Call Him Mine

by Tim MacGabhann

  On my iPad I flipped to a picture of someone at the protest holding a sign that showed Julián Gallardo’s student-card photo above the words ‘WHERE IS HE?’

  ‘Hey, this is something,’ said Maya, reading aloud from a quote in the article I’d sent Dominic: ‘“Poza Rica went from being a field to an oil capital in thirty years. Most of the region hasn’t caught up. It’s war out here, and indigenous mandarin growers are the ones losing”. Think about it.’ She counted on her fingers. ‘A darling of the Mexican oil industry rents fracking gear to multinationals. A bunch of indigenous folks being kicked off their land. A dead kid.’ She grabbed her pinkie. ‘And now Carlos.’

  ‘Run it by me,’ I said, kicking a rat-looted corn-cob from one foot to the other.

  Maya shrugged. ‘You know how it is here. Wherever there’s mineral resources, there’s a shit-ton of crime. Guerrero, you have the gold. San Luís, silver.’

  ‘And Veracruz has oil,’ I said.

  Maya nodded. ‘And it’s the same shit everywhere, right? Government and companies and gangs terrorise people until they let in the miners or the frackers or whoever.’

  In my head I saw Carlos holding up the gun and the cigarettes, telling me how politicians and cops and gangsters had held his entire city to ransom.

  ‘Fuck,’ I said.

  ‘Indeed,’ said Maya, as she studied the smoke ring she had blown.

  My hands were clamped to the side of my head. ‘That brings the state in. And foreign companies. Big story. What proof do we need, do you think?’ I said.

  Maya frowned, tapping her foot. ‘Well, like, death squad stuff. Infiltration. Zetas in uniform. Protests. Crackdowns.’ She waved a hand. ‘All that good stuff.’

  The elderly jogger finished his lap of the roundabout and curved back towards Parque Chapultepec.

  My next kick sent the corn-cob flying into the road. ‘And all that proof died with Carlos.’

  Maya tutted. ‘You really think so?’

  They broke his fingers, Teresa had told me.

  I shrugged. ‘Probably got it out of him, didn’t they?’

  Maya narrowed her eyes. ‘They can’t have gotten all of it, no?’

  Twisted a chair off in him.

  ‘Else you wouldn’t be here,’ said Maya.

  ‘Fuck.’ I pushed back my hair. ‘What they did. He held up under all that.’

  Maya nodded. ‘He must have loved you or some shit.’

  The howl of distant cars reached us. The jogger passed through the pools of yellow cast by the streetlights.

  ‘If he was going to hide something for you,’ said Maya, ‘where would it be?’

  Carlos standing by the foggy highway, twirling his Fidel Castro key ring, his USB stick whipping in circles.

  ‘Not a clue,’ I said, and reached into my jacket pocket for the receipt with Teresa’s number.

  Maya slung her arm around my shoulder. ‘Something’ll come to mind.’

  ‘Maybe.’ I heaved a fake sigh and looked up at the burnished gold angel on its pillar. Bells tolled out there somewhere. ‘Want me to drop you home?’

  ‘Nah.’ Maya tapped on her phone. ‘Like, there’s an Uber literally around the corner.’ A Prius slowed off the roundabout, and she pulled me into a quick hug. ‘Sleep tight, yeah?’

  Before Maya had even shut the door the phone was at my ear. The dial-tone pulsed once.

  ‘Who’s this?’ said Teresa, her voice hovering somewhere between tired and suspicious.

  ‘Hey, yeah, it’s Andrew,’ I said. ‘The journalist – we met at Mineria 45.’

  ‘Ah, right.’ I heard an office chair sinking backwards. ‘Well, can I help?’

  ‘Well, how do I say this?’ I swallowed. ‘I want to get into the apartment.’

  ‘Shouldn’t be a problem. Scene’s been declared open. Cleaner’s going in tomorrow. The landlord wants a new tenant in before the story sticks to the place.’ Her office chair’s wheels rumbled on the floor. ‘But the cleaner’s a good man. I’ll tell him you want – what, exactly? Some memento?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘A jacket.’

  ‘That’s fine,’ she said. ‘I mean, Lucio, the cleaner, he just puts things in bags. Doesn’t go through people’s wardrobes or anything: it all goes in the bag.’

  ‘Yes.’ I sucked a breath through my teeth for effect. ‘God, I’d just be so worried the jacket might be thrown out.’

  ‘That’s understandable,’ she said. ‘He won’t mind. Just be at the scene at –’ I heard the chair creak as she craned backwards ‘– well, let’s say eight o’clock tomorrow, OK? And I’ll talk to him before that. Arrange something. Take care now.’

  ‘Thanks, Teresa,’ I said, but she’d already hung up, leaving me with the smell of rain-wetted tarmac in my lungs and a wind chasing dead jacaranda leaves past my feet.

  12

  The remains of my nails were long bitten away by the following evening, sitting outside Mineria 45, by a doorstep that was already a shrine: spatters of candle-wax, stiff brown wreaths, photos of Carlos that had already started to warp. Someone had chalked the words ‘IT WAS THE STATE’ on the pavement. The yelp of kids playing and the tinny sound of workout music travelled from an outdoor gym class happening in the park one block over. The air was mellow with the odour of warm tortillas, their steam rising towards the window that had once been Carlos’. Soon, all that was left of him would be rinsed from the floor, squashed into bags, and wrestled into a dumpster. Then that square of light would belong to somebody else.

  Car headlights’ halogen cones cut the gloom, and I counted them while ashing into a quarter-empty Oxxo coffee that stood in the passenger door, until finally a black Jetta slowed down to park outside. A tall man got out, wearing a beige raincoat over a black suit and red tie, his black leather shoes shining like his car bonnet didn’t.

  ‘Señor Andrew?’ His accent’s postcode read either north inner-city Mexico City or Estado de México.

  ‘Lucio, how’re you doing?’ I said. ‘Thanks for your help.’

  His crew-cut was neat and grey, his shave clean, and he carried his bodyguard’s physique like he wanted to be smaller, and his handshake was a bodyguard’s too. With a sideways nod towards the building, he took a packet of Montana High-Tars from his pocket, and said, ‘First time at a murder scene?’

  I scuffed the FUE EL ESTADO chalkmarks with the toe of my boot. ‘Not even my first time at this murder scene.’

  His eyes were a timid, steady gleam when I turned towards him. There was something gentle in him, I figured, or perhaps just broken.

  ‘Well, my condolences, then,’ he said. He struck a match, nested the flame, and wiped his fingers on a tissue. ‘Up there, the killers were professional. Two affected rooms, no carpets, no humidity. A lot of tissue, but it’s localised. So, a fast operation.’ His voice was cottony with cigarette smoke. ‘Two hours to clean, I should say.’ His eyes scanned the street, back and forth, again and again, and he took a toothpick from a paper sheath, slid the tip under the pristine half-moons of his nails, chasing dirt-flecks only he could see. He looked at one of the buckled photos on Carlos’ makeshift shrine. ‘It’s a hard thing, grief. But a cleaning can be beautiful. You’ll see,’ he said. Smoke clouded from his mouth, then he chucked his cigarette and popped open the boot of his car. ‘Let me show you what we’ll be using.’

  Inside the car boot, a ventilator mask lay on top of a disposable Hazmat suit beside a metal briefcase with a combination lock, which he clicked open to reveal four bottles with sprayer-heads laid in black foam. ‘I make them.’ He propped a bottle on one end. Petrol-colour liquid sloshed thickly. ‘This one’s for blood.’ He tapped the bottle. ‘Blood is dangerous. Even without the stain, you can still find HIV, tuberculosis, hepatitis live at a scene.’ Lucio propped a second bottle on its end. ‘Different events, different formulas. Where the heart is damaged, you’ll find pericardial fluid.’

  Teresa’s words rang in my head. Twice in the chest. Six impact points.r />
  Lucio propped a third bottle on its end. ‘Because bullets cut through multiple tissues – blood, bone, viscera – you need to clean up multiple residues.’ Now he lifted the fourth bottle. ‘Scenes of torture and rape require formulas for semen, faecal matter …’

  Broke a chair off in him.

  When he saw my face, he cut himself off, scratching the back of his neck, then shut the boot and said, ‘You still want to go inside?’ The ventilator mask hung around his neck, and the Hazmat was balled under his arm.

  All I could do was nod.

  ‘OK. Well, let’s get ready,’ said Lucio, slotting a plastic scraper into one end of the mop handle.

  One after the other he handed me a pair of blue cloth covers for my shoes, a pair of see-through polythene gloves, and a surgical mask on an elastic band.

  ‘Don’t put these on until you’re inside,’ Lucio said, sliding off his jacket and raincoat, loosening his tie, and climbing into his Hazmat. He fumbled for the keys. I took them from him and opened the door.

  My stomach was a nest of rats as we climbed the stairs to Carlos’ door. In the four years he’d lived there, I’d climbed up and down these stairs to greet dealers, to collect pizza, to clasp his light body in my arms when he met me at the door.

  A pram rattled down the stairs above us, the mother and father laughing and talking about the restaurant they were off to. Lucio and I stood back as they passed, and the parents went quiet and looked right through us. The baby in the pram kept up its no-word chirping and craned around in the pram to point at Lucio, who smiled at her. Then Carlos’ door was in front of us for the last time in my life.

  ‘You can put the protection on now,’ said Lucio, setting down his briefcase and shaking out his Hazmat.

  By the time I’d pulled on the shoe-covers and gloves, and slung the surgical mask around my neck, Lucio had zipped himself into his Hazmat, his breath a Darth Vader gargle now through the ventilator mask. He turned the key in the lock, pushed open the door, and reached inside to turn on the light.

  Like I said, death has dozens of smells, and I only know some. This one was sallow and warmish: the carbon dioxide fug given off by bacteria feeding in a closed space.

  You could see where they’d shot him: black dots of coughed-out lung-blood specked the wall and floor, while the head-shot’s comet-trail of brain matter streaked the floor, the legs of his two unmatching chairs, the floor by the sofa.

  The brown leather sofa Carlos had rescued from the street, where we’d sit with our films and our pizzas and our smokes, its springs so worn-out they were comfier than a mattress, that sofa was clad in a hide of blood.

  Carlos, if you get this, they really went to town on your couch.

  A broken-off chair-leg lay in the middle of the stain, its splintered end coated and dark and obscene.

  That’s what made my stomach jerk, and sent me running to the bathroom.

  Only when the vomit came surging up my throat did I remember to get the mask off. Even then, it was just barely in time. For a long time I kneeled there, with my forehead against the rim of the toilet. Rinsing my mouth at the sink should have made things better. But Carlos’ hairs were caught there on the cracked ceramic, and I couldn’t keep from swirling my fingers around them, gathering them up into a little spider-shape that I slid into my pocket. He hadn’t replaced the lid of his VO5 hair wax, either, and so for a second I laid my fingers against the scoop-marks left by his fingers before screwing shut the lid.

  Carlos, if you get this, you’re still a complete slob.

  I spent almost a minute huffing the ghost of his Armani Code shower gel and stale cigarette-smoke from his towel, and the remembered warm jumble of him under me was almost real, almost there.

  From the sitting-room came a deep sound like a zip being pulled. When I walked back out, Lucio had slit open the sofa with a box-cutter, foam wadding from the cut like subcutaneous fat.

  ‘The worst job I ever had,’ he said, peeling away the outer layer of the couch cushion, ‘was in La Del Valle. Eight bodies. Robbery gone wrong.’

  The leather covering slapped to the floor.

  ‘Big house.’

  On the table stood a stack of the seven-peso action-movie DVDs Carlos would pick up from the Calle Jesús Carranza a handful at a time, beside a bag of Red Dot and his scrolled brass hash-pipe. Pebbled rings left by bottles of Dos Equis criss-crossed on the smudged glass. A credit card had left broken chop-marks through white lines.

  ‘In my head I saw what happened,’ said Lucio. ‘People running, falling. Throwing up their hands. You could nearly hear the screams just looking at the stains.’

  In the kitchen, the microwave door was wide open, the dish pitted and ashy where they’d nuked his camera’s memory cards.

  Carlos, if you get this, you are gone, man.

  ‘Here, though?’ Lucio shook his head. ‘Nothing. No self-defence injuries. One blood source. One attempt to escape.’ With the scraper he pointed to a long, dragging hand-print beside a greyish scuff. ‘Looks like he was smashing his phone.’

  Delete this number.

  ‘That’s where they grabbed him in the chokehold.’

  Blood thrummed in my ears.

  Don’t reply!

  ‘And then.’ Lucio shrugged, pointing to the big slick near the chairs. His face was stone.

  Please.

  ‘The stains are so localised,’ said Lucio. ‘Never seen a victim so calm.’

  ‘Huh,’ I said. ‘So, you don’t mind if I go look for something, then, no?’

  Lucio whumped open a yellow plastic biohazard bag, his back turned to me. ‘Go ahead,’ he said. ‘I didn’t see anything.’

  ‘That’s “Yes” enough for me,’ I said, and headed for Carlos’ room, where the WiFi router still blinked green in the corner, and the Venetian blinds were all rucked where they’d slammed his head against the window. Even his bins had been turfed out: Hershey’s wrappers and Frito packets glinted silver on the floor. One of the wardrobe doors lay in two halves, with his Hawaiian shirts, his jeans, his single grey three-piece suit pooled on top.

  Carlos, if you get this, you left mondo ironing to do, man.

  No desk, no bed, just a foam mattress and four pillows reefed open by serrated knives, and no laptop, iPad, phone, or cameras, either – not even his Kindle or e-cigarette, just a bunch of cables tapering out of the sockets like eels.

  From the sitting room came the brief squizz of Lucio’s spray bottle.

  My phone buzzed with a low-battery screen so I crouched by an outlet, slotted in my phone charger, and nothing happened.

  ‘Yeah, you’ve got a dud, right enough.’

  Flicking the safety switch back on and off did nothing, so I pulled the charger from the wall. For a second I mooched around looking for another plug, but then my foot caught Carlos’ Swiss Army knife lying beside the tangle of cables.

  The Swiss Army knife was open.

  At the other end of the hall water was rumbling into a plastic bucket.

  The Phillips-head screwdriver was popped out.

  Lucio glugged a bottle over the floor.

  The screws in the wall-mount, they were the Phillips-head kind.

  Carlos, if you get this, you’re a genius.

  My fingers shook when I started unscrewing the wall-mount, so much so that I had to switch hands more than once, but then the third screw dropped free, the lid of the wall-mount swung open part-way, and a black edge of gaffer-tape showed in the gap. When the fourth screw rattled to the floor, I fumbled inside to feel Carlos’ Fidel Castro key ring taped to the inside, the USB stick swivelling in its sheath to rap my knuckles.

  It’s like Lucio said: A cleaning can be a beautiful thing.

  With Carlos’ leather jacket slung over one shoulder and his key ring in my fist, I made it back out to where Lucio stood gouging his scraper against a crust of blood and hair and shit and fingerprint dust, moisture-lines tracking the dark red, wetted chunks loosening to a brownish goop.
Even through my mask the air had that cat-piss taste of ammonia.

  ‘C’mere, Lucio,’ I said. ‘I think I’ve got what I need.’ Fidel Castro’s square metal beard cut into my hand when I shut my fist.

  Lucio looked up, his ventilator fogged, his Hazmat suit sweated to a dark grey. The broken chair leg protruded from the yellow biohazard bag.

  ‘I appreciate this.’ I slipped off the mask and the shoe covers and the plastic gloves and dumped them in the bag beside the chair leg. ‘Genuinely.’

  He propped the scraper against the wall and gave me a mute thumbs-up. Our gloves squeaked when we shook hands. Then I left him in the smeared mess, slid on the jacket I’d found, and went back downstairs to the jeep, breathing in Carlos’ smell of leather and cigarettes and too much aftershave.

  13

  Outside, the park had fallen quiet. Maya’s Last Online WhatsApp status read 8.54 p.m. Now it was after eleven.

  ‘Maya,’ I said into a voice-note. ‘You up?’

  Two blue ticks. No reply.

  Mineria 45’s heavy brick, barred windows, and bank-safe door all scrolled to the edge of my mirrors and broke off into nowhere.

  ‘Ah, Maya,’ I said into the phone. ‘Be sound. Call me back.’

  Two more blue ticks as I passed the dreary row of blue-lit Chinese restaurants all along Revolución.

  ‘C’mon,’ I said into the phone. ‘Just because I’m not one of your booty-calls.’

  This time she called me back. ‘I’m in my pyjamas, man.’ Her voice was thick with sleep. ‘Watching las putas Gilmore Girls.’

  ‘That’s OK,’ I said. ‘I’m overdressed, too.’

  Her breath huffed static in my ear. ‘No mames. What’s this about?’

  ‘I’m coming from Carlos’ place.’

  Red-lit drops bled across the windscreen.

  ‘No chingues,’ said Maya. ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah. I got in,’ I told her. ‘Found something. Memory stick.’

  Maya said nothing. The tyres’ drone rose to a whine against the blacktop.

  ‘Chin,’ she said at last. ‘Well, you’d better come over, then, yeah?’