Bonham let out a humorless laugh. “A quid pro quo! You’re learning!”
“That’s a lot to trade for one name,” Valencia said. He lit his cigarette and squinted against the smoke curling into his eyes, giving himself a sleepy, hooded look. “It would have to be the name of a big fish. No plankton. No minnow.”
“This man works for the Brotherhood. He’s not a big fish, but he’s more than plankton—or a minnow.”
“What then? A snapper? A grouper?”
Ichthyological fine points were not Riordan’s strength. He went with snapper, which Valencia rejected as a species too insignificant to warrant what was being asked of him. They negotiated for a while. Riordan felt as if he’d been taken over by an alien personality who was nonetheless himself, a heretofore hidden sharer in his existence, a doppelgänger. If in the seminary someone had predicted that he would one day be haggling over men’s fates as if he were in a carpet bazaar, he would have thought it more likely that he’d be chosen as the first priest to fly into space.
Valencia relented a little: depending on the quality of Riordan’s disclosure, he would consider lifting the curfew, but only until the day after Christmas. The holiday fell on a Tuesday, not quite a week from now. The suspects could be released by, say, Saturday.
They need time to clean them up, Riordan thought, and to hide or heal their bruises. He asked, “How can I be sure you’ll hold up your end of the bargain?”
“You can’t be—this is Mexico,” Bonham answered, with another mirthless laugh, which Valencia echoed with one of his own. “Who is the snapper?”
“Jesús Delgado,” Riordan answered. He wanted, in the deepest part of his being, to say “Danielo García,” but Danielo was off-limits, protected by the seal of the confessional. Delgado, however, was fair game.
“Tell us about this Jesús,” Bonham said.
“He’s a famous rapist of teenage girls.”
“We don’t investigate rapists,” Valencia said, disgust in his voice. “What does he do for the Brotherhood? What makes you think he’ll do us any good?”
“He drives mota to the border, along with the mules to carry it over. He lives in Mesa Verde, and he’s as familiar with the Mesa Verde road as anyone. He might know something about the ambush. It’s possible he was in on it.”
“I don’t know, Padre Riordan. I don’t know about this Delgado,” Valencia said in a mocking singsong. “Sounds like not much of a fish to me. But you know what, priest? I’ll take your offer, bad as it is.”
Bonham was giving Riordan his invasive, mind-reading stare. “Don’t worry, we’ll keep our word,” he said. “Like I told you, I take care of my assets.”
Which, Riordan grasped, was the reason why they had agreed to the uneven exchange. They wanted to keep him on board.
* * *
“We don’t want to get sidetracked,” the Professor said after Riordan left.
Valencia lit another cigarette, letting the smoke drift slowly out of his mouth so that it veiled his bare-boned face. “From what?” he said as the veil lifted.
“The mission.”
“How are we being sidetracked from the mission?”
“This idea you have to find the names of the sicarios who staged the ambush. You have almost no chance of that. Salazar would like nothing better than to have us off chasing a wild goose instead of a butterfly.”
“Sixty thousand people have been murdered in this country in only six years. To put the best face on it, perhaps five percent of those crimes have been solved. You cops are experts on not finding out names. That’s why you think there is almost no chance.”
Valencia sprang from his chair, yanked a scrapbook from a desk drawer, and dropped it into the Professor’s lap. Pasted into it were press clippings, with tabloid-gory photographs and headlines crying, JOURNALIST ASSASSINATED IN NOGALES or variations thereof. One article elaborated: “Raúl Valencia, 31 years of age, a reporter for the magazine Proceso, was shot to death on Tuesday morning…”
The captain waited for the headlines to sink in, then snatched the scrapbook back, as if the Professor’s hands would contaminate it. He fell back into his chair and took another drag, again letting the dense blue cloud drift slowly from his lips; it looked like smoke rolling from under the door of a burning room.
“The police did a very thorough investigation,” he said. “Yes, an excellent investigation. They collected the bullet casings—five nine-millimeters. They determined that the rounds were armor-piercing, because they passed through the door of my brother’s automobile as if it were paper. They also determined that the sicario was a professional—the rounds entered in a tight group under the door handle.”
The Professor nodded, having, early in his career with Joaquín Carrasco, eliminated a couple of snitches in exactly that fashion.
“The police interviewed eyewitnesses,” Valencia continued. “Of course no one saw a thing, except one. He said the assassin was riding a motorcycle, a blue Kawasaki, and that he pulled up alongside my brother at a traffic light. My poor brother, he was not like most Mexicans: he believed a traffic light was a command, not a suggestion, and for his obedience his reward was death. The police concluded that the assassin knew about my brother’s habit of stopping at traffic lights, that he knew the route Raúl followed when he picked up his daughter at the school. My niece, Andrea. And, oh yes, they even found the gun! The sicario had tossed it onto the street as he sped away—a Beretta—and they discovered that it had been purchased at a gun store in Arizona. This is efficient police work, wouldn’t you say? Please, give me your expert opinion.”
The Professor had fallen into an impassive mood. “Come on, Alberto, I see what you’re—”
“But then the police showed what they are best at, without parallel. They found no one! Not a single suspect. No names, Inspector Bonham. Not one! The case dissolved. Which is what happens to ninety-nine out of one hundred murders in this country. I think I can do better. I will do better. I will find the names. I will find the bastards they belong to.”
The Professor listened patiently, and restrained himself from telling Valencia that his opinion of the army was as low as Valencia’s of the police. “We’re here to capture Salazar,” he said in a tranquil tone. “This has nothing to do with your brother.”
The captain raised his eyebrows. “But it has everything to do with him! We paratroopers are also a brotherhood. Those four men butchered for entertainment were my brothers. And I will lose the respect of their brothers, my troops, if I fail to do something about it.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
On Thursday afternoon, Federal Police officers in a sound truck cruised through town, announcing that the curfew would be lifted for the next five nights. Somehow the word got out that this had been Riordan’s doing, and that he had also worked a greater miracle, securing the release of the detainees. Having said nothing himself, he speculated that Bonham had leaked this information to buff his asset’s image among the populace.
If so, it worked. The pageant resumed that night, and the marchers thanked him, chorusing, “Bendito seas, Padre Tim, bendito seas.” He accepted their gratitude with a show of humility. Inwardly, he was gorged with pride and a sense of power. He’d made something happen! Two kinds of wolves menaced his flock. He’d succeeded, temporarily at least, in driving off the ones dressed in police and military clothing. But would he be strong enough to take on the other, more dangerous pack?
By the next day, those who had not seen the Butterfly’s video had heard about it. After Mass, instead of making the usual routine parish announcements, Riordan warned the congregation not to be taken in by narco propaganda. The Brotherhood had distributed stolen medicine to the Indians in San Miguel, and they had staged the soldiers’ executions.
“They call it justice for the boys who were killed last month,” he said. “But it wasn’t justice, it was cold-blooded murder.”
* * *
On the Saturday before Christmas, a police van d
elivered the detainees from Hermosillo, where they had been interrogated. It let them off in the plaza. Riordan met them there with their families. The mother of Miguel Durán, the college student, wept and kissed his cheek. The men had been in custody for less than a week, yet they had the wary, bewildered look of convicts paroled after long confinement; it was as if they didn’t quite believe they were free. Their clothes, the same things they’d worn when they were taken, were rumpled, but their hair was combed, their faces scrubbed and shaved, and no marks were visible. Their interrogators knew how to make sure of that. The punch to the groin. The club to the backs of the knees. The electric prod to the buttocks. Mothers, wives, fathers, sisters, and brothers asked if they had been hurt. To a man, all said no. Perhaps not, though their furtive glances, their tense postures suggested otherwise. Probably, keeping their mouths shut had been a condition of their release. As Riordan shook their hands in welcome and they shook his in gratitude, he thought of Jesús Delgado. A fair exchange—him for them. Whatever these men had endured, Jesús was in all likelihood enduring worse, because of Riordan’s denunciation. His conscience took a poke at him, but he slipped the punch, picturing Cristina pinned to the hard earth floor of some squalid shack.
* * *
The festival of Las Posadas climaxed in a grand fiesta on Christmas Eve, Nochebuena. Vendors’ trucks and wagons, peddling ices and chorizo and chicharrones, made a bracelet around the plaza, above which piñatas swayed from poles. Bowls of rum punch were set on tables. Sausages and machaca sizzled on mesquite-fired grills. Riordan had made a renewed effort to fast for Cristina’s sake and was light-headed from hunger. He thought he would faint from the savory smell of the smoke. He watched it rise into the black sky. His thoughts rose with it, drifting back to a Christmas Eve in the Piazza Navona, the scent of chestnuts roasting on braziers, the dirgelike drone of the Abruzzi shepherds’ sheepskin bagpipes, when he and Marcella ate pasta carbonara and watched the water splash in Bernini’s fountain while they anticipated the warmth of each other’s bodies and the moment that stopped time.
“Golpearlo, golpearlo, golpearlo; no lo pierda. Si lo pierdes, pierdes el camino.” Hit it, hit it, hit it; don’t miss it. If you miss it, you’ll lose the way.
The shouts tore him from his fantasy. Blindfolded people were swatting at the piñatas with sticks. The piñatas were shaped as seven-pointed stars, and they glittered starlike, covered in shiny wrapping paper that reflected the trembling candles in the lanterns, the streetlamps, the Christmas lights in the trees. The seven points represented the seven deadly sins. The people in blindfolds swung, trying to break the piñatas open and spill the sweets inside. The idea behind this custom was to ignore distractions, conquer sin through blind faith, and collect virtue’s blessings.
César was one of the sinners. He was also drunk from the rum punch, twirling and staggering, like a top losing the momentum of its spin, after his friends finished turning him round and round. “Hit it!” He swung, missed, and almost fell. Laughter. “César! You’re losing the way!” He swung and missed again, and dropped to his knees. Then things went wrong. He whipped the blindfold off, stood, and bashed the piñata as if it were a rabid dog. Hard candy and candy bars and peppermints tumbled out. Going down to his knees again, and with a kind of desperation, he began to scoop them up and shove them into his pockets. He looked like a penniless man falling upon found money. “Que le pass a el?” someone said. “El jefe tenido demasiado. Muy borracho.” That came from Moises Ortega. Embarrassed for César, Riordan pulled him to his feet and walked him to a bench before the man lost more of his dignity. César flopped down, bending over as though he was about to throw up. Riordan knelt and spoke softly.
“Okay, César. What gives with you? Qué sucede contigo?”
“Go away. Shut up and go away,” he groaned.
“I’ll look after him.” The voice came from behind the bench. Riordan turned. It was César’s sister-in-law, Lupita. “Maybe he has been thinking about my son. About Hector. He drank too much to stop the thinking.”
Riordan did not say anything. Over by the statue of General Obregón, someone else was taking a swat, the crowd chanting, “Golpearlo, golpearlo, golpearlo; no lo pierda. Si lo pierdes, pierdes el camino.”
“Me, I could drink all the rum and tequila in Mexico and it would not stop me from thinking,” Lupita said. She looked unbearably grave, there in the festive lights. “Go on, Padre Tim. Join the fiesta. I’ll look after him.”
Riordan stood. “Lupita, I know how hard this time must be for—”
“Shhhhhh,” she hissed, placing a finger to her lips. “You have already said too much. You said too much after Mass. Forgive me, but you were wrong, Padre Tim. It wasn’t murder, it was justice. Feliz Navidad.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
He celebrated Midnight Mass, a High Mass attended by a platoon of altar servers and perfumed by incense. “Smells and bells” they had called such ceremonies in the seminary.
Father Hugo presided on Christmas Day, giving Riordan the morning off. Though he could have slept in, he woke at his usual hour—four-thirty—and after Matins, he went into the courtyard for a breath of air and his survey of the heavens. But a winter storm was blowing in from the west; a thick overcast extinguished the stars. Nor, when dawn broke, was the sun visible through the rolling, roiling, pewter-colored clouds.
In need of mild exercise, he paced around, feeling lean and fit; now, more than three weeks into his fast, and despite breaking it several times, he’d lost ten pounds and had found never-used notches in his belt. Gratifying as this was, he looked forward to the care package Lisette had promised to send from an Italian deli she knew in Tucson, where she’d gone to spend the holiday with her son and Pamela. Riordan had placed an order with her: aged provolone, soppressata, roasted red peppers, kalamata olives. He was already thinking of what he could make with them. An antipasto. Bruschetta. Sausage and peppers. Then, as if he’d willed its arrival, he saw through the iron pickets of the courtyard’s gate a large box wrapped in brown paper lying on the ground. It must have been delivered last night. He opened the gate, picked it up—it was quite heavy—and lugged it into the courtyard. Ice cubes rattled inside. His name was scrawled on the top of the box. That was all—his name. No return address, no shipping label. Of course. A delivery service would not have brought the package on Christmas Eve, and if it had been sent all the way from Tucson the ice would have melted by now. It had to be a gift from someone local, although San Patricianos, adhering to a hallowed Mexican tradition, usually did not exchange presents until January 6, the Epiphany and the end of the Christmas cycle.
He removed the outer paper, then the candy-striped gift wrapping, its green ribbon tied in a squashed bow. Beneath it was a Styrofoam chest, with a greeting card taped to the top. His heart stopped when he opened the card and glimpsed a cartoonish version of La Santa Muerte, with a curved line connecting her rictal grin to a speech bubble that read, “Feliz Navidad y próspero Año Nuevo.” Inside the chest, a Santa Claus hat topped by a white tassel stood upright on a bed of ice. He caught a faint but unpleasant odor as pulled out the hat with a quick movement, like a magician plucking a cloth to reveal an astonishing trick. As he did, the object beneath the hat rolled backward in the softening ice. There was a moment of incomprehension, a very brief interval—a couple of seconds at most—before his mind grasped what his eyes saw: the severed head of the parish secretary, Domingo Quiroga.
* * *
It was the Old Priest, shuffling into the courtyard to water his garden, who found him, some two hours later. Seated on the stone bench beside Father Kino’s bust, he was staring at his discovery, its matted hair and shriveled flesh dripping moisture as they defrosted. Riordan had no idea how he had summoned the nerve to remove it and place it on the cooler’s lid. He could not explain why he had not raised an immediate alarm and flown to Delores Quiroga’s side, nor why he was sitting there, transfixed by her husband’s severed head. He was in shock, of
course, utterly numb and almost paralyzed; but there was more to his peculiar behavior. Something was stirring deep in his mind, vague as a mist, some insight or perception, some truth floating just beyond grasp. It seemed that if he looked into Domingo’s damp, dead face long enough, the bluish lips would part and he would speak, as it were, revealing the nature of the insight, the perception, the truth.
The Old Priest, unsure of what his weak eyes beheld—from his position in the courtyard, he could see only the back of the head—approached Riordan with the movements of a stalking hunter. When he stepped around the bench and recognized the object of his pastor’s attention, he nearly fainted. Moving for the first time in a couple of hours, Riordan reached up and caught him before he fell and lowered the old man onto the bench beside him. The Old Priest made an unintelligible sound, an “Ai, ai, ai” before eking out two words: “Dios mío!”
“God has nothing to do with this,” Riordan said.
The Old Priest’s lips flapped silently. The horror exerted its magnetism on him as well—he could not take his eyes off it. “Do … do…” he tried to say.
“Sí, es Domingo,” Riordan said. “I found him—it—here this morning.”
He was amazed to hear himself speaking with such objectivity.
“Police … You must go…” the Old Priest said, recovering somewhat from his own shock.
“I will…” He waved a hand at the church. The choir was singing the “Gloria,” their voices muted by the thick walls. “When Mass is over. I will go to the police then. We don’t want to spoil everyone’s Christmas.”
The two men were silent for a few moments.
“Tell me again that story about Azazel,” Riordan said, out of some hazy notion that the truth he sought to extract from his mind might be hidden within that ancient myth.
“Qué? Qué estas preguntando?”
“Azazel. Tell me again about him.”
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