The Shadow of the Shadow

by Paco Ignacio Taibo II

  The poet was returning from the bathroom with a vase full of water for the comatose Dutchman when a faint knock sounded on the door. The poet dropped the vase onto the rug and grabbed his shotgun. "Who's there?" he called out, masking the metallic click as he cocked the twin hammers.

  "Milkman," said a man's voice that was immediately drowned out by the massive double-barreled blast.

  Fermin Valencia aimed high, following the lawyer's advice, although high for him was only about five feet seven inches off the ground. The result was a fifteen-inch hole in the middle of the door, pocked all over with buckshot. He reloaded and crept forward, careful to stay out of line of the smoking hole. Kneeling down, he turned the knob with his left hand and cautiously pulled the door open. A bloody corpse lay on the floor in front of him but he couldn't afford more than a quick glance, as three pistol shots suddenly rang out from the landing, the bullets whizzing by inches from his head. The poet let go with another blast from the shotgun and, without taking time to reload, threw the weapon to one side and drew his Colt. Leaping over the dead man he ran down the stairs, yelling at the top of his lungs and firing away as he went. Another corpse lay hunched up on the stairs between landings. The poet had no time to react. He tripped over the body and tumbled crazily down the stairwell, finally coming to rest against the door of a dentist's office on the floor below. Taking advantage of this involuntary pause, he reloaded the Colt then continued down the stairs, more cautiously this time, until he came out onto the street. There was no one in sight. The poet made a vengeful figure, standing in the doorway in his stocking feet, his hair sticking out in all directions, and a Colt .45 smoking in his fist. Suddenly a car roared into gear. Without hesitating, the poet fired on the accelerating vehicle, perforating its rear window and picking off one of the side mirrors.

  He was left alone in the empty street, one stockinged foot ankle deep in a puddle of rainwater, deafened by the gunfire, his teeth clenched, his throat dry, possessed by a slow shaking that started in his legs, turned into a nervous ache around his kidneys and climbed in a subtle shiver up the back of his neck. He dropped down onto his knees and mumbled under his breath as though he were praying:

  "Fermin, what a man you are. Fermin, what a hell of a tough guy. Fermin, don't shoot anymore, Fermin. Fermin, forgive me."

  All of a sudden he felt someone watching him, and turned his head to see the lawyer Verdugo sitting against the wall a few yards to his left, his head dropped listlessly onto one shoulder, his eyes glazed over, his shirt unbuttoned, and his sleeves rolled up.

  "Verdugo, what's wrong? What've they done to you?" asked the poet in desperation, scrambling hurriedly to his feet.

  When Manterola got back to the newspaper he had two routine assignments waiting for him. One was the story of a Guadalajara bank robbery in which the holdup men's trail led to Mexico City, where the police had run out of clues. The other was the story of a single mother who had turned on the gas and stuck her head in the oven. The two together took him only a couple of hours and he handed in the work before deadline just as the rumbling inside his stomach reminded him he hadn't had a bite to eat all day.

  He tracked down his editor, told him he was going to keep working on the story of the stolen jewels, and got himself out of a few pieces of minor work. It was eight o'clock by the time he left El Dem6crata. He stopped first on Puente de Alvarado for a plate of chilaquiles, then headed over to Guerrero to look up the manager of the Industrial Printworks, having gotten the address from a friend at the paper who used to work there. After talking with the manager for half an hour, he limped his way toward the Majestic Hotel.

  A baseball team was celebrating its latest victory at the bar. There was some small action at the pool tables in the back, and a group of Galician swindlers and cardsharps sat scheming at the strategic table by the door.

  Manterola took his seat at the normal place, joined shortly by Eustaquio with a bottle of Havana brandy and a dirty rag he passed a couple of times over the marble tabletop.

  "My friends haven't been by yet?"

  "Haven't seen hide nor hair of them, no messages, no telephone calls. But that gentleman over there says he wants to talk to you." Manterola followed the bartender's pointing finger and found

  himself contemplating an elegantly dressed officer, his military jacket and pants impeccably pressed, his stripes shining in the dim light. It was the same man he'd known only a week earlier in the form of a comatose hod carrier. The journalist smiled. If Jesus of Nazareth had come back from the dead, why not a Mexico City construction worker? He waved the man over to his table and asked Eustaquio for another glass.

  "Major Martinez, secret service," the man introduced himself. "I'm sorry if I gave you a bit of a start."

  "Not at all, Major. My only regret is that you were unconscious the last time we met. A little bit of conversation would have done me good."

  "My apologies, Manterola. You know, when duty calls..."

  "Who do you work for, Major, if I may be so blunt?"

  "I report directly to the President of the Republic, General Obregon, through his secretary Mr. Alessio Robles."

  The barman set another glass on the table and Manterola poured it full of brandy, but the officer declined with a wave of his finger.

  "You'll have to excuse me. I don't drink when I'm on duty."

  "I'm all ears, Major."

  "I think it's the other way around, Mr. Manterola."

  "What do you want me to tell you?"

  "Everything you know about Colonels Martinez Fierro, Zevada, and Gomez. Everything you know about the Mata Redonda Plan."

  "The what?"

  "Let's start with the colonels."

  "Well, this is the first I've ever heard anything about Martinez Fierro. Zevada is dead, he either fell or got thrown out of a window in the building across from the newspaper. Gomez is chief of the gendarmerie. That about sums it up. If you want any personal opinion, I'd say that Gomez is corrupt, a thief and a murderer."

  "What would you think if I told you that on separate occasions, both Gomez and Martinez Fierro tried to have you killed?"

  "Listen, Major, let's quit beating around the bush. You tell me what you know and I'll see if I can't fit the pieces of my puzzle into the frame you give me."

  "I'm sorry, Mr. Manterola, I can't do that. However, I do have an important message for you: the President of the Republic personally urges you to continue with your investigation. I myself second the president's wishes, and furthermore, I suggest you proceed with great caution.' hat's all I'm at liberty to tell you for the time being. Take this telephone number. If something important happens or if you need my help, don't hesitate to call."

  The officer handed Manterola a card with the number 42-38 written on one side.

  "Is this an Ericsson number or a Mexican number?"

  "Mexican. When they answer, ask for the `red line,"' said the major, getting to his feet.

  Manterola raised the card to his temple as a sort of goodbye, then watched as the man walked out the door. Left alone, he let out a sigh.

  "General Obregon personally urges you... Damn. What kind of a chump does he think I am that he figures he can come along and give me orders just like that?"

  IN THE MIDDLE OF J U N E 19 14 , General Villa ordered the entire Northern Division to advance on Zacatecas, despite General Carranza's objections. The horses rode inside the train cars, and the cavalry rode on top making up songs about how they were going to break the backbone of Huerta's army in Zacatecas.

  Twenty-two thousand men eventually congregated on the outskirts of the city. The Nateras and Zaragoza Brigades, the troops of Aguirre Benavides, the Villa, Urbina, and Morelos brigades, the forces under Maclovio Herrera and Manuel Chao, the artillery under Felipe Angeles. Fermin Valencia wandered around the camps, smelling the food, watching the faces, searching everywhere for signs of the imminent battle, but everything he saw looked like the preparations for a celebration.

  On Jun
e 23, at ten in the morning, the Northern Division's fifty cannons opened fire on the fortified hills surrounding the city. The poet's blood, already infected by the festive atmosphere, started to boil. Holding his cavalry in reserve, changing the location of his artillery, and using strategic infantry assaults, Villa wore down the Federal forces. Loreto fell in only an hour. The bombardment grew in strength. Lead rained from the overcast sky above Zacatecas.

  At five o'clock in the afternoon, the order came for the Villa and Cuauhtemoc brigades to move out. The poet spurred his horse into a trot along with a thousand other Horsemen of the Revolution.

  Little by little they brought their horses to a gallop, the federal artillery tearing holes into their ranks. Invisible machine guns sprayed them with lead. At the poet's side, a horse was hit and its rider tumbled to the ground. The cavalry cut its way through the gunpowder smoke and the dust, leaving the explosions behind. All of a sudden, a shout ran down the line, the first trench opened up dizzily in front of them. They leaped over it howling. The poet gripped the reins between his teeth, dug in his spurs, grabbed his pistols and fired on the fleeing federales. Next to him, one of the horsemen was singing. The first line of federales broke before them, sweeping along the second in their panicked retreat.

  The poet reached the first houses on the edge of Zacatecas and reigned in his horse.

  "Viva Villa, cabrones!" he screamed. At that moment, Fermin Valencia was a happy man.

  "IF YOU DIDN'T SMOKE, it wouldn't be a ploblem, San Vicente," said the Chinaman in the blackness.

  "Hell, I've got plenty of cigs, man. It's just that this is my next to the last match, and I hate to waste it."

  Tomas had removed the crystal from his watch. He could tell by feel they'd been ten hours in that cold damp moldy cellar into which they'd fallen through the trapdoor in the floor above. Once they'd recovered from the fall, they'd used San Vicente's matches to explore their surroundings, but after half an hour they'd given up. All they found was a pair of empty coffins shoved into a corner, and a few old sacks of rotten potatoes. The floor and the walls were dirt and the only way out was through the trapdoor three and a half yards above their heads, which had automatically swung shut behind them. The only way to get up or down was for someone to lower a ladder from the room above.

  Their vigil had been interrupted just once in the last ten hours, when they heard footsteps crossing the floor over their heads. But the hot-tempered Spanish anarchist had cut the matter short, sending a pair of bullets flying up through the floorboards. From the shouts that followed, they could guess that one of San Vicente's bullets had found its target. After that, there was nothing.

  San Vicente had climbed up on top of the two coffins and Tomas in turn had gotten onto his friend's shoulders, from where he could just reach the trapdoor with outstretched hands, but the spring seemed to be locked or jammed somehow from above. All they could do was give up and settle down to wait.

  "What if they want to starve us to death?" asked San Vicente. "How long can you go without eating?"

  "Hell, when you're in good shape and have enough to drink, three weeks maybe. Here, who knows?"

  Neither one of them was much for small talk. Once they'd arrived at the conclusion that there was nothing to do but wait, they hadn't exchanged more than a couple dozen words every hour or so.

  "Listen, Tomas, I've lived pretty hard, I've lived a lot, and I've always known I could die from one day to the next. I never liked it too much... I've dreamed my death plenty of times, you know. There's a lot of different ways to go but, hell, I never thought it could be as stupid as this."

  "It's my fault, San Vicente. I make a pletty lotten Chinaman. This is what happens to me fol not knowing my own people. This is maybe only the fifth time I've been hele in Chinatown in my whole life. I don't like the food, I don't know a damn thing about tongs of tliads. It wasn't so bad back in Tampico, I had a bettel feel fol what was going on. Shit, when it comes light down to it, I can't baldly tell a Chinaman flom a Filipino of a Japanese."

  "Yeah, but you can tell the difference between a comrade and a son of a bitch. A few months back in San Luis Potosi, another Spaniard showed me a postcard of the town where I was born in Asturias. He might as well have shown me a picture of Borneo. The whole idea of countries and borders isn't worth two shits in hell. A man's from wherever he is right now. A man's country is the two square feet he stands on. A little more when they stick you in the ground."

  "How do you think it wolks?"

  "How's what work?"

  "The tlap dool. The hinges'le on this side, on splings. And then thele's a pin that locks in place when the splings swing the dool closed. The leason we couldn't get it open befole is because they've got it locked flom above. But what if we get up on the coffins again and shoot out the hinges? What do you think?"

  "We'll never know unless we try. The only problem is we've only got two matches left. You should have thought of it sooner."

  "Didn't you win a malksmanship contest once in Tampico?"

  "Sure, dammit, but I wasn't any where near so cold back then."

  THE REPORTER FINALLY ARRIVED at Verdugo's apartment around two in the morning after having first tried the poet's apartment, the Chinaman's house in Contreras (which he found empty with the door open and the lights on), the Red Cross, the White Cross, the morgue, and several of the downtown police stations. He finally got the lawyer's address from a young woman of Verdugo's acquaintance whom he ran into at the morgue. She was watching over the body of her father, who'd gone on a binge and died out in the cold. The lawyer's three-story building on Tabasco Street was sunk in darkness, surrounded by vacant lots and houses under construction. The streetlights were only just being installed and the lightless posts stood like grim messengers of civilization. The moon threw a soft pallor onto the street. Manterola ran up the stairs. After his long wait at the Majestic and so many hours of fruitless searching, he was convinced something terrible had happened. By the time he got to the first landing, stabs of pain were shooting up his bad leg.

  "Verdugo!"

  "It's about time, inkslinger," came the poet's voice through the ragged hole in the door.

  The door stood ajar. Manterola groped in the dark for the light switch, flicked it on, and was greeted by a shocking sight. The poet sat red-eyed in an armchair in a large carpeted room, a shotgun gripped in his hands. Verdugo and a man Manterola didn't recognize lay on a bed nearby.

  The rug was stained with a trail of blood that led into the interior of the apartment.

  "I've got two dead men in the bathroom, inkslinger... You have any cigarettes? I already finished off the lawyer's cigars and a pack of cigarettes I got off of one of the corpses."

  Manterola took out a pack of Argentino Ovals and offered one to the poet, who held on to the shotgun with one hand, resting the stock on his thigh. The reporter followed the trail of blood to the bathroom where the two dead men sat bolt upright in the tub. One of them had half his head blown off, the other had two nearly symmetrical bullet holes perforating his chest.

  "It's that Frenchman and the guy who shot at me that day over at Peltzer's. It's the same guy who killed the trombonist. When I saw him at Peltzer's, he was in uniform and I didn't recognize him, but now that I see him with the same hat he was wearing that first day, I'm sure it's him. Besides, he's got his holster on the left side," he heard the poet saying from the other room.

  "And the cops didn't come?"

  "Around here they could rape your mother and broadcast it over a loudspeaker and nobody would notice."

  "What happened to Verdugo? How long've you been here? Who's this other guy?" asked the reporter coming back into the room. He closed his eyes to get rid of the image of the dead man with only half a head.

  "All afternoon and all night. Maybe twelve, fifteen hours by now. Verdugo went out to buy cigarettes around three o'clock. Round about eight these two came knocking at the door, and later on I found the lawyer down on the street. He's ali
ve, but they must have done something to him because all he does is lie there in a cold sweat, shouting all sorts of nonsense. I don't know what to do with him... And the other one's Van Horn, the missing Dutchman, the one who shared a room with the Englishman who didn't commit suicide. He's in a coma. Now and then he says something but none of it makes any sense. There's only one bed so I put them both there together. I mean, the Dutchman's not a buddy of mine or anything, but I just didn't feel right leaving him on the floor... You know something, inkslinger...it's the strangest feeling, I wish my father was here, if he weren't dead I mean, and that he'd take me by the hand, tuck me into bed, give me a glass of water, and tell me a bedtime story. And then I'd go to sleep and sleep and sleep..."

  "I wish I'd been here with you, Fermin," said the reporter.

  "Yeah, me too, Manterola," said the poet, finally letting his head fall back and shutting his eyes.

  The reporter worked without stopping for the rest of the night. In spite of his bad leg, he carried both Verdugo and the Dutchman down to the waiting Packard, helped the poet down, put the two shotguns in the car, and shoved the two dead men into the trunk. Then he went upstairs again and carefully washed all the bloodstains off the floor and rug. Once everyone was safely in the car, he drove along Insurgentes as far as Las Artes, where he turned left. Following the poet's instructions, he made his way through San Rafael to the widow's mansion. It was three-thirty in the morning when he took the bodies out of the trunk and left them on the sidewalk out front. No lights came on in the neighboring houses, there was no sign of movement in the hulking mansion, and they drove off again into the night. They went up Tacubaya to Avenida San Angel, the moon beating softly down on the cornfields on either side. The poet snored in the seat next to Manterola. They passed a streetcar and later on a grocery cart hitched to a burro. Their headlights shone on three solitary figures walking along the side of the road. The reporter fitted his pince- nez over his nose.