The Shadow of the Shadow
Page 10
As he retreated, Fermin cursed himself for his carelessness in going out unarmed, but who would have thought that even in the offices of the Peltzer Tire Company... He ran through the waiting room-where Peltzer's secretary was just emerging from the broom closet with her stockings perfectly in place-and burst through the door into Peltzer's office. The first gun shot exploded behind him and the bullet sent splinters flying from Peltzer's mahogany desk. Without taking the time to turn down a Papantla cigar, Fermin ran past the Mexican tire king and threw open the window. "Shit," he thought.
Peltzer's office was on the fourth floor of the Guardiola Building, near the corner of San Juan de Letran. Without hesitating, the poet stuck his leg through the window and edged along the narrow ledge. A light breeze blew in his face. He could hear shouts from the office behind him, Peltzer arguing with the lieutenant and his companion. Fermin smashed his fist through the window in the next office over. Another shot whizzed by him and he crashed in through the window, splinters of glass cutting into his hand, ripping his trousers, and lodging in his hat. The sight of a stranger bursting into his office amidst a shower of broken glass was almost too much for the already high-strung accountant of a firm that specialized in the sale of contraband Remington rifles and sewing machines. The poor man nearly fainted from the shock. Fermin Valencia filed away for later use the poetic image of the exploding glass and ran like a soul pursued by the devil, out of the accountant's office and into the hall. He didn't catch his breath until he was seated in the bar of the Majestic Hotel, gulping down a double Havana brandy and cleaning his wounds with a napkin dipped into his shot glass.
PIOQUINTO MANTEROLA LIMPED over to the sink and lathered his face with a thick coat of shaving cream. His eyes sparkled in the mirror from inside the half circle of white foam. He pulled a German steel razor from the leather kit his father had given him years before, tested it on the hairs of his forearm, and brought the blade to his face.
"You'll be leaving us today, isn't that right, sir?" asked the nun who stood watching him.
"Today or tomorrow, Sister. The doctor said he wanted to take another look at my leg either this afternoon or tomorrow. If everything was all right, I could be on my way."
"That's wonderful. I hope you have a speedy recovery."
"By the way, Sister, do you think you could find someone who might like that box of chocolates there? I've never been much of a chocolate fan myself."
"Now, isn't that kind of you, brother? I know just the person, too. There's a woman in the next room over who's recovering from a bad case of bronchitis and hasn't had any visitors since she arrived."
The journalist watched in the mirror as the nun picked up the large box of chocolates tied up with a green silk ribbon and left the room. Manterola drew the keen steel blade across his cheek.
For the reporter, the few minutes he spent each morning in front of the mirror shaving was the best time of the day for getting his thoughts in order, a time when the world and everything in it took on at least a minimum of cohesion. Not too much, of course, but just enough, the absolutely necessary, the indispensable amount. Although there were days when that was so little that he never managed to get past a hazy fog of vague ideas, opinions, impulses, contradictory emotions, black clouds, irrational depression.
But not today. The reporter was determined to concentrate all his deductive powers on figuring out just what strange bird of prey had been circling around him and his friends.
His eyes sparkled again in the center of the ring of foam climbing up to his eyebrows.
"One," he said in a low voice as if he were praying, "they shoot a trombonist in the middle of a pasodoble. Or was it a march? In his pockets he's got enough jewels to open up a jewelry store. The dead man is Army Sergeant Jose Zevada. The killer is left-handed."
Manterola slid the razor carefully over the scar on his neck. "Two. A man falls out of a window at 23 Humboldt Street two days later. An army colonel named Froilan Zevada..."
Numbers three and four went unsaid as he shaved carefully around his upper lip.
"Five.Three thugs try and fill us full of lead in the street. None of them live long enough to tell who sent them..."
He was busy considering number six when it suddenly came to him again that he was in love, completely and absurdly in love with the violet-eyed widow. This sudden realization ruined his concentration and nearly cost him his life, but the razor slipped harmlessly off his throat.
Love and suicide was an old combination for the journalisthe'd tasted it before, familiar and sweet, undesirable but real. People fall in love and later they kill themselves... so as not to feel so ridiculous when love goes away.
"Cheggidout, cheggidout. Good to see you up and around, old man," said Gonzaga, El Democrata's star illustrator. "Thought you'd still be in bed."
"Gonzaga, what a pleasant surprise," said the inkslinger, silently blessing the man for saving him from his turbulent thoughts.
It had been ten years since anyone had told Gonzaga they were glad to see him, and he stared at the journalist with a look of honest perplexity. He carried his drawing pad in his right hand, and his left arm sagged with the weight of a thirty-pound Smith Corona "portable."
"I, uh...," he said, forgetting his characteristic cheggidout. "They sent me over with a story for you."
Gonzaga set the typewriter down and waited for Manterola to finish shaving. The reporter watched him in the mirror.
"That's the sweatshop mentality for you. They can't even wait for a man to get out of the hospital before they saddle him with more work."
"Cheggidout. Was my idea. Figured you'd like the story. Like it was made for you." Gonzaga opened up his drawing pad and stuck it in front of the reporter's face.
Powerful pencil strokes combined with charcoal shadows to create the image of a lion tamer dressed in the uniform of an imperial Hussar from the previous century, cracking his whip in front of a dozen lions. The tall bars of the cage reached skyward in the background. The lions roared aggressively or bared their claws, while the lion tamer stood grandly with his left hand on his hip next to his holstered revolver.
"Yeah? So what's it all about? Cut the telegraphic act and fill me in.
"The Krone Circus, six p. m., got it? German-Spanish lion tamer. Silverius Werner Canada. Crazy in love with a trapeze artist."
"Female trapeze artist or male trapeze artist? Let's get our facts straight, Gonzaga."
Gonzaga eyed Manterola uneasily.
"Female, kind of a slut."
"There we go. That's a start."
"Tamer goes into cage in the middle of the show..."
"As usual?"
"As usual, but instead of going through with his normal routine, he starts to beat the crap out of the animals until they get so mad they attack him and eat him for dinner."
"Holy... !„
"Cheggidout. Unforgettable love story. Public saw the whole thing, scared out of their wits."
"And why the hell didn't they pull him out of there?"
"Cheggidout. Locked himself in the cage, threw away the key..."
"Pretty efficient. So how'd they get him out in the end?"
"Didn't think to ask. Have to remain unclear."
"What do you mean it'll have to remain unclear? Is he still in there, or what?"
"Cheggidout. Could be. Lions still nibbling over his bones."
"Check it out," mumbled the journalist, not sure whether he should laugh or cry. "Be a good fellow, won't you, and help me put the typewriter on the table over there by the bed. I'm still not a hundred percent with this leg and all."
"Got it," said Gonzaga, lugging the heavy machine over to the bedside table.
"One last favor, Gonzaga. Go out to the reception and ask for a few sheets of paper, will you?"
The illustrator was walking out the door when he collided with the nun rushing back into the room.
"Please, brother, come quick," she shouted, and ran back the way she'd come.
"Look at her, dear God, look at her. I gave her the box of chocolates," wailed the nun, bursting into tears. A woman's body lay on the bed, teeth clenched, eyes bugged out, hands curled in a clawlike grip.
Two hours later the autopsy would reveal that she'd been poisoned by a chocolate bonbon filled with cyanide.
"HEY, YOU KNOW WHAT? We're like a shadow's shadow. Them, the confabulators there in the widow's house, if there's even any confabulation at all, they're only a shadow, indistinct, without any clear objective, at least as far as we know. And us, following them around haphazardly, erratic, like a bunch of wild kids out on a lark, stumbling across something in the darkness, we're the shadow of the shadow. You get it?"
"A rather lyrical assessment of the situation, my dear poet. That's the least I can say," said Verdugo as they dined on Spanish omelettes and chorizo in the Restaurante Abel (one of the five best restaurants in Mexico City, a little less elegant than the Cosmos and the Bach, and a cut above Sanborns and the Regis). They were finishing off their second bottle of a dry Spanish red wine that had come into Veracruz by steamer less than a week ago, "a bit agitated," according to the proprietor's judgment, but the two friends found it excellent. A bitterly dry wine that stained their lips a dark red.
"It's just that I'm convinced that even if we don't do anything at all and just go on living our absurd lives the same as before, they're going to kill us. Sooner or later we've got to go on the offensive."
"Who's they?"
"The shadow. Or whatever it is that they're the shadow of, or another shadow a little less confused than ours."
"Why the rush all of a sudden? Has something happened since your run-in at Peltzer's?"
"Look, how many times do you think they can miss? In this town, if you want someone dead it isn't too long before they get that way. It's time we started taking things seriously."
"I hate to say it, but it does seem like you're right," said the lawyer, nodding, "I suppose it's not enough to simply return fire and pretend like nothing's going on." He sighed.
The poet pulled his whiskers out of his wineglass and stared the lawyer in the face. His friend was prone to certain suicidal tendencies. And if he thought about it just a little bit, he could see the same thing in Manterola and the Chinaman as well. He couldn't hold it against them. Now and again he himself felt a certain nostalgia for death, a yearning for peace deep down inside. All of a sudden he was overcome with the memory of the cavalry charge at Paredon. He felt like a miserable survivor who had lost his chance for glory by not dying along with his comrades in the best cavalry charge in Mexican history. But for him it was always just a passing mood, usually connected to hunger or the flu, not like Verdugo who seemed to live with Marguerite Gauthier's eternal ironic smile fixed across his face, as though suffering from an incurable case of tuberculosis.
"It's time for the shadow's shadow to move into action," said the poet.
"What have you got in mind?"
"I say we take your lottery money and buy ourselves some weapons. If there's one thing I learned from General Villa, it's that whenever you've got a little extra cash on hand you should take advantage of the opportunity to improve your firepower."
The poet's suggestion didn't surprise Verdugo, who understood it fully in both its implications: guns and more Spanish wine. He raised his hand and indicated to the waiter to bring another bottle.
The restaurant was half-empty. It was well past time for lunch and still too early for dinner, but the two friends had come to celebrate with Verdugo's 1,700 pesos in lottery winnings. He'd won in a most curious way. As he was leaving a bordello, he'd accidentally picked up another man's topcoat. He found a lottery ticket in the pocket and the next day discovered he'd won third prize. With the winds of fortune smiling on him so openly, the lawyer had felt obliged to celebrate-he'd found Fermin Valencia sitting in Alameda Park writing an impassioned acrostic dedicated to the screen actress Lupe Velez.
They blissfully started in on their fifth bottle with a feeling of mutual harmony that, on a different occasion, might have seemed like an abuse of confidence. The poet read the lawyer a lengthy poem in open verse he'd submitted to the Milpa Alta Flower Festival poetry contest under the pseudonym Beatrice Flor Lopez, in the hopes of winning a little prize money; and the lawyer was moved to recount in detail the first three chapters of his doctoral thesis in international law: Territorial Waters and Transoceanic Canals. If one is to believe the records of the Mexico City tavern archives-a registry carefully maintained in the memories of bartenders, waiters, maitre d's, and cops on the beat-this was the first and only drunk shared by the two friends since they'd met many years before. Their motives were obscure. What caused the poet Fermin Valencia and the lawyer Verdugo to pass from moderate inebriation to a full-scale binge? Perhaps it was because they'd both reached bottom in their own way, perhaps their sudden and unexpected wealth had somehow carried them over the edge, or maybe it was simply the tension of those strange times. Whatever it was, the effects of the wine were generous and slow, filling them with a teary but peaceful nostalgia, and they felt themselves capable of anything. By six-thirty they had started in on their seventh bottle.
"We need a tank, that's what we need," declared the poet. "A combat vehicle, like the English had on the Somme in '17. With tracks and a big gun on top, all iron and rusty."
"An armored car, a bulletproof Packard like General Pablo Gonzalez."
"For all the good it ever did him."
"It was his own fault. The fool went off to Monterrey without the Packard and that was the end of Pablo Gonzalez."
"So what're we going to do with the Packard?"
"The same thing as with that tank of yours, but without attracting so much attention."
"I don't know," mused the poet, and he hid his head among the empty wine bottles, surprised by the lawyer's suddenly serious stare. "What if they're really the good guys and we're just sticking our noses in where we don't belong like a bunch of nosy bosybidies?"
"That's a novel way of putting it."
"What is?"
"Do you really think they could be the good guys looking the way they do? If Manterola were here, he'd set you straight on that score. This Colonel Gomez looks like the type who'd steal the bottle out of his baby brothers' mouths. Just look at them-the Spic, that crummy little lieutenant, the Frenchman, the hypnotist, the widow..."
"I kind of get the feeling the inkslinger's in love with the widow, you know... And you're kind of hot on your old friend Conchita, aren't you?"
"You surprise me, poet. I never made you out to be the puritanical type. What the hell do we want a tank for, anyway?"
"Did I say something about a tank?" asked Fermin, and he started to recite the verses of a young poet from Veracruz named Maples Arce, whose poems he'd just discovered that very morning:
Verdugo listened attentively to his companion.
"Dammit. I wish I could write like that kid," said the poet.
As they uncorked bottle number nine, they instinctively returned to the story at hand.
"I saw how they killed the guy with the trombone. Let me tell you, it was ugly. There must've been ten thousand people there. Well, maybe a little less, like five thousand, say, listening to the band, and then, bam, they blow the poor guy's brains out. Just like this, bam, blew his brains right out of his head."
"Me, I was at the widow's party. Of course I fell asleep, during the picture I mean. But that crowd there, they're just like the Romans, tanked to the balls and screwed to the walls. I mean it, just like the Romans... And the bullets, my man, the bullets. Hell, my hand still hurts," said Verdugo, flexing his bandaged left hand.
"Well, what about that lieutenant who almost killed me? He had me crawling around the outside of that building like a monkey in a circus. And my face all cut up by the
broken glass. Look," and he pointed to the fading cuts all across his face.
"I just wanted to...," said Verdugo, but he hesitated, thought about it for a minute, and by the time he looked back at the poet he'd forgotten what it was he wanted.
The next day after waking up with his stomach all queasy from the Spanish wine, "a bit too agitated" as the proprietor had said, but with the remainder of his lottery money still in his pocket, the lawyer went out and bought himself a used bulletproof Packard.
CIPRIANO APPROACHED TOMAs in the mill shop and took him by the arm.
"Tomas, you think you could put someone up in your house for a few days? I wouldn't ask you if it wasn't important."
Tomas nodded.
"If he doesn't mind being a little clowded. The place is full up these days."
"What's that? You get married or something?"
"It's a long stoly. Bling him by my place in the molning."
"You know the Rialto Movie House in San Angel? Across the street there's a restaurant run by old Magana's widow, the guy who got killed by scabs at the Carolina. Tomorrow morning at ten-thirty there'll be a guy inside reading Les Miserables. If he's wearing a hat keep your distance, but stick around and follow him when he goes out. Watch out, because he might have picked up a tail. If he's not wearing a hat, then it's safe to go ahead and make the contact."
The supervisor walked by and the two men broke off talking and went back to work.
An hour and a half later Pioquinto Manterola, who'd left the hospital the day before sufficiently shaken up by the episode of the poisoned chocolates, went with his friend the lawyer Verdugo to submit his declaration before chief of special services Nacho Montero at the seventh precinct house. According to the police investigation, the chocolates had been left at the hospital's front desk by a bellboy from the Bristol Hotel, 316 Jesus Maria Street. One out of every three was laced with cyanide. The dead woman had been unlucky enough to bite into a poisoned chocolate the first time around. Each poison bonbon had enough cyanide to kill a horse, and in spite of the fact that the confections were made with almond paste it would have been difficult not to have tasted the poison. But by then, of course, it was too late. "Enemies?" the reporter answered the policeman's question. "Who knows? A man in my profession can't help making a few through the years but it would be hard to say just who they might be."