by Bacon Thorn
At 4:01 p.m., the final strains of “La Virgen de la Macarena” faded away and the high brassy notes of a trumpet sounded, announcing the paseo. In the hot darkness under the arch of the cuadrilla gate, Cid Campeador y Camaro dropped a cork-tipped Filtron cigarette he was smoking and crushed it under the heel of his slipper. His suit of lights was dazzling white with silver sequins, soft brilliant spangles, and small bits of mirror glass sewn in intricate overlapping patterns, resembling light-collecting iridescent fish scales rippling upon a background of stiff, shiny silk. His jacket was studded with hundreds of tiny, lustrous pearls. Except for his black montera, his costume, from his tie to the sash around his slim waist to his stockings and soft slippers, was stark white. Some of his detractors swore that he wore the traje de luces of white to bedazzle the bulls from the reflected sun. This was nonsense.
He carefully dusted his face with fine rice powder before every corrida. With his arched black brows, black pigtailed hair tied with a satin bow, wide, thin mouth, like a wound slashed across a pale mask, the hollow face he offered was gaunt, austere, and tragic.
The last goring had occurred five years earlier when the horn of the bull split his shirt and jacket to shreds and gouged his chest. He had been doctored, changed to a white suit, and then returned to the arena shaken and pale with fear. When he left the bloody sands that day, splotched from head to toe with the bull’s living juice and his own, he had felt purified, cleansed of the physical fear of dying and knowing that white was the emblem of his triumph, the blazing spiritual armor of light over darkness, of life persisting over the thundering horns of black death. He was never to wear any color but white again. Later, he adorned his face with makeup as the final symbol of the living Ghost Who Dances. The fear had always returned, but it was manageable beneath his disguise.
The bugle ended suddenly and Cid Campeador stepped into the sunshine. He twirled his cape elegantly and it flowed and twinkled. He walked like a shimmering chandelier with his mask of white reflecting the bitter, bright sun.
-
Chapter XX
-
It was at six thirty in the afternoon when Peñas, standing next to Navarre in the callejón, took a call on his radio that confirmed to his satisfaction Nuños’s presence in the plaza.
The agent at the other end of the line telephoned to give his final report on the verdict of the coroner who examined the ruined body of Leon Abruzza. Earlier, the agent and his partner had traced Abruzza’s movements to the Hotel El Presidente, where he disappeared. There was no way in the world to determine what guest he had come to visit.
When the body of a man identified as Roberto Blas Garcia was discovered at five o’clock Saturday morning, an apparent suicide, the investigative instincts of the federal agents started pinging. With Peñas’s blessing, they escorted Maria Abruzza to the city morgue, where she screamed in anguish and fainted when the stilled face of the man who proved to be her husband was revealed.
On the ride back to her home, accompanied by the agents, the grieving widow repeated over and over, “He couldn’t have jumped. Heights terrified him. He couldn’t have jumped. He couldn’t.”
Information about Don Ortiz Arrango, the man who had occupied the hotel suite from which it was decided Abruzza fell, revealed only that he was a resident of Rio de Janeiro and there the trail ended, except for the general description of Don Arrango, which fit Nuños’s heavy bulk to a tee.
The clincher for Peñas was the medical examiner’s verdict, which described a contusion on the dead man’s skull. It was not associated with the other injuries to the body, since the falling man landed on his left side and injuries to the head were slight. The verdict: a blow to Abruzza’s head before he was thrown from the balcony.
Turning to Navarre, Peñas said, “I’ll tell you, Thomas, Nuños and Don Arrango are one and the same. And that tells us he killed Abruzza to shut him up before he could talk, and it means he’s here, in the plaza. But where, damn it, where?”
Lazlo Peñas was still irritated with the conundrum of Nuños and tense with his mounting feeling of pending personal violence when he radioed from his position in the callejón for a status report from Colorado. Colorado’s response heightened his sense of frustration, his belief that somehow he had missed something in his planning that was crucial.
When Colorado answered the call, he said, “Jefe, things are quiet as a grave back here. Nothing suspicious. I don’t know what to think.”
Peñas bit his lip. “I don’t understand it either,” he said.
“Jefe, my men at the roadblocks have turned away a few trucks. There was some resentment but no display of anger or any reaction that might be construed as hostility.”
“What were the last trucks to come in?” Peñas asked.
“At 2:20, jefe, three hay trucks passed through. They were legitimate. They were searched and the drivers and their helpers were clean. Their papers were in perfect order. Besides, what can you hide in a hay truck stacked high with bundles of baled hay? Nothing. After that an empty rendering truck and nothing more. All four are parked. The men who drove them went up front to watch the corrida.”
“Roger, Colorado, out,” Peñas said irritably.
As he put down the concealed radio, Peñas saw the strange look on Thomas Navarre’s face. The American’s eyes seemed remote and puzzled, and then opened wide with singular disbelief, a reaction similar to a sudden inspiration.
“Lazlo,” he said, taking a quick breath, “I’ve been thinking about hay trucks. What can you hide inside a hay truck stacked high with bundles of hay? How do you search it, beyond prodding the bundles with a knife or a hay fork?”
Peñas’s dark face changed as if he had been stunned. Then, just as quickly, his features altered, assuming a hard, pointed concentration.
When he radioed Colorado again, his voice was a brittle whisper. “Colorado, are you there?”
“Yes, jefe.”
“Listen carefully. Keep your eyes on those hay trucks but don’t appear too curious or suspicious about them. Pass the word carefully to your men to do the same thing.”
“What about the trucks, jefe? Have I missed something?”
“Perhaps. Just do as I say. Navarre and I are on our way. Out.”
Peñas immediately contacted Major Gil on the ground-to-air frequency. “Bull Dog here; come in, Sky Watch. Reply quickly.”
“Sky Watch, Bull Dog. Do you have instructions?” Gil’s voice sounded strained.
“I’ll be out of radio contact for a while,” Peñas said bluntly. “Notify Phillip that you are in command of aerial surveillance until you hear from me. Acknowledge, please.”
“Message acknowledged, sir, and out.”
Only moments after Peñas spoke to Major Gil, the radio still held in his hand squawked shrilly. It was the urgent voice of Gil, suddenly tense and obviously under extreme stress. “We have an emergency. I repeat, an emergency! Tail rotor malfunctioning. Losing control. Leaving position for nearest location to land safely. Will keep you informed. Gil out!”
“Damn!” Peñas cursed, and before Navarre could respond to the news, the Mexican chief called all supervising agents in Operation Stop Kill who were tuned into the protected radio frequency. Many had heard Gil’s emergency message. Peñas ordered Emil Brazos, the pilot of one of the two smaller copters patrolling over the arena, to assume immediate command of Sky Watch.
Peñas lifted his binoculars again, and with Navarre looking up through his glasses, both men watched the sleek, disabled Black Hawk. It seemed to be fumbling in the air. It was headed east, descending, but with its tail end dragging, as if its weight had shifted downward, bringing up its nose into an awkward upward angle.
Navarre was shocked by Gil’s sudden emergency. He couldn’t convince himself the defect in the rotor was mechanical failure, yet he couldn’t think of a way to prove the army major had pulled off a hoax. He couldn’t have done it by himself. His copilot had to have been part of the deception, as well as the armed a
gents aboard. But, damn it, he fumed, he believed the man was twisted. His emergency certainly could be blamed on equipment malfunction, but what if his whole act was staged? What if he was a devious player in the assassination plot? One whose specific purpose—whatever it was—could be a devastating betrayal that would cripple the plan to prevent the killing of President Calderón?
Navarre knew that it was rare, almost unheard of, that a Black Hawk developed mechanical problems during flight, unless ground fire damaged control surfaces. They were too well engineered for sudden faults. In dozens of combat situations in Granada, Afghanistan, Iraq, Kosovo, and Panama, they had performed under fire. Now, one was in trouble. It didn’t make sense—unless the failure was deliberate, or the machine had been sabotaged, or its pilot had intentionally simulated a defect that would demand the aircraft’s removal from service.
To make a charge of treachery so treasonous was a serious matter, but Navarre believed he had no choice. He had to confide his strong feelings about Gil to Peñas. If they were rejected, at least he would have sounded a warning that would plant a seed of doubt in the Mexican chief’s mind. Navarre touched his new friend lightly on his shoulder and, turning to him, said, “Lazlo, I have something I have to get off my chest. You may think what I have to say is crazy, that my fears are groundless, but my gut tells me they are genuine.”
Peñas, his brow suddenly wrinkled, looked into Navarre’s eyes intensely and was convinced of the American’s distress.
“I don’t trust Girado Gil,” Navarre said flatly. “Call it a strong inner sense, a hunch, a feeling of wariness, but I think he’s dirty. I think he faked the trouble with the rotor.”
Silent for a moment, then sighing with relief, Peñas stared at his feet. “I, too,” he admitted, “have had stirrings of doubt, but with no proof of his intentions. I’m bothered,” he confessed, “by the dysfunction of the Black Hawk. I’m familiar with its performance record. Did this really happen, or is it an act of treason?
“I will call Brazos and ask him to do a limited search for the missing aircraft. I’m not hopeful.”
Peñas twisted the squelch button on his radio after instructing Brazos and gripped Navarre’s arm briefly. “A great part of a policeman’s career is built on hunches, Thomas. I think you would have made a hell of a cop. We will see if your intuition is right about the hay trucks. We’ll walk briskly as if we were tired of standing, but we will not appear hurried. We will take the first exit from the callejón, move under the stands, and reach the corrals through the door on the other side of the arrastre gate. We will talk amiably as we go while we are still in sight. I have the feeling of eyes upon us . . . that we are being watched.
“What did you think of that last bull?” he asked his companion conversationally, as they strolled down the callejón with long steps toward the nearest exit under the bleachers.
The fifth bull was in the arena when Navarre and Peñas descended a dusty stairway leading down from a main corridor of the plaza into the hot, trash-filled gloom beneath the bleachers. As they picked their way hurriedly among discarded beer bottles, candy wrappers, peanut shells, and the old refuse dropped by fans of hundreds of corridas, Navarre thought briefly about the redhead Colorado and their conversation earlier in the day, when they had stood on the high stone wall that formed one side of a chiquero, a penned-off enclosure where each fighting bull was held until it was time for him to be released into the arena. El Muerto had been trucked into the stadium only three days earlier. Because of the crowding in Mexico City, the corrals located outside the great circular stadium had gradually shrunk in size, so that now nine bulls and nine horses was the maximum number of animals allowed in the feedlots, pens, stalls, tunnels, and fences. It was there, gazing down at the great bull, that Navarre asked Colorado, “Why is the bull called El Muerto?”
“Do you see that faded spot on his forehead like a scorch mark?” Colorado pointed. “It is shaped like a skull. I was told his name came from that. But this is a special bull by any measure. He is a grand cornigacho. You see how the horns start from the head lower than usual and curve downward? This set is a great danger during the faena, when the matador must go between the horns to drive the sword between the shoulder blades into the heart. I think Cid Camaro will meet his match today. Did you know that less than a week ago President Felipe Calderón went to look at El Muerto at the La Punta farms? Of course he is an aficionado and has a great interest in fighting bulls. But I’m certain that a busy man like him would not leave his office if he was not curious about the great reputation of El Muerto. He is one in a thousand.”
Something had made the bull angry, and the great hump of tossing muscle, the morillo, began to swell with rage.
“Ahhh! Look at him, Thomas. Never have I seen such a magnificent bull.”
Navarre examined the fierce animal more closely. There was a curve of massive power in the deep shoulders, the line of the curve dipping in a concave grace that swept upward to the high, broad, rounded rump and down the slack flank of relaxed muscles that bulged like spring steel when they were tensed. The tassel at the end of the tail, a rope of flawless silk, barely touched the ground.
Suddenly, the bull stopped pawing; he raised his wide, black muzzle in the air and snorted defiance. The sun flashed, touching with gold the glossy black curls between the angry eyes, and caught the streaks of red in the baleful stare he flaunted at the men. For an instant the trick of light reflected a blind, opaque look from the flaming eyes, then winked away.
But Colorado whispered, “The sun does not warm the soul of the poor in heart.” And Navarre thought how true the Mexican adage was, el mejor es él de la barrera, the best bullfighter is the one in the box seats.
It was 6:49 p.m. when Navarre and Peñas pulled open the old wooden doors that led from the litter-smelling half darkness beneath the bleachers into the slaughterhouse of the plaza. The stripped carcasses of three bulls hung from the ceiling hooks in the cement-block room, where the vestigial odor of old blood and the acrid, ammonia smell of fresh blood stung Navarre’s nostrils. Two men in smeared rubber aprons with red, dripping hands paused in their work on a fourth bull, headless and minus the portion of its tail given to a torero for his victory, to gaze briefly at the two intruders. One started to object to their presence, waving his skinning knife perfunctorily, but he clamped his mouth shut when he glimpsed the hard authority on Peñas’s face.
There was a small bolted door set on hinges in one of the large double doors leading from the slaughterhouse room, and from beyond Navarre and Peñas could hear the murmur of voices—the clamor of Mexico’s poor, who early in the day had queued up to be first in line for the parcels of free bull meat the two men would pass out later.
Peñas walked to the bolted door and threw the iron rod; with a sign to the two men, he and Navarre passed through. They heard the bolt slam rudely shut behind them. They ignored the crowd of beggars who eyed the two passing dandies with suspicion and resentment.
Navarre and Peñas hastened their pace and a few moments later reached the deboxing area of the plaza, where the fighting bulls were unloaded from trucks through a sturdy wooden chute into the pens of the corral. Colorado, his face eager, jumped down lightly from the thick stone wall and hurried toward them.
The redhead was a caricature of the ubiquitous Mexican campesino. His mop of unruly flaming hair gave him away, even though it was partially hidden beneath a straw sombrero. His white, bloused shirt and balloon pants tapering to wrapped ankles gave him a curious, clownlike appearance.
His feet were ensconced in worn huaraches. From head to foot his costume was covered with a film of dust and hay stubble. Particles of straw stuck in his hair. His freckled face was glistening with sweat, as if he had been hard at work in the sun. Hanging loosely from his left hand was a blue metal submachine gun. He had an irresistible smile as he came abreast of both men.
“Your hunch was right, jefe,” Colorado said. “The dogs are in the trucks. They’re hol
low as the smoke box on a steam locomotive.”
Quickly he launched into a brief description of his actions since Peñas’s last radio call. He had called upon the services of Obregon Blanco, one of the dozen or so armed agents who, like himself, were dressed as peons or campesinos. Blanco had a singular talent: he was a wizard with cars and trucks. If a machine had wheels and an engine, Blanco could diagnose its ills or divine the workings of a new innovation or conversion.
What he found in the cab of the trucks, attached to the main hydraulic air-brake system, was an auxiliary pump whose function, he deduced, was to pump air pressure into a secondary line, probably routed to the interior of the truck. It could furnish fresh air to dogs if they were secreted inside. The device, Blanco had noted, would have escaped the attention of any agent at the roadblocks unless he knew what to look for. He had found a small but effective air conditioning unit powered by batteries and located in a compartment behind the driver’s seat. It turned on automatically and pumped cool air into the interior of the truck when the motor was shut down.
Colorado agreed it would be easy to simulate the normal appearance of a hay truck, with bales stacked on the long flatbed acting as a camouflage. The hay bundles could be wired in place from the inside to sturdy uprights, creating a rectangular hollow for the dogs. But the animals would need air inside the stuffy matrix of hay insulation.
At this point Colorado had stationed Blanco in the large cab with a submachine gun and two more agents in the other trucks and climbed up on the stacked and roped hay bales on the first truck to locate exhaust vents. He found four.
“Yes, jefe,” Colorado grimaced, “on each truck I found four big holes drilled in the hay bundles with stovepipe linings. A thin patch of hay covers each hole. Simple and ingenious. Exhaust holes. I located them by smell.” He wrinkled his nose. “Jesus, what a smell! There is a dog and dog-shit odor coming out of those vents strong enough to knock you over. I cleared the hay from one of those vents, but I couldn’t see down far enough to spot anything, even with my flashlight, and I couldn’t keep my nose there any longer. But I did hear movement.”