Don't Send Flowers

by Martin Solares

  Treviño looked compassionately at the girl’s parents and slipped the photo into his breast pocket.

  “I’ll keep an eye out for her.”

  “Let’s go,” said the Bus, who couldn’t stand those people.

  Just as they were about to leave, the cook asked if she could grab a cassette of Juan Luis Guerra’s greatest hits from the Maverick’s glove compartment.

  “Sorry. It’s just, who knows if you’ll be back,” she said and hurried back to the kitchen.

  “Goddammit!” the Bus exploded.

  Moreno and Rafita, leaning on the two Lobos with tinted windows, watched them until the Maverick’s engine turned over and the main gate opened.

  When Treviño and the Bus reached the outskirts of La Eternidad, they stopped at a convenience store. A headline from the evening paper caught their attention: FIFTY CONSTRUCTION WORKERS DISAPPEARED NORTH OF LA ETERNIDAD: THEIR BELONGINGS WERE FOUND ON A TRAIN TO MATAMOROS. While the Bus picked up a few bottles of soda and a dozen or so bags of junk food, Treviño stepped out to smoke his first cigarette of the trip. Standing there, he noticed that the front yard of the house next door was being set up for a quinceañeara. Everything was there, even the cake. As he watched the preparations, Treviño thought back to a few months earlier, when an armed crew had killed seventeen kids at the same kind of gathering not far from La Eternidad. The killers got out of two huge trucks, took their time interrogating everyone there, then shot them all and left. Later it was revealed that they’d been released from federal prison by the warden for the express purpose of carrying out the crime.

  He recalled how the hit men had opened fire on a group of kids (sure, maybe they were dealing drugs, but they were still a group of unarmed teenagers) and thought to himself, God help us. It was a party just like this one. The guys must have driven up a street just like this one, fanned out across a garden just like this one, terrorized a group of people like the ones right here. People dancing, chatting, enjoying life. And how do you bring them to justice when there are no witnesses, the facts of the case are beyond reckoning, and they’re backed by the prison’s warden, to say nothing of the politicians. From one day to the next, right before our eyes, everything changed. The law doesn’t decide who has the right to live anymore. It’s them. It’s the criminals who decide who lives and who dies. “Holy shit,” he said, tossing his cigarette. “What have I gotten myself into?”

  13

  Around fifteen minutes after clearing the city limits, travelers who take the highway north from La Eternidad see the landscape turn rocky. Tropical vegetation gives way to miles of yellow, sun-scorched brush. Just outside Ciudad Miel, the land turns to desert. Suddenly, the only things along the side of the road are huge, bright green cacti growing in forms so strange they’re like something from another planet. This sight goes on for five or six miles, and there’s nothing else like it. People used to stand in front of those neon green plants, their eyes wide with wonder and a smile frozen on their faces, hoping to catch those extraterrestrial beings in the middle of a conversation, maybe just as they reached an important conclusion about life on earth.

  But that was then. Now, no one driving along that road notices the vegetation. What catches the eye instead are the wrecked cars riddled with bullet holes.

  That’s how things are, here.

  That’s how things are, now.

  14

  Treviño closed his eyes, and immediately heard a voice say, Ditch the car. They’ve got to know where you are by now. He ignored the advice, which slipped to the back of his mind where so much else was hidden. Every now and then some memory would venture forward, but when it reached the surface it would sense that the moment wasn’t right and go back into hiding, like a frightened bird. He woke a few times in the back of the Maverick and stretched out his arms: the color of his skin stood out for a moment before the darkness took over, devouring him in inky blackness. My arms, the night, he thought and drifted off again.

  He’d had trouble falling asleep ever since they kicked him off the force, as if he were trying to drive himself toward extinction. When he did manage to drift off, his dreams took him to terrible places, like the chief’s torture room. For months, his insomnia was so bad he’d end up getting out of bed and putting on his boots. If he was staying at a motel, those were the best hours to slip out into the hall: there were only a few guests up and about at that time, and they were too tired or drunk to want to chat. It was strange: as dawn broke, the birds would invariably erupt into song just as he was remembering who and where he was, as if they sensed he’d entered the world and were announcing it. Birds, dreams, night.

  Then came the heat and the mosquitos. There you are, you bastards, he thought. The burn of their bites brought him back to the world. The mosquitos always showed up right when he was in the middle of an idea, and he often lost his train of thought just as he was about to have an important revelation. He came to believe that in the strange balance of the universe the way mosquitos strike just as you’re on the verge of an epiphany has kept far too many people from answering the big questions. Like what the hell they’re doing with their lives, for example.

  He’d tried to lead a peaceful life after being forced to leave La Eternidad, but his troubles with the law seemed to follow him wherever he went. He spent over a year doing odd jobs for whoever could pay him, as long as it didn’t involve going back to La Eternidad: as the driver of a smuggler or a respectable engineer, finding stolen cars for their owners, tailing a businessman’s cheating wife, working for companies whose activities ranged from questionably legal to downright criminal.

  One time, when he was between jobs, he saw a big, fat crow staring at him angrily from the middle of the path as he headed down to the river to wash his clothes. It reminded him of Chief Margarito. Treviño made like he was going to kick it, but the bird barely moved: it spread its wings insolently and with one hop came to rest just two paces from the former policeman. Son of a bitch, he thought. Have I really gone that soft? He’d never seen such an audacious bird and took it for an emissary sent by his enemies, from the same realm as his demons and the nightmares that haunted him. Later, on his way back, he noticed his belongings spread out on the grass. He almost never carried his weapon when he wasn’t working: he believed that anyone who carries a weapon ends up depending on it. One way or another, it destroys the character of its owner. Walking around his car, he ran into a young man rummaging through the trunk. He had a rifle strapped to his back.

  “Hey, kid!”

  The young man struggled to raise his rifle. Treviño could have crossed the space between them and slugged him in the time it took him to bring the gun up, but he told himself it wasn’t worth the trouble. A real tough guy, this one, he thought. But harmless, just like that crow. He stopped in his tracks when the kid leveled his weapon at him.

  “This is private property,” growled the boy.

  Treviño looked around.

  “I don’t see any signs or fences.”

  “It’s private property,” the young man repeated.

  Treviño turned his back on the young man as though he didn’t have a rifle pointed at him, gathered his things, put them in the trunk, and sat in the driver’s seat, whistling the first thing that came to mind. And he left, feeling the fierce gaze of the kid or the crow or whatever it was.

  Sometimes his reputation preceded him. Once in Pueblo Viejo he was hanging out at a roadside food stall when he noticed a married couple staring at him from a nearby table. The man, who wore a short-sleeved button-down shirt, a tie, and glasses, rattled on and on to his kids without taking his eyes off Treviño. After a while, the detective was able to make out a few snippets of a different version of his life: the story of a cop who brought down the man who’d murdered four young women with a chainsaw and seemed impossible to catch. When he saw Treviño looking at him, the husband raised his glass of orange-colored soda and said, “To your health, officer.”

  Treviño watched co
ndensation form on the glass the man was holding. The whole scene made him uncomfortable, but he gave the man a nod. Later he wondered how that version of the story, far as it was from Margarito’s official line, could have gotten out and who published the photo that allowed the man to recognize him. Maybe the truth just circulated among different channels here in Mexico. He felt strange, so he set his silverware on the table and stared out the window for a while. When he tried to pay his bill, he was told it had been taken care of by Dr. Solares, who’d just left.

  Another time he went looking for work in Las Manitas, a little town where police headquarters was just a sentry box on the side of the highway. The precinct had two indios with guns as its only officers, a stake-body truck for a patrol vehicle, and a chief of police who got around in a wheelchair after driving through the front wall of his own station while under the influence. Treviño waited outside while the crippled chief talked on the phone. The officers stared at him, fascinated. One of them asked if it was him who’d caught the Chainsaw Killer. He had been asked that question so many times he’d learned to distinguish friendly from morbid curiosity and eventually nodded.

  “What happened?”

  Treviño summed up the entire affair in two sentences and glanced over at a brown horse walking along the highway. The officers reflected on what they’d just heard and told him it could have been worse.

  “You came out of it alive and with one hell of a story.”

  Right then the chief came out to meet them.

  “Looks like you’ll be spending a few days in lockup, papá. Your boss issued a detention order for you. Cuff him,” he ordered. The officers didn’t move. He repeated the order and the men remained in their seats with their arms crossed.

  “You’re not going to arrest him? Sonofabitch, what lazy bastards you two are. The law won’t mean a damn thing around here if you two keep this up.”

  One of the officers said something in his language.

  “Don’t talk shit about me in Nahuatl, or I will fire your sorry ass,” the chief snapped.

  Treviño stood. The chief was still arguing with his underlings as he turned the key in the ignition.

  His nightmares got especially bad whenever one of his jobs brought him near the sierra outside La Eternidad. Once he even dreamed that his first wife, who died in a fire, was sitting on his bed. She had the fangs of a wolf and said to him, “I’m like this because of you.” When he finally managed to wake up, he wondered if the torments that awaited him in the next life would begin with that image of her.

  One night, a contact in the port warned him that the Three Stooges were on their way to the town where he was hiding out, so he got into the clunker he kicked around in back then—another old, beat-up Maverick—and drove until he was nearly out of gas. Just as he was losing hope of ever finding a place to sleep, he happened upon a modest hotel tucked between the highway and the beach. A rotted wooden sign announced it as the Hotel de las Ballenas.

  When he saw the car pull up, an old man who’d been sitting out front stood and smiled at him.

  “Come in, come in. If you like, you can leave your car in the garage.”

  Treviño gratefully pulled into the small wooden shed, away from prying eyes, and was pleased to see the old man close its doors as soon as he got out of the car.

  “Do you have a room for the night?”

  “Do I have a room? You’re the only guest this weekend. If you like, the presidential suite awaits you on the second floor with a terrace facing the beach.”

  He was practically giving the room away, so Treviño accepted.

  “This beach is different,” said the hotel manager. “This is a special place. Whoever sleeps here is visited in his dreams.”

  Skeptical, the detective watched the rough surf and said he might fall asleep right then and there. The old man smiled and showed him to the suite. And so began a new phase of his life.

  He liked the room right away. It was timeworn, but with its wood floors, paneled walls, and ocean views, it was the kind of place where anyone could imagine staying forever. A shelf beside the bed held a few books he’d heard of before: Don Quixote, Tom Sawyer, The Black Arrow, The Odyssey, The Aeneid, The Iliad. He picked up this last one and lay down, leaving his clothes on and keeping the Taurus in reach. A few minutes into the chapter where Odysseus and Diomedes agree to go spy on the Trojan camp, he noticed he was having trouble keeping his eyes open.

  He sensed someone, dressed in black, open the door and stand there, staring at him. After jumping out of bed and realizing it was just a dream he said to himself, “If it’s gonna happen, it’s gonna happen.” Then he flopped back down, this time free of worries. It must have been the chill of the night air or the soothing murmur of the waves, but he didn’t feel himself drift off.

  He dreamed he was looking out over a pond, its smooth surface disturbed by just a few ripples here and there, and he understood it was a reflection of his soul. He recognized his history in a few scattered objects: a guayabera like the one he used to wear in La Eternidad; a blurry photo of Daniela, the beautiful blonde who’d been his first wife; a pair of jeans; the Taurus; a leather jacket, a machete, and a pair of tall boots, like the kind he’d worn in the jungle. From there, he jumped to his sisters’ bicycles, the steering wheel of his faithful Maverick, a straw hat, and the memory of his last true love. It was all so unfair, he thought. I would have given my life to save her from that fire. A booming voice enveloped him. Would you really have given your life? His heart felt like it was being wrung out and he sensed that every word, even the ones he didn’t say, had real consequences in this world. That voice must belong to someone important, he thought, because his words reverberated like waves on the ocean. Answer, commanded the voice, and Treviño realized this was not a joke. “Yes,” he said, possibly out loud. “I’d have given my life for her. I’d trade my fate for hers if I could. I didn’t want her to die.” As he said these last words, he realized he’d begun to cry.

  Then came a silence that felt like a storm brewing, and the voice responded: As you wish. When he was finally able to make out the dream’s landscape, he found himself in a dense forest thick with fog. Little by little, the form of a horse came into view a few paces ahead of him. The animal looked at him and turned to follow a narrow path that led deep into the forest. Am I dead? he wondered, and it seemed entirely possible. He’d lost so much in recent months that maybe he’d died as well. Maybe they killed me in my sleep and I didn’t even notice. He asked, out loud: “Am I dead?” And the horse quickened its pace. “Wait!” he yelled, but the horse had no intention of losing him. If Treviño slowed down, the animal would wait for him, snorting and stamping the ground impatiently, as if to say, Are you coming, or what? The horse suddenly turned onto a wider path with fewer branches blocking the way and headed downhill. Oh, good, thought Treviño. Everything will be easier from here. Just then, the animal turned to him and said, in the voice of a human: “Think carefully before you go any farther: you get one last chance, then there’s no turning back. Listen to the master.” The horse fixed its eyes on a point in the distance behind the dreamer and said, “He’s already here.”

  He was certain a shadow had installed itself in his suite. He might have opened his eyes for a moment but when he closed them again he discovered that in the dream there was only an immense tree. Treviño waited, but the master didn’t appear. How strange, he thought. Maybe he’s not here, after all. And out loud, facing the tree, he said: “This is all too strange. I’d better go.” The tree said nothing. “Maybe I should go back to the port and ask the consul for help,” he continued, but this time a voice interjected. Do not trust the consul. Avoid flatterers. Crows feed on the eyes of the dead when the dead no longer need them, but flatterers devour the souls of the living.

  In the dream, Treviño was startled to realize that there was, in fact, someone there. We rarely think about death, the voice continued. Almost never, really, during our lifetimes. From a young age, w
e do our best to avoid the subject, and suddenly it is too late. It was then that Treviño realized there was someone sitting at the base of the tree. A man dressed in white and draped in shadows. “They call me the Greek,” he said. “I have chosen you as my student. What a shame we have to die.”

  Treviño shuddered again in his bed, but the visitor went on. “You can shield yourself, but no man lives in a walled city when death comes. You will descend into hell,” he continued. “And you will try to cross through. If you succeed, you will be given great responsibility. Every day when you leave your house, you will meet a friend, an unexpected ally, a liar, an enemy, and a traitor in disguise. If you manage to identify them, you will be allowed to return.”

  Treviño dreamed all this that night in the hotel on the beach. Five years later, as he slept in the back seat of the Maverick, he realized he was having the same dream again. The master said to him, “I entered the Trojan camp, where all sought my death, with no more than a sword and leather clothing instead of armor. We were the first to set foot in Ilion. We were showered with glory,” he continued. “But the gods kept me from returning home. Prove that you are a warrior. And never forget: what is the point of being given life if you are going to fear death?” The master reached out and touched Treviño’s forehead.

  It was still night when he opened his eyes, but his spirits had lifted.

  On that original visit to the Hotel de las Ballenas, as he observed the damage the ocean had done to the shoreline the night before and thought how peaceful the place was at that hour, he’d decided to ask the old man if he would sell him the hotel. The old man had looked at him quizzically. Before long, Treviño was the proud owner of a beachside hotel. He met his wife there. He had turned the page.

  On Tuesday, November 8, 2014, Treviño awoke in the back seat of a white Maverick similar to the first car he’d owned and thought: I’ve had this dream before. I’ve lived this life before. The Bus looked back at him in the rearview mirror.