Milena, or the Most Beautiful Femur in the World

by Jorge Zepeda Patterson

  “He didn’t tell you where in Europe, or who this big fish was?”

  “No, honey. I just asked whether the girl was violent or a troublemaker and if that was why he was being shy about her. He said she was the very opposite: all she ever did was read and write. ‘A goddamned enlightened whore, that’s what she is,’ he said to me.”

  “That’s her,” Amelia said. “Her name’s Milena.”

  Minutes later, she got in her car and called Jaime Lemus.

  “It’s Marcelo Galván. We’ll meet back up at the newspaper.”

  Then she dialed Rina’s number, but didn’t get an answer. The girl had also disappeared after the shootout at her home. Vidal had told her Rina had been with Luis at the doctor’s office when all the killing took place, and that was a relief, but she hadn’t answered her phone since. Amelia trusted she had taken refuge with one of her relatives. Despite what Jaime had said, she decided she would investigate with the help of her own sources and see if that didn’t clear things up.

  ‌25

  Milena

  Wednesday, November 12, 8:30 p.m.

  She had walked all afternoon without being able to take a decision, not because she was weighing various options, but because she felt she didn’t have any. First she rambled without any set direction, trying to escape the scene she’d just witnessed. Then, when she realized she was headed into Paseo de la Reforma, where there would be people everywhere, she ducked into a side street. She ended up sitting in a Chinese café close to the wax museum in Colonía Juárez. The recollection of the man in the dark suit leaning against the truck and bleeding out tormented her: he had gone there to protect her from Bonso’s thugs and now he might be dead. She asked herself how many bodies would have to pile up before she would be free, or before she was murdered as well.

  When she saw the façade of the Wax Museum, she remembered the taut figures of the people inside and told herself that all of them had passed through moments as dramatic, or more, than those she was living through now. Rosendo Franco had taken her there once to walk through the narrow hallways smelling of naphthalene and lined with sculptures in exaggerated attire. “Look at them, all tranquil there, with the tragedies and deaths the bastards have behind them,” he had said then. And with that memory, she was filled with envy for the dolls’ beatific attitude. She’d like to be that way, like them, all tranquil there.

  Discouragement hung around her neck like a millstone. Lead in her veins and cement in her joints, or maybe the soulless wax of the figures she had envied moments before. She told herself her life was pointless, with nothing to hope for and nothing to enjoy, a source of misfortune for those around her. Then she made a resolution: that night, she was going to die. That was the only way to keep her family safe. With regret, she remembered Rina, the only person, perhaps, who would lament her death, even if they barely knew each other. Or maybe that was it: Rina liked her because she didn’t really know her. The idea weighed down on her chest. She consoled herself with the thought that her disappearance would save the two young people: if they had been home that afternoon, they might already be dead.

  She saw herself captured by a security camera at the moment she threw herself in front of the metro, and she found the image calming. There was nothing dramatic, just her body vanishing from the scene. Before she threw herself on the tracks, she would carefully place a briefcase on the ground.

  The image made Milena smile. She opened her bag and took out the thick hardbound notebook. It had been with her since her arrival in Mexico and she had managed to hold onto it thanks to the decoys she passed off to her jailors: sheaves of nonsense she pretended to conceal in false hiding places. But this notebook she had never given them. It would be her legacy and her penance. She imagined the book’s cover: Tales of the XY Chromosome, or maybe just Them, signed by “Milena, the whore who writes.” Or maybe it would never become a book, but she at least trusted that the press would spread some of her tales around to scandalize and ridicule her most celebrated clients. She imagined the bishop with the milky skin fleeing southern Spain, the one who always blessed her after begging her to spank his chubby ass. She remembered the corrupt senator whose dick was getting hard and shooting his load while he recited articles of the Constitution from memory. She thought of the fifty-odd entries in her notebook and told herself that at least her death wouldn’t be in vain.

  She had two boxes to check off before her date with the subway. She asked the waitress when the station closed and figured she could get everything done that night if she rushed. As so often in her life, she turned to writing, like a meeting point marked on a map, the place she returned to every time she got lost.

  The television wedged into a corner in the café distracted her. Any mention of Ukraine inevitably called her attention after so many years spent with Russian and Ukrainian clients in Marbella. In the course of recent months, when she was living with Rosendo Franco, she had read the issues of El Mundo he brought to the apartment, had followed the crisis in Ukraine, and had often asked herself which of the two factions of Ukrainians controlling the market in Marbella would end up benefiting from the situation. She knew the leaders of both. Ukraine was coming apart in a political and military struggle that pitted the population of Russian origin and those who defended Ukrainian national values and were looking westward. Both had their representatives in Marbella.

  The newscaster translated Putin’s call to restore “the glorious past of Mother Russia” into Spanish. Red-faced, the Muscovite leader riled up the crowd, and they lifted their fists in the air. “We will not abandon the Russians now living in Ukraine,” the Mexican journalist repeated, with indignation and irony. The words of the Kremlin chief resounded in Milena’s mind. She remembered parties in Marbella where she’d heard similar slogans from other Russo-Ukrainians. Normally, it was just boastfulness brought on by alcohol. Amid the clinking of glasses, one group would say to the other that the Russian community in Marbella should play a more active role in supporting the motherland. But not everything was the result of drunken effusion: more than once, she had seen guys in from Moscow exchanging names and numbers and making plans to tighten links between Kremlin politicians and the Russian mafia on the Costa del Sol.

  It was a long time since she’d thought about all that. Reflexively, she placed her fingertips on the lining of her black book, but she didn’t dare remove what she had put there months before. At first, she had been convinced that Bonso was the one chasing her down, obsessed with putting her back to work in the brothels. But the destruction of the walls and furniture everywhere he passed through and the things she had just heard indicated another motive: the explosive information her book contained.

  ‌26

  Jaime and Vidal

  Wednesday, November 12, 9:20 p.m.

  Like all the Lemlock employees, Patricia Mendiola was working against the clock. Two hours before, Jaime had handed out assignments and set a meeting to review the results at 9:20 in the evening. Throughout the afternoon, all of them had worked at a vertiginous rhythm, still shaken by the shootout that had taken the lives of two of their colleagues and left a third in a coma. She herself had recruited the kindhearted Julián Huerta, a harmless peeping tom, even if he had a creepy of looking at her legs when she crossed them in his presence.

  She had worked for hours putting together a profile of Bonso’s gang, but she didn’t know the identity of whoever was protecting him, and that was what mattered to Jaime most. Ten minutes before, he had called her office elated to tell her it was Marcelo Galván, a government worker in the immigration services. He had been one of her prospects, but she wasn’t sure enough to put him into the report. With his name, she could have sketched out a clearer profile.

  Shortly afterward, Lemus himself got the meeting started with the coordinators of the different departments. Patricia was surprised to see Vidal, Jaime’s nephew, there.

  Ezequiel Carrasco, an ex-commandant in the Federal Security Directorate, gave an ac
count of the operation their colleagues had died in. They ran into three active-duty cops, apparently on Bonso’s payroll. The gunmen formed part of the brigade assigned to Mexico City International Airport.

  The coordinator of overseas operations, Esteban Porter, an ex-director at Interpol, offered additional data about Milena’s background. She was born Alka Moritz in 1988. His former colleagues traced her to Spain starting in 2005, when she was seventeen years old. Every trace of her vanished thereafter, until she showed up in Mexico this past January 23. Not much was known about her long stay on the Spanish coast, but he was hoping to get better info in the next twenty-four hours: following Jaime’s instructions, Porter had offered a small fortune to informants connected to the Spanish police and security services to try and figure out what had made them take the girl from the Iberian peninsula.

  Mauricio Romo, coordinator of the company’s team of hackers, described the security network set up to try and find Milena. They’d hacked into the public network of security cameras in the Mexico City metropolitan area, which included the streets and plazas and the metro and other modes of public transport. They’d tapped the phones of everyone who had any relationship with the Croatian: the Blues, Rina, Claudia, and their closest friends and relatives. Through Facebook, they’d gotten the email addresses of Leon and various members of Milena’s family; a translator from Spain was already working with them and would be ready in case the girl sent any messages to her family in her language.

  Finally, Patricia spoke. She gave a profile of Bonso and his protector, Marcelo Galván. He was a man with ties to the old political class and second in command of immigration services. But even he seemed to be a mere underling. He was part of a huge trafficking ring that supplied numerous markets: sexual exploitation, labor for plantations in Central America, processing services for Asians looking to immigrate to the United States. It had the backing of a diverse group of businessmen with close ties to governors and politicians: the businessmen funded their campaigns, and they shared in the benefits of human trafficking. Patricia didn’t dismiss the possibility that Bonso himself had gotten the ear of some of these politicians after providing them with female.

  Patricia told the group she had gotten hold of the address of a brothel the Romanian owned and had it under surveillance, but she doubted it was the only one.

  Jaime made notes while his coworkers continued with their presentations. Then he asked for a few concrete details—the address of the immigration chief, the names of Milena’s family members—and laid out the steps they would need to follow in each phase of the investigation. He asked Patricia and the hackers to concentrate for the time being on the figure from immigration: his routines, his family, bank accounts, properties, friends and enemies, bad habits, and quirks.

  “Whatever you find out, I want it by eleven tonight.”

  He dismissed them and stayed behind with Vidal.

  “The upcoming hours are decisive. We have to find Milena before Bonso, or else we’ll never see her again. Either they’ll kill her or they’ll ship her off to another country. Emiliano’s life depends on it, too. He’ll stay alive as long as Bonso doesn’t have what he wants.”

  “You don’t have to tell me that, Jaime,” Vidal said, offended.

  “I’m telling you so you don’t hesitate if the ball ends up in your court. It’s always possible Milena will turn to Luis and Rina. They seem to be the only ones she trusts.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” the boy said.

  “And if I am, you know your friends will be in mortal danger, right? You already saw what happened at Rina’s place. Their life will be in your hands.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You have to keep on both of them so you’ll be the first one to know if Milena manages to reach them. That will allow us to rescue her right away. Otherwise the two of them will try and hide her and they could well end up as Bonso’s next victims. Capisci?”

  “What do I do?”

  “You’re already tracking Rina and Luis via GPS on your cell phone. Find a reason to meet with them and don’t let them out of your sight. Remember, it’s for both their good.”

  Minutes later, a chauffeured company car was wheeling him down the Avenida Insurgentes. He couldn’t pick up Rina’s cell-phone signal, but a red dot gave evidence of Luis’s trajectory a few miles ahead.

  Vidal felt better now. It seemed to him he was part of something strong, able to make a difference in the lives of others, of his friends. Luis and Rina thought they were invulnerable, but they had no idea of the danger they were facing. He would rescue them and get them to safety, no matter how they’d hurt him the night before.

  The scene of a thankful and indebted Rina that played out in his mind was interrupted when he saw that the red dot hadn’t moved for the past few minutes. It was stationary somewhere in Colonía Juárez. That’s where he headed.

  ‌27

  Tomás and Claudia

  Wednesday, November 12, 9:50 p.m.

  Tomás paced back and forth like a prisoner in his cell. Claudia followed him with her eyes; she was too tired even to get up. To her, the last twenty-four hours felt like a long stretch of days, even geologic eras. Beside her was Emiliano’s file from human resources. After flipping through it, she’d consulted the opinion editor’s Facebook page. They were the same age, and his hobbies and tastes made her think they could have been close. She felt the possibility of his death on her shoulders.

  “Don’t go, I don’t want to stay here alone,” Tomás had asked her when Amelia and Jaime left on their respective missions.

  Tomás called Guerra, the deputy director, and told him to take over editing. No one else at the newspaper knew about Emiliano’s kidnapping, not even his family. They had no idea how to ease their anxiety before eleven, when the group would meet again, an hour before Bonso threatened to execute his prisoner.

  Tomás examined the available options over and over. He had the feeling that he was forgetting something.

  Claudia got up from the sofa to make her third espresso of the night. Days before, she had set up a capsule machine next to her father’s desk to avoid having to ask her secretary for a service she considered personal. Or at least, that was how Tomás saw it.

  He felt bad for her. Barely a week ago, as far as he could tell, her biggest problem had been finding a way to make up with her husband, or maybe to put an end to a marriage without children and without hope. He contemplated her back, a little less rigid than usual. A wave of affection made him cross the three yards between them. He hugged her from behind, putting his hands on her biceps and his chin on her shoulder. He whispered in her ear.

  “Relax. You’re doing a good job.”

  She didn’t respond, she couldn’t have. It felt like a ping-pong ball was swelling in her throat, and her eyes moistened as quickly as an ice cube melts in a hand.

  They stayed motionless for a moment and then she did something he found strange and unexpected, when he looked back on it later. She pushed her behind into his crotch. He wrapped his arms around her waist. He turned his head and rested his cheek on one of her shoulder blades. They held the position until she felt Tomás’s erection and made a slight movement to accommodate him. He squeezed her tighter.

  No buttons were fumbled with, no zippers pulled down. No hands stroked torsos or ran through hair; there were no moans or heightened breathing. She just wanted to keep from falling apart, and was thankful for the feeling of relief that Tomás’s embrace gave her, the feeling of being held in one piece. In contrast, every cell and neuron in his body was concentrated in the swollen and compact tip of his member, and though she kept pressing harder and harder against his abdomen, intuition told him this wasn’t a burst of passion they were experiencing.

  The sound of his telephone interrupted their embrace. He pulled away and brought the receiver to his ear. She straightened up and added powdered creamer to her coffee.

  “It was Jaime, he says he has the information we ne
ed. He’s coming here and he wants to push the meeting ahead as much as we can. I’ll call Amelia to see if she’s talked to her French friend.”

  Tomás and Claudia spent the next forty minutes talking over issues at the newspaper, both of them peering into the screens: hers was a huge desktop, his was a tablet that was never far from his reach. At 10:35, the meeting started.

  Jaime and Amelia told the others what they’d found out. Amelia said everything, Jaime kept a few things back. The director of Lemlock told them he’d been able to trace the call Bonso made from Emiliano’s phone. Apparently they were on the road at the time, maybe in an armored car or a truck with tinted windows. From then on forward, the phone had been cut off or the battery taken out. Either way, it was impossible to localize.

  After going over the information at their disposal, the four of them agreed that the most urgent thing was to get hold of the immigration director, Bonso’s only known contact. Amelia doubted the Romanian would execute Emiliano when he said: after the shootout, he must have guessed that they didn’t have Milena either. By his logic, she figured, Emiliano would still be useful as a trade for the Croatian in the event that Claudia and her friends found her first.