Mala Vida

by Marc Fernandez

  Diego delivers a well-aimed shoulder check to the person in front of him, opening a path to exit the elevator. He gets off and turns down a long hallway. Diego’s tiny office—barely one hundred square feet with no air conditioning and a window no wider than an arrow slit—is at the end of it, sandwiched between a maintenance closet and the restrooms. Stuffed with files, books, and newspapers, it looks more like a storeroom than an office, and nothing in it conforms to current safety codes. It is the radio station’s version of Siberia. There is a television mounted on one wall. A computer screen sits among the accumulated mess, but he has never turned it on; its keyboard is somewhere on the floor. Diego doesn’t like computers, and he refuses to use the one supplied by an employer who is in the pocket of the new government. His own MacBook Air with a 4GB flash drive is enough for him.

  In any case, Diego could give a damn about the size of his office. His top priorities are: investigating, getting out in the field, cultivating sources, and fact-checking. In other words, the ABC’s of good journalism. A code of conduct that seems to have been forgotten for some time already. The only rule of the twenty-four-hour news cycle is to break a story, even if it means using unverified or even false information. Diego, on the other hand, likes to work at his own pace and take his time in adherence to “slow journalism,” a protest against the mainstream media’s churnalism and the cult of immediacy created by social media. Diego doesn’t have a Facebook account and uses Twitter sporadically. He’s also in favor of lifting confidentiality protections of legal investigations, which he considers a total hypocrisy with grave consequences. As if they were a guardrail that could keep his fellow journalists from crossing the limits of decency.

  He doesn’t keep any personal items in his office, with the exception of a black-and-white photo that he taped to the PC’s permanently darkened screen: Carolina. His wife smiles at him in what appears to be a restaurant, her head tilted slightly to the left, her chin resting in her right hand, a usual pose for her, with her long, red hair falling on her shoulders and her bangs framing a pair of wide, green eyes. That was a long time ago, in a different life made for two, before everything fell apart one winter night. After ten years with Carolina, a phone call was all it took for the nightmare to start.

  That fateful night, Diego was working late at home, reading the proofs of his latest book detailing an in-depth investigation he had conducted on Latino street gangs operating in Spain. A one-word text from one of his police sources managed to draw his gaze away from his reading: estocada. It was their code word for an urgent development. A system that served its purpose, saying, as succinctly as possible, that they had to meet immediately. The exact words used depended on the sensitivity of the information, but they always came from the jargon of bullfighting, which was their common passion.

  Never had his informer given the signal quite this way. Diego understood immediately that something serious was going down. He dropped his papers and pen, shut off the stereo that was playing Pink Floyd, grabbed his jacket, cigarettes, and keys and went out without stopping to turn off the lights. He was only a few streets from their usual meeting place. On the way there, his phone was blowing up with calls: private numbers, friends, then the news agencies of the Interior Ministry and the Ministry of Justice. Something was up. He began to walk faster and finally started running. He had a bad feeling that was turning into a mounting panic. Despite the frigid temperature, he was sweating, his hands were clammy, and his head was pounding. In less than ten minutes, he was standing with his cop friend on the Plaza del Dos de Mayo, at the monument to Daoíz and Velarde, the two heroes of Madrid’s popular uprising against Napoleon’s army on May 2, 1808.

  The cop, a member of the elite Special Operations unit of the Spanish police, was waiting for him at the monument’s brick arch, and he looked like hell. Instead of shaking hands with Diego, he threw his arms around him.

  “Diego, it’s Carolina …”

  “No!”

  His cry tore through the Madrid night.

  He sank to the ground before he realized what he had done. He was sitting on the cold concrete with his head in his hands, incapable of doing anything else. Numb. It took him several minutes to grasp what he had just heard. Then the questions came: “Where? When? How? Who? Why?”

  “I’m really sorry, buddy. I don’t know what to say … Come on, I’ll take you to the coroner’s office. You’re in no condition to drive, but you have to identify the body. It’s standard procedure,” the cop said.

  “That can wait,” Diego shot back. His eyes were bloodshot, and he could barely stand up on his own. “First, I want to see where it happened. Do you know anything more?”

  “Not yet. There’s a unit on-site. If anyone knows, they do.”

  They drove to the Chueca neighborhood, where Carolina had been having dinner with friends, the same friends who had tried to reach Diego on his phone earlier that Thursday night in December. The restaurant entrance looked like a classic crime scene: yellow police tape, squad cars with their red lights flashing, gawkers. A white-suited forensics team was busy at work. They had already removed the body.

  Diego had seen dozens of scenes just like it, in Spain and in plenty of countries in Latin America, enough to harden him against death and immunize him to the sight of corpses. But not that night. That night, it was Carolina. His wife. The woman he wanted to spend the rest of his life with. Whom he wanted to start a family with. They had made the decision only a few months before and had been trying to have a baby ever since.

  It took everything Diego had to control himself when he saw the pool of blood where she had been gunned down. He saw David Ponce coming toward him and felt the judge grab hold of him as he started to fall. At that time, the two men were only professional acquaintances who held each other in mutual esteem and got along well.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” Diego managed to ask.

  “I’m on duty tonight. Listen, Diego, I’m so sorry. You know how much I liked your wife. The only thing I can tell you for now, even if it’s not much comfort, is that she didn’t suffer. She died immediately. I promise you, we’ll do everything we can to arrest the people who did this.”

  “Tell me how it happened.”

  “Two guys were waiting on a motorcycle outside the restaurant. It all went down very quickly. The one who was driving started the engine, the one riding pulled out a gun, he shot five times, and they drove off. They were already long gone by the time the police arrived.”

  An execution, by the numbers. A modus operandi that was all too familiar to the police and intelligence services. The signature style of Latino drug traffickers. Despite the best efforts of Ponce and the officers assigned to the case, they were never able to close it. Carolina’s murderer was never caught, and Diego hasn’t been the same since. Her death was his fault; he would never be able to forgive himself. His investigations into the drug cartels had earned him many death threats. Several Mexican drug lords let it be known that he and his family would pay dearly if he stuck his nose in their business. Diego never believed a word of it. “There’s nothing to worry about,” he reassured Carolina. “The Mexicans aren’t going to come all the way here just to shoot me.” To assuage her fears, however, he cut back on his trips.

  But drug traffickers stop at nothing to get revenge. With the help of his friend Ana Durán, Diego led his own investigation. And he discovered that the murder had been ordered by El Loco, the kingpin of the Juárez Cartel, one of the largest criminal organizations in Latin America. It was a Mexican federal narcotics agent who tipped him off. In typical fashion and true to his nickname, the drug lord told his henchmen he didn’t want to kill the journalist so much as make him suffer for the rest of his life. So he ordered Carolina’s execution. Diego and Ana also found out that the two hired guns flew in just for this mission. They arrived on a flight from Mexico at eight that night, killed Carolina at one o’clock in the morning, and were back on a flight and home again early the ne
xt day. The authorities had identified them but couldn’t stop them in time. The driver later died in an AK-47 shoot-out between warring cartels. As for the gunman, no one ever found out what happened to him. Probably six feet underground, as well. In their line of work, life expectancy doesn’t run high. Or that’s what Diego hopes, at least.

  After Carolina’s death, he fell into a deep depression and has never really come out of it. He hardly goes out socially anymore and refuses any and all dinner invitations. As for meeting someone new, the idea has never crossed his mind. Five years later, his heart hasn’t healed. Could it, someday?

  Seated now behind his desk and pleased with the little provocation he directed at his new colleagues in the elevator, Diego opens Ana’s file on the APM councilman, lights a cigarette, and starts to read the private detective’s report. He has a nagging feeling that there is something different about this case, but he can’t put his finger on it. It is just intuition. From force of habit, his hand reaches for the television. He turns it on but keeps the sound low. It’s the news, promising a special report after the commercial break.

  Isabel Ferrer spent the afternoon at home. The lawyer needed some time alone after a complicated morning and a tumultuous lunch. Thirty-eight years old, single, French, and with no children, this granddaughter of Spanish immigrants to France who carries passports of both countries has always felt an emotional attachment to her parents’ and grandparents’ homeland. After graduating magna cum laude from law school, the pretty brunette with dark eyes marched her five-foot-six-inch frame into one of the biggest criminal law firms in Paris. She worked her way up, case by case, client by client. From small-time dealers in the projects to the most dangerous felons to the most famous ones as well. Her early cases usually went immediately to trial, but her later ones were high-profile criminal court cases. She defended them all: con men, murderers, drug dealers, armed robbers, everyone except sexual predators. She refused categorically to use her skills defending rapists and pedophiles. It was the only part of her oath as a defense lawyer that she ever broke, the only breach in her personal code of conduct, based on the firm belief that every person, no matter the crime of which he stands accused, has the right to an attorney. But she drew the line at rapists: that was just too much for her. She couldn’t say why, exactly, but that’s just the way it was. And no one ever challenged her on it.

  Isabel didn’t win all of her cases—far from it—but her eloquence and her impassioned arguments could plant a seed of doubt in the minds of jurors and reduce sentences for her clients. Some in the media fell for her too, praising her as a symbol of a new generation of talented and attractive young lawyers: the beauties of the bar. Her success led to some memorable fights with her family, who never understood how she could defend a killer or a dangerous criminal.

  At the peak of her career, at a time when she could have opened her own law practice, she ditched it all and took the opposite voyage that her father, mother, and grandparents had made. She crossed to the other side of the Pyrenees and settled in Madrid. All it took was a week: no more clients or cases, no more working for the Paris bar, and no explanations either. She dispatched her standing caseload, put her handsome apartment in Neuilly-sur-Seine on the market (it sold in two days), got on a plane, and set her suitcases down in Salamanca, one of Madrid’s most expensive neighborhoods.

  No one understood, not even her parents. A sudden impulse that some of her friends and associates chalked up to burnout: the work was just too much for her. Others saw a gesture of grief, in reaction to the death of her grandfather, with whom she had been close; he had passed away only a few weeks earlier at the age of ninety-three. The only one who remained mute about her decision was the person who usually had something to say about everything: her grandmother. She held her granddaughter tightly in her arms at the airport the day Isabel left, but she never looked Isabel in the eyes, for fear it would make her cry. Isabel never looked back, passed quickly through the security checkpoint, and from there to her boarding gate. She was changing her life entirely, but, oddly, she felt calm, relieved even.

  Today, however, she feels anything but calm. As soon as she got into her apartment, she took a shower. Even an hour under a powerful jet of hot water didn’t relax her one bit. She tried to take a nap but couldn’t drift off. She hasn’t eaten since the day before and is having trouble concentrating because of a pounding headache. She puts two slices of bread in the toaster, and when they’re ready, she pours a trickle of olive oil and a sprinkle of salt over them. Her grandmother used to make her the same snack when Isabel was a little girl. She forces herself to eat them with some aspirin to alleviate the coiling and uncoiling of pain in her head. Her day isn’t over yet; she still has something very important to do. She has to look good, and, above all, she has to be on her game. She goes back to the bathroom to do her makeup, paying attention to the dark circles under her eyes and her tired complexion. From her closet, she selects a light-colored suit, and from the dining room table, she picks up a pile of papers and fits them into her purse. It’s time. She is hoping that, at the Puerta del Sol, right in the heart of Madrid, a large crowd will be waiting for her.

  A dozen or so journalists are already stationed in front of Calle de Cervantes. All of them are intrigued by the invitation they received from an organization they have never heard of, announcing a press conference and a big reveal: something of major importance, something big enough to shake up Spain’s very democracy. At eight o’clock. Right on time to make the nightly news at nine. Luring the press was Isabel’s idea: invite them, tell them, and let them spread the news to as many people as possible.

  That’s all it took for a pack of journalists to show up. TV station vans are double-parked in the street, blocking traffic. Crews from the national radio stations have parked their cars on the sidewalk. Two police officers are trying as best they can to keep order. One of them is requesting backup from headquarters, yelling into his walkie-talkie and gesturing so wildly that everyone walking past laughs.

  Isabel has a hard time pushing her way through the crowd. When she gets to the door and the journalists realize she has the access code, microphones and cameras are swiftly pointed at her from all directions. They start to surround her, but she manages to get inside without having to answer any questions.

  She joins her team on the second floor. There are a dozen people, mostly women, who have followed her instructions to set up the area for a press conference. There is a dais with a long table and some chairs, and on the wall are hung black-and-white photographs, along with a few in color, though yellowed with age. All of them are faces of children. Beyond the dais are fifty empty chairs; it won’t be long before they are filled. There is no air conditioning; the air is almost too thick to breathe. The tension is almost palpable, too. What they are about to set in motion can’t be stopped, and everyone there knows it. When this press conference is over, their lives will never be the same. They know there will be consequences. They’re ready.

  With her nerves on edge, Isabel greets the staff and then finds a seat without another word. She takes out her papers and looks them over. Then it’s time. With a simple nod, she gives the signal. The doors open. In less than ten minutes, the room is completely full. While the cameramen set up their equipment at the back of the room and the radio reporters position their microphones, Isabel is imperturbable. She stares blankly ahead, oblivious to their questions.

  When she senses the room is ready, she gets to her feet, and the crowd immediately falls silent. She hasn’t said a single word yet. She gestures toward a door in the back, and five people, all women and wearing white masks, enter. They come forward hesitantly, warily, under the media’s projectors, and take their seats with Isabel on the stage. Incomprehension plays across the faces of the journalists, who are wondering what all this can mean as they begin to text their editors: whatever this is, the pictures alone are going to go viral. Their frenetic typing on their smartphones ceases only when Isabel fina
lly begins to speak.

  “Good evening everyone. Thank you for answering our invitation. You are wondering undoubtedly who we are and why these masks. I want to reassure you: when you leave here tonight, you will understand why these women chose to remain anonymous for the moment. I am not one of them, but I am their spokesperson. My name is Isabel Ferrer. I am a lawyer, and I am representing these women and thirty other individuals, including some men, old people, and young people, who have decided to join together today to demand justice.”

  For a full twenty minutes, the audience seems to be holding its breath, hanging on Isabel’s every word. She composed her speech as if it were an argument for the defense. The only difference is that she is standing not in front of a judge, jury, defendant, and plaintiff but before an audience of members of the press. She summons all of her energy, her strength, and her conviction. She knows she has the power to convince any listener and can find the right words, the ones that will hit home. Just like in a court. This is a case she intends to win in front of a judge and jury of journalists.

  “I won’t insult your intelligence by retelling the story of the dictatorship that began with Franco’s rise to power. However, I ask you to remember that sinister period, to think back in your mind to 1939 and the dark years that followed. I want you also to remember his death in 1975, the transition period that began then, the referendum on the Constitution of 1978, and the Amnesty Law that was passed so that we could live today in a democracy.”

  Her speech sets off a flurry of quizzical looks, raised eyebrows, shoulder shrugs, and some impatient fidgeting in the audience. With the country again in the hands of the far right, her words hint at something worse to come for these journalists who are already battling restrictions on press freedom. Isabel falls silent for a long, strategic minute, an almost unbearable wait, before continuing to speak, with greater and greater confidence.