Milena, or the Most Beautiful Femur in the World

by Jorge Zepeda Patterson

  His smile disappeared when he felt his phone vibrate. It was Jaime. Vidal told him where he was, where Luis was, that he was certain Milena was nearby, and asked for instructions. When he hung up, a bitter taste in his mouth kept him from savoring Jaime’s compliments.

  A hundred yards away, Luis looked for pages related to Bonso. He found a half-dozen that might belong to his organization, but he was only sure of two. He clicked through similar ones to try and find some heavyweight rival he might pit against him, but the restaurant’s Wi-Fi was too weak. By that time, he’d struck up a conversation with the sharp-eyed kid who brought him a sandwich and three coffees. Luis offered three hundred dollars to buy his cell phone; it was worth half that, but he had to offer five to get it. It didn’t have GPS, but at least it offered a safe way to communicate with the rest of the world. He erased all the contacts and data, and turned his own phone off.

  Afterward, he went to a small but well-stocked supermarket nearby, bought additional minutes for the phone and picked out the food Rina and Milena had asked for. After getting back in the car, he decided to ditch it: he drove twenty minutes toward Toluca until he reached the lot of a huge outlet mall on the outskirts of the city, where he figured Rina’s car wouldn’t be in danger parked for a few days, and walked over to a taxi stand. The taxi took him to La Marquesa and dropped him on the side of the road. He preferred to walk the last mile to the cabin to keep from giving away his location. He was happy with his work for the day: he had made some headway in his investigations into Bonso and had erased any tracks that would lead their pursuers to their location. Or so he thought.

  ‌34

  Jaime, Claudia, Tomás, and Amelia

  Thursday, November 13, 11:00 a.m.

  After Vidal told him Milena and the other two were likely in La Marquesa, Jaime didn’t expect any new information from the meeting with his friends at El Mundo. But he also didn’t want to let his growing influence over Claudia and Tomás slip. The meeting would have to solidify his position as consultant and go-to person for all the newspaper’s security needs.

  He was still thinking about how to get Milena out of Luis’s hands and somewhere safe. For now, that was all he could do, because Bonso was still impossible to find: the number Galván had dialed to talk with him had gone dead. Perhaps he was smarter than they’d believed. Tracing him by phone was a dead end, but Jaime was confident Patricia would dig up all the brothels the gang ran. Sooner or later the boss would have to call or show his face at one of them.

  Still, he was impatient. Víctor Salgado also had ample resources at his disposal. After the carnage outside Rina’s house, his rivals had already picked up on the relationship between her and the Croatian and would be looking for her car everywhere. The system had probably picked up the vehicle’s information on the highway to Toluca, and it was only a matter of time until Salgado and his men had it. All it would take was for one of the chiefs of police under his command to issue a warrant for the car, and then the wheels would start turning.

  Amelia seemed to sense what he was thinking.

  “I can’t find Rina anywhere. She was supposed to show up at my office yesterday for work, but she didn’t come. I sent my driver to her house early this morning, and there’s no one there. Maybe the shootout frightened her, and she decided to hide out with one of her relatives. She also doesn’t pick up at the number she left with my secretary. She must be with Milena, right? Have you heard from Vidal? Maybe he could tell us something.”

  Tomás had tried to get hold of Vidal to tell him to take care of Rina after what had happened at her home, but he didn’t pick up his phone. Tomás assumed he was with Rina and Luis and let the matter go. The possibility that the four of them were together—absolutely logical now that Amelia mentioned it—had never occurred to him. He’d supposed Milena had run off scared and hidden out somewhere on her own, but that was impossible.

  “It’s best if we concentrate on the negotiations with Víctor Salgado,” Jaime said. “That’s even more important than finding Milena. Let’s remember that as soon as we get Milena back, the clock starts ticking for Emiliano. The most urgent thing is to neutralize that threat.”

  “So what do you propose?” Claudia asked.

  “I have the perfect go-between, he’s going to try and set up a meeting tonight. When my contact found out it would be with the owner of El Mundo, he took it for granted that Salgado would be interested. You’re the new kid in town,” he finished in English, looking at her.

  “Perfect. Tell us a time and place. Tomás and I will be there,” the redhead answered as forthrightly as she could, though she still met eyes with Tomás, seeking his support.

  “Do we need some kind of protection?” he asked.

  “Not at all. Salgado’s not hiding out and he doesn’t have any warrants of any kind. The most likely thing is he’ll see you in some restaurant. At worst, he’ll say he doesn’t know what we’re talking about or he’ll refuse any type of negotiation.”

  “That means we need to line up other alternatives, just in case,” Amelia interrupted. “First, a plan to rescue Emiliano, if it comes down to it. I insist we bring in someone we can trust from the police, a higher-up, in case negotiations fail. Second, we need a definitive plan to keep Milena safe. When I was running the national network for the protection of battered women, we managed to get numerous women abused by men in power out of the country. They left with passports with fake names. Authorities from Sweden and Australia supported them. They were untraceable.”

  “Let’s not jump the gun here,” Jaime said, getting up and grabbing his coat to leave. “All this will be unnecessary if we work it out with Salgado. Let’s talk at the end of the night and then evaluate where we’re at.”

  A minute later, the meeting was over. Jaime rushed off to Lemlock, phone in hand, and Tomás went with Amelia into his office.

  “Call me ungrateful,” Amelia said, “but negotiating with Salgado on Jaime’s terms doesn’t exactly make me feel calm.”

  Tomás raised an eyebrow and looked toward the camera in his office.

  “Get that out of here already,” Amelia said, exasperated. “Do you have plans for dinner?”

  “I’ve got to see Emiliano’s wife. She called me early, when she got up and saw her husband hadn’t made it home. I don’t know what the hell to tell her.”

  “You have to tell her his situation. She has a right to know.”

  Tomás nodded curtly. Feeling for him, Amelia took his face in both hands and gave him a long kiss goodbye. Tomás was happy to receive it, but he couldn’t stop asking himself if Claudia was looking at a monitor with the feed from his office.

  ‌35

  Milena

  January 2012

  For the weeks after her failed escape, Milena sought refuge in old Russian novels. Anna Karenina and Raskolnikov became much more alive than Bonso and the faceless men who used her body at night. She ate without tasting and listened without hearing, obeyed her captors’ orders, carried out the household routines mechanically and efficiently, but her heart was filled with the absolute certainty that only death would free her from her slavery. Once again, Vila-Rojas changed her life.

  “You cost me a fortune,” he told her weeks after the scene with the dogs, the first time they were alone together. “Now you’re mine, precious.”

  “I’m not anyone’s.”

  “I admire your poise, but you and I both know that’s not true. Still, I can set you free.”

  Milena looked close at Vila-Rojas’s face, trying to find a hint of humor in his tone or expression. But it was neutral, categorical. They were fully clothed, drinking whiskey in the living room of a large suite in one of his properties, the Hotel Bellamar, and as always, he didn’t seem interested in her body, but in what she had to say.

  “So what would I have to do for it?” she asked suspiciously.

  “Work for me a few years. If you do it to my complete satisfaction, I’ll give you a nice wad of cash and yo
u can start over wherever you want.”

  “Is that why you stopped Bonso when he was going to punish me?”

  “You got it.”

  “Why me?”

  “You’ve got a rare ability to pick up on things other people don’t see. You showed it to me the night I met you, at the party on the yacht. And your profession puts you in places where things get said. That could be useful to me.”

  “You want me to be your informant?”

  “Much more than that. I’m not just interested in your eyes and ears. It’s your access to their bodies that justifies the fortune I paid for you.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You don’t have to understand anything for now, just know that from now on your fate and mine are linked.” For the first time since their conversation had begun, Vila-Rojas’s words had some warmth to them.

  Milena weighed the implications of what she’d heard and assumed it must be good news. Until then, only the pimps had decided her fortune.

  “Unfortunately, there are two or three individuals who are putting our destiny in danger,” he added.

  “In danger? What do you mean?”

  “That as long as those people are alive, I’m running serious risks, and you are, too, by extension. Unless you help me resolve the situation.” Again, his tone was gentle. “For you, it would be simple to eliminate those obstacles, make them disappear from the map.” He spoke as if they were talking about a minor inconvenience.

  “You want me to become a hit man?” she asked incredulously. “What makes you think I would do a thing like that?”

  Vila-Rojas didn’t answer. He refilled his glass, this time with water, and sat back on the sofa.

  “You don’t have another option. All your alternatives have vanished. Look at you: if it wasn’t for my intervention, there wouldn’t even be a trace of you left in the stomachs of Bonso’s dogs. And look, that’s still a possibility; it’s just off the table for now. It seems like a waste to me, given your faculties, but what can you do—those are the rules of the game, so I’ve been told.”

  “I don’t think I have what it takes,” she said.

  She couldn’t understand how the conversation had gotten to a point where she was talking about committing murder, and it hurt her to hear him talking about her as if she didn’t matter. She liked to think it was just his way of negotiating. She was unable to believe Agustín didn’t have feelings for her, even if his tough-guy exterior made them hard to recognize.

  “You do, believe me. You’re not the only one who knows how to size people up.”

  “But what about the risks? I’d be the first one they came to if I killed one of your enemies, and that would make people look at you, right?”

  “Leave that to me. They won’t find you out, and besides, no one but Bonso knows you’re working under my command. And he owes me his life, too.”

  The image rose up in Milena’s mind: a client she detested with his throat sliced open, bleeding to death in bed. She was less perturbed by the violence of the scene than the feeling of calm it produced in her. The idea wasn’t completely disagreeable. She could reserve the right to limit her killing to human trash: she knew a dozen particularly cruel men whose premature deaths would leave the world a better place. It might not be a bad job, and if she was lucky, Vila-Rojas would keep up his end, and in two years, she’d be free.

  “What do I have to do?” she asked.

  She didn’t dare admit that being useful to Vila-Rojas, working side by side on something so delicate, might allow the peculiar relationship of shared secrets they’d had till then to evolve into something deeper, more caring, more in line with the feelings he aroused in her. As if reading her thoughts, he went over to her, stroked her cheekbone with his hand, and kissed the other side of her face softly.

  “You won’t have to do anything. Just stay fit. And don’t worry, we’re not talking about beating anyone’s head in. Our methods will be subtle. I’m more interested in your ability to read people and situations than in your athleticism. You belong to me now, but you’ll go on working in Bonso’s place. I’ve given instructions for your clientele to be restricted to wealthy businessmen and public figures. I’ll make sure you’re at all Marbella’s upper-echelon parties.”

  “Who’s going to tell me what to do when the time comes?”

  “Once a week you’ll have an appointment with Mr. Schrader, a retired, inoffensive German no one knows I have any connection to. You’ll have a drink in the bar, then you’ll go up to a room connected to this one. He doesn’t know anything about our arrangement. He’ll wait on the other side while you and I chat. On those occasions, you’ll tell me who you’ve seen and what you’ve found out, and if it’s necessary, I’ll give you instructions on how to act. In the meanwhile, read those two books closely.”

  Vila-Rojas pointed to the nightstand beside the bed. Her eyes followed his arm, and she sat down and looked at two books with thick covers: one was a manual of toxicology and the other a textbook on infectious diseases.

  She picked them up and examined them. Both were well-thumbed and had countless underlines, arrows, and brackets on the pages. It seemed that her reading days hadn’t ended with War and Peace. It also seemed to be the first time in her life she’d ever had a purpose. The small revenge against her clients she’d found in her Tales of the XY Chromosome was about to grow exponentially.

  ‌36

  Milena, Rina, and Luis

  Thursday, November 13, 2:15 p.m.

  From the sofa in the middle of the cabin where she was sitting, Rina watched Milena and wondered if she was missing her home country as she looked down at the dense forest through the window.

  “Does that look like the countryside in Yastabarco?”

  “Yastabarco?” Milena laughed. My village is called Jastrebarsko.”

  “Yeah, that. Is it similar?”

  Milena looked back out the window and shook her head after a long pause.

  “No. I don’t even know if there are still woods there. When I was a child, they’d already logged the surrounding hills. They say it was because of the war, to avoid sneak attacks, but my grandfather said the people from the Fabrizio sawmill used that excuse to make themselves millionaires.”

  “Is Jastrebarsko pretty? Do you miss it?”

  “I don’t miss anything. If you start remembering, you’ll never stop, and one day you’ll wake up and hang yourself with your bedsheet. I’m just thankful not to have those sweaty men on top of me anymore.”

  Rina went on contemplating her: she imagined nauseating fat people, men with prickly hairs in their nostrils blowing hot air onto her lips, rancid sweat. Just thinking of letting a man like that put his dick into her body made her sick. Suddenly moved, she stood up and walked over to Milena on the other side of the room. She stopped beside her and stroked her hair with her fingertips. She took a tuft of it and rubbed it gently, as if evaluating the quality of a fine cloth. Rina wondered what its natural blonde tone must look like beneath the cheap black dye, and restrained the urge to cry.

  “I’m going for a quick run, do you mind? If Luis shows up, don’t start cooking. I want to learn a Croatian recipe.”

  In fact, she wasn’t planning on running far. Her jeans and sneakers weren’t the best thing for the mountain paths, but she felt the need for fresh air and some time away. Her new friend’s misfortunes had reopened the deepest wounds from her own tragedy, and now she felt the panic coming back. She walked quickly along the dusty route they had taken the night before. The straw hat she found in the cabin and her broad, dark glasses could barely keep out the bright midday sun sifting over the path. Shortly before she reached a curve, she heard a car motor. She smiled in anticipation of Luis’s arrival, and stopped to wait for her lime-green car to appear. Instead, there was a gray truck followed by a white one. Both pulled to a stop beside her.

  “Milena?” a man in a black suit said from the passenger seat.

  She nodded softly, par
alyzed by confusion.

  “Hop in. Claudia sent us,” he added while another man got out of the back seat and opened the door politely. She didn’t move. With their suits, manners, and earpieces, they didn’t seem like two-bit triggermen. But all Rina could feel was panic. The image of her family in her living room covered in blood rose up with absolute clarity.

  Woozy from the heat and the insistence of the man squeezing her arm, she settled into the cool seat he offered without uttering a word. She tried to say something, but the words got caught in her throat. The vehicles turned around and headed back the way they had come from.

  Before turning onto the road, they saw a young man walking uphill with half a dozen plastic bags and what looked like a backpack on his back. The man in the passenger’s seat gestured to his companion, who grabbed Rina by the nape of her neck and pushed her head down into her knees. When he was certain the boy was Luis, the driver called Patricia, who was in charge of the operation, and asked for instructions. The trucks slowed but didn’t stop. Patricia said that it was the foreigner and not the other two who mattered, and they sped back up. When they reached the highway, they drove back to Mexico City as quickly as possible. On the way, one of the men tried to make conversation with the girl, but he couldn’t get a word out of her. Rina had become aware of her captors’ confusion: she supposed the glasses and hat had contributed to it, and decided to lead them on. Maybe that would help Milena and Luis reach safety in the meantime.

  The sight of the trucks had unsettled Luis. The dust from the road and the tinted back windows had made it impossible to see the details of the occupants, but he managed to get a glimpse of one driver’s earpiece. Fearing the worst, he hurried back to the cabin. There were only a few properties up there, so it was unlikely the trucks were coming from one of the other homes. He jogged for the last hundred yards, and when he saw the cabin, he left the bags and sprinted the rest of the way.