by Tim Baker
Pilar begins to descend the staircase, a few claps building into applause. She walks over to Maria and hugs her, then turns to Lupita. ‘What is it, amiga?’
Lupita glances nervously at Maria, who takes Pilar’s arm. ‘It’s Esteban. It was on the news this morning. He’s dead.’
‘He was murdered in a hotel.’
Pilar holds her friend close to her, remembering the death threats she and Juan Antonio have been receiving these last few weeks; recalling last night’s dream and certain now that Esteban died because they were looking for her. It makes her want to weep, to scream with outrage and guilt. But not right now.
There is work to do.
She gets on the first bus, which is already full with students and female workers, everyone on board applauding her. ‘Come on, compañeras,’ Pilar cries. ‘Let’s shut this town down!’
81
Padre Márcio
When Padre Márcio saw Amado standing with El Santo by the baptismal font in the cathedral the day before, he had felt the coming change. Not the natural change of evolution but the wresting one of cataclysm.
Extinction.
Amado’s face had not just been transformed, it had been transmuted, stripped of what little humanity he had managed to retain during the course of his criminal career, and rendered into a death mask – some fierce fetish which occupied the savage border zone between existence and extermination; both mocking the living and defying the dead. Even his eyes had changed color, the earnest mole of the child lost to a chemically induced marbled gray. Amado was physically unrecognizable … but the silence of the man, the power of his malign intent was unmistakably unique. Padre Márcio had never truly believed in God, but that moment in the cathedral had been his epiphany, because he knew, watching him lurking there, that Amado was the devil.
He had been spending less and less time in Ciudad Real and had convinced himself it was because of his manifold interests across the border and in other countries. But it was simpler than that: he couldn’t sustain the proximity to such evil. An evil that he had helped create and hone. An evil which had returned for its final reckoning.
Padre Márcio had dared to believe the extravagant notion that Amado had really died. He had appropriated billions from their partnership over the last four years, financing orphanages, clinics and schools in over one hundred nations. There were billions and billions more left, in property, in stocks and bonds. In businesses and warehouse stock. In cash. But he had betrayed Amado by naïvely assuming that death had severed their partnership, when both men knew that it was never really a partnership, but a dictatorship.
And now the moment had come. Padre Márcio had looked up from his papers and Amado was standing there, watching him. ‘I’m not like one of those bishops who send the pedophiles away to another parish – passing the problem along,’ Amado said, crossing the study and standing over his desk.
Padre Márcio had no idea how he had gained entry: both doors were locked. And the alarm was on. He rose to his feet in fear. ‘How did you get in?’
‘I tend to my garden. You’ve always known that. And now it’s time to start pruning.’
‘You went away. I had choices I had to make.’
There was a flash of teeth – perhaps an indication of something approaching amusement. ‘Lucifer told God the same thing. You remember the shitstorm that caused?’
‘Your father gave his word. Equal partners.’
‘My father had two weaknesses. One was his word. The other was thinking he was smarter than me … Let’s go, Padre,’ he said, passing him a chalice brimming to the top with a red, viscous wine.
‘Where to?’
‘Come on, Padre, don’t make this any harder than it has to be.’
Padre Márcio held the chalice in his two bleeding hands, the wine spilling over the lip. ‘Where are we going?’
Amado shook his head, disappointed in the priest. ‘Golgotha … Where the fuck else?
82
Pilar
She should have known. She should have listened to Juan Antonio. But she has always been like that: not impulsive so much as visceral. Aware not of the voices in her head but of the fervor in her heart.
And now they are trapped.
The second maquiladora was ‘liberated’ with only middling results. That was to be expected. It had never been identified as a target, or subjected to the usual organizational protocols, but it was on the way to the next designated objective. She thought it would be worth the risk.
All the striking women and the students and the agitators are standing by the side of the road, state and federal police watching them behind riot gear, balaclavas and sneers, gun muzzles pointed their way. Most of them are alarmed. Pilar isn’t. There are television crews. There is even a helicopter. As long as they are seen, they are safe. It is only when you are taken away from the public gaze and locked inside interrogation rooms that things get ugly. Like the stables outside Tijuana. So she is calm; almost optimistic. She saw Juan Antonio on his phone before it was ripped out of his hands. The two of them even exchanged their usual looks. The first one was reproach from him and acceptance, if not apology, from her. The second told her that he had communicated what had happened. Lawyers would be waiting back in Ciudad Real. Medical staff would be standing by. Human rights and labor organizations would be notified. The idea was simple but effective: make their arrests phosphorescent – simply too hot to handle. Their story might even be picked up by the international press.
It might not be such a disaster after all.
When the municipal police arrive, Juan Antonio steps forwards, speaking directly to a state police commander. ‘They have no jurisdiction here. We’re dealing with federal and state laws, not ordinances.’
The commander nods to a municipal police officer, who strikes Juan Antonio across the face. Juan Antonio staggers backwards but regains his footing. He knows the rule: the ground is your enemy. Once you go down, chances are you stay down.
Journalists are escorted back to their cars. Papers are swapped and torn up. Hands are shaken. Weapons are ostentatiously racked. Engines are started. Dust settles after the departing convoys. The prisoners stare back at the municipal police. ‘You will all get on the buses. Anyone who resists will regret it.’
Looks are exchanged; not so much a communication as a page shared from a history of the twentieth century. The activists start to comply with the order, but a young student is suddenly yanked out of a bus, falling backwards down the steps. Police encircle him, rifle butts pummeling him with a mounting frenzy, his body kicked under the chassis of the bus. The prisoners all take a collective, unconscious step backwards into horror.
‘Women only in the first three buses.’ Maria helps Lupita onto the bus, followed by Pilar, who notices Ventura sitting all alone. She sits down next to her as the bus starts up, Ventura’s breathing surging with anxiety. ‘Don’t worry,’ Pilar lies, holding Ventura’s arm. ‘It will be all right.’
83
Ventura
They seem to be heading in the general direction of Juárez, but Ventura can’t be sure. It’s not a road they’re following but more a cleared track, etched between shadowing canyons, the rock face purple with shadow on one side, blinding ochre with sunlight on the other. It’s as though they’re hewing two extremes: fire and ice. No one speaks. No one dares to within this foreboding terrain. The only thing that gives her any hope at all is that the convoy of buses has been maintained.
They are still all together.
She notices the driver and a few of the women trying to get a signal on their cell phones. She tries again on Mayor’s phone, even though the battery’s nearly dead. There’s nothing out here.
They begin to rise, a nauseating loop of cutbacks amidst the crumble of curves and the plunge into scree. And then they come out onto the plateau. It’s like they’re entering a military exclusion zone. The buses are waved through a roadblock into a huge loading area, with camouflage nets pulled ov
er storehouses and vehicles. At the opposite end of the plateau is a tarmacked landing strip that only comes to a stop at the edge of a cliff. Ventura can see something gleaming through the heat haze.
She takes out her camera and fits the 90 mm f/2. Trembling like a mirage in the distance is the border. Far beyond is the white splash of settlement. El Paso.
‘Put the camera away,’ Pilar hisses. ‘If they see it, they’ll kill you.’
Someone thumps one of the windows from the outside, startling her. There’s a shout and then the bus lurches forwards, trundling towards the runway. Ventura looks back. Only two buses follow – the other ones with the women.
The division has begun.
She sees the men stepping out of their buses, hands on their heads, municipal police pointing guns at them … Then the view is lost as they pass the storehouses, the netting undulating in the wind. There’s a radar antenna at the end, turning like a windmill, and three men talking, staring up at the sky expectantly. One of them is on a phone …
Ventura glances at Mayor’s phone. ‘There’s a signal,’ she cries. ‘We have a signal!’
An excited stir breaks out all around her; the electronic ping of numbers being punched, the murmur of connection, then the shout of quavering voices. Crying. Pleading. Fast with confusion and fear.
84
Padre Márcio
The last thing Padre Márcio remembered from this world was sipping the bitter red wine. Then he dropped into a deep and narrow well. There was a dreamy, expectant mist hovering on the surface, followed by an unexpected sense of flying.
His landing was surprisingly soft; as though he had been consumed within a soothing embrace removed from all light.
Darkness reigned, ponderous and powerful. When the sound first came to him, it did so with a slow reassurance, pulsing into a steady and unmistakable presence, growing in timbre; the echo of a gentle tapping coursing around the constraining walls of the well, rising in volume as he himself drifted upwards into consciousness.
As the persistent hammering increased, so too did his perception of something wholly unexpected and unwelcome: pain.
Padre Márcio’s eyes sprang open, his scream emptying his lungs. He was lying down, staring up at a sky that contained no pity, the red Aztec sun watching him with a practiced, sacrificial stare.
He tried to move. Impossible at first. With a monumental effort, he raised his neck and stared down his naked body to his mutilated feet. He had no doubt that if the nails were removed, they would tumble from his legs like oversized shoes.
He turned his head towards his tormentor. ‘They talk about the palms of the hands, but you have to respect anatomy,’ Amado said, driving the final nail’s head flat against the wrist. ‘You wanted the stigmata? Well, your prayers have just been answered.’
85
Fuentes
Fuentes talks Mayor through the documents’ failsafes without naming names. It’s not that he doesn’t trust Mayor; it’s just good business practice to let him know he’s not alone; that he couldn’t bury it even if he wanted to; even if Fuentes were killed. Even if Mayor had a gun pointed at his head.
He stresses the forensic importance of the original photographs, and the charges of criminal possession that Mayor will face if they ever find the victims’ files in his possession. Mayor could live with that. Fuentes has the feeling that Mayor has lived with a whole lot worse. Mayor has a Xerox machine in an office at the back. He’ll make copies of both the files and photocopied photos and have them all sent by diplomatic bag to his agent in Barcelona and his publishers in Milan and Buenos Aires. He still has connections. That way he’ll have his own failsafes.
He’s smart. And he is happy to help – after all, it is paperwork, and he is a writer.
Gomez comes into the library, holding up his cell phone. ‘They just put El Santo up on the bridge. The narcomanta claims it on behalf of Los Zetas.’
‘A war between Tijuana and Los Zetas … Why here?’
‘El Santo was sitting on the fence?’
‘Makes sense. And it gives us a distraction.’ He turns back to Mayor. ‘I’d like you to look through these photocopies of the photos now, and try to identify anyone you can.’ Mayor takes a step back, holding the bridge of his nose as though trying to regain his balance. ‘Are you okay with that?’
‘There’s no one else you can ask?’
‘I’m afraid not at this moment, Señor Mayor.’
‘Very well …’ He accepts the package from Fuentes and slides the first page out, then gasps in shock and takes a step back.
‘You may wish to do this sitting down, Señor Mayor … Perhaps in the privacy of your study?’
Mayor walks into the adjoining room and sits down behind a massive oak writing table as though seeking shelter. Gomez studies him, then turns back to Fuentes. ‘You sure we can trust him?’ Fuentes nods, taking the cigarette Gomez offers. ‘I don’t know … Do you think it’s true what they say, about him fucking all those actresses?’
‘Who even cares?’
Gomez shrugs defensively. ‘After all, gossip’s a form of information.’
‘Like cotton candy’s a form of nutrition? What they say about you is true. You can’t take your mind off fucking.’
‘That’s not true. I think about eating three times a day …’
‘Well, put that fevered little mind of yours to work because we need to think of a way to fuck over Valdez.’
‘Wait, we’re not letting him off the hook – are we?’
‘We need our first roller and he has to be huge. Valdez knows everything, including the consequences of even being suspected of informing. He’ll roll in seconds. And what’s more, he’ll know exactly who else will roll.’
‘Fuck that. I don’t want to cut a deal with a scumbag.’
‘I don’t see that we have a choice.’ There is a cry from the study, and both of them turn as one. Mayor is wincing away from the image in his hand, as though it were a newspaper announcing appalling news. And in a way that’s exactly what it is: the big reveal. Every corrupt and rotten set-up he has ever imagined is true, only one thousand times worse. He is receiving the Gospel of Saint Jude, the patron saint of the impossible, and what it preaches is: the impossible has become our reality. Felipe Mayor, a founder of magic realism, has just landed on the other side of the mirror.
Fuentes turns back to Gomez. ‘We need to work this out fast. We’ll only get one shot at Valdez, and if he eludes us, all three of us are dead.’
‘So what do you have planned?’
‘We make an arrest.’
Gomez’s laugh is more a choke of outrage. ‘That’s original. For what?’
‘Byrd dropped a bag of coke. I found it.’
‘It’ll take more than one bag of coke to arrest Valdez.’
‘Not Valdez. Hernandez. Then we brace Valdez. We tell him we have the photos. We tell him Hernandez is in them. Valdez will know that Hernandez will be desperate to make a deal. He’ll know the first name Hernandez will give up will be his. Valdez’s only chance will be to roll faster than Hernandez.’
‘Chido. It could actually work.’
‘It will work. All we need is one minute alone with Valdez. And then a safe house for his testimony.’
‘Where?’
Fuentes pulls a face. ‘You know where it’s got to be.’
‘And let that pendejete go into witness protection?’
‘We lose Valdez, but we get everyone else. Are you really going to say no to that trade-off?’ As if in answer, a phone rings in Mayor’s study. ‘Besides, we have options. After the arrests, after the convictions. Once the dust has settled. You know it yourself. No one really disappears. And, if someone kills Valdez five or ten years down the track, no one will mourn him.’
‘I know you. You’re no killer.’
‘I don’t have to be. I just need to know the right people.’
Mayor strides into the library, tugging a phone on a long cord behin
d him like a stubborn dog on a leash. ‘It’s a friend of mine.’ He thrusts it at Fuentes. ‘She’s just been kidnapped.’
86
Padre Márcio
Pablo Grande had gone to the crossroads at midday and waited under the contracting shade of a flowering eucalyptus. A battered J2000 Jeep pickup with a broken grille guard was the seventh car to stop for him, but the Huichol family inside were the only people to seriously consider his request. The man behind the wheel was younger than the car, although the couple sitting next to him were far older than Pablo Grande.
He told them what he needed, then stood back politely, allowing them to debate his request in Coyultita. The old woman got out and scanned the skies, while the old man sat quietly inside, watching Pablo Grande out of the back of his head.
Then the woman got back inside the pickup and appeared to fall asleep.
An hour later, the driver got out and offered Pablo Grande a gourd. The agua was cold and had the metamorphic alkaline taste of all sierra water. The driver said they were in no particular hurry and would be glad to assist him in his quest.
They drove for the rest of the afternoon, and it was sunset when they stopped the car.
Pablo Grande stepped forwards cautiously, smelling on the air the distinct scent of ozone – the confirmation of a recent lightning strike.
‘We’re too late,’ the driver said, transfixed.
‘We can still save him,’ Pablo Grande said.
He hurried to the base of the crucifixion. Sinking to his knees, he began to remove the rocks grouped around the base. The driver watched for a horrified moment, then began to work by Pablo Grande’s side, heaving stones away, the base already beginning to tremble.