‘You may collect your free burger,’ said Carlos, and stole a cigarette from the packet before tossing it back to me. ‘And so, yeah, the cops, the soldiers, they turn the blind eye on the gangs they’d prefer to see win. Massacres, drive-bys, suddenly they’re all copasetic, long as it’s the right gangs doing them.’ He curled his lip. ‘And me, I think that’s bullshit, man. And so I just take pictures of everything, everyone, the shit the army pulls, the shit the locals pull, no matter who I piss off.’ He blew out smoke. ‘Which is why I wind up on my knees, begging, and pleading, and offering those Federales my sister’s ass.’ He shook his head. ‘And I don’t even have a sister.’ He shrugged, looking embarrassed. ‘And I mean, OK, so I didn’t shit myself. Well. Not much. But I think I must have –’ he cackled ‘– shamed them into letting me go, you know?’ He drank some beer. ‘And so they accepted my offer.’
I let my jaw hang slack. ‘Your poor imaginary sister.’
Carlos laughed. ‘Nah, man, just my cameras. Wallet, jeep. Computer. They did this other fucked-up thing, too, right, drove me to the nearest ATM, parked their cars right up by the cameras, not a care in the world, and had me take out my daily limit, then drove me around till after midnight so’s I could fetch them that day’s limit.’ He shook his head. ‘Dump me, then, after, in some shithole barrio. Walk myself to my friend’s house. How I didn’t get mugged was a bigger miracle than the first thing. Friend drops me at this here hotel, and –’ he spread his hands ‘– voilà.’
He took a long, slow pull on his beer and looked out the window, a view of the footbridge, the mountains, and the border’s stark wire lines reflected in his glasses. ‘Nine months,’ he said, ‘watching the debt fatten on my credit card while my city burns two hundred metres away.’
My pen tapped my notebook. ‘And this morning?’
He laughed. ‘Shit, you’re worse than me. Can’t let a thing go.’ He took another of my cigarettes. ‘Nah, so, this is, like, two nights ago. Source calls me. Gang member. Nice guy.’ The bottle sloshed. ‘And so this guy, he asks me how I’ve been. Where I’ve been, too. And so I just spill, right?’
‘Oh, shit.’ My voice sounded hollow.
Carlos did his one-shoulder shrug, but it looked like an electric shock. He said, ‘My guy, he tells me to get my guitar. Come back across the border. Make it look like I got rehearsals. Go walk past the first Starbucks I see.’
‘Which is what you did.’
Carlos nodded slowly, his eyes aimed at nowhere.
‘And boom. There they are,’ he said. ‘The Federales who jumped me.’ He took out his phone and held up a picture of a police-car windscreen frosted with bullet holes. Just below, on the bonnet, lay two Federales, shot to mince.
Carlos circled one of the faces. ‘See? Wrestler beard.’ He swiped shut his phone. ‘My guy shot them. Favour for all the stories I did, I guess.’
‘Nice guy,’ I said, my breath hot in my chest. What I was feeling, you couldn’t call it fear, or want – envy, maybe, or whatever word there is for that feeling when you’re not sure if you want somebody or just want to be them.
‘So now you can go back?’
Carlos huffed out a laugh. ‘Nah, nab, my mother’d be scraping up hot chunks of son from the fucken Avenida de las Américas within, like, ten minutes.’ Carlos stared out at the sky’s frozen orange slush and shook his head. ‘If I could go anywhere? I’d go south. Uruguay. This hotel there, me and my mother, we stayed there when I was a kid. Some fellowship deal she got to Buenos Aires – art thing. She’s into all that, painting, sculpting, video, the whole bit. But the Porteños were all assholes, so we got ourselves a ferry across the bay. Country life, you know? Cycling. Forest walks. The beach. Yeah, that’s where I’d go. Take all my pictures. Print ’em all out, shred ’em, and file them into the surf.’
‘What’s stopping you?’ I leaned over and cracked my second beer.
He scratched his jaw. ‘Doing the photos thing too long, I guess. I’d miss it.’
My arms tensed. ‘You could work from Mexico City. Far from here. Who’d care? I mean, you know, I’m just starting out, articles-wise,’ I said. ‘But we could do some work or whatever, like, together.’
He frowned. ‘But this is for a big paper, though, right?’
‘Uh, yeah. Maya slung me the gig. It’s. Well. It’s my first article.’
Carlos leaned forward for another cigarette. ‘You got others planned?’
‘Oh, yeah,’ I said, and cringed at the new-kid shine in my voice. ‘Tons.’
Carlos poked a loose thread with his toe. ‘And so, Mexico City. You think you could find me a place there?’
‘Think so. A friend and her boyfriend, they’re looking for somewhere new.’ I had electric eels swimming laps in and out between my ribs. ‘Want me to call them?’
He walked to the window. The cigarette between his fingers had burned past the writing. He didn’t notice.
‘Do you want to?’ he said, looking at me.
‘Well, yeah.’ I didn’t even think. I just started tapping on my phone. ‘I’ll say you’re a friend.’
‘Yeah.’ I could feel his eyes on me. ‘Yeah, you tell them that.’
9
The morning after that acid memory, red early, I stood in the cool brown perma-dark of the Capilla de la Inmaculada Concepción, breathing in lilies and busted plumbing.
The only sound was from a man in a cheap suit, shuffling on his knees from one altar to the next, the straps of an old Wilson rucksack hanging slack and frayed from his shoulders. When he arrived at a chapel off the nave, he stopped in front of a statue of Jesus swaddled in purple, bleach-white dust stuck to his bloodied face, a distant look on his face that you might translate as ‘This has gotten out of hand’. Then the guy in the suit crossed his hands across his face like he couldn’t bear to look, murmured a prayer of thanks for his family, his safety, his home.
State I was in, shivering in the post-acid throes, that made me blink back tear-sting and look over to where an older nun whispered prayers as she relaid candles on a brass tray in front of a Pietà. Mary’s upcast tearless eyes and outstretched arms morphed to become Carlos’ mother, Veronica, carrying his body in her arms.
‘Quit shaking,’ I hissed at my hands, ‘people are watching.’
Four pews in front of me knelt a hefty shaven-headed cholo type, a Tupac blackletter chest-piece showing through the scoop of his vest, his shut eyes aimed towards the risen Christ on his wire above the altar, his face a warm gone dream of peace. When the security guy’s shuffling made him sit up they exchanged smiles before lapsing back into their devotions.
Elbows on the pew, my face in my hands, I counted breaths through my fingers until Maya slid in beside me and slung an arm around me.
‘There she is,’ I said, returning the hug.
A shaft of moted light cut through a gap in the church doors.
‘I keep thinking,’ she said, breaking the hug, ‘that he’s going to walk through that door, any second now, giving us both the finger.’ She dabbed a Kleenex at the corners of her eyes and offered me one.
‘Nah, I’m good.’ I stood up on legs whose tendons felt frayed. ‘Shall we?’
Maya adjusted the pristine strap of her JanSport and looked up at me for a second. When she saw that I wasn’t going to stop, she slid out of the pew and followed me to the door.
Outside, the hot draught of a bus hit me full in the face. Even at this hour on a Saturday, the street was busy with mothers toting loads up from the Mercado San Juan, shoeshine boys jogging for change, teenage beggars whose eyes were a stun of paint-thinner.
‘You sleep at all?’ Maya said, as we crossed to where I’d parked outside a tall hotel built of blood-colour tezontle stone.
‘Last time I slept, Carlos was still –’ I swallowed ‘– well, you know.’ My reflection in the bonnet had burned-out zeros for eyes.
‘I should have brought coffee.’ Maya sat into the passenger’s side.
‘Oh, there’s plenty here.’ I swiped a couple of styrofoam cups out of her way.
She tucked her elbows close to her sides. ‘God. How did it end up like this?’ She kicked a cup from under her feet and a brown dribble snaked onto the carpet. ‘I mean, like, I breathe, yeah? And I hear something spill.’
‘Just drink some of it, honestly,’ I said. ‘It’s mostly fresh.’
The jeep’s tyres sizzled through last night’s drench. You could feel the Centro’s collective hangover seeping down out of the soaked grey air.
‘Am I OK to park this up where we’re going?’ I asked.
‘On your own? No,’ said Maya. ‘With me? Yeah.’
Couples from the gay bars and punk clubs and mariachi cantinas off Plaza Garibaldi huddled in around the tamal sellers’ steaming buckets, the bags under their eyes deep enough to carry the whole neighbourhood’s empties.
‘And so this gun guy,’ I said. ‘How come you’re so tight?’
‘He liked the story,’ she said. ‘Said I made him sound like Scarface crossed with Juan Gabriel.’
My tyres crunched over a Bacardi bottle. Mopeds zipped ahead of us, quick as hornets. Orchids nodded before a Saint Jude shrine. Vendors hollered prices from every stall, kids’ bikes, life-size teddy bears, four-foot bongs. Through my open window a voice asked me in rapid English if I wanted weed, coke, ice, whatever. The frantic slam of reggaeton rose from the pink-walled vivienda across the road, mixed in with yells and laughs from the tianguis market workers roping tarps into place. Sudsy water slapped out of buckets. Brushes rasped. Our bumper nudged a couple of slow walkers.
Maya leaned toward the window in her seat. ‘Third fruit shop on the left.’
Beside a lamppost stood a six-foot shrine to Santa Muerte; roses dried to rust in the tequila and cognac bottles at her feet, a worshipper in a dirty vest standing before her, his eyes shut, clasped hands dappled pink from a crack-cook gone awry, lips moving as he put flame to what smelled like White Widow mixed with good tobacco, drawing a chestful of smoke and exhaling his prayer.
Maya cuffed me on the shoulder. ‘Buck up, love. It’s the weekend.’
Hip-hop rippled from a taco-stall where a big cheery kid chopped out carnitas for a couple of worse-for-wear bank-clerk types, his big cleaver thocking out a staccato cross-beat against his stereo’s frantic slam, tipping out halved lemons onto the two guys’ plastic plates with a gag about panochas that made all three of them roar. Under the taco-stand vitrine stood rows of glossy pigs’ ears, steamed brains, thick cables of fried entrails. My stomach flipped fully over.
‘Park here,’ said Maya. ‘This fruit shop here, with the nice sign.’
With the acid still firing my synapses, the sign’s halved pineapples, split mangoes, and bad grin of watermelons all blurred into Julián Gallardo’s lipless face.
Maya checked her phone. ‘He says he’ll be a minute. Let’s go eat, yeah?’
‘Cool.’ The handbrake jerked back with a breaking-neck sound. Fractured hyoid bone, said Teresa’s voice again in my head.
Maya found us a quesadilla stall around the corner from the fruit shop. This side of the street was easier on my head, mellow with chatter, cooking-smoke, the rich gold odour of vegetable oil.
‘They make the Metro free, to keep the traffic down, and the pollution down,’ said the old woman who owned the stall, spooning tinga de pollo onto ovals of dough that she slid into a pan of oil so hot that little drops pinged against the tin. ‘Makes the Metro too full to get on board. And how can I feed my boys if I can’t get on board?’
‘You should go on strike, señora,’ said one of the kids, taking his cap off to adjust his hair.
The TV news above her stall showed a body found in a canal. A girl on a gurney dragged across the screen, her forehead bulged and sallow from the water.
The kids’ quesadillas were ready. They watched, ate, said nothing.
Maya leaned forward, spooned salsa verde onto her plate then dipped the fried end of her quesadilla. ‘You want one?’
The news ticker read ‘Between twenty and thirty bodies have been hauled from the canal.’
‘Nah, I’m good.’ I watched the kids watching us.
‘Couldn’t eat all yesterday,’ she said, frowning at the quesadilla before taking a small bite. ‘Like there was a ball in my stomach.’
‘It’s all right,’ I said, rubbing her shoulder. ‘What’s it you said to me yesterday? Even if you don’t want to, just eat something.’
‘I guess,’ she said.
‘Here,’ I gestured to the vendor. ‘I’ll eat one if you do.’
On the corner, at a red-striped DVD stall, a vendor sat in a blue haze of smoke, his mouth cat-arsed around a joint. One of the leaflets caught the light: three sleek bald athlete types plugging a tiny blonde girl. Apart from the wares, that stall and its red-and-white striped tarp could have been the one where me and Carlos used to buy European arthouse bootlegs to watch on the old brown couch at his apartment. My thoughts were nearly fully back in those days – cigarette smoke knitting in the light through his blinds, drinks in our hand – when Maya held out a can of Coke bought from the vendor.
‘You OK there?’ she said.
‘Just thinking,’ I said, cracking the can open. ‘About this guy Carlos found. Over around those dodgy stalls. What he was doing there, I’ll never know. But he found, like, snuff porno, you know?’
Maya shook her head. ‘He had such lovely friends.’
‘Yeah. But the stall guy, right? He told Carlos that one time, this customer turned up. Stocked up by the fistful. Couldn’t believe his luck. The sickest, most repugnant crap he could ever dream of, all in one place. Takes the DVDs home. Pops the first one on. Unzips, or whatever, I don’t know.’ I swirled the can and took a sip. ‘And what pops up?’
Maya grimaced. ‘Do I want to know?’
I shook my head. ‘Some Adam Sandler shite. Stall guy sold him an armful of duds.’
‘And he didn’t ask for his money back?’
‘What, would you?’ I said. ‘“Excuse me, sir, I paid for DVDs of sex murders, but was not given the DVDs of said sex murders”?’
‘That is exactly what I’d say,’ Maya said. ‘Yes.’ A door opened in the shuttering of the fruit shop and a man wearing a black vest leaned out to give Maya a friendly wave, cords of muscle rippling his arms. With his wizened face and his blond-speedboat hair, he could have been a John Lydon puppet made out of leather.
‘That’s him,’ said Maya, handing our plates to the vendor with a fifty-peso note.
‘Maya, what a miracle,’ said the guy in the vest as we reached the shutter. His voice was cotton-soft. He patted her cheek. ‘Gosh, you look so thin. Is everything all right?’
‘More or less.’ She wavered her hand back and forth in the air. ‘Hey, so, Osito, here’s the guy I told you about, yeah?’
‘Andrew.’ I shook his hand. ‘Thanks for this.’
Osito ran his eyes down me. ‘Where’d you get this one?’ He cuffed me on the shoulder. It was only a tap, but the play-punch knocked me off-balance. ‘Come on in.’
‘Look at these.’ I hefted an avocado that I took from one of the creosote-darkened wood shelves. ‘Absolute units.’
‘Stop by whenever you like.’ Osito lifted a box of apples to the counter. ‘Give me a hand?’ He held an egg box out to me. ‘Put this on the shelf behind you, please.’
When I turned back around, Osito was unwrapping newspaper from a snub-nosed black .38.
‘That’s not the one you sold me,’ Maya said.
‘No, that was a Five-Seven,’ he said. ‘This is a Smith & Wesson Bodyguard. Five shots, light as a feather. Little laser-sight. Switch is on top of the stock.’ A red line caught motes from the dark air.
‘Looks like a water-pistol,’ I said, watching the targeting dot come to rest on a papaya’s fat hip. ‘Is that plastic?’
Osito’s fingernail tinked against the frame. ‘Aluminium. I’ll show you the basics, OK?�
� He pressed a switch behind the cylinder and it dropped out, then handed me the pistol by the stock, the barrel barely clearing my thumb. ‘Double-action, no hammer, so it won’t snag in your pocket.’ An oily smell tacked to my fingers, same as I’d get from the machines in my grandad’s carpentry workshop.
‘Clean, too,’ said Osito. ‘You get caught, serial number leads as far as a Walmart in Texas, six years ago, so you won’t be done for anything but an illegal firearm.’
‘And the penalty for that?’
Osito’s laugh was bright, clear. ‘Let the cop keep the gun.’
The grooved plastic guard was snug in my hand. ‘Lighter than my phone.’
‘Probably more durable, too,’ said Osito. ‘A fourteen-year-old could use it.’
‘I’m sure they do.’ I aimed the laser sight at a photo of the Club América 2010 line-up that hung on the wall. ‘This is so new to me. I only know rifles. Shotguns. For rabbits, pheasants. Things like that.’
‘Same principle,’ said Maya. ‘Point and shoot.’
‘Well. Kind of,’ I said. I’d only seen one person shot in front of me, outside Ensenada, where fishermen were often pressed into service as smugglers. While I was interviewing one of them, a guy sitting at the bar got into an argument with someone else, pulled out his gun, and dropped it right into the lap of the man he was shouting at, then got himself popped in the top of his skull, the blast tipping his eyes from their sockets like two poached eggs.
Osito walked back behind the counter, collected two resealable kilo bags of Café Garat, and opened them. ‘Forty-grain, full metal jacket, you even graze somebody with this, and you’ll break his arm.’
‘Lead-free, too,’ said Maya. ‘For your health.’
‘I don’t want to know how you know that,’ I said. With a flick of my wrist I flipped shut the cylinder of the gun and slid it into my bag with the coffee-bags of bullets. ‘Time to pay you, I think.’ I reached for my wallet.
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