“Right. See you around.”
“Farewell, my esteemed Consul.”
As the gringo got into the car, his driver thought to look over his shoulder, and saw the chief mutter some malicious remark to his bodyguards, who found it quite funny. One of them even blew him a kiss, but Larry Pérez ignored the provocation and got into the car.
“Son of a bitch,” said the Bus, sweating. “That was close.”
11
As they approached Mr. De León’s mansion, the detective noticed a sports car parked near the front steps: a Ferrari convertible. While the Bus and the consul walked down to that part of the garden, Treviño caught sight of Mrs. De León through the living room window. She was talking to two women who had their backs to him. Mr. De León came out to meet them before they made it to the door.
“Any news?” the businessman asked. Judging by the distressed look on his face, he expected to hear they’d found his daughter’s body. Treviño deduced that the kidnappers still hadn’t called, and he briefed Mr. De León on his progress.
“El Tiburón and Cristina weren’t among the bodies brought in from Colonia Pescadores. Four men took your daughter from the nightclub, and three of them are dead. El Tiburón probably killed them himself, but we can’t rule out that there was someone else involved: maybe a member of La Cuarenta, since they stopped over in Four-Zero territory. After that, it gets murky.”
“What do you mean?”
“Those boys were killed with an assault rifle. Anyone around here could have a gun like that, from the army and local police to Los Nuevos or anyone else in the trade. But I don’t think it was them. It doesn’t add up.”
“What doesn’t add up?”
“Why would a twenty-something-year-old kid kill his buddies? Did they try to take advantage of Cristina and he didn’t want them to? Did they want to rape her, and he wanted to keep her for himself? I’d rather not speculate.”
“Cristina …” whispered Mr. De León.
“On the other hand, your daughter isn’t in the morgue, and from what the consul’s heard, she’s not in any of the hospitals around here, either. Not far from the scene of the crime, witnesses saw a red truck turn onto the highway headed out of town, so there’s a good chance that Cristina and El Tiburón got away with the vehicle and their lives.”
Mr. De León looked at Treviño through red, swollen eyes. Finally, he spoke.
“Follow me. Ruth Collins is here with her daughter Barbara, my daughter’s best friend. They were at the club together that night, so ask her anything you want, Treviño.”
It would be hard to say which of the three women in the living room looked most fetching. Mrs. De León was in a fitted black cotton dress and had painted her lips an intense, glistening red, apparently to match the youth of her daughter’s friend. She wasn’t wearing much jewelry, but she had styled her blond hair to fall elegantly around her shoulders. When they saw him walk in from their seats on the couch, her two guests immediately dismissed him as a mere domestic employee. Ruth Collins was a forty-something who carried herself as if she worked out every day. She had fiery red hair, blue eyes, and the same prickly demeanor as Mrs. De León. Next to her was a teenager with very pale skin, reddish-brown hair, small blue eyes, and lovely full lips, just barely made up. She had the kinds of curves that would look amazing even in jeans and a T-shirt. It didn’t escape Treviño’s attention that both wore understated, dark clothes, as though they were already mourning Cristina.
“This is Mr. Treviño, our detective.”
The detective nodded in their direction and sat in the only empty chair.
“Afternoon,” said the consul as he entered, causing a minor commotion.
“Uncle Bill!” As soon as she saw him, the teenager rushed over to give the consul a kiss on the cheek. The gringo’s talent for making friends among the wealthiest families in the port never ceased to amaze the detective. The girl’s mother, on the other hand, barely got up from her seat and pursed her lips as though she and the consul had a long history that involved a bed. As soon as the girl took her seat again, Mr. De León indicated with a nod that he could proceed, and the detective leaned toward her.
“Barbara, can you tell us anything about Cristina’s disappearance?”
When the girl refused to look up, he insisted. “What is it?” he asked. But she wouldn’t meet his eyes.
“We came because my dear friend said you wanted to speak with my daughter,” the redhead interrupted him. “But we have nothing to say, other than that we’re distraught over what happened to my goddaughter and that we’re very sorry about all this. I can’t believe the terrible things that are happening in this city.”
Treviño noticed that the girl was biting her lip, hard. She wants to say something, thought the detective. Her mother has her in a straitjacket, but she’s a rebel. He kept at her.
“What you tell us might save your friend’s life.”
“Treviño, please,” said Mrs. De León, forcing a smile. “This is my best friend’s daughter.”
The detective was clearly annoyed and cut to the chase.
“Did Cristina have another boyfriend, aside from the poet?”
“No! What are you talking about?” the redhead interrupted. “Cristina could never, ever—”
The detective stopped her with half a smile and a full wave of his trembling hand. The woman fell silent when she saw the irritation written across his face. He leaned toward the girl and when he finally got her to look up, he locked his eyes on hers. The girl would have no choice but to answer.
“Who was he?”
“His name was Romain. A French guy she met in Switzerland.”
“What!” shouted Mrs. De León.
“He’s coming to visit her in two days. They message each other every five minutes.”
Mrs. De León’s jaw dropped so far it looked as if she’d dislocated it. Mrs. Collins let out a shriek and brought a hand to her mouth.
“And that’s what Cristina and her boyfriend were fighting about?”
The girl nodded.
“Cristina wanted to end it, but Beto didn’t.”
“I can’t believe my daughter …” Mrs. De León started to say, but the detective gestured that she should be quiet.
“What a mess,” said Barbara’s mother. “What will your godparents think?”
The girl turned scarlet and was about to stop talking, but the detective didn’t let her.
“Did they have a fight in the club?”
She nodded.
“What else?”
The girl got her nerve back. “He told her he loved her, but she said she was with Romain now and he should leave her alone. He screamed some horrible things at her and she ran out of the club, but he went after her.”
“Damn it, Cristina!” thundered Mrs. De León. “Beto was such a catch. How could she do this to him?”
“And you didn’t see anything strange while you were inside the club? Any other boys watching her?”
“No,” said the girl.
“Why didn’t you follow her out?”
“I was dancing with my boyfriend,” she replied. “And besides, Cristina and Beto fight all the time.”
“All right, that’s enough,” the girl’s mother said to the detective. “Time for us to go, sweetheart.”
“One last question.” Treviño looked at the girl. “What were they fighting about?”
Barbara’s face twisted into an expression of sincere anguish as her mother stared at her agape, praying for her to keep her mouth shut. But sometimes there’s no stopping a redhead.
“She told him she didn’t want to be his girlfriend anymore, that she was going to have a French boyfriend, and he asked her how she could be so full of herself when everyone knew what her father did for a living.”
“Barbara, shut your mouth,” ordered the girl’s mother.
The detective saw the color drain from Mrs. De León’s face, observed her husband’s volcanic anger.
>
“He told Cristina that her father did business with people in the trade. That she should know, if she didn’t already. But she yelled at him, saying it was all lies. She got really upset, screamed she never wanted to see him again, and ran crying out of the club. A little while later, people started leaving without paying their tabs. We thought there was a fire, but when we got to the parking lot we saw Cristina’s car with its doors open and Beto lying in the mud.” More like a pool of blood, thought the detective, but he didn’t interrupt her.
“Then a little while later, an ambulance came for him,” she concluded.
Mr. De León was trembling with rage. The detective kept a close eye on his reactions.
“My dear friends, forgive her. The girl is clearly confused. We should go.”
“Yes, perhaps you should,” Mrs. De León agreed. “Thank you for stopping by.” She was furious too.
“Please don’t be angry. They’re just a boy’s lies. Around here, if someone does well the first thing they do is accuse him of laundering money.”
Mrs. De León’s eyes narrowed to slits, as though she were trying to hide them, but she forced a wide smile as she said her good-byes.
“I do hope you’ll stop by some other day. Take care, now.”
As soon as the women left, the detective looked at the magnate. The man’s ears were aflame.
“Bitches,” spat Mrs. De León. “The minute someone makes it in this place, people line up to sling mud at him. Isn’t that right, Rafael?”
But the magnate didn’t respond. His wife watched him sit down next to the bar cart, understood that he wasn’t going to say a word, turned, and climbed the enormous spiral staircase, smoothing her black dress as she went.
After a prudent pause, the detective turned to the consul.
“It would have been better if you’d told me the truth from the start. I would have approached the investigation differently. I’ll leave it at that.” And Treviño stood to go.
“It’s just slander, malicious lies spread by a bitter young man,” the consul explained. “Isn’t that right, Rafael?”
“Sit down,” said the magnate in an unfamiliar voice. He poured himself a glass of whiskey. His face had darkened, as if he were having trouble breathing. He drank the whiskey in one swallow and snarled, “Everything I have, I built with my own two hands. When my father died, what I inherited was mostly debt. I started out with the deck stacked against me. If you look under the carpet, you’ll find that three of every ten businesses in this city have dealings with the cartels in one way or another. No one wants to admit it, but in some cities, like this one, small businesses depend on the money these guys bring in. Malls, clothing stores, luxury car dealerships, residential developments, restaurants, sports clubs, language schools, liquor stores, fast-food chains, supermarkets, travel agencies … Even the airport does business with them. Throw a rock and you’ll hit someone living off the cartels, sometimes without even knowing it. I have a relative, I’m not going to say who, who’s always been a deadbeat. Whenever he runs out of money, he sets up a new business with a different set of partners, and that’s how he makes his living. Going bankrupt and starting over, if you catch my drift.”
He rubbed his eyes.
“We’ve always known who they were. You see them in church, at the beach. Their kids go to school with our kids. They come over for dinner, stay overnight or for a weekend. We sometimes go on vacation together.”
“But not you, right?” asked the consul, conciliatory.
The magnate poured himself another whiskey and drank it down.
“When you run as many businesses as I do, you can’t control everything. It’s a lot of people we’re talking about.” He pointed a finger at Treviño. “I have nothing to be ashamed of or anything to explain to the law.” The businessman looked down at the ice cubes floating in the amber liquid and went on. “You asked me if I had any enemies, Treviño. The truth is it could be anyone. This situation is forcing us to do things that would have been unthinkable back in my father’s day. Four years ago, I noticed that the manager at a local bank I own was authorizing an unusual number of six-figure loans, mostly to people without collateral. I went to talk with him. He told me that every week or two one of his clients would come in, scared to death, asking for everything he had in savings plus the biggest loan he could get. And he would give him the money, because that’s his job. The third time a guy came in, nervous and sweating, my manager took him back to his office and asked him what was going on. The man explained that Los Nuevos had threatened to kill him if he didn’t give them the money that night. People still come in like that all the time. We give them the money, and they go into debt. No one can pay the loan back on time, so they end up losing their homes and their businesses. But what are we supposed to do? We’re certainly not going to deny them the loan. Anyway, the bank doesn’t take a loss. Insurance covers it, and then some.
“It’s the same with car sales. I own dealerships for Mercedes, Ferraris, Toyotas, and Fords. Not a week goes by that my collection agents don’t complain about some guy showing up, putting a down payment on the most expensive car on the lot, and then disappearing. We never hear from him again. But our insurance covers the loss. We’re not willing to lose the sale.
“I could have made enemies helping people, too … One day one of my competitors showed up at my door, asking me to buy his company’s nine branches right then and there. He needed the money to pay off the guys who’d taken his wife and children. He told me that over the past month he’d had to empty his bank accounts to pay the kidnappers several million pesos every week so they wouldn’t kill his family. ‘Can’t you report them?’ I asked. ‘To whom?’ he said. ‘They show up to collect their payment every week in a squad car.’ What could I do? I bought out the company he’d spent a lifetime building. At a small discount, of course, because if I hadn’t bought the locations someone else would have, for even less.
“Two years ago, a man whose name I won’t repeat came by with a proposal to open a casino. He had good references. I’d met him through a senator.” He looked at the consul, who seemed to want to escape his gaze. “It was an interesting offer and I got involved. The numbers looked good, and it was going to be the first casino in the area. We even signed a formal agreement, but two months later they kidnapped and killed the man who was going to be the casino’s manager, then the accountant, and that was when I figured out who this guy was. I called a meeting with our lawyers and told him I’d changed my mind.”
The detective waited out another prudent pause. When Mr. De León had served himself a third drink, he asked, “What was the man’s name?”
“He’s dead now. They killed him. Twenty years ago, anyone could report them. Now they’re everywhere. They want houses? They just take them. Who’s going to stop them? Guns? They buy them off the Central Americans, or get them from their gringo associates in exchange for drugs. If they’re in a rush, they can pick one up right here in town. Women? The Russian mafia can deliver a hot blonde from any country that survived the iron curtain. They’ve given money to the church, paved streets, built hospitals, and formed alliances with the police. The government used to lock one of them up every so often to appease the gringos, but that all ended when the politicians started getting cozy with guys in the trade. And who’s going to write that headline?
“These thugs even planted an editor in chief at one of La Eternidad’s major papers. He shows up right before they go to press, sits down, and pores over the local and national news. When he’s done, he has the section editors take out any articles that defame the criminal organization that bankrolls him. He also makes them eliminate certain terms. To replace ‘gang’ with ‘insurgent group,’ to write ‘business’ instead of ‘crimes against public health,’ ‘taken’ instead of ‘kidnapped,’ ‘marks’ instead of ‘wounds,’ ‘disappeared’ instead of ‘was murdered.’ As if words were the private property of those bastards, too. Soon we won’t even be able to say t
heir names.”
De León turned to look at Treviño with his bloodshot eyes.
“All I ask is that you honor the agreement we made this morning and find my daughter. I’ll pay whatever you want, but please, get out there.”
“Just tell me one thing,” Treviño looked fed up and exhausted. “There’s nothing else I need to know?”
“Treviño, Mr. De León just told you—”
“It’s my life on the line. Do you or do you not have direct dealings with anyone in the trade?”
“I don’t work for them or with them,” the magnate responded without hesitation. “I don’t know any of them personally.”
Skeptical, the detective got to his feet. “I’ll be back in five minutes,” he said and went out to the garden.
As soon as Treviño was alone, he took out his cell phone and tried to call his wife. No luck. He got two messages in a row saying her phone was turned off or out of range, so he turned his attention to the scenery. There must have been forty palm trees bordering the path to the stairs: forty strikingly beautiful palm trees. Beautiful like his wife. There were also a few ominous vines clinging to the side walls that seemed determined to cover everything. The detective sighed and noticed a copse of pine trees across the garden that had probably been growing there since long before that part of the city was inhabitable, inhabited, and then uninhabitable again. He took a few moments to enjoy the view of the man-made forest around him: a gentle breeze stirred the branches on the trees, which from that angle looked like anemones caressing the air. Then Carlos Treviño took a deep breath and went back inside.
The consul and the businessman cut their conversation short when they saw him.
“Well?” asked Mr. De León.
“We have one lead left,” Treviño said, turning to the consul. “Find the title for every ranch called El Zacatal. If El Tiburón survived the firefight, and if he has Cristina with him, he might have gone there to lie low.” Meeting Mr. De León’s gaze, he added, “It’s all we’ve got.”
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