“What was her name?” Jaime asked.
“I don’t know, I can’t remember.”
“And you’re sure she was Russian?” Tomás asked.
Again, the two friends seemed to be competing.
“Don Tomás, Señorita Claudia has been asking if you might come over a moment so she can discuss something with you,” Murillo added, seeming like he wanted to get away as quickly as he could.
The journalist was unable to hide his satisfaction, and his eyes turned back to the redheaded woman still standing beside the casket.
“Let’s go over together and give our condolences to the family. I still have more to do today,” Amelia said.
Tomás nodded, though he felt an uncomfortable tingling on the back of his neck. Amelia knew nothing of the affair he’d had with Claudia five years back, although her intuition bordered on witchcraft, or at least that’s how it seemed to him.
As they walked toward the coffin, the bodyguards set in motion, barely two yards from Amelia, but she motioned for them to stay where they were. It seemed like bad taste, offering your sympathies flanked by those guard dogs. The three Blues filed past the deceased newspaper baron’s wife, daughter, and other close relatives. Tomás noticed the deep circles under Claudia’s eyes. With her father’s passing, enormous responsibility had fallen onto her shoulders all at once. Her mother never meddled in her husband’s business dealings and had no entrepreneurial acumen. Rosendo Franco’s sole living brother was a drunk, and Claudia’s two uncles on her mother’s side were deadbeats. The only member of the Franco family she could trust was her cousin Andrés, the renowned Mexican tennis player, but he hadn’t been in the country for years. The journalist asked himself what role Claudia’s husband might play in all this, but the distance he’d kept during the funeral suggested some sort of tension in their marriage. The idea pleased him vaguely.
Tomás drew out his greeting to the widow and cut short his condolences to the daughter, aware as he was of Amelia’s presence. In any case, Amelia was distracted. She had no knack for commiseration: there was nothing she could say that didn’t come out as a cliché. She imagined the interchange of phrases repeated dozens of times in the course of the viewing must be as unpleasant for the widow as it was for her. There was something artificial in these viewings that made Amelia uncomfortable: she thought the living should be able to bury their dead in privacy and mourn in the familiar spaces they had shared with the deceased. Social conventions obliged the grieving to put their suffering on display in front of strangers who mimicked a pain they weren’t feeling. She asked herself how many of the sobs she heard around her were the result of the recent death and how many the product of the self-pity that tended to spring up at these events. The body in the coffin was a mere catalyst for tears that had nothing to do with it.
Amelia said goodbye to the remaining guests, kissing her fingers and then opening them in a kind of blessing of the masses. She still had to face a long and delicate conversation with Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the historical leader of the left, who’d split off from the PRD months ago; she wanted to explore the possibility of some kind of coalition with him against the present government. It wouldn’t be easy: “Every organization composed of three Trotskyites has four factions,” she recalled despairingly. Still, she had to try.
Jaime looked around the room trying to find Cristóbal Murillo. The Russian had awakened his curiosity and he sensed that, if Amelia were no longer there to intimidate him, Franco’s talkative assistant would happily open up. Any kind of enigma was an irresistible challenge to Jaime, especially in cases with a member of the elite involved.
Tomás stayed beside Claudia, waiting for a group of politicians to wrap up their expressions of continued devotion to the family. Even when they didn’t know her, the women would hug the widow and console her with an affection and feeling borne, he supposed, of female solidarity. A tribal atavism: women comforting women, widows taking care of widows. The men’s approach, on the other hand, showed a protective sentiment more projected than real: “Anything you need, Doña Edith”; “Don’t you worry, Don Rosendo had many friends”; “We’ll be here for anything the family needs”; “Just say the word”—phrases that evaporated in the air faster than the aroma of the men’s costly colognes. As soon as they’d turned their backs, these supposed protectors would search the room for somebody to latch onto and talk about their business dealings and things they needed done.
At last, a breach in the parade of mourners allowed Claudia to pull Tomás into a small office not far from the coffin.
“You don’t know how sorry I am…” he began to say when a finger placed over his lips stopped him.
Claudia laid her head on Tomás’s chest with her arms hanging at her sides. He embraced her carefully, assailed by sensations: tenderness in the face of female vulnerability, commiseration with her grief, discomfort at her husband’s proximity. But more than anything, an immediate, unexpected erotic impulse that soon erased any other consideration.
She pulled away before she could notice his agitated breathing.
“I want to ask you two favors,” she said. Her tone was intimate, closer to the kind shared by a couple who have spent their entire life together than by two lovers bound by four days of shared passion five years past. “Alfonso Palomar, the current managing editor—I don’t trust him to run the paper, not to mention that weirdo Murillo. But I won’t be in any shape to go to El Mundo for the next few days. And it’s not like I know that much about the business anyway. I’m not sure what I’m going to do, but what I do know is there’s no way I’ll let those conmen take charge. What if you do it?”
The request took him by surprise, and he only responded after a long pause.
“You’re right, Claudia, letting either of those two be in charge would be like handing the Catholic Church over to Luther. The problem is, I’m not the answer. I’m a columnist, not an editor. It’s been fifteen years since I’ve been in the field, and I’ve never led a section or a supplement, let alone a whole paper. If you want, I’ll help you find the right person for the job.”
“My father had an office in the editing room that he never used,” she said, ignoring Tomás’s objection. “I’ll send a letter to management telling them that you’ll be representing the publisher’s interests in the upcoming days. Palomar will leave the newspaper tomorrow. You’ll have to authorize the cover and the first section before they go to the typesetters. Any check over fifty thousand pesos will require your approval. We’ll celebrate your nomination as general director on Monday.”
Tomás examined her and tried to detect some sign of mental unbalance in her gaze but didn’t find one. Her words sounded certain, as if she’d thought the matter over for hours.
“I never wanted to be my father’s successor, and that’s why I never trained for it. I loved him so much, I was always trying to find something to grab hold of to avoid thinking about his death. It’s ridiculous, as if I was betting on his immortality. After I met you on that trip to New York, I realized that if the time came, you were the only one I could trust, and knowing that has been a relief. You might not have experience, but I have faith in your honesty and intentions. It’s true we were only together a few days, Tomás, but haven’t you ever met someone, and even after you lose them, you feel like you’re still together?”
Tomás couldn’t speak, but his eyes were moist. So much time missing her, years assuming their affair had been a fleeting diversion in the life of a rich girl. Four days when she had slipped into his bedroom, behind the backs of the rest of the troupe accompanying her father on his tour through the hallowed temples of American journalism.
“And the second favor?” he asked.
Her eyes settled on Tomás, scrutinizing him, like a poker player wavering before betting all her chips.
“This morning, Cristóbal Murillo gave me a sealed envelope. Apparently, my father asked him to do so in the case of his unforeseen death. What was in the en
velope led me to a safe in a bank vault where there was a package with money and two letters. One talked about someone named Milena, asking me to protect and help her. The other one looked like a note dashed off under pressure to alert me to a grave danger.”
“Milena?” Tomás asked, rooting around in his mind for that name.
“Despite what has been said publicly, my father died in his lover’s arms in an apartment he went to several nights a week. The initial police reports leave little room for doubt as to the circumstances of his death. He was deeply in love with a girl, judging by the emails I found on his office computer,” she said, and then added, “After seeing the strange messages he left me in the lockbox, I looked through his mail; the old man wasn’t too crafty with his passwords.”
“And who is Milena?”
“I never believed my father could feel so passionately. He always showed complete control of his feelings. He was a consummate manipulator, as we all know,” she said to herself with an intensity Tomás perceived as something akin to tenderness.
“What do the letters say? Who is Milena?”
“It’s confusing, but I know she was up against death threats and my father was protecting her. In the messages they exchanged, he tried over and over to calm her down. In the first letter, he asks me to make an effort to try and understand and sympathize with her, and to watch out for her future. But the second one is very strange.”
Claudia took out the letter, covered in a few bare scribbles, and read.
“Protect Milena. But take the black book away from her and destroy it. It could ruin the family.”
“And where is the girl? Do you know anything about her?”
“Nothing, she vanished.”
They remained standing in silence beside the desk in the makeshift office in the funeral home. For lack of something better, he hugged her. He was starting to understand the position her father’s request had left her in. Taking charge of the newspaper was a formidable task, though she knew it was something that would have to be done sooner or later. But the responsibility of safeguarding her family’s integrity against this mysterious, elusive threat was an unforeseen challenge perhaps beyond her powers.
“Did your father ever refer to the black book? Does he mention it in any of his emails?”
“Never. Just in that letter. I don’t even know where to begin.”
“Maybe you need to comb through that apartment she disappeared from. I doubt she left anything of value behind, especially not the black book your father was worried about, but at the least we can get the most obvious starting point out of the way. Let me do it, I’ll handle that,” Tomás said, not knowing how or when he could carry this promise through.
“Please, do it fast. I don’t know what this danger could be.”
Tomás pondered in silence and asked himself if Rosendo Franco was afraid the Russian would blackmail him somehow, if she had some compromising video or details about some dirty dealings. There had to be more than a few the old man had been wrapped up in.
“So how do you feel about that, about protecting… her?” Protecting your father’s lover, Tomás thought.
“Does it seem sick to you? I thought so myself. In a certain way, it’s an act of disloyalty toward my mother. But this is what he wanted. You have to see the intensity in their exchanges. Like it was their last days on earth and they were pouring what was left of their lives into them.”
In fact, that was the case, Tomás thought, at least for Rosendo Franco. And from what Claudia was telling him, the same could be true for Milena, if the threats she had received were real.
“If you look at it that way, this may be the best homage you could give your father.”
“Besides, there’s the other warning. It seems urgent, hasty. There’s no doubt we should find her and get hold of the notebook.”
The journalist nodded.
“Yeah, but why me?”
“First, because I don’t know what kind of dangers this girl is up against, and it would be better not to attract attention. We can’t run the risk of the black book falling into the hands of the police or anyone else, not without knowing what it contains. Second, very few people, not even Milena herself, will understand the nature of my intentions. And, above all, my father told me about what you and your friends did in the Pamela Dosantos case—the files you uncovered and the help you got from some insanely talented young hacker. You’re the only person I can trust for an investigation like this. Or am I wrong?”
Despite her categorical tone, Claudia’s words sounded to Tomás like a determined little girl rattling off all the reasons Santa Claus has for preferring to enter through the chimney. Nonetheless, her proposal was seductive, irresistible.
As he felt himself giving in, Tomás asked himself how much of her talent for manipulation Claudia had inherited from Rosendo Franco. The suspicion grew when she took a ring of keys from her pocket with a tag from an apartment in the Anzures development: Rosendo Franco’s love nest, presumably. But the kiss planted on the corner of his lips made him temporarily forget the commitments he’d taken on.
When he left the funeral home, Tomás failed to notice that Amelia’s SUV and her bodyguards’ vehicle were still parked in the lot.
Amelia had received a call from the office of Andrés Manuel López Obrador rescheduling their meeting. Her first impulse was to go to the office, but then she decided to call her secretary, Alicia, to pass on instructions about her most pressing obligations.
Jaime rapped his knuckles against her window.
“It’s lucky I found you still here. Do you have a few minutes?”
He tried to open the door, and the guards ran to Amelia’s aid, but she waved them off. Jaime asked the driver to leave them alone, and, despite herself, Amelia agreed.
“Get in,” she said drily. “But I have to be at a meeting soon.”
Years had passed since she’d been alone with Jaime, and it wasn’t a feeling she enjoyed. But she couldn’t shut the door in the face of someone she’d considered a brother for so long.
Now that he was finally face to face with her, Jaime didn’t know where to begin. Amelia’s previous demeanor had wounded him, and when he saw she was still around, he decided to confront her, despite his usual habit of carefully planning anything of special significance.
“I know you don’t care for my methods, Amelia, but believe me, there are times when nothing else works in this rotten world we live in. In the end, we’re on the same side.”
“And what’s that have to do with anything? Has death got you turning reflective?” she asked, pointing to the funeral home. She regretted the harshness of her words, but she felt Jaime had betrayed her with his conduct those past few months. The manipulative man he’d become, so full of secrets, was light years away from the boy she’d grown up with.
“What’s that have to do with anything? You practically ignored me inside. I don’t deserve that kind of scorn. If only you knew what you’ve always meant to me.”
She sat there quiet, surprised by the unusual emotional intensity of Jaime’s tone.
“Beside my bed, I have a matching set of designer earrings and a bracelet from Egypt that you would have liked,” he said. “Twenty years ago, I was going to give them to you, at that party we threw at my house to celebrate me getting back from my master’s program in Washington, remember?”
Amelia agreed faintly, her mind drifting back to women in frilly dresses and men in tuxedo jackets, tents set up in a garden and a half-dozen officious waiters.
“I was in love with you, Amelia. And I’m sure we would have ended up together if he hadn’t gotten in the middle of things. That afternoon, I was going to give you the jewelry. For hours I waited for the right moment, and when I saw you disappear, I thought I could finally catch you alone. That image of how I found you in my father’s library has haunted me ever since. It took me a long time to forgive you, but here I am. Him, on the other hand, I never saw him again, I never said a word
to him. He knew I loved you, but he didn’t care, he didn’t care about destroying his son if he could have his little fling.”
Amelia listened in silence. He must have repeated the story a thousand times in his tormented mind, she thought. She had been aware of Jaime’s feelings, but she never imagined the depths of his passion.
“I’m sorry, Jaime, but you took everything wrong,” she said after a few seconds. “Your father and I had a real, intense relationship. I won’t go into details, but it was important for both of us and lasted a long time.”
“I’ve never let go of that jewelry,” he answered, as if he hadn’t heard her. “I used to look at it every couple of nights to recall my father’s betrayal. Now, I do it as a way to resurrect my hopes. I needed you to know that.”
He got out of the car before she could say anything, and she watched him disappear around a corner of the funeral home.
3
Milena
August, 2005
Her name was Alka and she was Croatian, though after three days locked up in a dark closet without a bite to eat, she began to feel like a nameless animal with no country of origin. The nakedness, hardly helped by the old blanket thrown in the back of the space where they’d confined her, made the feelings of loss and anonymity grow. The first day, she pounded the wood for hours, more indignant and angry than afraid, waiting for a shadow to cross the light under the door and set her free. The second day, she was filled with self-pity and sorrow and collapsed, depressed, on the floor of the hovel. But on the third, every other consideration vanished before the desperate urge to drink and eat. The fear of being raped was nothing now compared to the need to bring some nourishment to her lips. On the fourth day, she started gnawing on a wooden hanger, the only thing she could find in that dark-black hole. That day, they took her out.
Milena, or the Most Beautiful Femur in the World Page 2