by Carmen Amato
Mercedes held the strip up to the light, studied it, then handed it back. “No. I never heard her talk about any other family besides her grandmother. But maybe Itzel knows.”
“This is going to sound odd,” Emilia said as she replaced the photo strip in her bag. “But Lila had a very graphic porn magazine. Hidden from her grandmother, of course. Do you know anything about that? Maybe one of the girls posed for some pictures?”
“No.” Mercedes wrinkled her nose in distaste. “If the girls had ever talked about something like that, I would have remembered it. These are good Catholic girls, all going to private schools.”
“Berta seems to have been very strict with her.” Emilia picked up her cup again. The coffee was still warm. “Do you think Lila might have run away because she was unhappy living with Berta?”
Mercedes’s face hardened. “I would have counted myself lucky at that age to have what these girls have. On my sixteenth birthday, I won second prize in a dance competition and gave it to my father. A thousand pesos. He beat me for not coming in first, then went out and drank it all.”
“At Lila’s age I was selling candy at the entrance to the Maxitunnel,” Emilia offered. “Wondering if there was going to be enough money for me to keep going to school.”
Mercedes leaned forward and held her cup out to Emilia. “Look how far we’ve come,” she said.
Emilia touched her cup to that of the other woman. “To survival,” she said.
“To us,” Mercedes corrected her. “Smart women who have learned not to take anybody’s crap.”
Emilia grinned. She liked this feisty dancer. They shared similar backgrounds and attitudes. She wondered what Mercedes would think of Kurt.
“Why don’t you come back on Thursday?” Mercedes asked. “You could talk to Itzel after class. She might be more honest here than if you talked to her at home.”
“Good point.” Emilia nodded. “I’ll be here.”
Suddenly the dancer’s smooth face crumpled. “I hate this. I hate what’s going on in the city. A young girl like this. And we all know she’s not the only one.”
“Fifty-one women missing in the last two years,” Emilia heard herself say. “I keep a log.”
Mercedes pressed a hand to her mouth. Even that gesture of distress was marked by grace. “Madre de Dios,” she said softly around her fingers. “Just here in Acapulco?”
“Yes,” Emilia said. “Padre Ricardo from San Pedro asked me to help Lila’s grandmother because he knows I keep track of missing women cases. Maybe in time I can give their families some closure.”
“Maybe Lila ran away to this brother,” Mercedes said hopefully.
“And told a friend who just hasn’t said anything yet,” Emilia said.
Mercedes looked down and sighed. “That must be the best case scenario when you’re looking for a missing girl,” she said.
“Yes, it is,” Emilia said.
Chapter 11
The video showed three men seated at a long rectangular table covered with a white cloth. Each man was fully clothed in black—black turtleneck, black face mask, black gloves. There was an unopened bottle of water on the white tablecloth in front of each man, as if the video was intended to look like a press conference. The backdrop was white as well. It looked like a sheet. A banner was strung across it with the words “LOS MATAS EJERCITO” handwritten in block letters. The banner was hung high enough to be clearly visible over the men’s heads. The audio hummed with slight static.
Clustered around the computer screen, the detectives watched as the man in the middle began speaking. His voice was deep and he spoke slowly. The mask didn’t have an opening for his mouth and Emilia realized that it was a military balaclava, the kind the army and navy wore in photos of cartel raids. It distorted the man’s voice.
The one on the left played with his water bottle. He was the only one who moved at all. Emilia realized that even if the water bottles had been open, the men’s masks prevented them from drinking.
“The army is terrorizing the city of Acapulco,” the speaker said. “The army attempted to kill our beloved mayor, our beloved Carlota. We are dedicated to restoring order to the city and are declaring war on the army. We will kill any army personnel caught setting fires in the city.”
Emilia decided he was reading an off-camera script.
The masked man’s diatribe against the army went on for several minutes, the other two men silent on either side. They were all big, Emilia thought, as she compared the size of their hands and torsos against the water bottles. The black shirts they wore were all the same: a tight-fitting knit that showed off well-built, heavyset bodies. They were a black pyramid of vigilante menace.
The opening for the eyes in their masks was a slit rather than two eye holes. There was nothing distinctive about any of their eyes, and the openings were so narrow they didn’t show brows above or smile lines at the corners. If she had to guess, Emilia would have said the men were all mestizo; their eyes were all dark brown and the skin around their eyes was caramel colored.
At the end of the video, the man simply stopped talking. The camera stayed on the strange tableau for a minute more as the men sat motionless. The video stopped at four minutes, 12 seconds.
“Looks like we’ve now got a vigilante problem,” Lt. Rufino said.
“Only if they take action,” Silvio countered.
It was less than 36 hours since the official statement that a truck and personnel in camouflage had been at the scene shortly before the fire at the El Tigre, which Acapulco’s mayor had barely escaped. General Hernandez’s office had blasted back with a strongly worded denial of army involvement. An archly worded response from Carlota’s office about compromised safety and security for Acapulco citizens then sent the media into overdrive.
It got worse. Two hours after the detectives saw the Los Matas Ejercito video, the first funeral was held. Carlota attended, leaning on a cane and wearing a somber black dress and veil.
The whole thing went viral almost immediately. Social media whipped up a popular frenzy across Acapulco, and within hours everyone was talking about how citizens of the city had to protect the mayor. The Los Matas Ejercito video got a million hits and was replayed on television. Carlota’s ratings skyrocketed, and pictures of her at the funeral appeared everywhere. The orderly demonstrations outside the alcaldía ballooned into crowds and tents for an extended Carlota lovefest. More uniformed cops and rapid reaction forces were detailed to the scene, as were Macias and Sandor. Flunkies from both Chief Salazar’s office and the alcaldía were in and out of Lt. Rufino’s office, and his interactions with the detectives were briefer than ever.
But even as the demonstrations ballooned, social media went nuts, and the video replayed on an endless local television news loop, by Thursday Emilia’s world had shrunk to the computer on her desk and a list of over 300 club cab trucks registered in Acapulco and the neighboring areas. The soundtrack of her world was an endless stream of muttered curses from Silvio as he grappled with his half of the list.
The lack of compatibility between various databases meant that for each truck listed, they had to access not only the registration database, but also three or four others in order to find the owner’s address and other personal information. At this rate, Emilia figured, as the internal police browser crashed yet again, overloaded by the number of windows she had to open, it would take about a week to run down all the truck owners.
The ring of her desk phone was a welcome diversion. The caller was Javier Salinas Arroliza, from the state attorney general’s office. After an exchange of pleasantries, he asked when he could expect the first reports on the raid on the El Pharaoh casino.
Emilia leaned back in her desk chair as a little hourglass icon pulsed in the middle of her blank blue screen. “The arson at the El Tigre restaurant is going to cause a delay,” she hedged. Castro and Gomez had refused her offer of a briefing and had hardly been in the squadroom since Monday. They weren’t there now, e
ither. “I’ve been reassigned to that case.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, Detective,” Salinas said. They’d never met in person, but Emilia imagined a harried middle-aged lawyer who needed to exercise more and eat fewer tortillas. “I know that everyone has priorities, but I’m expecting evidence to corroborate the initial investigation. The El Pharaoh has already lodged a protest, disputing the closure order. No evidence, no charge that will stick. They reopen and we’ll all look like fools.”
“I fully understand,” Emilia said. She toyed with the buttons on her phone. “Let me refer you to Lieutenant Nelson Rufino Herrera. He’s our new chief of detectives. He’ll have more information for you.”
Salinas sounded mollified and Emilia transferred the call to Lt. Rufino’s office. Through his closed door, she heard his phone ring once. Silvio looked at her around their computer monitors and snorted, fully aware of what she’d done.
Five minutes later, Castro’s phone rang. After five rings and no pickup, Gomez’s phone rang.
Eventually Lt. Rufino came out of his office. “Where are Castro and Gomez?” he demanded as he approached Emilia’s desk.
“No idea,” Silvio said without looking up.
“Tell them to mark all the seized money from the El Pharaoh case and get the armored van to take it over to the state attorney general’s office,” Lt. Rufino told Emilia.
“They should verify all the accounting documentation as well, teniente,” Emilia pointed out. “There’s no reason to separate evidence.” Marking seized money so it couldn’t be stolen out of official police custody was fairly standard procedure, but she knew that half the money was going to disappear before it got marked, even if it was counterfeit, if he left it up to those idiots.
“Priorities, Cruz,” Lt. Rufino said shortly and went back into his office.
Emilia stretched over her desk and rapped on the pile of papers by Silvio’s computer mouse. “Hey,” she said, trying to keep her voice low. “Did you hear teniente just now?”
Silvio kept looking at his computer screen. “He said shut the fuck up.”
“This is a stupid way to handle the case,” Emilia insisted. “I don’t think he’s thinking about anything besides the El Tigre fire and Carlota.”
“Then I’ll say shut the fuck up,” Silvio growled.
Emilia settled back in her chair. Her computer screen was still blank except for the hourglass. “Rayos,” she swore.
When life returned to the screen, her inbox icon was blinking. Emilia toggled through the messages, hardly believing the updates about the magnitude of the demonstrations going on downtown. An estimated 150,000 people were in front of the alcaldía, clogging all the nearby streets. Tensions were high as demonstrators chanted both support for Carlota and anti-army slogans.
“Look at this.” Silvio snapped his fingers to get Emilia’s attention. “This name mean anything to you?”
Emilia came around the side of both desks to look at his screen. It showed the national identity card, or cédula, database. The identity card of a man named Lester Torrez Delgadillo was displayed.
“No,” Emilia said. “Should it?”
Silvio rubbed his jaw. “Torrez is former army with a funny address. Looks like a hacienda outside of town, but nothing comes up.” He toggled to a map application to show that it had returned a null search.
“I know where else to look.” Emilia scribbled down the address information and quickly logged on to the single computer in the squadroom that was connected to the outside Internet. She tried not to get too excited as she called up a search program, but this was why she wanted to be a detective: to put together bits of information, to find out things no one else could, to draw the threads together. To win.
“Fuck,” Silvio breathed five minutes later as he read over her shoulder.
Emilia printed out the results and they knocked on Lt. Rufino’s door.
“I think we’ve got a result,” she said as soon as they were in the office.
Lt. Rufino squinted at both of the two detectives. “What?”
“A truck owned by Lester Torrez Delgadillo,” Emilia said. “He’s a former army sergeant, 48 years old, married, two children. The truck is six years old, bought here in Acapulco. His address is a big ranch east of the city. Maybe a two-hour drive.”
“So?” Lt. Rufino made a come on gesture.
“Torrez Delgadillo is the foreman.” Emilia struggled not to speak too rapidly. Silvio stayed behind her, feet apart, arms folded, forearm muscles bulging. “The ranch is owned by Fidel Macario Urbina. The housekeeper at the ranch says Torrez Delgadillo lives on the property but was gone over the weekend. She doesn’t know where.”
Lt. Rufino looked at her blankly.
“Carlota defeated Macario Urbina in the election last year.” Emilia couldn’t quite keep a note of triumph out of her voice. “It was a slugfest.”
Lt. Rufino finally held his hand out for the papers. He looked through the printouts, looked up, and nodded. “Old-fashioned police methodology.”
His phone rang. After an initial exchange of greetings, he described the information on Torrez and Emilia realized el teniente was speaking to Chief Salazar. After a few minutes, Lt. Rufino hung up.
“Meeting at the alcaldía in two hours,” he said.
Chapter 12
Emilia hadn’t expected to see General Hernandez at the meeting in Carlota’s office. He was a fit man in his early fifties with deep squint lines around the eyes and short hair brushed back from a smooth forehead and graying at the temples. He wore stiffly starched camouflage fatigues and a minimum of gold badges of rank. His flunkies numbered only two, four less than hovered behind the mayor’s chair. Emilia recognized all of Carlota’s staffers from the meeting in the police auditorium.
“This has become a media circus,” he said and gestured at the demonstrators outside the window. Sounds of chanting were partially muffled by distance and swaths of sheer draperies. “Based only on the fact that a so-called expert arson investigator says that grenades were used to set fire to a local Acapulco restaurant. That sort of loose talk resulted in that atrocious video. Now you’ve come up with a very tenuous link between someone with the right type of truck who once served in the army.”
“I was at that restaurant,” Carlota retorted. “And I want answers.”
At times Emilia could make out the chants from the throngs outside: Can we give the army our Carlota? No! Do we want army criminals burning our city? No! Cops in riot gear and Plexiglas shields were keeping open the back gates leading into the alcaldía. Emilia had felt uncomfortably hemmed in as their police car had passed through.
“The answer is that the army in this military district had absolutely nothing to do with that fire.” General Hernandez folded his arms. “Regardless of who the police are guessing may be responsible.”
Carlota got up and walked to the window, moving easily without the aid of the cane she’d taken with her to the funerals. She stood to one side so that she wasn’t visible through the sheer drapery. The mayor was the same elegant woman as at the restaurant Saturday night. Today she wore a trim black suit with rhinestone buttons and a cream satin blouse. Black platform slingbacks revealed blood-red toenails that matched the polish on her fingertips. She appeared totally recovered from her ordeal.
Besides Carlota, her minions, and the army officers, the group in the mayor’s spacious office included Emilia, Silvio, Lt. Rufino, Chief Salazar, and a uniformed police captain named Vega from the chief of police’s executive staff. Obregon was there as well, wearing another black suit, and accompanied by two of his own minions. So far the union boss had said nothing but his eyes were often on Lt. Rufino.
“The people are calling for swift justice,” Carlota said and turned to face the group. Her expression was a mix of saint and fox. “Listen to them out there. I need to make a statement about this.”
Next to Emilia, Silvio’s face wore a set expression but the rest of him radiated impatien
ce.
“Any official statement needs to make the unfortunate point that grenades can be purchased in this country on the black market,” Hernandez said. “There’s no proof that any explosive used at this fire came from military stockpiles, much less this district. The norteamericanos could be sending them over the border by the case, for all we know.”
Carlota flapped her hand in a gesture of either dismissal or annoyance.
“Your statement should be a call for these demonstrators to disperse,” General Hernandez went on.
“The demonstration could also be a ruse for another attack on you, señora,” Chief Salazar said and shifted uncomfortably in his seat. He always reminded Emilia of pictures of old Spanish dons: a narrow face, hawk-like nose, bald head like a shiny brown egg emerging from his ornate police uniform. “By Torrez or by an accomplice. We can’t afford a statement until Torrez is in custody. The decision we need to make is whether or not to inform Macario Urbina before the arrest. Or arrest him at the same time. Either way, your office needs to be prepared for the political fallout.”
Carlota flung herself back in her seat, crossed her legs, and dangled her foot. “What exactly is the army connection to your suspect?”
General Hernandez bristled but before he spoke Chief Salazar gestured at Lt. Rufino who cleared his throat. “Torrez is a former army sergeant. We can assume that Macario Urbina knows this and encouraged him to use his connections to obtain the grenades.”
“Once again,” General Hernandez said ominously. “Are you suggesting that this Torrez Delgadillo obtained grenades from my military district?”
“We all know that the Acapulco police have no jurisdiction at campo militar,” Lt. Rufino said. “But if you opened your armory and its records to a thorough vetting it would allow us to close out that part of the investigation and help defuse the situation with the public.”
“No,” Chief Salazar said. “The Acapulco police don’t need to investigate at campo militar. This should be a matter for Murillo, the arson investigator.”