Call Him Mine

by Tim MacGabhann

  The fastest way to Maya’s from here was along the forty-foot-high Segundo Piso highway. With the city lights like a spill of protozoa below me, and nothing but cold skyscraper lights all around, it was like driving through the sky.

  ‘Want anything from the Oxxo?’

  ‘I want to say “cigarettes” but it’s healthier if I just steal yours.’

  ‘Absolutely.’ I switched to fifth gear and dropped down onto Universidad.

  Maya must have let security know I was arriving, because, when I pulled on to the concourse of her building, there was this guard wearing a cheap suit over a quarterback’s build, waiting to beckon me past the uplit palms, and onwards to a parking space. When I flashed him a thumbs-up in thanks, he gave me a cheery wave that revealed dental braces and the sleek bulge of a shoulder-holstered pistol. After I parked, he held the door open for me with a warm ‘Good evening’ and an orthodontic perma-smile. On the tablet in his hand I could see he’d been looking at a bunch of cat pictures on Pinterest, and, seeing that I’d seen, he swiped shut the screen to walk me to the lift.

  When the doors pinged open on the fourth floor I stepped through smoke towards Maya’s door, where she was waiting for me, outlined black against the light.

  ‘Que chingados, güey.’ She swatted at the smoke. ‘In the lift?’ She wore a maroon Adidas zip-up, men’s pyjama bottoms, and a deep frown. A ballpoint pen wagged at the corner of her mouth. ‘Couldn’t wait till you got upstairs?’

  The eco-friendly light bulbs in her sitting room were on full blast, a white-edged hum that set my left eyelid twitching.

  ‘Whoa, are you wearing Carlos’ jacket?’ she said, taking a step back from me.

  ‘You don’t have a dimmer-switch, do you?’ The hair I pushed back from my forehead was tailed with sweat and grease.

  Maya dropped the lights to sepia. ‘Better?’

  ‘Little more.’

  Shaking her head, she turned the room’s sconce-lights down to the mellow red of a darkroom. ‘Have a seat, yeah?’ Maya handed me a glass of water and crossed to the white L-shaped couch, where she pulled a blue and purple floral Chiapaneco blanket over herself. Floor-to-ceiling windows looked out over the empty avenue.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said, running my hand over the butcher’s-block kitchen counter. ‘This place is all right.’

  ‘Feel like I’m living in a lab.’ From the maple coffee-table her laptop cast a clamshell of glow over her face. ‘Haven’t really unpacked.’ She clicked her tongue and lifted her laptop onto her knees. ‘Old place was home. This is just a place.’

  One month before, Maya had published a story about a narco safe-house operating in a hip neighbourhood full of clubs and Americans. The day after, some guy had broken into her old place, left the shower on for hours, destroyed her ornamental vegan soaps, emptied her Moroccan hair oil down the toilet, and robbed not a thing. The following week, leaving her gym, some guy had pulled a gun on her beside her car. The headlights of a passing car had scared him away. Next day, she’d moved house.

  ‘You cold?’ she said.

  ‘Hm?’ I’d been hugging my shoulders, pressing myself deeper into Carlos’ jacket. ‘Oh. Yeah. Wee bit.’

  ‘Your fault for weighing less than your own laptop.’ Maya drew back the blanket and dialled down the brightness setting on her screen. ‘Get under here.’ She shut an open tab showing a pirate streaming site.

  ‘Glad to see I’ve improved your evening.’

  ‘Dramatically. Plug that USB in, yeah?’

  When I did, a folder popped up on the screen: I WOULD GIVE IT TO ANDY’S MOTHER.

  ‘Fuck’s sake, Carlos,’ I said.

  ‘Let’s see what dirt he’s got on your mother, then,’ said Maya, then pushed up her glasses and clicked open a photo of students and oil-workers, beat-down-looking field labourers, women and school kids, all gathered into one protest march, Mexican tricolours waving, their red and green sections dyed black, placard held up that read ‘WHERE’S MY MONEY?’, ‘I CAN’T BREATHE’, ‘POZA RICA SE ESCRIBE CON “ZETA”’, ‘AJENJO = ASSASSINS’, photographs of Julián Gallardo’s I.D. photo. You could almost hear the crackle of loud-hailers, taste the smog on your tongue.

  ‘That’s a good one,’ said Maya.

  Carlos, if you get this, you’re still the best.

  In the next picture riot cops outnumbered protesters about six to one, their pulled-down visors and the sectioned shoulder plates of their armour throwing back the hot glare. A fleet of black Dodge RAMs stood parked among the police cars. A big guy with a long beard like a heavy-metal bass player leaned against the bonnet of one, his arms folded, wearing a black T-shirt and desert camouflage pants. Next came shots of heavyset men just in front of the riot shields, with no uniform, no ski-masks: just crew cuts, machetes, the deadest of eyes.

  ‘Oh, shit,’ said Maya. ‘What was it we said last night? About all the stuff you needed? Death-squad stuff? Infiltration?’ She clicked through shots of those men in plainclothes running, the protest line buckling, students running, people falling to kicks, punches, coshes, swinging blades. ‘Because Carlos has pretty much got it all here, yeah? You’ve got your crackdowns,’ she said, and flipped from a pool of blood to a photo showing an arm in a policeman’s uniform aiming a bloodied machete right at the camera. ‘And this here, that machete – that’s not police shit. That’s narco shit. And the police are just letting him go right ahead and do it, in their clothes.’

  The next image was zoomed out to show the guy holding the machete: light-skinned, balding, enormous. Carlos’ photo had caught black drips of blood falling from the machete blade. A kid lay at his feet, clutching a dark stain on her jeans, right above her opened leg. His mouth was open in a yell of anger, and you could see silver caps on his incisors.

  Maya lifted her hand to her mouth. ‘You know who that is?’ She did a couple Google searches and opened a tab: a Veracruz State police mug shot, silver-capped teeth bared in a grin, and a name beneath that read Abel Carranza, ‘Dientes de Tiburón’ – ‘Sharktooth’ in English.

  ‘Huh.’ I tapped a cigarette against the packet, said nothing about where I knew the face on the screen from.

  Maya watched the cigarette.

  ‘I’m not sure whether to offer or not.’

  ‘Va, pues, chingue su madre.’ She took a smoke and opened the next photo. Here, Sharktooth was dragging the girl with the opened leg behind the police line and barking an order at the riot police.

  Maya shook her head and stooped to the lighter. ‘So Carlos snapped one of Mexico’s most violent men in a Veracruz State police uniform.’

  ‘And ordering cops around,’ I said.

  ‘No wonder they killed him,’ Maya said. ‘It makes the company look bad, if they’ve got cops and narcos working together for them.’

  My eyes were on the kid’s face. Through the long hair fallen across her face you could see she was crying.

  ‘You’re shaking again,’ said Maya, rubbing my shoulder.

  The corner of my left eye jumped. ‘You ever really want to sleep, and, like, also not want to ever sleep again?’ I said, because I didn’t want to tell her that Sharktooth was the guy I’d seen outside Carlos’ place.

  Maya made a crease of her mouth. ‘Every night since moving here.’ She spread her hands. ‘Get you some camomile tea?’

  ‘OK.’ She squeezed my shoulder and crossed the kitchen. ‘You go see what else he’s got on that stick.’

  ‘Some good stuff in there,’ I said, clicking open four pages of news clippings about oil thefts, murders, kidnappings. ‘Lots by this Francisco Escárcega guy.’

  ‘He’s good.’ Maya put the kettle on. ‘Email him.’

  It always feels like you’re imposing, when you contact people out of the blue like that, but whatever, I tapped out a draft, introducing myself as someone who’d been to Poza Rica before and was looking to learn more. As I was pressing ‘Send’, Maya handed me a cup and slid under the blanket.

  �
��It was really fucked up in the apartment,’ I said, my hands wrapped around my cup. ‘I mean, we’ve both seen things. But – well, you know.’

  ‘Never someone who mattered.’ She put her sleeve to the corner of one eye. ‘Fuck, man. Fuck these people.’

  ‘I know.’ I gave her another hug, but a quick one, because the smell in Carlos’ apartment wouldn’t leave my nose, and I was afraid it was tacking to me all over, that she’d breathe in all the stuff I’d had to see there.

  She shook her head, pulling the laptop across. ‘And there’s so many of those bastards, too.’ Her voice sounded clotted. ‘That’s the worst of it.’ She opened a link for the Veracruz Attorney General’s most-wanted list, a four-page spider diagram whose top photo showed a slim oval face captioned with the name Evelio Martínez and the nickname ‘El Puccini’.

  ‘This is the guy who runs Poza Rica,’ she said, ‘and these –’ she ran her finger down the next row ‘– are the guys who help him do it. Some police who’ve switched sides, and some lawyers, accountants, union officials, guys like that.’

  The names and photos blurred together as she scrolled down: a beefy, unshaven, black-haired guy, followed by a guy called ‘El Mangueras’ – pudgy, curly-haired, dark-skinned – and the tall, white guy with the beard who I’d seen leaning against the police car in one of Carlos’ pictures. Then, last of all, with his silver grin and thinning hair, the guy I’d seen outside Carlos’ apartment – Sharktooth.

  Maya zipped all the way back up to El Puccini and tapped the screen. ‘But this boss, yeah? He’s the worst. Take a look.’ She opened an old Los Angeles Times article capped by a picture of a soccer stadium, a leaden tropical sky swagging low above row after row of soldiers wearing jungle camo and red berets, lowering rifles to the grass while red flares clouded them with smoke. A slight figure stood on the edge, eyes locked on a weedy guy with a moustache standing on a podium to the left of the shot.

  The guy with the moustache was Alfredo Cristiani, former president of El Salvador. The guy watching him was El Puccini.

  ‘Maya.’ I raised my hand for a high-five.

  ‘It’s just the Internet, man. This article has been around for ages.’ She fluffed her bedhead and tapped a photo of the huge portrait hanging from a tall flagpole behind the podium. ‘Recognise this guy?’

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘What about that logo?’

  Clustered around that tall flagpole stood smaller poles hung with red banners, each one emblazoned with a skull pierced by a lightning bolt.

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Jesus. What do they teach you in Europe?’ She shook her head. ‘This officer, he’s the head of the Atlacatl Battalion, a unit trained by the CIA at Fort Bragg. Used to travel the jungle in El Salvador, murdering rebels, poor people, indigenous people, quote-unquote communists.’

  Grainy pictures from documentaries flickered in my head: men silhouetted against flaming jungle, kids stumbling over rubble, corpses stacked in army lorries.

  ‘The death squads.’ My eyes moved back to El Puccini shrouded in the red smoke of flares. ‘Where our man got his start. And now he’s working for cops and oil companies in Veracruz.’

  Maya nodded. ‘This ceremony was after the ’92 peace accords, when the unit was disbanded.’

  ‘“‘You served a transcendental mission,’ said President Cristiani.”’ I read aloud. ‘“‘You fought with mysticism and discipline, courage and valour’.” Jesus.’

  ‘Best bit’s here, though.’ She highlighted a chunk of text.

  ‘“‘After eight years, it’s a little sad,’ said Evelio Martínez, 26, shortly before relinquishing his weapon. ‘But I’m satisfied to have served my country.’”’ The teacup had gone cool in my grip. ‘Fuck. Eight years. He’s been at this since he was a teenager.’ I read on. ‘“‘Afterwards, I hope to serve my country another way’.”’

  ‘That’s not what happened.’ She scrolled down the text.

  ‘Did he join the cops?’

  Maya wagged a finger. ‘No,’ she said. ‘He was one of the “good guys”.’ She added air-quotes.

  I snorted.

  ‘No, like, I mean it.’ She opened a link to a small local item from a Salvadoran daily. ‘People in a unit like that tend to wind up in ministry positions, police chief roles, army roles after that. But this guy?’ She shrugged. ‘Nothing for years. Next time he pops up, it’s 2001. He’s working as a bus driver. Gets himself shot by a street gang. After that, nothing until 2008, when he’s in Guatemala, and he goes by El Puccini.’

  The news item was from Siglo 21, about a vigilante group called Sangre Azul, ‘responsible for the deaths of thirty suspected members of the Mara Salvatrucha gang over the course of just three months.’

  ‘Back in the death squads again.’

  ‘But fighting against the baddies,’ said Maya. ‘Well. Like, if you go by all the right-wing memes on Salvadoran Facebook. He’s sort of a Robin Hood figure.’ She opened another tab. ‘They even have a Twitter site for him. Fake, obviously, but it links to this weird fan site.’

  The website was pretty ugly, white script on a jungle-camo background complete with silhouettes of soldiers in fatigues, and Puccini’s army photo up top, under tabs that read BIO, AWARDS (MILITARY AND CIVIL), and PHOTOS. A yellow blat of martial trumpets and drums autoplayed in the background when the whole lot had finished loading.

  ‘God,’ I said. ‘People really fucking suck, you know that?’

  ‘Weird Central American fascists with Web 1.0 skills do, certainly, yeah,’ said Maya. ‘He killed a lot of addicts and homeless people around that neck of the woods – “social-cleaning” type deal.’ She scrolled to a story from El Faro. ‘Anyway, look, for a couple of years he pops up around Guatemala and Honduras doing the same thing. Name’s misspelled sometimes, but it’s him: Salvadoran, veteran, vigilante.’

  ‘This is fucking brilliant, Maya.’

  ‘It’s just copy-paste, honestly. Most people know this stuff anyway.’ She clicked open a photo that showed a muddy square lit by the lights of a small white church. The photo accompanied some text from the Control Risks security analysis consultancy. ‘Anyway, here’s where he stops pretending to be one of the good guys and joins the narcos.’

  Outside the church, right on the step, a severed head rested on a circle of dried blood, the dead mouth hanging open as if in a martyr’s ecstasy shiver.

  ‘And so, you know, there’s big crossover with the Central American guys and that Gulf side of southern Mexico, yeah?’ she said, highlighting text from the Control Risks report. ‘Puccini winds up in Huimanguillo, Tabasco, in 2010, working for the kind of people he’s been killing for, like, thirty years or whatever. Takes over a section of Highway 180, transporting kids, drugs, organs, you name it.’ She tapped the screen. ‘And this severed head, yeah? It belonged to some Gulf cartel bigshot.’ Maya switched tabs to an article from La Jornada de Veracruz from March 2011. ‘And so that was like his audition, or whatever. Zetas liked what they saw and brought him in.’

  I read aloud from the next article she’d brought up: ‘“Late last night, a fleet of black Dodge RAMs roared through the streets of Poza Rica. A nightclub in the Zona Rosa was shot at, injuring four. Seven bodies were recovered outside an auto-repair shop on the outskirts of the city, bearing signs of torture, and accompanied by a narcomanta announcing an alliance between Los Cocodrilos and Los Zetas”.’

  Maya scrolled back up the page to El Puccini offering his rifle forwards with the rest of his battalion, red smoke misting his face. ‘What a creep,’ she said.

  ‘I need to get down there.’ I sat back hard. My tea splashed the couch. ‘Oops.’

  ‘Don’t worry.’ She mopped the spill with her napkin. ‘It’s waterproof. I also hate it.’

  The adrenaline that had carried me through the day was sputtering out now, my blinks getting longer and longer. My eyes shut on pictures of Carlos’ trashed apartment, and, when I tried to remember past those pictures, back
to how it was before, I couldn’t: all I could see was Lucio chucking the leather covering of the couch like he’d just skinned a fish.

  Maya’s hand was cool on my forehead. ‘Want a break?’

  I cracked open an eye. ‘Lash on more Gilmore Girls?’

  ‘I didn’t know you watched anything that wasn’t news,’ said Maya.

  ‘I have a rich interior life.’ I grabbed a cushion to prop behind my sore back.

  Maya huffed out a disgusted noise. But she pressed play again anyway.

  ‘Thanks,’ I yawned.

  Swap the genteel dialogue for action-movie explosions, keep the body-heat beside me under a blanket, and it could have been Carlos’ couch I was falling asleep on, could have been his movies I was falling asleep during, making me thankful for the dark, thankful for the laptop voices fraying into memories of Carlos.

  14

  Hard to say what set off that night’s bad dream, but it ended when I thrashed myself off Maya’s couch and onto the sitting-room floor, her purple Chiapaneco blanket still over my head, my pulse whumping in my skull, the breath quick in my lungs. In the dream, that blanket had been a plastic bag taped over my head by a guy with thinning chestnut hair and ‘Z’s printed on his teeth.

  Whump, whump went the air, even though my heart was slowing down.

  My breath sucked the wool nap of the blanket against my lips. I shook a cigarette from the box on the table to kill the dungy taste in my mouth.

  Whump, whump went the air, cutting in and out against the sound of Maya’s shower.

  The whumping wasn’t coming from my chest, so I whipped off the blanket, saw the palm trees tossing back and forth, and got up to stand by the floor-to-ceiling window, barefoot, pantless, a cigarette dangling from my mouth, as a police helicopter veered low over the concourse outside Maya’s building, rotors shuddering the air, the tinted-glass cockpit flinging back the high sun, the front light fixed on me, beady and insectile and red.

  Whump, whump. Any second now the loud-hailer would spit static-garbled noise at me, order me to my knees with my hands behind my head.