Velvet Was the Night

by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

  This did not make sense. Yet, in certain melodramas, even the dead manage to rise from the tomb, cheating the afterlife.

  “I saw the story about my uncle in the paper,” Leonora said. True enough, she was dressed in respectful, mournful black.

  Maite was stunned. Her mouth felt dry. “But how did you know Rubén was in the hospital?”

  “I called Jackie and she told me. Rubén looks ghastly.” Leonora grimaced. “Why are you visiting him?”

  “Rubén didn’t tell you?”

  “He said you were both looking for me.”

  Maite supposed it wouldn’t have been in good taste to simply blurt out the whole story. Still, it irritated her that Rubén hadn’t even hinted that they were involved. “Yes, we looked for you. Where were you? You vanished. I waited for you with the cat.”

  The young woman crossed her arms, rubbing them and looking at the ground.

  “I was going to pick up my things and the cat, but when I was headed to the print shop I noticed someone was following me. I don’t know if it was my uncle’s men or someone else, but I panicked. I managed to lose them and I left the city. I tried calling back when I thought it was safe to do it, but you hung up on me.”

  “Rubén hung up on you.”

  “Well, it scared me even more. Then I read the paper and I decided to come back to the city. I went to see my sister, and she said our uncle was dead and Emilio had phoned and was looking for me. He told me the photos were destroyed.”

  “Your uncle did that. It was all this fuss for nothing.”

  “Yes,” the girl said, looking sheepish. “At least Rubén will be okay.”

  “Look, I’m sorry, but I was dropping these off for Rubén, I need to put them in water,” Maite said, clutching her bouquet.

  “Oh. Sure.”

  Maite walked past Leonora and went into the room. She was annoyed to hear Leonora following her inside, but she put on a smile as she approached Rubén’s bed and showed him the flowers. He had a newspaper in his hands and tucked it away when she walked in. It was the evening edition. She wondered if Leonora had brought it in.

  “Hello there, I hope you’re feeling better.”

  “Maite. What, you bought flowers?”

  “I thought they’d brighten the room, except now I’m realizing there’s no vase to put them in. Do you think a nurse might have one?” she wondered, and she set the flowers on the night table. “Leonora, maybe you could find a vase?”

  Once the girl stepped out, Maite touched Rubén’s hand and smiled. “Feeling any better?”

  “I’m getting discharged in two days,” he said, sliding his free hand across his chest.

  “So soon! But I suppose that’s good. I was thinking…and it was thinking, but it’s a good idea…at least I’m certain it’s a good idea…Anyway, I was thinking you could stay with me. You’re going to need someone to take care of you for a little while. Your guesthouse won’t do.”

  He looked embarrassed. She’d never seen him embarrassed. He’d paraded through her apartment without a stitch of clothing and didn’t seem to mind. Now he was blushing.

  “That’s nice of you, but I’ll be leaving the city as soon as I can—”

  “I thought you liked me,” she said quickly.

  “I do. But it’s not like we have anything in common. You know how it is.”

  She shook her head. “No, I don’t.”

  “Come on, Maite, you didn’t really think…and Leonora and I…well…”

  He trailed off and looked at her, as if the smile on his lips could do all the talking for him. They had reconciled, then. She supposed it was simple enough for people so young to blow hot and cold from one instant to the next. Maybe Rubén had portrayed himself as the wounded hero and that had reeled Leonora in. Or maybe he had been on her mind all along.

  Maite felt her face growing warm with shame. He didn’t say anything else, instead looking down at the newspaper on his lap.

  She realized, with his silence, how inadequate and meager she was, and how utterly she had misinterpreted his every gesture. Yet she almost felt like laughing. There was something furiously funny about the situation.

  Maite turned around and saw Leonora standing by the doorway. She realized that the person who had been written out of the story was her, not Leonora.

  “Don’t forget your damn cat this time,” Maite told her as she walked out.

  Epilogue

  MAITE’S FEET WERE sopping wet. She’d waited for the bus forever, but when it came at least it was half-empty, and she took a seat with a sigh and placed her bag with groceries on her lap. She glanced out the window, at the city lights and the water droplets sliding down the glass and thought of nothing, her mind as numb as her chilled fingers.

  It was Sunday. Sunday she went to the movies. But not that Sunday. She’d gone shopping instead and bought chicken and a few vegetables. At the supermarket, not the tianguis, because she’d missed the damn tianguis again. She was planning on making consommé. It was simple enough, and it should last her for a few days.

  Someone sat next to her. She slid a hand against the glass, traced a circle with her fingertips.

  “I’m wondering if you’d go for coffee with me.”

  She took a while to raise her head and look at the man speaking, because she didn’t think he was talking to her. But then she glanced at him and realized he was. And she knew him. It was the man from Emilio’s house, the one who had killed the colonel.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked.

  “Following you,” he said simply.

  “Why?”

  “Habit. You were under surveillance.”

  “By you?”

  “Me and my teammates.”

  So she’d been right. She had seen him before the confrontation at Emilio’s house. Up close she was able to place him: he’d been at the diner. He’d cocked his head a little, smiled at her while he lit a cigarette. Now she remembered.

  “You played a song,” she said and then she frowned. “Am I under surveillance again?”

  “No. That’s all over. Plus, it would be pretty dumb for me to talk to you if that was the case.”

  “Why are you talking to me?”

  “I’m curious about you. And I told myself I would. Talk to you, that is. After it was all over.”

  It was odd how she wasn’t nervous, sitting there, talking to a killer. Because the young man was a killer and God knew what else. Maybe she was tired. She felt old, as if life had drained out of her body, and her soul was as numb as her cold hands.

  “Who are you?” she asked.

  “I was a Hawk. I’m not anything in particular now.”

  “I meant what’s your name.”

  “Oh. That. I suppose it’s Ermenegildo,” he said.

  “Suppose?”

  “Yeah. I could tell you. Over coffee. It’s kind of cold in this bus.”

  “I’m headed home.”

  “I know.”

  She looked ahead. The bus was slowly rolling down the avenue. The man took out a cigarette and offered one to her. She shook her head. He lit his cigarette, took two puffs.

  “There’s a café over there,” he said, pointing at the street corner coming up ahead. “It’s nice. Or you want to hit that joint of yours with the jukebox?”

  “I’m going home.”

  “You scared of me?”

  She didn’t reply. He smoked his cigarette and leaned forward, resting his forearms on the seat in front of him. “I saw your record collection in your apartment. It’s impressive.”

  “You were in my apartment.”

  “Told you: surveillance.”

  She pictured him and his buddies going through her drawers, sitting in her atelier and sliding their hands over her books, her records. Her meaningless,
dull life laid bare to strangers.

  “Anyway, I was wondering why you’ve got the Prysock cover, not the Bennett.”

  “That is what you want to know? That is why you followed me onto this bus?” she said, her voice suddenly tinted with anger.

  He turned his head and looked at her. His hair was shaggy and wet with rain, water droplets sliding down his neck, and his eyes were twin black abysses. They were painted with ink, like the eyes of a comic book character.

  “I don’t know what I want, don’t know who I am,” he said, and the smoke curled up from his mouth. “I don’t know anything. But I can’t stand being alone right now.”

  She thought of the jungle, as she’d seen it in those cheap romance stories she liked to read. The quality of that jungle sky came back to her. That’s what his eyes were like: the night on the printed page. Blacker than the night outside the bus, the real and tangible night awaiting them here—because in the city there were lights from buildings and cars. But the night in the comic books was smeared on the page and did not allow any light. Even the moon did not provide illumination: it was a circle, the size of a coin. The absence of ink but not the presence of light.

  The moon did not glow.

  “I’m getting off at the next stop and I’m going back to that café,” he said. He sounded tired too. Like her.

  She clutched her bag and pressed her lips together. The bus neared the curb, and the young man climbed off it. The semaphore light was red. She saw him, with his cigarette in his mouth, standing on the sidewalk for a moment, before the light changed and the bus stuttered forward.

  He was mad. That was clear. Who else but a madman would come looking for her like this? Who would look for her at all?

  Crazy killer, crazy man standing back there, in the rain, walking back to his café. Maite thought of the safety of her apartment, of the parakeet in its cage and her collection of stolen trinkets. She thought of playing “Strangers in the Night” and sinking into the shadows of her living room and dancing alone, dancing on her own, as usual. As she should.

  At the next stoplight she jumped off the bus. The rain fell slow and steady, making music of its own. She stood in the middle of the sidewalk with her umbrella in one hand and her grocery bag in the other, looking down the street in the direction of the café.

  She wondered what would happen if she started walking there, if she did not head immediately home.

  She wondered what kind of story started like this.

  She saw a figure in the distance, hazy, and he waved at her. Maite held her breath.

  Afterword

  THE TELEGRAM THAT opens this book is a real message sent by the CIA. One Thursday in 1971, a shock group funded and organized by the Mexican government attacked a group of students marching through a large avenue in Mexico City. The Hawks (Los Halcones) had been trained by Mexican authorities with support of the CIA in an effort to squelch communism in Mexico and suppress dissent. Hundreds of protesters were injured or killed during what became known as El Halconazo or the Corpus Christi Massacre. President Luis Echeverría and local authorities, including Mexico City’s regent, Alfonso Martínez Domínguez, denied the existence of the Hawks or shifted the blame.

  As a result of this attack, simmering guerilla action in Mexico increased, as incensed students decided that one could not reason with the authorities. Meanwhile, the Hawks were disbanded. However, repressive action against activists and guerilla fighters did not cease. Through a group known as the Brigada Blanca, the government abducted, tortured, incarcerated, and murdered Mexican citizens during the decade of the 1970s. This was known as the Dirty War (Guerra Sucia).

  Music debates had been heating up in Mexico for years. In upper-class neighborhoods, government approved “singing cafes” could play the music the government sanctioned, harmless covers of American songs. But by the late sixties, most of these venues had closed down. The government claimed they fomented rebellion and anti-nationalist values. A few months after the Halconazo, the Festival de Rock y Ruedas de Avándaro took place. It was called the “Mexican Woodstock.” Subsequently, President Echeverría outlawed rock concerts, and the government demanded that records played on the radio be free of content that offended morality. In response, young people of the lower classes organized clandestine reunions called “funky pits,” but the rock scene suffered greatly.

  Backlash against rock music and live performances was a symbolic way for the government to tighten its grip on the nation. There would not be another Halconazo during the 1970s, but of course the reigning PRI party would never give people a chance to march together again: the Brigada Blanca made sure to exterminate any opposition.

  The more daring, innovative bands of the 1970s did not survive the inhospitable conditions for music making. None except for one: El Tri, which began as a cover band called Three Souls in My Mind. They had played at the legendary Festival de Rock y Ruedas de Avándaro and began writing original songs in Spanish, not just playing covers. In the mid-seventies, El Tri recorded the first explicitly anti-government rock song: “Abuso de Autoridad.” They obviously did not have a major label behind them.

  Nobody was ever punished or found guilty for the Halconazo, which echoed a previous armed attack in 1968—the Tlatelolco massacre. In 2006, ex-president Luis Echeverría pleaded guilty and was put under house arrest for his participation in the Halconazo. He was later exonerated and charges against him dropped. None of the men who led the attacks against activists during the Dirty War ever did any jail time, either. Many of them have now died quietly in their beds of old age. Some went on to have successful political careers: Alfonso Martínez Domínguez became the governor of Nuevo León.

  In 2019, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador released the archives of the Federal Security Directorate, which contain information about the Dirty War and the political persecution of activists by the Mexican government.

  We’ll never know the exact number of victims of the Dirty War. My novel is noir, pulp fiction, but it’s based on a real horror story.

  The Author’s Playlist to Velvet Was the Night

  LISTEN ON SPOTIFY at randomhousebooks.com/​VelvetWasTheNightPlaylist

  “Todo Negro” by Los Salvejes

  “Jailhouse Rock” by Elvis Presley

  “Dream Lover” by Bobby Darin

  “Can’t Take My Eyes off You” by Frankie Valli

  “Eleanor Rigby” by The Beatles

  “Abuso de Autoridad” by Three Souls in My Mind

  “Run for Your Life” by Nancy Sinatra

  “Quiero Estrechar Tu Mano” by Los Ángeles Azules

  “El Día Que Me Quieras” by Carlos Gardel

  “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” by The Platters

  “Love Me Tender” by Elvis Presley

  “Satisfacción” by Los Apson

  “Sin Ti” by Los Belmonts

  “Lost in My World (Perdido en Mi Mundo)” by Los Dug Dug’s

  “Blue Velvet” by Arthur Prysock

  “Shain’s a Go Go” by Los Shain’s

  “Bésame Mucho” by Antonio Prieto

  “El Cigarrito,” 2001 Digital Remaster, by Victor Jara

  “Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)” by Nancy Sinatra

  “Cuatro Palabras” by Juan D’Arienzo

  “White Room” by Cream

  “Agujetas de Color de Rosa (Pink Shoe Laces)” by Los Hooligans

  “Somos Novios” by Armando Manzanero

  “Kukulkan” by Toncho Pilatos

  “Solamente Una Vez” by Lucho Gatica and Agustín Lara

  “No Me Platiques Más” by Vicente Garrido

  “Piel Canela” by Eydie Gormé and L
os Panchos

  “Dream a Little Dream of Me—with Introduction” by The Mamas and the Papas

  “Volver a los Diecisiete” by Violeta Parra

  “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” by The Shirelles

  “Are You Lonesome Tonight” by Elvis Presley

  “Surfin’ Bird” by The Trashmen

  “At Last” by Etta James

  “Can’t Help Falling in Love” by Elvis Presley

  “The House of the Rising Sun” by The Animals

  “The Girl from Ipanema” by Stan Getz, João Gilberto, and Astrud Gilberto

  “Strangers in the Night” by Frank Sinatra

  “Pobre Soñador” by El Tri

  Gracias por la música, padre

  Acknowledgments

  A BIG THANK you to my agent, Eddie Schneider; my editor, Tricia Narwani; and the production team at Penguin Random House. My interest in music was fueled at a young age by my father, who waxed on nostalgically about certain bands. Noirs have a proud tradition in Latin America. The first noir writer in Mexico was Rafael Bernal, who published El Complot Mongol in 1969. So thanks to Rafael and the other writers of old noirs.

  By Silvia Moreno-Garcia

  The Beautiful Ones

  Certain Dark Things

  Signal to Noise

  Gods of Jade and Shadow

  Untamed Shore

  Mexican Gothic

  Velvet Was the Night