The young man frowned. “I’m not sure I should be giving her address to strangers.”

  “I’m Leonora’s neighbor, okay? I live right across from her, that’s how I wound up with her cat. Now I really don’t want to drag the cat and that box back and forth a million times. Is her sister’s home really nearby? If it is, I could stop there and ask if she’s around. It sounded like she needed the papers in the box.”

  Maite didn’t care if Leonora needed squat, but she wanted to get paid. Her car was not going to drive itself out of the mechanic’s shop. With the money Leonora had promised her, she’d be able to settle her bill and get the damn car back. They were holding it hostage. The good old days when accounts could be fixed with a handshake and a verbal promise were long gone. Shops and businesses would not extend credit to a person in need. The world was hard now, and those bastards wouldn’t let the car out of their sight until Maite paid every single cent owed.

  Leonora had promised Maite thrice her original fee. She wasn’t going to pass on that. Yes, yes, maybe Maite had overcharged the girl in the first place, which meant she was going to make out pretty well once she collected, but Maite figured Leonora could afford that and more.

  “Well?” she told the young man.

  “Give me a second.”

  The young man reached for a filing cabinet and pulled out a drawer, then found a receipt. He brought it to the counter and copied the address for Maite.

  “Now look, I’ll give this to you, but please tell Leonora to give me a ring when you find her, will you?” he said, holding up a scrap of paper.

  “I would if I knew your name,” Maite replied, irritated, snatching the address from his hand.

  The magazines Maite liked to read offered tips on how to snag a boyfriend. Things such as ask him about his interests and don’t smoke too much. Recently she had read something called “The Fantastic Guide to Flirting” that included the recommendation to remember that every man you meet is a potential date, so women shouldn’t ruin their chances by being too rude or shy. Maite realized her harsh stare was probably not among the recommended tactics for interactions with men, but she was short on patience. Besides, even if the magazine assured her toads could turn into princes, this guy wasn’t a handsome specimen that she might want to impress, like Emilio. She could afford to be less than charming and it wouldn’t matter one bit.

  “I’m Rubén,” he said with a certain pleasant blandness that must come with customer service, so that she felt compelled to reply in turn with a politeness that had been sorely lacking only seconds before.

  “Maite. I’ll tell her,” she said, remembering her manners and shaking his hand. “And if you see her, can you tell her I went to her sister’s place?”

  “Sure.”

  Leonora’s sister lived in the Condesa, which was great news because it meant Maite would be heading in the direction of her apartment. If it had been somewhere else, she might have rethought her strategy. But she needed the money, and she also didn’t want to be stuck caring for the fat cat for days or weeks on end. Leonora had said she’d be gone for “a while,” and who knew what that meant exactly, if she was finding herself, or being creative, or god knows what. Maite didn’t even like cats. There wasn’t enough food to feed it. It would be on its last tin that night, and Maite would be damned if she was going to also be paying for meow-meow’s cuisine.

  Maite finally arrived at the wrought-iron doors of a tasteful two-level house. She rang the bell and waited. A young woman opened the door. She was maybe a couple of years older than Leonora. The resemblance between the sisters was strong. She had Leonora’s pretty little mouth and her cheekbones, but her hair was cut shorter.

  “Yes?” the woman asked.

  “Are you Cándida? Leonora’s sister?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is Leonora around? I’m her neighbor. I’m trying to get a hold of her.”

  “I’m not—” Nearby, a baby began crying. The woman turned her head and sighed. “Why don’t you come in?” she asked. “Follow me.”

  Maite walked behind her. The cat, perhaps to compete with the baby, was meowing again. Maite wanted to give its carrier a good shake but contained herself.

  Maite and Cándida walked into a large living room with plush sofas and a large orange-and-red rug on the floor. The house boasted a big TV and an impressive stereo console. A baby in a blue onesie was playing in its playpen in the middle of the living room. Or the baby had been playing. It was currently waving a pacifier in one hand and emitting a pitiful wail.

  Cándida bent down, scooping the baby into her arms. Then she scrambled toward the television and switched it off. Maite set the box and the cat carrier on the floor with a grateful sigh.

  “Sorry, you were saying you wanted to get a hold of my sister?”

  “Yes. I’ve been watching her cat, and I need to return it to her.”

  “I don’t think I understand.”

  “I was supposed to watch it until Monday, but she hasn’t come home and now she wants me to bring her the cat, but I can’t seem to find her. I wouldn’t bother you, but she never showed up at the place where we were meeting, and that’s how I wound up here.”

  Maite lifted the cat carrier for her to see. The woman was now patting the baby’s back, and the baby was beginning to calm down.

  “I thought Leonora would be home, but if she isn’t that explains her phone call. Oh, Lord, I hope she hasn’t done something stupid.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You probably already know what my sister is like.”

  “We talk and such, yeah. We’re not great friends,” Maite replied cautiously.

  “I wouldn’t know her friends these days,” Cándida said, shaking her head. “That’s the problem. I mean…not you. You look respectable.”

  Respectable. It wasn’t an insult, but somehow Maite bristled at the description. Respectable meant dull. Though she supposed she did look dull in her cheap suit and her cheap shoes.

  Cándida wandered toward a shelf that had pictures in silver frames. She was staring at one photo. It was Leonora and Cándida with a gray-haired man. The man looked very solemn; the women were smiling tentatively. Leonora wore a flowy pink dress and had a flower pinned to her shoulder. It might have been a high school graduation picture.

  “That’s our uncle Leonardo.”

  “Leonardo and Leonora?”

  “Yes. She’s named after him. This was three years ago, before she started changing. She’s an artist, you do know that, yes?”

  The man appeared in another picture, dressed in a military uniform, looking younger. His resemblance to Leonora and Cándida was rather striking in that photo: same eyes, most definitely. Other pictures showed a couple she assumed were the parents of the girls, and there was a bridal photo of Cándida.

  “I’ve seen her paintings.” Technically this was true, since she’d been inside Leonora’s apartment.

  “Our uncle never thought that was a great idea, but he still agreed to pay for her apartment and bring her here. I don’t know what happened. Maybe it was…Mexico City is different than Monterrey, I guess. One moment she’s happy, she
’s painting, then she’s not. She’s wasting all her time, going to parties, dating boy after boy. There’re drugs, of course, there’s alcohol, and awful, awful people.

  “You know she hangs out with all those students who are always protesting and going to rallies? God, I can’t remember the name of the organization she’s been with lately, that stupid art collective. At any rate, I think some of them went to that rally. The one that’s been in all the papers.”

  “Yeah, I saw some stuff about that,” Maite said. She had skimmed the headlines, avoided the secretaries as they spoke about dangerous pinkos or government agents. All that talk of secret groups of hired thugs and communist plots made her nervous. Yet she had an idea of the magnitude of the altercation: Zabludovsky had interviewed the president, and the president had said those responsible for the attacks would be brought to justice. He’d said that students shouldn’t demonstrate in aggressive ways, that he condemned both irresponsibility and repression. Maite understood little, but she grasped this: that beneath banal phrases and appeals to the good of the nation something dangerous simmered.

  “Leonora is not bad, but sometimes she gets these silly ideas in her head and, well…she phoned me today in the morning asking for money. I thought maybe she wanted to bail people out. You have to understand, she’s done that before. Her friends make some sort of fuss, get arrested, and she bails them out. Or…well, drugs and booze are another big-ticket item. But she said it wasn’t for that and she said…she said June tenth had changed everything.”

  “Did you give her the money?”

  “I can’t,” Cándida said. “It’s not because I’m stingy. My husband has me on a modest allowance. I have some savings, but the last couple of times, I asked our uncle for the money. Of course, I couldn’t tell him what it was for. He’d never agree to bail out a bunch of mischief-makers or pay for drugs. It’s bribe money, really. Not bail money. Just so they’ll let them go.”

  Now that the baby had been soothed and once again had a pacifier in his mouth, Cándida deposited him back in the plastic playpen and switched the TV back on, turning down the volume. The baby held on to the railing of the playpen and stared at the images. The coyote was chasing the road runner.

  “She told me she was heading away for a while. Do you know who she’s staying with? Maybe there’s a friend I can call. She wanted her cat and her papers,” Maite said. “Could she be with Emilio Lomelí?”

  Maite was hoping Cándida would say that might be the case. That way she would have an excuse to phone him. But the young woman shook her head.

  “I don’t see why she would be. They broke up a few months ago.”

  “Could she be at your uncle’s?”

  “Uncle Leonardo pays Leonora’s bills, but they don’t see eye to eye lately.”

  “I guess I should leave the cat with you, then. I’m not sure what else to do with it.”

  “The cat?”

  “Yes, the cat. She also promised she’d pay me for the cab I took and the days I watched over it. You could settle her account and I could leave it here,” Maite asked, trying not to sound too eager. She definitely did not relish the thought of becoming the permanent nanny of that furball.

  Cándida touched her throat and reached toward the box of cigarettes resting atop a glass coffee table and lit one. “Oh, never! I wouldn’t be able to keep a cat. You do know what they say about cats? They asphyxiate babies.”

  “I don’t think that’s true.”

  “My husband wouldn’t like it.”

  “Maybe your uncle can take it? And, you know, settle Leonora’s bill?”

  “I really don’t want to bother him with this stuff. I told you, they don’t see eye to eye. Can’t you keep watching the cat?”

  “I didn’t agree to that.”

  “I’m sorry. Look, write your number down. If Leonora calls, I’ll tell her you stopped by.”

  “Feels like I’m playing telephone tag,” Maite said dryly, but she did write her number down for Cándida.

  When Maite left the house she looked at the ominous sky and wondered if it would rain before she reached home. She didn’t want to spend any more money on taxis, especially when she would probably have to buy the stupid cat more food. Her apartment wasn’t that far. She could take a bus and hope for the best. On the other hand she was getting tired, and she still hadn’t eaten a proper meal.

  Maite huffed and decided to find a place to eat and then trace her route home. If only she had her damn car! But now she was never going to see it again, not without this stupid, flighty girl settling her accounts.

  6

  EL MAGO TELEPHONED and gave Elvis fifteen minutes to be ready. Elvis had already finished his daily exercises, so he rushed into the shower and dressed in what he called his work uniform: jeans, leather jacket, blue-and-tan shirt. El Mago arrived on the dot, as he always did, and Elvis jumped in the car. They drove to Konditori.

  El Mago ordered a coffee, black. Elvis liked his coffee with milk, sweet, but he had taken to imitating El Mago and also asked for a black coffee. He did ask for a slice of black forest cake to go with it.

  “You should not be having so much sugar. It is a disgrace, the way you eat.”

  “Come on. It’s a waste to come to a place like this and sit around with a black coffee and not even one pastry,” Elvis replied. “Can’t be carrot juice and eggs all the time.”

  “It keeps you fit.”

  El Mago was all about keeping them fit and sharp. Sit-ups, push-ups, squats. Get your blood pumping early and fast, that’s what El Mago told them. Elvis had never been much into routines until he joined the Hawks, and though he didn’t mind making his bed or jumping rope, he did miss scarfing garnachas at odd hours of the day. But El Mago was strict about that too. This gave credence to the Antelope’s theory that he was a military man, but Elvis wasn’t too sure, and he’d never been able to figure El Mago out.

  If he’d been military, he didn’t mention it. Maybe it had been a while back. Besides, when El Mago wore his round, black-rimmed glasses, he looked like a retired professor. The way he spoke made Elvis suspect he was closer to a scholar than a soldier. But then, there was no way of knowing. El Mago was “El Mago,” no last names and no title, just like El Gazpacho, El Güero, and the Antelope didn’t have any proper names.

  “Sure, it keeps you fit, but who’s gonna pass on fucking cake?”

  “Language and diction, Elvis,” El Mago said. “What have I told you about language and diction? Are you even trying?”

  “I try, sir.” He did. Not just with the word of the day but by reading the papers and listening to the announcers on the radio.

  “You are not a verdulero at the market, at least not when you are with me,” the man said. “In any case, restraint is learned.”

  “I guess.”

  “You do not guess. You should know it,” he said firmly, and Elvis sat very straight, like a student before a favorite teacher.

  El Mago took off his glasses and placed them on the table. He looked a bit haggard that morning. Nothing terrible and no one else would have probably noticed, what with the nice suit he wore and the nice tie and his gray hair perfectly parted, but Elvis knew El Mago well enough to spot the dark circles under his eyes. Something or someone was bothering El Mago. But these days Elvis supposed everyone was being bothered.

  “So, may I ask if anything has changed?” Elvis asked, trying to mind his words. “Is El Gazpacho feeling better? Are we getting back in action?”

  He was praying the answer was yes. Back in action meant there would still be Hawks. He’d been having an awful feeling lately, and the Antelope didn’t help, all nervous and talking about how they were going to be dissolved, and then what would they do? The Antelope was ex-military. He’d been a fucking cadet, summarily expelled. Some shit like that. There was no going back for him.

  F
or none of them.

  “There is an assignment,” El Mago said, opening his briefcase and taking out a folder.

  The file was thin. Elvis looked at the picture of a young and pretty woman clipped to the notes. Only one picture. It showed her with her hair pulled back, looking at the camera, her lips parted. Leonora Trejo. El Mago had written a few notes about her in his clean, neat handwriting. It was odd. This was all normally typed. There was usually a lot more.

  “Who’s she?”

  “She is your assignment. Art student, in university. The girl has gone missing, along with a camera with important photos. I want her found and the photos too. And no harming her. It is strictly find-and-retrieve, you understand?”

  “Sure. But if she’s missing, where you want me to start looking?”

  “Give her apartment a sweep. If you are lucky, the photos are there and half of your work is over.”

  “And if I don’t find it there?”

  “Then things are getting started for you, are they not?”

  A waitress came back with their coffees and Elvis’s slice of cake. She asked if they wanted anything else, but El Mago waved her away. Once the waitress was gone El Mago took out another file and handed it to Elvis. This one was substantially thicker.

  Elvis flipped through it, staring at the photos of a man with glasses. A man in a black habit with a white collar. He’d never seen that before.

  “It’s a priest,” Elvis said, glancing up at El Mago in surprise.

  “A commie,” he clarified.

  “A commie priest?”

  “A Jesuit. A member of Obra Cultural Universitaria. They are from Monterrey. They were supposed to keep students in check. Instead, some of them are preaching liberation theology and making trouble. Christ, the first communist, they say.” El Mago smiled his pleasant smile. But there was something sour in it. As usual, the smile hid the fangs.