Velvet Was the Night

by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

  Sócrates was already nervous, but that seemed to do it. He flinched and almost jumped a little, as if they’d administered an electric shock to said balls. “Man, I am not hiding her! Damn. I already told Anaya, I don’t know where she is!”

  “Back up,” Elvis said. “How do you know Anaya?”

  “Fuck,” Sócrates muttered.

  “Fuck, yes. Talk. Fast.”

  “I mean, I wouldn’t know where to begin, I mean, it’s not—I can’t tell you.”

  “Hit him,” Elvis ordered.

  El Güero turned around and slammed a book against Sócrates’s head, then moved across the room to start browsing the contents of a bookshelf. Sócrates let out a high-pitched whine, almost like a cat, and pressed a hand against his ear, eyes closed. Elvis let him sit like that for a minute, then he tucked the knife inside his jacket’s pocket and took out a cigarette. He lit it.

  “I’m having a shitty week, and you don’t want to make it any worse,” Elvis said. “Talk before I get my friend to use every volume of your fucking encyclopedia on your ribs. How do you know Anaya?”

  “I pass information to him.”

  “You’re a rat.”

  “An informant,” Sócrates said, still rubbing his ear.

  A rat. A fucking squealer. A rat’s a rat no matter if you’ve read a thesaurus and can call it something fancy. But if he wanted to call himself Goldilocks, it didn’t matter to Elvis.

  “You’re with DFS, then?”

  “No, nothing like that! They nabbed us one time distributing leaflets, and Anaya said if I didn’t cooperate with him, didn’t help him, he was going to make sure I was tortured for weeks. So I do, I cooperate. He asks me questions from time to time, and I answer them.”

  It wasn’t unheard of. Ears were a dime a dozen. Justo had been sniffing around Asterisk for the DGIPS, and this bozo had been talking to Anaya, and there was some Russian fucker too, and for all Elvis knew the CIA and Santa Claus also had spies in that little commie nest. Overkill and lack of coordination. That was the problem. The DFS hated the DGIPS, thinking they were hicks, and the DGIPS thought DFS agents were stuffy pricks.

  “Anaya asked you about Leonora. What did you tell him?”

  “Can I…can I have a cigarette?”

  Jesus! Bumming his cigarettes! But if it helped get this dipshit explaining, Elvis would give him a whole pack. He took out one and lit it for the man. El Güero was whistling “La Cucaracha” and had gone into the bathroom.

  Fucker, Elvis thought. He couldn’t stop giving him grief for one damn day.

  Sócrates took a puff, then licked his lips. “I drove Leonora to Cuernavaca last weekend. She went to meet a journalist.”

  “A friend of yours?”

  “No. A friend of Emilio, her ex.”

  “Did she have the pictures with her?”

  “No.” Sócrates reached for a dirty glass sitting on a table by the bed and let the ash from his cigarette fall into it. “She didn’t know if she could trust the journalist. I drove her because I wanted to know if she’d tell me more about the photos, if maybe she’d show me where she kept them. On the way back, I asked her a few times, but she clammed up and asked me to drop her off at Casimiro Villareal’s house. She thought she’d be safe with him.”

  “Not with Emilio? Or with Jackie?”

  “No. I guess they weren’t the first people she thought about, and maybe she wanted to confess something to him. Religious stuff, you know? I tried to convince her she was better off staying with me, but I couldn’t.”

  “Stay with you. So you could hand her over to Anaya?”

  “She would have been safer. If Anaya knew where he could find her, he wouldn’t have made such a fuss about this.”

  “You’re such a good friend.”

  “Fuck you,” Sócrates said, his teeth almost clamping on the cigarette for a second before he took a puff. “I was hoping I could get her to hand over the photos to me, and I’d hand them to Anaya. I thought that was the best thing to do. That’s why I took her to Casimiro’s house and not Anaya. I could have turned her over to Anaya. But then she vanished.”

  “Abracadabra, like a magician.”

  “No one’s heard from her.”

  “And you didn’t help her perform this magic act?”

  Sócrates dropped the cigarette into the glass. “No. She has money. It’s not like she couldn’t have used it to go hide somewhere. And I’ve looked for her in all her old haunts. Nothing.”

  El Güero walked back into the room. “Can’t find anything resembling a camera or pictures. Should we call it a morning?”

  “I’m expecting someone in less than an hour,” Sócrates said.

  “But we’re just beginning to know each other,” Elvis said.

  “It’s Anaya.”

  “You lying to me? Because remember: knives cut balls.”

  “It’s true!”

  “Well, you’re lying about something,” Elvis said. He had no idea about that, but he decided to throw it out there. See what he got. It seemed to work, because suddenly Sócrates was rubbing his forehead and looking down. But he didn’t speak. He pressed his lips together.

  “You son of a bitch,” Elvis said, and he grabbed the knife and pressed it against the guy’s leg. “I’ll slice you, one ball and then the other. How would you like that? It’ll take me a minute, so no danger in running into Anaya.”

  And for a moment as he held the knife like that and stared at the dude’s face, he wondered if he wasn’t overdoing it—this had been El Gazpacho’s role, and El Gazpacho was always a bit of a gentleman—and he even felt a little sorry for Sócrates, because the guy was about to shit himself while El Güero chuckled in a corner. But Elvis hadn’t been lying when he said he’d had a lousy week and his body still ached, so he wasn’t exactly in the best of mindsets.

  “An ad! I said I’d put an ad in the paper!”

  Elvis frowned. “What paper?”

  “When I dropped her off at Casimiro’s apartment building I told her you can’t be too careful. I said, people might be after you…because, because of Anaya. Because I was scared. And I said if there’s trouble and you have to lay low, do that, stay hidden, and then I’ll put an ad in the paper letting you know if the coast is clear.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Elvis said, stepping back and smiling. “You were trying to double-cross Anaya?”

  “I was trying to keep her safe.”

  “Can’t do that. Too many people are looking for the girl. What paper, and what is the ad supposed to say?”

  “El Universal. In the classified section.”

  “Write down the message.”

  Sócrates sat there, stiff as a rod, but then Elvis angled the knife a little, and Sócrates grabbed a notepad by the bed and scribbled a few words.

  “Have a good day,” Elvis said, folding the piece of paper and putting it in his pocket. Then he motioned to El Güero, and they went down the stairs. It was still early and taxis were scarce on the street they were walking down, so they went looking for a taxi stand rather than attempting to hail one. Elvis didn’t mind, even though it was still drizzling. He wanted to think.

  He didn’t have Leonora’s location, but he did have the message that was supposed to tell her the coast was clear. Or at least he thought he did. It could be Sócrates had mangled the code, in which case Elvis and El Güero would have to go back for a visit. But he thought Sócrates had written down the real message. This meant Elvis could put it in the paper and see if he flushed Leonora out.

  The problem with this strategy was that he wasn’t sure where Leonora might go if she really thought the coast was clear. Immediately back to her apartment? Would she be that foolish? Or would she show up at her sister’s house? Her ex-boyfriend’s? Leonora hadn’t trusted Jacqueline, and the people at Asterisk mistak
enly thought she was the mole in the organization. This probably rendered all of her associates there null—including Casimiro and Sócrates. She wouldn’t go to them.

  Though if she trusted Sócrates’s message, maybe that meant she trusted Sócrates? Definitely. Sócrates was a possibility. She might try to go back to her apartment—it was stupid, but also not unlikely if she truly felt safe. Elvis mentally cancelled out Emilio and Leonora’s sister. El Mago had told him to keep his distance from them, and in the case of Emilio, Elvis felt that, though he’d supplied her with the name of a journalist, if Leonora truly had trusted him—or if he had wished to assist her—he would have taken her there himself.

  Yeah, now that Elvis considered it, Emilio was probably a crafty bastard. He agreed to help his ex, but in a way that wouldn’t get him into too much trouble. A simple referral to the journalist was no crime, while harboring her when the DFS and the Hawks were on her trail was another matter. No, that rich boy wasn’t going to be of much value. The sister…well, Elvis couldn’t say. He really didn’t know anything about her, and if El Mago hadn’t released info on her then that avenue was closed.

  Leonora would either attempt to return to her apartment or she’d contact Sócrates. That was Elvis’s conclusion. This meant he needed two damn lookouts. He had two men, but they couldn’t watch a building for twenty-four hours. This was going to be complicated. Elvis figured if he put the ad in that morning, then it couldn’t be in the papers until the next day. It might even have to go in Tuesday’s edition. Either way, this gave him at least a little time to figure out their schedules. Maybe he could hire Justo to watch Sócrates’s building. El Mago wouldn’t like it, but Elvis didn’t have enough manpower.

  For now, Elvis and El Güero stood under an awning, shielding themselves from the rain, and lit their cigarettes. The owner of a newspaper stand had arrived and was beginning to open for business and arrange his wares at the corner. Elvis bought El Universal from him and circled the phone number of the classifieds’ office with a pencil. He’d ask what they needed for a quick ad in a bit. But first, there were other matters to attend to.

  He placed the newspaper under his arm and walked to a pay phone, then phoned El Mago to give him an update. It was early, but El Mago answered at the first ring, and he didn’t sound sleepy.

  “Found the mole,” Elvis said. “It was Sócrates, feeding info to Anaya.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Nothing worth repeating now. I’ve got to look after a few things,” he said and hung up, following procedure. Keep it quick and simple, that’s what El Mago said. Anyway, he couldn’t discuss his concerns with El Mago over the phone. He’d have to ask to meet again, and he was leery of doing that. He didn’t want to seem like a helpless buffoon who ran to him for everything. Elvis was team leader, after all. He could figure this out.

  Elvis whacked El Güero’s arm with the newspaper. “Come on, let’s get going.”

  20

  THEY HAD TACOS de barbacoa on the way back from Cuernavaca, in a little eatery on the side of the road.

  This is what people do on their weekends, she thought. They go out with their friends.

  Rubén wasn’t her friend, and they weren’t hanging out together because they enjoyed each other’s company; he was merely hoping to find his ex-girlfriend. Still. Maite was going to tell Diana she’d visited Cuernavaca with a date. A new beau. Diana would look at her in admiration, since she rarely went anywhere alone. She traveled, as if a part of a troupe, with her mother and sisters.

  Rubén was nice to her during their lunch too. He paid for the tacos and their Cokes, and they had a pleasant, simple conversation. When they got back to the city, Rubén went straight for Sócrates’s building, but as much as he pressed the buzzer, no one came down.

  “Maybe he’s at Asterisk,” Rubén said, and they walked around the corner, to a pay phone. Rubén called, but Sócrates wasn’t there either.

  “What now?”

  “We come back tomorrow morning.”

  “Tomorrow’s Monday. I’ve got work tomorrow. Don’t you?”

  “Damn it, that’s right,” Rubén muttered. “I’m sure I can take off early. What about you? Can you get off around one p.m.?”

  He looked at her eagerly. “Yes,” Maite said, thinking she could always make up an illness. She hated Mondays, anyway. Secret Romance was the reason she got up some weeks. There had been days when she could have stayed in bed forever. It’s not as if she would have missed anything.

  The lawyers never came in on time, and they often cut their days short. She figured if they got away with such unprofessional behavior, she could invent a flimsy excuse without a shred of guilt.

  “I can pick you up outside your office if you give me the address; that way we can get here faster. Hey, I need to stop by my place to get clean clothes, do you mind? It’ll take five minutes,” he said.

  “Why do you need clothes?”

  “I figure I can crash on your couch again, for your own safety. But I’ll have to change in the morning.”

  “You can’t live on my couch eternally.”

  “Maybe until we talk to Sócrates. I don’t know, I don’t feel right about leaving you alone.”

  I’m always alone, she thought. But…again, why not? Why shouldn’t he spend another night over if he wanted to? She could cook something. She could pretend she was making dinner for a good friend. It probably wasn’t a big deal for him, this popping up in a random woman’s house and spending the night there.

  They drove to the guesthouse where he roomed. Rather than wait for him in the car, Maite went with Rubén, curious to see where he lived, though the moment she walked in she thought about stepping outside again, because a couple of young men were walking their way and greeted him, throwing her a perplexed look.

  She probably didn’t look like the sort of person who visited the guesthouse, not in her prim, ugly dress. She didn’t look like Leonora, who was pretty; she didn’t even look like Jackie, who seemed interesting. She looked like a finicky aunt.

  “This way,” Rubén said, and she followed him down a hallway and into his room.

  It was very small and plain. By the bed Rubén kept a cheap bookcase piled high with thick tomes. There was no bathroom and no phone, though he told her the landlady sometimes let them use the phone in the living room if they promised to be quick about it. He had a window, but the view was of a low, damaged brick wall circling the property next door. The neighbors had a chicken coop, but all she could see was a single sad rooster sitting outside of it, all alone.

  She wondered if Leonora had ever been in that room. Rubén’s bedspread was green and orange, and she ran a hand across it. Did Leonora sleep here? Did she bump into some of the men they’d seen before in the hallway? Did they also stare at her, looking perplexed?

  “Have you lived here long?” she asked.

  Rubén opened a drawer and tossed a shirt into a canvas bag. “Almost since I moved to Mexico City. The rent’s fair, and the landlady’s cooking’s decent too.”

  “Where are you from?”

  “Guerrero,” he said, folding a pair of trousers.

  “You ever think about going back?”

  “Maybe. There’re guerillas there. Real guerillas.”

  “Are there? Isn’t it all bandits?”

  “You really don’t read the papers, do you?” he asked. He didn’t sound scornful, surprised maybe, but it made her frown all the same. “They’re in the sierra. They can’t get them there. Genaro Vázquez Rojas, he’s the real deal. And Lucio Cabañas. They’re going to change the country; they’ll overthrow these bastards of the PRI.”

  “You’ll end up in jail if you keep talking like that.”

  He laughed. “So you don’t know anything about anything, but you know that?”

  “Everyone knows that.”

  �
�You’re probably not wrong, but what’s the other option?”

  “Does Leonora want to join a guerilla and live in a place like that?” Maite asked, and she remembered Leonora’s apartment, her pretty dresses, the red sheets and expensive bottles of wine.

  But he hadn’t heard her or didn’t bother answering, instead tossing a couple more things into his bag. “Ready,” he said. “All packed.”

  In no time they were back at her apartment. She went to feed the cat. Rubén asked her why she didn’t bring the cat into her apartment, so she didn’t have to be walking into Leonora’s place three times a day.

  “It’d be easier. But I don’t know. I don’t like cats,” she admitted.

  She supposed if Leonora didn’t return soon she’d have to do something about the damn animal. At least Rubén was the one who paid for the cat food when they stopped at the supermarket to get a few grocery items. She preferred buying her fruits and vegetables at the tianguis because you could haggle there, but there had been no chance of that, so they ended at a Superama.

  “Maybe I can bring the cat over here in the morning, I don’t know,” she said wearily.

  “You don’t have to. It was a suggestion.”

  She took off her shoes and sat on the couch, rubbing her feet. She felt tired, although they hadn’t done much that day. It was the excitement of the trip, she supposed. He’d sleep there that night, then they’d talk to Sócrates…and then what? This situation couldn’t go on forever. Chasing after some girl…and there was that man, Anaya, and whoever had beat up Rubén’s friend from Asterisk. Anaya might show his face around her office again. That might be embarrassing. Or dangerous.

  “I’m going to put on a bit of music,” she said and went into her atelier.

  Rubén followed her, looking at Maite as she fiddled with her records, unsure of whether she should pick an old-fashioned bolero or attempt something newer.

  “You have a huge record collection.”

  “It’s not that big,” she replied, a little defensively, because that was the same thing her mother said when she complained about Maite’s lifestyle: “Maite, you spend all your money on records and books and comics and nonsense.”