Some Rise by Sin

by Philip Caputo

  The phone vibrated in his pocket. “Excuse me,” he said, and sprinted through a side door into the courtyard.

  “Hola. Inspector Bonham? Can you hear me all right?”

  “A little faint, but good enough. What did you want?” Bonham said. He sounded annoyed.

  “I need to know a couple of things, like why you warned César Díaz.”

  “Why would a priest need that kind of information?”

  “Inspector, please. I’m only trying to get at the truth.”

  A short, sarcastic laugh. Even over the phone he could see Bonham’s penetrating eyes boring into him.

  “Padre Tim, you should know by now that the second most dangerous thing in Mexico is knowing the truth. Because if you know it, you’ll do the most dangerous thing, and that’s to speak it.”

  “Would you please tell me.”

  After a brief pause, Bonham said, “I take care of my assets.”

  “César? That’s how you knew he was planning to leave the country? You mean César was—”

  “What do you think? For all practical purposes, he was San Patricio’s chief of police. Valencia doesn’t know I recruited him. He’s got a bigger hard-on for Díaz than he does for you.”

  “If we could talk in person for a few minutes,” Riordan pleaded. “Could you stop by the rectory this afternoon?”

  “I’m in Hermosillo, tying up loose ends. The joint operation is over. The Federal Police are being reassigned.”

  “Valencia’s troops, too?” he asked, with a timorous hope in his voice.

  “They’ll be pulling out in a few days,” Bonham responded.

  Another reason for the captain’s haste, Riordan said to himself. He needs to tie up some loose ends of his own. Then to Bonham, in a tone of stiff formality: “I would appreciate it if you could tell me … did César have anything to do with that ambush?”

  Bonham let out a long, loud breath. “Put it like this: We’re in Mexico. We’ll never know who did it.”

  “But Valencia seems to think … He’s going to frame César, isn’t he?”

  “Listen to me,” Bonham broke in. “If I were you, I would stay out of it and away from Captain Valencia. Like I said, I take care of my assets, right up to when they have to take care of themselves.”

  And the line went dead.

  * * *

  Riordan attempted to do just that—to stay out of it, whatever “it” was—by evicting all thoughts of César and the others and attending, with a kind of furious concentration, to mundane tasks: going over the parish books with Father Hugo (they hadn’t found a replacement for Domingo Quiroga); working out the Mass schedule and who would visit which sick parishioners; reading his breviary. Focusing on these daily affairs required such mental effort that he was exhausted by midday; and yet he could not sleep at the siesta hour. He lay on his bed wide-eyed; then, giving up on rest, he hopped on his bike to run a couple of errands and gas up at the Pemex station. By that time, news of the events of the previous night had reached almost every ear in San Patricio. People at the gas station and in the market were murmuring that the army was preparing some sort of move, arrests were going to be made … César Díaz had fled the country! On his way to El Norte! The rumors must be true—he was a narco. Otherwise, why would he have left so suddenly?

  That was the sole topic of discussion at dinner. Father Hugo, to Riordan’s distress, repeated the slanderous whispers. The guilty man flees when none pursues. Except in this case, someone was in pursuit, and the pursued wasn’t guilty. Couldn’t be guilty. Affecting a sober air, Riordan pointed out that Díaz had been planning to move to the States for some time; he’d merely left early.

  At eight-thirty, after Compline, he retired to his room. Under normal circumstances, this was the hour for an examination of conscience and serene meditation, but on this night, he gazed at his smartphone screen, willing it to ring or to flash a text message. Thirty minutes of this was twenty-nine minutes too long. He removed Ignacio’s business card from his wallet and called the home number. The voice-mail reply infuriated him. “Damnit!” he muttered. “Answer!” He rang off and tried again in a little while, receiving the same recorded message: “No one is available to answer your call. Please leave a message after the tone. For other options…” This time he left his name and number.

  It might be Moises and those others, he reflected as he stripped down to his underwear and went into the bathroom. Maybe the Americans detained them, and César and Marta with them. He banged his knee on the commode—the bathroom had barely enough space to turn around without bumping into something. He brushed his teeth and pissed and got into his pajamas. Certain that sleep would elude him, he shuffled back into the bathroom and swallowed a sleeping pill, wishing he had some of César’s bacanora to wash it down. He dropped into his narrow bed, and with Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations in his lap, sought a haven within himself: Nowhere can man find a quieter or more untroubled retreat than in his own soul … the ease that is but another word for a well-ordered spirit … His spirit was a long way from well-ordered. It would have kept him wide-eyed half the night if not for ten milligrams of Ambien.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Riordan woke up at his usual time—four-thirty—but not with his usual vigor and alertness. The sleeping pill had left him too groggy for his habitual stargazing. Otherwise, he clung to the consoling rituals of his morning routine: wash up, shave, don his scratchy Franciscan robe; sing Lauds in the church with Father Hugo and the Old Priest. At seven-thirty, he said daily Mass for a sparse congregation, then ate breakfast. By nine o’clock, he was in the parish office, occupied with administrative work. Trying to be occupied, that is; his mind was elsewhere, dwelling on Bonham’s inelegant words: He’s got a bigger hard-on for Díaz than he does for you. Riordan grasped the reasons for Valencia’s hostility toward his own person, but the still deeper hatred for César had other sources. The captain had been infected with the same malignancy as the criminals he pursued: a moral rabies, as it were, but of a peculiar kind, in that he didn’t blindly snap and bite at anyone or anything that crossed his path. He singled out his victims. That his suspicions had fallen on César and César’s fellow militiamen was not without logic; yet, the suspicion had grown equal to conviction in the court of Valencia’s mind. It was a logic birthed by an irrational impulse: to make someone pay for the deaths of his troops. Retribution, the curse of Mexico: Blood must compensate blood.

  The cell phone’s ringtone almost made him jump out of his skin. The caller ID read, IGNACIO DIAZ.

  It was Ignacio’s wife, Consuela. She apologized for not returning Riordan’s call last night. She and her husband had been at the border crossing in Nogales, asking the customs agents if they had any record of César’s having entered the U.S., or if he’d been detained. There was no record of any kind, she said. Nor had they heard from him since yesterday afternoon, when he called from Magdalena to say that he was about an hour from the border. They were, naturally, very worried that he’d met with an accident.

  Riordan felt a slight chill.

  “Mrs. Díaz, have you contacted the American consulate?” he asked, feigning calm.

  Her husband was in fact at the consulate, and the people there were asking the Sonoran state police if there had been any traffic incidents.

  “He’s not in any trouble, is he?” she asked.

  What to say? He settled on “I don’t know for sure”—which was true as far as it went—“but I think the consulate should look into that, too.”

  “Oh, my God—”

  “Please, Mrs. Díaz.” It took some effort to keep any note of alarm out of his voice. “I don’t want to cause you any unnecessary worry. I’ll find out what I can down here.”

  This is impossible, he thought, setting the phone on the desk. For conscience’s sake, for the sake of César and Marta and the militiamen yet to be arrested—if they hadn’t been already—he would have to ignore Inspector Bonham’s warning.

  * * *


  He rode his Harley up the Mesa Verde road, taking the turns slowly, uncertain what he would say to Captain Valencia; uncertain, for that matter, that he would be allowed to see him and not sure what could possibly come of it if he was. But he had to try. César, Marta, and the others had been apprehended, somewhere in the sixty miles between Magdalena and the border—of that he was reasonably sure. Reasonably, ha! As if reason had anything to do with what happened in this beautiful, sorrowful, blood-spotted country.

  He rounded the final bend before reaching the crest, where the rock pinnacle soared on the left side of the road and the cliff plummeted on the right, into the waterless Santa Teresa. He was surprised to find that the bloqueo was back up, its orange cones sheering him toward the left. Instead of the usual squad, only two soldiers were manning it today, and when they got out of their SandCat, he recognized the same pair who had accosted him months ago: the squat, powerfully built private and the sergeant with the lupine face. The temperature had shot up twenty degrees since daybreak; in his leather jacket, he felt the heat when he stopped.

  “I’m going to Mesa Verde,” he lied as he stood, left boot on the foot peg, the right on the pavement, the idling bike leaning into him.

  “Shut the engine, get off!” the sergeant ordered.

  “You must recognize me. I have to get to Mesa Verde.”

  “Sure, I recognize you. Shut the damned engine, get off the motorcycle!”

  To underscore the command, he swept his submachine gun back and forth.

  What now? No reasoning with a man with a gun. He did as he’d been told.

  “You are under arrest,” the sergeant barked, pulling from his rear pocket a plastic zip strap.

  Before Riordan could protest, the private seized him by the biceps, in a grip so strong his arm went numb, spun him around, and yanked both arms behind his back. The sergeant cinched his wrists, gave the strap a hard jerk, and shoved him to the roadside, facing the pinnacle.

  “You’re not going to make me lie in the dirt this time?” Riordan said, figuring the least sign of weakness would only excite these two predators. A mistake. The sergeant ripped off his helmet and struck him with it, where his neckbone joined his spine. His head snapped forward, into the cold, fissured rock. As he reeled from the twin blows, the sergeant patted him down, shoulders to ankles, and confiscated his cell phone and wallet.

  “Keep your mouth shut and don’t move one centimeter.”

  His skull pounding front and back, afraid he would topple over, Riordan pressed his sore forehead against the rock. Like a natural air conditioner, it was releasing the chill it had absorbed during the night. The cold, he figured, might keep any swelling down. He was sweating nevertheless, rivulets dripping down his ribs. Behind him, he could hear the sergeant speaking into the SandCat’s radio. Under arrest—they must have been waiting for him! But how…?

  Sometime later—it might have been half an hour—a car approached, but he resisted turning to look at it. He heard a door slam, then voices in undertones: the sergeant’s and Captain Valencia’s. Footfalls on the road, then—

  “Turn around and look at me, priest.”

  He obeyed, galled by his own docility, though it was the only intelligent way to behave. Valencia, in his beige camouflage, maroon beret cocked dashingly to one side, regarded him with a look of benign curiosity, as if he were some odd, harmless animal in a cage.

  “I should thank you; you saved me the trouble of going to look for you,” the captain said.

  He had Riordan’s cell phone in his hand. Without further word, he held it up to Riordan’s face, the screen showing the call log, then produced Ignacio Díaz’s business card. His expression didn’t change.

  “The reason you have been arrested,” he said in neutral tones, “is that yesterday morning you assisted in the attempted escape of a man suspected of murdering four members of the military. You know who that is.”

  Riordan noted the emphasis on “attempted.” He said nothing. His forehead throbbed. His tongue was sticking to the roof of his mouth for lack of saliva.

  “This is Mexico and I am an army officer, in case you have forgotten,” Valencia said. “You do not have a right to remain silent, you do not have a right to a lawyer, you do not have any rights at all. I asked if you know who that is.”

  Riordan cleared his throat and answered, “I didn’t realize it was a question. César Díaz.”

  “Who is also under investigation for narcotics trafficking.”

  “He’s done nothing wrong, and I didn’t assist him in escaping. He wasn’t escaping. He’d planned to move back to the United States. He’s a U.S. citizen, you know.”

  “But first a citizen of Mexico,” Valencia said. “How is it that you know he’s done nothing wrong? How do you come by this information?”

  “It’s ridiculous to think that he’s a narco, or that he’s capable of murdering your soldiers. Or murdering anyone.”

  The captain’s eyebrows arched. “So I am ridiculous?”

  “You know that was not my meaning.”

  “I said he is suspected of murder and narcotics trafficking, then you said it is ridiculous to think that. Which makes me ridiculous.”

  “Lo siento, Capitán,” he said with a slight, obsequious bow. Submit! The average Mexican, the Mexican not born into privilege or power, ingested that lesson with his mother’s milk. But it made Riordan feel painfully small. “My meaning was, if you knew him as well as I do, you would know he’s not a killer or a trafficker.”

  “I am certain that Díaz and I will become better acquainted soon. Then maybe I will form the same judgment as you. But maybe not.”

  “Would you tell me where he is?”

  “Why should his whereabouts concern you? To find out if your assistance was successful?”

  “I did not assist him. He asked my blessing for his journey—”

  Valencia threw his head back in laughter, then cast glances at the two paratroopers. “His blessing. Did you hear that, muchachos? Bless me, Padre, so I can escape!” The soldiers laughed as well, stiffly and artificially, as if in obedience to an order. “You fucking priests and your blessings. Tell me, do you bless the altar boys when you stick your dicks up their asses?”

  Good God! Was all this, at its root, about his violated brother? Or another demonstration of his power? Both?

  “Where he is…” Riordan began. “Not my concern…”

  He couldn’t put a coherent sentence together.

  “Good!” Valencia said. “You got something right! It’s not your concern. I am amazed that you and he would think I would allow him to take off without alerting our people to be on the lookout for him. What stupidity! No, it’s arrogance!”

  “It’s his brother. He’s worried…” Riordan stammered. “His brother is at the American consulate.… The consulate is making inquiries…”

  The captain clenched his teeth, and his gray eyes appeared to push back into his skull, darkening to lead as they did.

  “Making inquiries? That’s what they’re doing?” he shouted, poking a forefinger into Riordan’s chest. “You are telling me that it is I who should be concerned because the Americans are making inquiries? Do you think I give a fuck about that? Do you?”

  The suddenness of this violent response caught Riordan completely flat-footed. He lurched back from the jabbing finger. As swiftly as he’d lost it, Valencia recaptured his self-control; but it wasn’t like the composure of mere seconds ago—more like a leashed rage.

  “Never mind the gringos’ inquiries,” he said in a low voice. “You haven’t answered mine. How did you come by this information that Díaz did nothing wrong? What brings you to this conclusion?”

  Riordan was silent, aware now that he was dealing not only with a man mastered by a morbid obsession but with a psychopath. Say as little as possible, he told himself. Say nothing if you can.

  “I thought so,” said Valencia. “You have no idea how you came to that conclusion. Because it is
a false conclusion. A fucking lie.”

  “He would have told me. I would have known.”

  “Maybe we’re getting somewhere. You mean, he would confess to you his crimes. Which I am sure is what he did.” The captain brushed his upper lip with his fingertips. “You visited Díaz in the hospital not long ago, is that correct?”

  Pointless to inquire how he knew.

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “He asked to see me.”

  “For what purpose?”

  “He had a heart condition, he was going in for an operation—”

  “Yes. Exactly! Such medical procedures can be dangerous, so he wanted to make a confession and clear his conscience. But he didn’t confess that he had missed Mass or had beat his wife or had fucked some whore.”

  Riordan met the captain’s harsh gaze as steadily as he could manage. Heat waves shimmered off the asphalt road. “I can’t tell you what he said. I can’t even tell you if he confessed. I thought this was settled between us.”

  “I don’t recall that we settled anything. You … how to put it?… tendered your resignation. I don’t accept it. You heard his confession in that hospital room. And what did he confess?”

  “I can only tell you what I already have. Díaz never killed anyone.”

  Suddenly, the captain’s expression softened, and his tone grew milder.

  “Look, you can spare your friend a great deal of unpleasantness. I have evidence that will implicate him, and when I show it to him, it is I who will be hearing confessions.”

  “Then what do you need me for?” Riordan cried out.

  “To spare Díaz unpleasantness.”

  “I doubt that anything I might say would spare him.”

  “Consider sparing yourself, then.”

  He had to get out of this, but he couldn’t think how. He could barely think at all. A recollection popped into his mind. Something the inspector had said weeks ago. The name of the game in the Sierra Madre was dominance. And that was the name of this game. Valencia didn’t want information; he wanted to break Riordan to his will, to force him to grovel and beg and say whatever he wanted to hear. Riordan was resolved not to break. In twenty-four hours, he would go before the bishop in another kind of interrogation, and he could not face that man if he surrendered now.