The Hidden Light of Mexico City

by Carmen Amato

  Chapter 40

  The man who’d said to call him Juan had delivered on his word and those louts from Chihuahua had picked up Cortez’s girlfriend. Max didn’t want to know what would happen to either the woman or Cortez. He’d do this last thing because he couldn’t afford to leave any loose ends. But then he was done.

  He put the old ledger into his briefcase and left a note on his father’s desk. As he left the office he turned off the lights. He joked with Alvaro as he passed through the bar, just like always. Max’s father was in the kitchen and Max nearly wavered, but he straightened his spine and left the hotel without saying goodbye. If he saw his father Max knew he’d spill everything and no one, no one, could know.

  Juan was waiting at the appointed place and time, eager to be going. He’d been equally eager to talk, once he had assurances that he’d be taken seriously and that rewards would come his way. He’d given them interesting information but he’d also said a lot of nonsense about this fictional Los Hierros bunch. How there were cells all over but nobody knew more than a dozen members, like they were the French Resistance or something. Max agreed with Hugo that Juan was making that part up, trying to seem more important than he was. Juan was an attention hound and Max wanted him gone.

  So Max could go, too.

  Juan hopped into the passenger seat of Max’s car, shoving aside Max’s planner. “Introductions, you said,” Juan said as Max pulled away from the curb.

  “People who can help you in your career,” Max replied.

  “They understand that Los Hierros is serious business?” Juan adjusted his glasses.

  “Absolutely.” Max headed north, towards the anonymous housing blocks of the Satellite City neighborhood. “They know you’re a serious player.”

  “Good.”

  They traveled in silence, following the heavily trafficked main artery and bailing out into a typical Satellite development. Max pulled up in front of a house and two men came out. Both were dressed casually, in contrast to Max and Juan’s suits. One of the men pulled open Juan’s door. Juan shot a look at Max, who nodded back encouragingly. “Go ahead,” Max said. “I’m right behind you. Just need to call Lorena. Check on the campaign.”

  He made it sound like a confidence only he and Juan shared. Juan got out of the car. Max pulled out his cell phone as soon as Juan disappeared inside the gate with the two sicarios.

  Lazaro answered on the first ring. Everything was packed and ready to go.

  Max made it to Lazaro’s apartment in 20 minutes. The two men held each other for a moment, nerves jangling and hearts racing.

  “I’ve got the ledger,” Max said when they broke apart. “It’s our protection if they come after us.”

  “I’ll make the copies,” Lazaro said.

  “I transferred it all to the Canary Islands account.” Max found himself breathless at his own audacity. “Cashed today’s shipment.”

  Lazaro put out a hand to steady Max. “I closed down Hermanos Hospitality online. It’s like the company never existed.”

  “But you left the postings page alone.”

  “Of course.” Lazaro took Max’s planner and started making copies of the pages. The printer-copier was the only thing left on a desk that was usually cluttered with two laptops, an extra hard drive, and various other computer paraphernalia. “We’ll need to keep watching it.”

  “Of course,” Max echoed.

  The protection went into Max’s carry-on bag, along with the fake passports and bundles of American dollars curled up in socks. Lazaro had the same amount in his bag and both carried money orders for cash as well as bonds and stock certificates.

  The last thing wasn’t hard at all. Max put the planner copies into an envelope and addressed them to Ernesto Silvio. The courier service came, collected the envelope, and left without incident.

  The taxi ride to the airport was excruciating. The two of them leaving with suitcases was sure to arouse suspicion if Lazaro’s apartment was being watched. Max expected the taxi to be attacked. But nothing untoward happened.

  The airport was mobbed, as usual. They checked in for the first flight, which would take them to Madrid. Lazaro’s knuckles were white as they went through Security. Max wondered how long his heart could pound before he had a stroke.

  No one questioned the bulky socks in their carry-on bags. They found the gate and boarded with the other first class passengers. The flight attendant offered them newspapers, champagne, orange juice, movie cassettes, the dinner menu. Max took juice but didn’t drink it. His father would be reading the note by now, finding out that his son was gone.

  After an eternity the big jet rumbled down the runway and lifted into the air. Max didn’t realize he was crying until Lazaro reached over and thumbed away the tears.

  Chapter 41

  Luz was trapped in the middle of the back seat, her left arm twisted across her back by the man on her right. The man on her left worked a thin braided leather belt around her neck. Bile and panic rose in Luz’s throat as her breathing was nearly cut off. They pressed her head down onto her knees. Luz was more frightened than she’d ever been in her entire life. They would rape her, kill her, or she would choke on her own vomit.

  It was a long time before they let her sit up, dazed from the awkward position and her labored breathing. The man holding the noose snapped the loose end like a whip, opening a cut on Luz’s chin. “Is this the right one?” he barked at the front seat. He was a broad Mexican with small eyes and pockmarked skin.

  “Straight hair!” the driver roared. “He fucking said she had straight hair.” He was loud and argumentative. Luz stared at him in the rearview mirror, memorizing the curl of his lip and the lift of his eyebrow as he shouted at the others and squinted at the road.

  The man twisting Luz’s arm was dark and sharp-featured like an indio. He pulled her toward him, making her cry out in pain, even as the noose tightened. She saw blood on the front of her uniform dress and thought stupidly that Señora Vega was going to be very angry when she saw it. Blood stains never came out.

  “What the fuck is he doing with a maid?” The front seat passenger was sharp-featured like the man holding her arm, with lank hair slicked back from a low forehead.

  “Maybe the uniform gets Cortez hard,” the man holding her arm said.

  The noose slackened. “You saw Eduardo Cortez a while ago.”

  Luz gulped air.

  “Answer me, bitch.” The man slapped her. “You were all prettied up. Fancy jeans and a flashy bag. That was you, wasn’t it?”

  “No,” Luz said and he pulled the noose so tight her eyes rolled back and she felt herself start to slip away.

  He grabbed her hair and tipped her head back and her vision cleared. “You know a cop named Valderama?”

  Luz couldn’t say anything if she’d wanted to. The lack of air and the sour body smells of the four men in the confined space gagged her. Blood ran down the inside of her throat, a salty, gummy taste. Her tongue swelled and her thoughts were a crazy jumble of fear.

  “Cortez. Valderama. You know them?”

  The car turned onto a highway. Luz saw a sign for La Marquesa. The park where Eddo and Tomás played fútbol and families had Sunday picnics. Where there were desolate places only wild dogs roamed.

  “You saw Cortez, no?” the man went on. “Sometimes they call him Eddo. I hear you climbed right in his bed.”

  “No,” Luz whispered.

  “Do you clean his house?”

  “No. I don’t know him.” He still had her by the hair, her head pinned against the back of the seat, her left arm trapped behind her.

  “I don’t believe you.” He let go of her hair and nodded at the other man in the back seat.

  With an unseen movement, someone dislocated Luz’s left shoulder.

  With the noose around her neck, Luz couldn’t even scream. Hot tears of agony flowed down her face as pain pulsed through her body and she passed out.

  '

  They slapped her
awake, the pain white and consuming, the movement of the car excruciating. “Next time I’ll let him break your neck,” the man said and Luz knew he would. “Tell me about Cortez.”

  “I don’t know,” Luz choked.

  “Where is he?” he roared at her and the other men were yelling now, yelling at him to hurry up, they didn’t want her puking or pissing in the car, just find out where Cortez was and do it now.

  “Where?” He started punching her face, each time sending a hammer of pain through her shoulder and down her back and into her stomach.

  “House,” Luz mouthed, hardly aware of what she was doing, blood and vomit in her mouth.

  “Do you clean his house?”

  “No.”

  “He’s fucking her, then,” one of them said. “More money than God and he’s fucking a maid.”

  “He pay you?” The front seat passenger leaned over the seat and leered in Luz’s face. “Cortez pay you to be his mamacita?”

  “I didn’t take the money,” Luz gasped and they all roared.

  “So where is he now?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Don’t you want him to fuck you again? Or maybe you want a big one, no?”

  The man who’d dislocated her shoulder put his hand under Luz’s dress and tried to pry her legs apart. She wanted to push him away but her right arm was weighed down by the grocery bag full of glass bottles still looped around her wrist. She could only scream soundlessly.

  The cell phone in her pocket rang.

  The man groping Luz found her cell phone. The noose slackened and Luz sucked air. He held the phone to Luz’s ear.

  “Luz, you didn’t call me back. Where are you?” Through the haze of pain Luz recognized Tomás’s voice.

  “The old highway to La Marquesa,” she croaked.

  The noose cut into her throat again. Suddenly Luz’s lungs were bursting, there was no air, and she passed out again.

  '

  They hadn’t slapped her awake this time. Luz’s head pounded but the pain in her shoulder seemed less, as if her body had adjusted to the awfulness.

  The car moved easily along the old highway, well past the worst congestion of the little towns between Mexico City and Toluca.

  “He’s in fucking Panama.” The front seat passenger waved Luz’s cell phone in a gesture of surprise.

  Sitting limply between the two men, her eyes closed as if she was still unconscious, Luz realized she’d given them what they needed--a way to get at Eddo.

  The big glass bottles full of Bloody Mary mix and seltzer water were still in the bag looped around her right wrist. Her attackers weren’t paying her any attention, the two in the back seat slanted forward to communicate with those in the front. No one noticed as Luz laced the necks of the bottles between her fingers, praying she was strong enough to lift the bottles with one hand and that she wouldn’t pass out from the pain if she did.

  She was strong enough.

  She didn’t pass out.

  Luz heaved the grocery bag with the bottles in it to her left, smashing the Bloody Mary mix into the man’s face, shredding the plastic bag and raining tomato juice and bits of glass all over the backseat. The man grunted and went limp. The noose unraveled. Luz swung her arm in the opposite direction, over the front seat and into the face of the right seat passenger. The effervescent seltzer water exploded like a glass bomb, leaving her clutching the two jagged bottle tops like a desperate bar fighter. The remnants of the plastic bag flapped around her wrist, a shredded wet bracelet. The driver started shouting and the car slewed on the highway.

  The foreign man on her right grabbed at her. Luz reflexively rammed her elbow into his face, yelling for him to let go of her. Something cracked loudly and he curled away from her.

  “Stop the car! Stop the car!” Luz screamed. The dislocated shoulder vented white-hot pain into her head but Luz leaned forward, pressed the jagged glass in her hand into the driver’s neck and twisted as hard as she could, yelling at him to stop, stop the car, let her out, that she’d kill them all. He scrabbled ineffectively at her hand with his own. Luz ground the glass into the driver’s neck, needing to survive like a wild animal, wanting to see the life pour out of him. The brakes squealed and the car fishtailed, bucking all over the road as the driver’s blood spurted over her arm.

  “Get her out!” the driver sobbed. “Get her out! OUT.”

  The car swerved crazily and the front seat passenger came alive. He reached over the seats and flailed at Luz. She clapped the bloody handful of glass straight into his face, seeing a long shard disappear into his eye. He started to shake and shriek.

  “Stop the car! Stop the car! STOP THE CAR!” The man to her right joined the bedlam, his nose caved in and streaming blood. He lunged at her, trying to wrestle her down. Luz pulled the bloody glass out of one man’s face and shoved it against the other man’s crotch. She put her weight into it. He shrieked like a dying thing and clawed open the car door.

  The car was still moving as she half fell, was half thrown. The driver’s sobs to get her out, to kill her, to shut her up, rang in her ears along with her own animal cries.

  She hit the ground heavily, the glass in her hand flying back at the car. Luz retched as the bones in her dislocated shoulder grated together and then her head rapped into concrete. She was unconscious as sounds like Cinco de Mayo fireworks exploded around her. One hit her a massive body blow, folding her up with a wave of leaden pressure as the sedan careened away.

  Blood blotted across the front of her dress, creating quite a big stain.

  Chapter 42

  Tomás’s face flickered into view.

  “I’m dead,” Luz mouthed.

  The look on his normally hard face was one of pure relief. “You’re in the hospital,” he said. “You’ve had surgery but you’re going to be fine.”

  Highway Patrol officers had found her lying by the side of the highway. A rib had shattered along the path of the bullet and it had taken surgeons nearly four hours to pick out the bone fragments. A large compression bandage encircled her torso and her right hand was swathed in gauze. Her left shoulder was back in the socket and she could use her arm but there was a burning ache. There was an IV line in her hand and an oxygen tube under her nose. As her vision focused, Luz realized that the young cop named Diego was also in the room.

  “Where’s Eddo?” she managed. Her throat was raw.

  “He’s safe,” Tomás said. “Can you tell me what happened?”

  Hardly able to speak above a whisper, Luz told Tomás and Diego everything. At a certain point the two men exchanged a meaningful look. Tomás turned back to Luz. “Can you tell me what they looked like?” he asked.

  “I need paper,” Luz said. Tomás sent Diego to find some.

  A doctor and two nurses came into the room and the conversation stopped. The doctor checked Luz’s various bandages, the nurses discreetly shielding her breast with a cloth as he looked at the stitches over her ribs. An angry red trench was held together by black stitches, making the whole thing look like the decayed teeth of a snarling animal. The entire side of her ribcage below her breast was black and blue.

  The nurses left roses in a vase and an array of magazines and DVDs for when she was feeling up to some entertainment. The hospital hairdresser would come tomorrow. She’d probably be able to have real food in a day or so. The doctor made sure the correct dose of antibiotic was in her IV and then they all left.

  Despite her bandaged hand Luz drew the man who’d held the noose, capturing his thick jaw, flat nose, greasy hair, and pockmarked skin. Then she drew the odd man who’d dislocated her shoulder, remembering his hawk-like features and intense expression.

  The front seat passenger was easy to draw with his low forehead and lank hair. The driver was fleshy, angry, trying to be in charge.

  Tomás gathered up the drawings. “We’ll find them, Luz.”

  “I didn’t want to say I knew him.” Luz’s eyes felt heavy.

  “Luz,
just rest,” Tomás said. “We’re going to have somebody with you all the time. Anything you want, you say so. Don’t worry about a thing.”

  “You need to call Señora Vega and tell her where I am,” Luz whispered groggily.

  “We sent somebody over there already, Luz. Just rest.”

  The next day she only half remembered drawing the pictures. But Diego was there, along with another cop named Benito, and they made sure she had everything she needed.

  Chapter 43

  Eddo shut the door behind Tomás. Handshake turned into bear hug. His newly healed collarbone protested the pressure but Madre de Dios, it was good to see Tomás.

  “You look like an old fucking rock star,” Tomás said when they broke apart.

  Eddo grinned. He’d let his hair and beard grow to give himself some camouflage and it was like hiding behind itchy foliage. “Second career.”

  “Good choice.” Tomás looked around the expansive hotel room with its carved door and two big beds. “So. Panama City’s not bad.”

  “As long as you like rain,” Eddo said.

  He’d been there a week, staying at the El Panama hotel in the heart of the commercial district. The Casco Viejo area was just a taxi ride away. There he’d found that Montopa looked fairly legitimate, with a small office and a secretary who knew nothing and could not make any appointments for him; all the company’s management was traveling. A few workers roamed the buildings that Montopa was ostensibly restoring. Local tax records listed Montopa’s bank as Credit Britannia Limited, a bank located in St. John’s, the capital of the tiny Caribbean nation of Antigua and Barbuda.

  Tomás sat on the bed closest to the door and took a folder out of his carryon bag. “You ready for this?”

  “Yeah.”

  Tomás handed the folder to Eddo. “Luz’s drawings of the men who attacked her.”