The Right Eye of God

by Bacon Thorn

  So Thomas Navarre became another beloved son of the de la Garzas and the affectionate brother of Raldon. It was only natural that the boys graduated the same year, Thomas with a degree in journalism and a news service job to go to, and Raldon, with his undergraduate degree, to enter medical school.

  Navarre let out a ragged breath. As soon as he could extricate himself from the messy intrigue he was caught up in, he would visit his foster family and grieve with them for their loss.

  Navarre was certain that his friend would never have been so foolhardy as to investigate the remote farm of the veterinarian Rodriguez in person. He had to have been abducted, taken by force, questioned ruthlessly, and subjected to agonizing pain until he talked. A shallow grave had been dug hastily for his body. A strong, scouring wind had blown away his shallow grave cover, and his corpse had been revealed.

  With a renewed sensation of disbelief, Navarre recalled the dirty, hunched, and stinking old Indian with the caul in one eye and the crafty malice in his bronzed face. His thoughts flew back to a feature story he had written a decade earlier about the prevalence of leprosy and mal de pinto in isolated areas of Mexico. The relationship of diseases to witchery had fascinated him. Mal de pinto, he’d learned, was almost never fatal or debilitating, but distinguished its victims with ugly, discoloring scars that branded them as inferior and socially unacceptable. This discrimination was a personal stigma, even after those infected were cured and their achromatic skin blotches bleached white from healing medication. Called pintos blancos, or white pintos, those with vanilla skin spots on their faces and limbs were ostracized because their pigmentation was convincing proof to the uninformed that they were disease carriers and deserved to be shunned. Brujos like the sin eater turned their spotted skin to advantage by tattooing mysterious signs on discolored patches of their faces and arms, claiming they were powerful symbols of pagan evil forces passed down from ancient deities. The brujos convinced the superstitious that they could transform themselves into monsters.

  Navarre was convinced, despite his cynical rejection of magical rituals, curses, and evil spells, that the sinister sin eater was a menace who derived strange powers from his ancestral link to pureblooded indígenas in far-removed, primitive areas unreached by missionaries or any influences of civilization. Stone-aged forebears had passed their occult mysteries and practices through an ancient tribal language that persisted through centuries of divination, inspired by worship of wind, rain, sun, moon, and star signs.

  Navarre did not like to admit that there were people who possessed unfathomable dark energies. They could forecast the future and foretell life and death. But never had he encountered in one distorted human such a condensation of pure evil as in the Zopilote.

  Navarre sat up in his bed, chilled by the memory of the Zopilote’s prediction. Hebrano had chided him for being unnerved by the sin eater’s words, but the priest could not know the strong feeling of reproach that haunted Navarre’s dreams. How could he have explained the sense of blame he carried with him like a cross because he was convinced that somehow he’d failed the woman he loved when she needed him most? He knew his guilt was irrational. He had been helpless, but that excuse did not excuse him for what had happened to her. The nature of her injury was uncertain, but somewhere in his mind, blanked out, was the hidden disclosure of the harm to her. Until he could learn what it was, what he feared it might be, the weakness that robbed him of confidence would endure.

  Narcos’ use of brujos to intimidate the poor and ignorant was not far fetched. Duelos was not the only village to succumb to terror by design. Sorcery, black magic, and murder were the frightening elements of an old story in Mexican history, used to gain political or economic advantage. Navarre was well aware of how deadly the five prominent drug gangs had become in Mexico. A poll released by the Mexico City daily Reforma just before he left New York disclosed that 53 percent of those questioned said the narcos were winning the drug wars. Mounting drug-related murders in just the last year prompted one citizen to put into words the fears of many: “The power of the narcos has surpassed the power of my government.”

  Navarre got to his feet. He was certain he had not seen the last of the Zopilote.

  Stepping to the porcelain sink in the cramped bathroom, he splashed water on his face, dried it with a towel, and decided against a shave. He weighed the idea of taking the Colt with him and rejected it. He shrugged into his jacket and fifteen minutes later, acting on the advice of the hotel owner, entered a small comedor, ate a plain, satisfying meal, and then walked toward the center of the city. It was now slightly after 10:30 p.m., and the night was dark. As he drifted casually, he watched for a cruising taxi, knowing full well that he was going to ask for Gracia Esparza at the Glorieta in the district of the whores. He made no excuse to himself for his decision; he did not weigh it for its potential of harm or exposure of himself. It was something he had to do and it was not debatable or subject to reason. His hope was that Gracia Esparza, if he found her, might remember something of value her father, Tato Hernandez, imparted to her about the accident that troubled him . . .

  Navarre finally flagged a cab and directed the driver to take him to the zona. When the man seemed confused, he pushed a ten-peso note across the front seat and said to the driver in Spanish that he wished to be taken to the Glorieta in Boys’ Town. The driver smirked, and then exclaimed, “Boys’ Town, sí.” He pointed the taxi toward the eastern outskirts of Chihuahua.

  When Navarre paid the driver and stepped out of the cab, he felt safe, protected by the darkness, yet wary of its hidden surprises. He stood and took in the Posada de Carrera, a group of shabby buildings in the barrio of Chihuahua, linked together by a common stone wall with narrow portals that ran the length of an unpaved street. The wall was a repository of crude messages carved into its crumbling exterior by the numberless men who had visited the dark, quiet Indian girls in their short chemises who stood outside their doors or squatted on the sills of the little lighted crib houses, waiting. In each one was a bed, some paper flowers, and a crucifix that could be seen through the open door or through the windows, curtained with faded cotton prints.

  Across the dusty street was a row of superior buildings, the cantinas: drab, squat structures of sun-bleached pink, yellow, violet, peeling and shedding their colors and calcimine and coatings of grime like tired old women shucking their illusions.

  From the cantina marked Glorieta, Thomas Navarre heard a violin and guitar working disharmony in a weak rendition of “La Adelita.” The street was deserted at this early hour except for two empty cabs, their drivers probably gossiping over a drink in one of the cantinas.

  When Navarre entered the cantina, as if by signal, the violin and guitar picked up tempo. The room was rectangular, with a wooden bar running the long length. Several girls were seated at tables placed against a wooden railing that separated the bar area from a small dance floor in the back. There two musicians sat by themselves strumming their instruments with apparent boredom. It was a convenient arrangement whereby couples could leave the dance floor by the rear door that led to private rooms facing a square patio.

  Strings of dingy red, green, and blue Christmas bulbs fastened to the ceiling offered just enough light to give the seated women the mystery of purple, red, and violet shadows. Individual pools of light from small table lamps made yellow circles on the tabletops. The giggling laughter of the women was bold and bawdy.

  Navarre seated himself at the bar, and noted as harmless three other men who sat on stools in bored contemplation of the beer they were drinking. He smiled and shook his head firmly to a girl who sauntered up to him with a swish of skirts. She puckered her lips at him, then wobbled a few steps on her high heels and flashed her behind, naked beneath the short skirt she raised, with a flouncing motion. She earned laughter from the men at the bar and her sisters at the table. Navarre grinned and ordered tequila from the bartender, though he had never developed a taste for the sharp, oily flavor of the drin
k.

  “Perhaps you can help me,” he said to the bartender. “I am looking for a particular woman.” The face of the man was blank. Navarre pushed a fifty-peso note across the bar, and the dark face opened a little, showing crooked teeth. “Her name is Gracia Esparza,” he said. “She has a way with her.”

  The man shrugged and signaled he would leave and find out if she was busy.

  Navarre sat on the wooden barstool and fingered the half-empty shot glass resting in a small spill on the ancient wooden bar top. He had decided to forgo reconnoitering Hebrano’s church until late at night. The longer he waited, he reasoned, the greater the odds were in his favor that the surveillance would be dropped. It had seemed a natural idea to fill in the intervening hours with an interview of Gracia Esparza. But now, sitting in the cantina, which smelled strongly of cheap perfume, tobacco smoke, tequila, and pine-oil germicide, Navarre felt suddenly foolhardy in his determination to talk to the widow of Amparo Esparza. He knew that if she were engaged in rendering her professional services to another man, he might have to wait to see her and that would heighten the risk of his discovery.

  The bartender returned and said to Navarre, “The woman is not busy. It is customary to pay the house in advance for the pleasure of one of the girls, and of course for the drinks.”

  Navarre knew it was not customary, but he put two hundred pesos on the bar.

  “It will be more for all night.”

  Navarre said he would decide later about that. The man shrugged and beckoned to Navarre to follow him. The girl who had approached him at the bar flashed him a pouty look of disappointment as he passed her table.

  The bartender pointed to a door at the far side of the patio, and then walked lazily back to the long bar without a word. Navarre knocked on the door, and a woman appeared. “Come in,” she said. “I am Gracia Esparza.” Her voice was harsh; it did not seem to fit her appearance.

  She was tall for a mestizo, five feet seven or eight inches. Her hair, shiny black and unraveled, fell in two long strands over her breasts. She wore a yellow chemise which dropped just above her knees and she stood very straight, barefooted, with her legs apart, reminding Navarre of the many pretty Mexican girls he had seen. With her stance she could have been a village girl drawing water from a well for a cooking pot, arching gracefully, austerely, or one of the working girls leaving her office in Mexico City, lithe and springy, striding triumphantly. In one hand she held a pink celluloid hairbrush. Her face was light, with a creamy, olive complexion, and her features were almost patrician, or so they seemed from her expression of aloofness. Her brown eyes held Navarre’s with a look of strong suspicion.

  In rapid Spanish, she asked, “Why did you ask for me? I have never seen you before. You don’t need to pay to sleep with a woman. What do you want?”

  Navarre ignored her barrage of questions. “May I sit down?” he asked. A little surprised, she nodded toward an overstuffed chair. All of the furniture in the room, with the exception of the stained, shiny, overstuffed chair, was painted blue, and the curtains that hung on the windows were red. The dingy white walls were bare except for a cheap crucifix, a miniature Jesus crowned and writhing on a little wooden plaque. It hung above a dressing table consisting of two wooden boxes upon which a plank had been nailed, and a pink cloth stretched across as a covering. A small lamp with a fringe of beads hanging like a circular beard from the bottom of the shade threw a dim pool of light on a few bottles and boxes of lotion, cosmetics, and perfume. A tin kitchen stool painted electric blue stood in front of the dresser. The big, ancient brass bedstead took up half the space in the room. The edge of a chamber pot of chipped porcelain with a wooden lid stuck out from one side of the faded bedspread. The upholstered chair upon which Navarre sat was clean, but blotched, probably from dried whiskey spills. A tall floor lamp leaned at an angle in one corner of the room, creating glare and shadows.

  Navarre said, “Father Hebrano told me I would find you here in Chihuahua.”

  The woman’s eyes opened wide and then narrowed, and her lips flattened. “I think you’d better go, hombre. I don’t need messengers from priests.”

  “I’m not his messenger,” Navarre said evenly. “He told me your husband was a borrachón and was killed in his truck in an accident, two years ago.”

  Gracia Esparza stared at Navarre incredulously, alarm growing big in her eyes. Her voice issued from her throat in a shrill whisper. “Why should he tell you anything about me? What business is it of yours? Who are you?” she demanded.

  “A man who can help you if you can be wise and cautious and will listen carefully. Hebrano said you have a child to support and you’re smart, or was he a fool and misjudged you?”

  There was dark anger in the woman’s face now; her eyes glittered with fury. Huskily, her voice a deep, strained whisper containing a surprising erotic viciousness, she lashed out at Navarre, leaning toward him with her fists on her hips so that the deep line between her breasts was a black shadow. “You came here to help me? That’s a laugh. Why should I believe anything you say? You’re after information—what, I don’t know, and why should I give it to you if I did? This is a dangerous place to be asking questions. You don’t look like a fool. You know the rules in places like this: keep your mouth shut and your eyes and ears open and never trust a soul. Just because you bring me Hebrano’s name and his misplaced praise, am I supposed to take you at your word? You’re a fool for coming here. Give me one reason, one solitary reason, why I should trust you?” She straightened up stiffly with her fists still planted hard on her hips, waiting for Navarre to answer.

  He rose to his feet, withdrew his wallet from inside his jacket pocket, and took out a slim sheaf of large-denomination American currency. He walked to the dresser and placed the bills under an empty water glass.

  Gracia Esparza looked at the money curiously, and then returned her eyes steadily to Navarre’s face. “That’s a great deal of money,” she said with surprise and irony. “I’m to believe in your money, is that right? The money will suddenly make me smart and wise and cautious? How much is there, four, maybe five hundred American dollars? My God, that’s a lot of money to prove you are righteous. Father Hebrano would bless you. You think it is that simple, eh? I think you better take your money and go. I don’t want to be indebted to you that much.” Her face was still, shame and longing and fear and pride showing in her shining, dark eyes.

  Navarre knew he had made a mistake. He had started by appealing harshly to her memory of what she had been in Hebrano’s eyes, the priest she rejected out of bitterness, and had insulted the image she had of herself by making a bribe of such dimension that it was cruelly tempting to her, and demeaning.

  “I am sorry,” he said. “There was a woman in the car your husband struck the night he died. She was my wife. Please keep the money for the child.”

  “Wait!” Her eyes were round and large; she reached out and touched him, tentatively brushing his lips with her fingertips, a graceful, forgiving gesture. Her face was softer, lovely and shyly bold, and Navarre could understand now why the priest had said she was beautiful.

  “Why did you go to Hebrano?” she asked in a low voice.

  “To learn something about what happened that night.”

  “About what happened to your wife, is that what you mean?”

  “Yes.”

  “Quickly,” she said, “sit in the chair. I’ll turn off the big light. It will seem more convincing to anyone who may be wondering.” She turned the glaring floor lamp off, and then moved to a small cupboard adjacent to the dresser. From it she removed a bottle and poured whiskey into two glasses. She sat on the bed and gave one of them to Navarre. “It is mescal. I like the sweetness, and it makes a nice fire in the stomach. I remember the night of the accident,” she said in her husky whisper, “the night my father came home and told me about finding a man and a woman on the highway. She was dead. So also was Amparo, whose truck strayed into the wrong lane. My father took the man and the
woman to the doctor Rodriguez. He thought the man might live. He was badly injured, and his head was bloody.

  “My father was a very strict man. With high morals. He found it hard to explain to me that when he came upon the wreck, headlights from a car shone on another man who was bending over the hurt woman in a strange manner.”

  “What did he mean by that?”

  “That’s all he would say.”

  “Who was the man?” Navarre asked.

  “Ah,” Gracia sighed, “it becomes clear. You came to find out his name. Well, it is Pappe, Pappe Nuños. He questioned my father about the injured man and his wife when he learned they had been taken to the veterinarian. My father was not good at hiding his feelings, but he never admitted to Pappe how much he had seen, even though Pappe threatened him. He told my father that if he didn’t forget all about that night something terrible would happen to him. My father promised, but he told me because it was such a burden to him. That is all there is to tell. Why are you interested in the man now?”

  “This Nuños, what does he do?”

  “He is the jefe. Everybody knows that. Jefe de policía.”

  “The chief of police here in Chihuahua?”

  “Sure, he comes here all the time.”

  “Because he owns the place?”

  “I don’t know about that. Many times he comes to visit the girls. And he brings friends here who spend their money wildly. Sometimes he stays and drinks with them; sometimes he goes. He has a big appetite for women.”

  Gracia sipped the sweet mescal in her glass, and then looked at Navarre with a puzzled frown. “I asked you, why are you interested in Pappe?”

  “If I tried to explain, I don’t think you would understand,” he said gently.