Osito thumbed through the notes. ‘Grab some avocados, too, if you like.’
‘Ah, seriously?’ I picked out six. ‘I’m definitely coming back here.’
‘Anytime.’ Osito wrapped the avocados for me, then pulled me in for a hug, gave me a kiss on the cheek. ‘Take care of yourself, now, won’t you? Maya says you’ve had a tough bit of news. If you need us to sort something out, you know where to come. Here is your house.’
What I wanted to say was, ‘As soon as I get those names, I will be right here.’
But Maya cut across me. ‘Andrew’s not going to need that. See you soon.’
‘Well, OK.’ He gave her a hug and a kiss, and then we stepped back out into the street, where the teenagers from the quesadilla stand were waiting by our jeep.
One gave us a wary nod and said, ‘We watched your car for you, man.’ He tugged the brim of his cap forward.
‘Ah, thanks, buddy.’ I held out ten pesos. ‘Much appreciated.’
‘Nah, friends of Osito’s, man?’ he said, waving away the coin. ‘They’re always welcome round here.’
Getting into the car, I dropped the avocados in Maya’s lap.
‘Late Christmas present,’ I said, like that weak line might set off the kind of banter we’d already be locked in if nothing was the matter, if Carlos was still here, if I hadn’t just bought a fucking gun.
But Maya just opened the bag, looked inside, frowning a little, and said, ‘This is a lot.’
Passing through the colonia Obrera, down a street of lilac- and turquoise-walled hip-hop clubs shuttered for the day, a mural across one that showed an old-style mariachi serenading a skeleton girl under tapering gold cursive that read AL SON QUE ME TOCAN BAILO, Maya asked, ‘What time you going to the funeral?’
The question went through me like a pin. ‘Wait, what?’
Maya pulled a face like she’d seen a nasty football tackle. ‘Oh. So his mother didn’t say.’
‘My God,’ I said. ‘Like, OK, so she and I, we don’t get on, or whatever –’ I flipped the indicator so hard that it waggled ‘– but this?’
Maya squirmed in the seat, and said, ‘Yeah, well, don’t tell her I told you, but tomorrow at noon, in that big cemetery on Constituyentes.’
‘Huh.’ I cut past a pesero bus that shuddered with a cumbia bassline.
‘She’s upset, yeah? People get strange when they’re upset.’
The purple lights of a European off-licence broke over the windscreen. For the first time in a long time they looked warm to me, inviting.
‘I’ll say,’ I said.
Slowing onto the concourse outside her apartment, Maya patted the bag of avocados, and said, ‘You want to take these?’
‘You don’t want them?’ I said. ‘I thought we could make something.’
Last night’s acid intake was a crack in my sobriety, sure, but it was like the ding gone out of my Aviators – only a big deal if I thought about it. Cracking and hitting the off-licence, though, that’d be like smushing those Aviators underfoot. Staying at Maya’s would have kept me away from that, I knew, but she was ashen tired.
‘Ah, never mind,’ I said. ‘We could both do with a rest.’
‘I don’t think I could eat even one of these,’ she said, looking into the bag. ‘Feels so weird, you know? Moving on with stuff. While Carlos is in a fridge somewhere.’
My hand found her shoulder again. Hers was less bony than his, but I gave her the same squeeze as I’d have given him. ‘Sorry for today. Dragging you out. Last thing you needed.’
Maya lingered with her legs half-in, half-out of the car, rolling a Starbucks cup with her foot. She shrugged. ‘Well, I don’t want to lose both of you, do I?’ She leaned in to hug me goodbye, and said, ‘Yeah, you need that sleep, right enough. I could shoot pool-balls down those pupils. What you do last night?’
‘Reminisced,’ I said. ‘Heavily.’
‘Right,’ she said, with a doubtful look. ‘Well, don’t reminisce too hard then tonight, yeah? Big day tomorrow.’
‘Yeah, I promise,’ I said, then left, my arm around the back of Carlos’ seat same as when he used to sit there, driving home under a towering grey sky.
10
The handful of breakfasts I’d had with Carlos’ mother over the years had been tense, memories that made me shiver as hard as anything I’d seen that week. Needing bodies between me and her, I got to the funeral as late as I could, and arrived to a packed chapel. In the cool marble dimness of the crematorium, down the back, watching other reporters’ cameras flicker over Carlos’ coffin, I basked in the mammal warmth of the crowd. Beside the lectern stood an A2 photo of Carlos framed in orange and purple crêpe paper flowers. The picture was his byline photo: dark sunglasses, black leather jacket, his hair wavy and shoulder-length, and his trademark fish-hook grin.
Carlos’ mother stood before the mic. ‘I had to ask the agency for this picture, you know. Two photographers, and we took hardly any pictures together – probably we were too busy just being together, mother and son.’
You could hear people sobbing in the gaps between Veronica’s words.
Veronica shook her head. ‘My son, the photographer, and this is the only one I have of him. And I had to get it from the papers.’ She laughed gently. ‘This is my lesson from all this. Take pictures of your loved ones while you still can. You never know when there’ll be no more pictures.’ She shifted her posture and blew out a sigh. ‘Mothering Carlos was the best job I ever had – and the toughest, too. He had his beliefs. I had mine. And we spent thirty years of dinners arguing about them. Breakfasts, too, if there was a stone left unturned on his side. Plus, sometimes, he’d duck home at lunchtime to finish a dispute begun earlier.’
A laugh rippled the congregation, fading as her face grew serious.
‘My son brought me so much pride. His daring, his courage, his willingness to take a stand where others fell to their knees,’ she said, her Vermont accent poking holes in the Spanish words.
My eyes moved across the congregation to where a Mater Dolorosa stood in the corner, her face pleading through her black lace veil.
‘I can’t separate my pride from the pain I feel today. Not just because his pain was my pain. Not just because the wounds to his dignity hurt me as much as his loss. No – it’s because the very thing that makes me proud of him – that daring, that tenacity, that courage – has led him no further than here.’
Maya turned in her chair and caught my eye, gave me crease-mouthed smile.
‘My son’s murder,’ said Carlos’ mother, ‘is a case of power learning the mistakes of history with the aim of repeating them.’
That drew applause further up the chapel from a couple of journalists I knew, rising towards the maple rafters, catching echo from the marble, all the way to where I leaned against the wood-panelled back walls.
As the applause faded, Veronica set her jaw and glared at me through the red frames of her glasses.
‘We don’t know who killed my son yet,’ she said. ‘We may never know.’
The air was thick with cloying smells: lilies, mid-range aftershave, shoe-polish, fresh dry-cleaning.
Veronica pointed at the photograph. The smile was back on her face now. ‘But we know what has to happen when the state, or a cartel, or whoever, tries to silence their critics. The people have to pick up the noise where their dead left off.’
The applause started again now, a sound of waves rushing. From the speakers came the green wash of organ chords – some generic sad classical thing. When I took a last quick look over my shoulder the coffin was rolling up along a short conveyor-belt towards the elevator that would take it down to the oven, and I slipped out of there, dodging past a guy in a shirt, tie and bike-shorts, standing on the steps, squinting into the noon glare and the red light of a BBC video-camera.
The tombstones wore black stains like tear-run mascara. I headed for the shade of yew and cypress, because, from there, I’d be able to see all of the chimney
from which Carlos’ smoke would be appearing any second now. At my feet stood a San Judas Tadeo statue, serene in his green robes, a flame quiff above his head, his eyes aimed up at the clouded-out heavens.
‘Easy for you to be chill,’ I told the statue.
The saint eyed my cigarette like he fancied a drag.
Then Carlos’ thread of smoke frayed up from the crematorium, and I slid down the tombstone, knocked over the candles and dry dead roses, and sat in a mess of bird-of-paradise flowers, the base of my skull pressed against the headstone while I waited for a crying jag that wouldn’t come, not even when Carlos’ smoke rose and scattered.
Maybe it was that whole mutant heart thing he and I had shared, the same trait that had made him talk to the bodies he’d photograph, the same trait that had made me pin Julián Gallardo’s face to my noticeboard, and drop acid instead of properly remembering him, and go buy a pistol instead of going home.
Maybe that’s why my eyes stayed dry as his smoke petered down to a pale grey line that the wind erased. Part of me wanted to tell him that I was going to get whoever it was who had put him there, but I suspected he knew anyway.
When there was none of him left, I just loosened my tie and got out of the cemetery before anybody could see me, as a gust blew the smoke over the chapel eaves, greying the backs of my shoes.
11
Friday nights, a big scattering of us foreign correspondents would get together at a yellow-lit cantina in La Condesa. The older hands, the veterans, the superstars, they sat at the head of the table, pucking war stories back and forth from behind a thickening cluster of shot glasses and beer bottles, while, right at their elbows, sat the new hacks, all anxious attention. My first time coming here was when Maya brought me, to celebrate the Carlos interview and talk me up to editors, meaning my seat was at the middle of the table, where the freelancers swapped contacts and tips and brags across a thinner cluster of cheaper drinks.
When I walked in that night, though, it was like someone had pressed pause on the shop-talk and tipsy hand-gestures. After a beat of silence people raised their glasses, nodded their ‘Hello’s, went back to talking with the volume down just a notch. Me, I did the handshake rounds of the table, gave the usual stilted questions – ‘How are you feeling, are you OK, what’s new’ – my usual stilted answers – ‘I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know’ – and took my chair beside Maya.
‘Evening, Reservoir Dogs,’ she said, plucking the sleeve of the suit I’d forgotten to change out of. ‘Thought you’d be at home.’
‘Yeah, well, I needed some background noise.’
On the TV above the table the news was looping footage of the scene outside Carlos’ apartment: UNAM kids laying candles, a couple of local journalists I knew holding up signs that read ‘FUE EL ESTADO’, the head of the Artículo 19 press freedom NGO talking into the microphone.
‘Great choice of background noise,’ said Maya.
‘Yeah, well,’ I said, swirling my glass.
A couple of young kids – boy and a girl, early twenties, American – were whispering and trying not to point at me, so I gave them my darkest scowl.
‘More of these every month,’ I said, loud enough for them to hear. ‘More reporters than English teachers around here, I swear.’
‘Andrew,’ said Maya.
I ignored her. ‘War on drugs, great for the C.V.’
The girl looked furious, the guy looked embarrassed, just like I’d wanted.
‘Oh, they’ll forgive me,’ I said. ‘They’ll want my contacts.’
Maya shook her head.
‘Don’t know how you’re still on the water,’ said Pau from CNN beside me. ‘Given the circumstances.’ She raised her cognac and Coke. ‘To Carlos.’
‘To Carlos.’ We clinked glasses.
Then everyone was doing that – Bloomberg and the Financial Times, the Daily Mail and VICE, the Wall Street Journal and the Dallas Morning News, arms raised above the table like the rafters of a building. People clinked glasses as if they were shaking hands at the end of Mass. The kids I’d dissed, they took a second, but then they joined in, too, and I gave their glasses a knock just to be nice.
After the toast ended a brief hush dropped and a couple of people stole glances at where I was sitting, like I might be about to make a speech or something, but I just watched the bubbles pop in my water and asked Maya if she wanted a cigarette.
‘If it stops you picking fights, yes.’
When we slipped out a couple of friends of mine were leaned up against the wall: Jon, an Iraq War vet turned photographer, and Sadiq, one of the New York Times guys. They offered condolences, cigarettes. I accepted both.
Sadiq clapped me on the back. ‘You OK, brother?’
‘It’s fucked up as fuck,’ said Jon. ‘One of ours.’
‘They’re all one of ours,’ I said, and turned the cigarette between my fingers.
‘Don’t know how you’re keeping it together,’ said Sadiq. ‘Man, in Afghanistan, when the journalists’ bar got shot up that time? Didn’t know what to do.’
‘Ah, sure, what can you do.’ The wheel of my lighter turned, sparking, under my thumb.
All around, the bloody neon thud of Friday night echoed out of the clubs on Calle Tamaulipas. Cop cars prowled the curb while six-year-olds in faded clothes hawked sweets and single cigarettes all along the bar terraces. Buffets of smoke rose up into the humid night.
‘You want another water?’ said Jon. ‘I’m gonna grab a drink.’
‘I’m all right.’
‘Well, don’t get too hedonistic, anyway.’ He cuffed me on the arm as he headed back in the door. ‘Hang in there.’
‘So weird,’ said Maya, ‘Never seen him earnest before.’
‘I’m glad we all were here for that,’ said Sadiq.
Behind us, back inside the cantina, the chatter and laughter was back up at the usual volume. The thronged empties gleamed.
My eyes drifted back towards the jeep. Sadiq gave me another meaty slap on the back without breaking eye-contact with Maya, and that was all I needed.
‘I’m gonna get rolling,’ I said, when I couldn’t resist the pull of the flask any longer. ‘Head’s not really at the races.’
‘Bring it in, bro.’ Sadiq clapped me in a bear hug. ‘See you next week, yeah?’ A gale of laughter came buffeting out through the door as he went back inside.
‘Background noise get too loud?’ said Maya when I went to hug her.
‘Ear-bleeding,’ I said.
‘Well, how about a coffee?’ she said, poking at the step to the cantina with her toe. ‘I don’t know. Today was hard.’
‘It was.’ With my finger I whipped my key ring around in circles. ‘But yeah, let’s do it. I know a place. Let’s do some brainstorming or whatever.’
In the car, driving along Avenida Insurgentes, Maya dropped her window and let her hand ride the buffets of rain-cooled air. Headlights swept past, flaring to white, while an inane house playlist rattled my gun inside the glove compartment.
‘Here we go,’ I said, and parked across the road from the Ángel de la Independencia monument, its tall pillar lit up purple. Shimmers of chrome light flowed along the windscreen. The tarmac shone like oil.
‘What? Where?’
‘Right there.’ I pointed at the 7/11.
‘You sure know how to treat your friends,’ she said.
When I’d picked up the coffee and doughnuts Maya was standing with her laptop propped on the bonnet of my car, the draught of cars flicking her hair. She looked up when she heard me unwrap the doughnuts.
‘Your diet, man,’ she said. ‘It’s a colonic tumour waiting to happen. Or else an ulcer.’
‘I’m trying for twins, actually.’ I offered her half a doughnut.
She wrinkled her nose. ‘No way. The sugar in those, you know what it is?’
‘Aspartame,’ I read from the packet. ‘And?’
‘Aspartame,’ Maya said, opening her laptop and lean
ing it on the jeep bonnet, ‘is science for embalming fluid.’
‘So I’ll have lovely young guts.’ I dunked the doughnut. ‘How is that bad?’ I swiped open my iPad, Julián Gallardo’s skinless face appeared on the screen. The crickets pulsing in the trees grew shrill.
‘That the kid you found?’ said Maya.
‘That he is.’
An elderly jogger nodded to us on his lap of the roundabout. Other than that, we were alone: all the action was happening on Calle Genova a few blocks away, gleeful yawps, yellow blats of banda music.
‘You find anything else about him, then?’ Maya asked.
‘Bits and pieces,’ I said, reopening a bunch of tabs. ‘Like, he’s tagged in a whole lot of pictures from protests, but other than that he’s just another kid. Second-year student at the engineering school.’ I turned the screen to show Maya a picture of Julián with his arm around a man in a cowboy hat and a woman with dyed red hair, the lush stretch of ferns and mandarin trees behind them shadowed by the orange flame of a burner.
‘Sad picture,’ said Maya. She tapped the caption. ‘“Two years since we took this photo”,’ she read ‘“Missing you every day, Dad”.’
‘Shit. I didn’t see that.’
She gave me a backward nod. ‘Anything else?’
‘Just bits,’ I said, opening a local news portal with photos of students and housewives standing shoulder to shoulder, toting placards that read ‘MÉXICO NO SE VENDE’, and oil workers carrying banners and yelling.
‘Nothing special here,’ Maya said, then pinched the screen to zoom in on the placards. ‘Wishy-washy. You see it at every oil protest.’
‘These guys, though.’ I dragged the screen across to the placard that read ‘AJENJO ASESINO’. ‘They’re not popular, from what I could gather.’
‘They do OK in the business pages,’ Maya said, tapping through an image-search of front pages from the past few months, all of them showing a grey-haired man in a suit with a large, well-trimmed moustache, captioned with the name Roberto Zúñiga. She nicked a doughnut.
‘“The architect of Mexico’s second oil miracle?”’ I read. ‘Huh.’
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