Don't Send Flowers

by Martin Solares

  A bald man in military attire stood in front of two dozen ragtag trainees, who hung on his every word. After aiming his assault rifle at a target and showing them how to shoot it, he handed the weapon to the guy closest to him: a leathery-skinned teenager with a strip of fabric tied around his forehead. The man in military attire pointed toward two dozen soda cans hanging in front of what remained of a house, and the teenager aimed, then fired four times. The man examined the results and passed the weapon to the next in line. As Treviño made his way down the hill, he felt his blood run cold: the bald man was the guy he’d had trouble with down at the beach. The Colonel, himself.

  A skirmish suddenly broke out. In one of the other groups, the colossus with the cauliflower ear was kicking a man who was already flat on the ground. No one dared step in to separate them, and the giant didn’t stop until the man was unconscious. Only then did he calm down.

  The soldiers who’d piled them onto the bus walked them to the middle of the camp, where they met their instructor for the day: a man around fifty years old, whom the other men called the lieutenant. He’d been expecting them. A few yards farther in, yet another instructor was showing a different group of shirtless men how to make Molotov cocktails. Treviño was struck by the fact that they were using Coca-Cola bottles.

  When it was his turn to shoot, Treviño made sure his aim was impeccable. He hit three bottles set at different spots on a tree trunk.

  “All right, let’s see that again,” said the instructor.

  Treviño repeated the feat, which wasn’t really all that hard. It was a good rifle and just needed a little adjustment to the sight. The lieutenant asked if he’d had any military training.

  “I used to be a cop,” he confessed. Just as he and the consul had agreed beforehand, he went on to explain that he’d been on the force in Veracruz, where one of the gringo’s contacts could vouch for him.

  “Why’d you quit?”

  “Wasn’t enough for me.”

  “Who’d you report to?”

  “Antonio Segura.”

  The instructor nodded and asked him to wait to the side until they’d finished this round. Treviño walked over to the row of pine trees, where the cholo was already sitting with the fake Chiapans. He breathed a sigh of relief.

  They smoked in silence. Treviño looked the kid over from time to time. At around two in the afternoon, something like an alarm sounded over the loudspeakers and the newcomers had to line up. To Treviño’s concern, the Colonel walked over to say a few words to them. He thought he saw the man recoil when he saw him, so he tried to make himself invisible in the crowd.

  “You have three weeks to prove your worth, and that worth will be measured by your participation in real operations. You will be judged on the basis of your resourcefulness, teamwork, obedience, and loyalty. You will not question orders. An infraction will get you corporal punishment. Traitors will be executed on the spot. At the end, the best will be invited to join the organization; the rest will join the staff. Desertion is not an option: whoever sets foot in here is in here for good.”

  At three o’clock, they were taken to a barracks that must have been used for cattle at one point. A large, open space that held a row of at least thirty benches. On one of them, behind a column, a woman with Asian features and a body covered in tattoos was riding one of the fake Chiapans. She was naked except for a pair of knee-high cowboy boots. She caught sight of Treviño when he walked in and didn’t take her eyes off him.

  When the Chiapan finished, he put his hands on the woman’s hips and said something to her that pissed her off. She slapped him jokingly, but hard enough to make it clear that she’d gone easy on him, and stood up. She took stock of her surroundings, then sauntered toward the newcomers, putting all her weight on one leg, then the other, as if they were industrial shock absorbers. It took Treviño a moment to understand that she was offering him her services. “Five bucks, sweetie.” He declined.

  They were given ham sandwiches and coffee. After the meal, Treviño walked over to the two soldiers on guard duty and offered them cigarettes. He introduced himself by his assumed name and told them he was at their service. He asked a few practical questions:

  “Where do we sleep?”

  “In one of the barns, they’ll show you where later tonight.”

  “What time do we get up tomorrow morning?”

  “We start at five every day.”

  A few minutes later he asked if it was true that they bused in prostitutes, like he’d heard. If it was true that some of the girls were foreigners, if there were any blondes, if they were hot. One of the guards told him to chill out, that he’d just gotten there and was already talking about taking a vacation, but he insisted:he had his expectations too. He’d signed up because he’d heard that the guys who got in were treated right, and that there’d be plenty of honeys.

  “It’s pretty fucked at first,” offered the shortest of the soldiers. “But don’t worry, it gets worse.”

  The others, who were sharing a joint, ignored Treviño entirely.

  “You’ll be up to your ears in bitches, booze, pills, and weed, maybe even a little blow, but you’ve got a long way to go,” said the runt. “You gotta earn it, cabrón. Now, I don’t say this to get you all hot and bothered, but yeah, they bring us girls. Every month, month and a half.”

  “And there aren’t any other girls around here?”

  The runt went on teasing him for being impatient and asked him what was wrong with La Chinita. After beating way around the bush with talk about the cauliflower-eared giant’s short temper and what he did to guys who disrespected him, the runt said that, yeah, there were a few other women around, but they were reserved for the bosses.

  “Sometimes the bosses bring in broads from outside. Those ones stay for just a few days.”

  Treviño said he’d seen a blonde, maybe sixteen years old. She’d made an impression. They told him there were a few blondes hanging around, but he shouldn’t get his hopes up. The only time they left the main house was to get some sun, and that was in a little attached enclosure. When they were done, they went right back inside. Mostly Asian chicks. They’d brought them in around six months before, but there weren’t many left.

  “There’s blondes, too, though,” said the other soldier, pointing at the main house. “I saw a few yesterday, from a distance. They were swimming in the enclosure with three or four buzz cuts standing guard. Real choice broads. They spent the whole time bouncing from the trampoline into the pool until they got tired and flopped into some colorful hammocks hung from the trees. They sunbathed out there and had drinks brought to them for a while. Three of them.”

  Treviño asked if they were Mexican or foreigners.

  “More like Russians,” the soldier replied. “A little long in the tooth, they’d had a lot of work done.” He said they’d been speaking a sharp, explosive language that sounded more as though they were crushing gravel between their teeth than talking and that—judging by the way they shouted at one another—they didn’t get along all that well. Mockery and contempt sound the same in any language. Treviño said he’d like to get a look at the women, anyway. He was just finishing up his cigarette when the colossus with the cauliflower ear walked up.

  “Get to work, gentlemen.”

  They unloaded a shipment of bricks from the back of a truck and set them on a plot that had recently been cleared, at the back of which they could see barns and what was probably the main house. A third fence and another pair of guards stood between them. Just as Treviño was thinking there was no way to get over there, much less to explain himself if he got caught, the colossus got a call on his cell phone and asked if anyone there knew anything about plumbing.

  Treviño raised his hand.

  “Can you install a Jacuzzi?”

  He nodded convincingly and was told to head straight up toward a two-story structure that was pretty run-down but still bore some resemblance to a house. He advanced cautiously until he reached
the first guard, who leveled his rifle at him.

  “They sent me to install a Jacuzzi,” he explained.

  “Who did?” The sentry looked at him suspiciously.

  “The boss they call Tiny.”

  The sentry looked into the distance, nodded, then told him to head straight up there and keep it moving.

  “Go around back and report to Sergeant Garlanza.”

  Treviño walked toward the house at a leisurely pace, as if he were admiring the landscape. He noticed four square windows on the second floor and two larger, rectangular ones on the ground floor. He estimated that if the structure was built like the estates of yesteryear, there were probably only four bedrooms, all upstairs. When he’d almost reached the front of the house, he paused. In one of the upstairs windows he could see an Asian girl of about twenty-five or thirty doing a line of coke. The plunging neckline on her dress revealed the beautiful woman’s breasts as she bent forward. So this is where the bosses hang out, he thought.

  “Go on, quit dragging ass,” called the sentry, tossing a rock at him.

  As he walked, the sentry whistled to another guard who was standing at the front door to the house. The second guard responded in kind, and when Treviño got close enough, he gave him a good kick in the back.

  “Keep moving that slow and you’ll catch a bullet. Around here, we follow orders.”

  “Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.”

  “This way.”

  He took Treviño around back, where a bunch of muscular dudes in swim trunks were chatting up three women wearing only thongs. It didn’t take the detective long to notice that contrary to what the runt had said there was only one real woman among them, a tall brunette with shapely long legs and enormous implants. The other two were bottle-blond transvestites. So this is how the “real men” spend their time, eh, Treviño thought and looked away. A soldier was cooking meat on a grill nearby.

  “The reinforcements are here, boss.”

  One of the more sour-faced members of the group stood and walked over to him without putting down his beer.

  “You’re a plumber?”

  “I do construction, dabble in plumbing.” Treviño saw an enormous eight-person Jacuzzi still in its original packaging and, next to it, a state-of-the-art water heater.

  “How long will it take you to install?”

  “About three hours, sir.”

  “You’ve got half that. And remember, it’s your ass if you break this shit. What do you need?”

  “Some bricks for the base. Cement. A set of wrenches. And help lifting the thing.”

  “The Jacuzzi is fine where it is. You move it, I bust your head. They’ll bring you the rest of that shit now. Get cracking. This guy will give you a hand,” he said, pointing to the soldier who had kicked him.

  They were unpacking the water heater when Treviño heard new peals of laughter. Two blondes in their forties with spectacular fake tits had arrived. The man with the crocodile smile followed a few paces behind them, and all the way at the back there was the Colonel. Treviño hid behind the machine and tried to cover his face with his hat.

  “Let’s go get those bricks,” he suggested. Just as he and the soldier were getting up, someone called out his real name.

  “Carlos Treviño.” The Colonel was right behind him. “What, you don’t remember me? We met on the beach a while back.”

  The men held the detective’s arms while the Colonel mercilessly pummeled his ribs and face. Eventually he got tired.

  “Take him to the kitchen. I’ll be there soon.” The Colonel’s knuckles were bleeding. The men lifted Treviño into the bed of a pickup truck. “Awww shiiiit,” they said. “You’re gonna get yours.”

  His body was floating on an immense wave of pain that made it hard for him to think. All he wanted was to get his hands on the cannonball lodged in his back, giving off flashes of black lightning.

  They didn’t take him to the kitchen. Instead, they drove a good twenty minutes across hilly terrain. He suddenly thought he smelled boiled chicken. Then one of his attackers grabbed him by the arm and rolled him onto the ground. Opening his eyes was as hard as lifting a truck.

  The first thing he saw was three men heating a gigantic vat that stood around three feet tall. A long-haired guy in a shirt splattered with dark stains lifted a neon green bottle and emptied its contents into one of the containers near him, out of which a hand protruded. Treviño suddenly understood who they were, what they were doing, and that this would be how he’d meet his end too.

  “Hey, here are a few more.”

  Only then did the detective notice the two bodies that had been thrown down beside him.

  “How do you want them?”

  “These two, same as the rest. But this other one”—he pointed at Treviño—“don’t touch him. The Colonel will come pay his respects after dinner.”

  The guy with the long hair looked at him and nodded.

  “Don’t touch this one. We’re waiting for the bald man,” he said to one of his helpers, who stopped in his tracks, shovel in hand. The other one laughed and stared at the ex-cop, who looked the other way and discovered a dozen trees in bloom. The big, lush bougainvillea and canary-yellow golden chains were like beaming smiles amid the chaos. Flowers existing in a parallel dimension, blithely unaware of the terror.

  The guy with the long hair poured himself a handful of pills and swallowed them with a swig from his can of Coke. Then he went over to Treviño, pushed him over to a nearby tree, and tied his hands and feet with nylon cords. When he was finished, he walked back and handed a machete to one of his helpers.

  “This one goes in the gray drum, that one in the blue. But not right now. Right now it’s time,” he went on, raising his voice so the two men could hear him, “to get something to eat.”

  Treviño noticed a small piece of metal near him—probably the lid from a can of food. He covered it with his foot, praying no one else had seen it. The undertaker with the long hair looked at the detective, furrowed his brow, and planted himself right in front of him. For a moment, Treviño thought he was on to him.

  “Who’s going to watch him?” asked one of the helpers.

  “The guardians of the mountain,” said the man. “No one gets past them.”

  Flashing his jack-o-lantern smile, the undertaker leaned over the detective and tapped him several times on the forehead to get his attention.

  “Be right back,” he grunted.

  And they left Treviño tied to a tree.

  As soon as they were nearly out of sight, he grabbed the shard of metal and began rubbing it desperately against the ropes that bound his wrists and ankles. The moment they started to loosen, he wriggled out of them like an angry cat. It took a little while, but he’d cut himself free.

  A bolt of pain shot through his back when he tried to stand, propping himself up on a shovel he’d found. He doubled over and had to take a deep breath before he was able to move his right leg forward, then his left.

  He made sure there was no one in sight and, using the shovel for support, hobbled down the hill in the opposite direction from where the undertakers had gone. The good news was that there wasn’t a soul for miles. The bad news was that there wasn’t a rock, bush, or burrow to hide him anywhere, either. All it would take to catch him would be for someone to return to the execution site and look toward the horizon. Winded and trying to ignore the pain from his injuries, he made his way toward the crest of the nearest hill.

  The evening sun painted the rocks a warm orange. He knew night would fall soon and the Colonel would be coming for him.

  He reached the crest of the hill and saw that he was just ten feet from a large pond, probably stocked with fish.

  Water was one of the things he needed most, so he carefully made his way down, knelt on the gravel, and drank like a dog until he couldn’t breathe anymore.

  He checked to make sure there was no one around and leaned over again to wash the dried blood off his face. He rinsed his mouth and s
pat several times onto the dry earth. Then he removed the torn, bloodstained rag that had once been his guayabera, leaving on his sleeveless undershirt. His tongue was in bad shape and he was pretty sure that if he wiggled one tooth too hard, it’d end up in his hand.

  He suddenly felt a change in his surroundings, as if all the birds had fallen silent at once. His whole body tensed.

  A shiver ran down Treviño’s spine. He turned to see a straw hat appear at the water’s edge and under it a diminutive man with an impeccable goatee.

  The shock nearly killed him. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, he thought. As the tiny man walked toward him, he wondered why he was so scared, and a voice inside him answered: Because he’s an evil spirit. A Chaneque. He thought back to all the stories he’d heard as a child. If you were alone near a river or spring they warned, you might get a visit from one of these wicked creatures, who prey on the defenseless. If one of them asked you a question, you were supposed to lie or trick him if possible, because they’d ruin your life if they got the chance. You only had to say the name of a loved one out loud, and that person would fall deathly ill or have a fatal accident that exact moment. He told himself it was all ridiculous, but he couldn’t stop himself from shaking as the visitor approached.

  Unlike most dwarfs, the man had fine features, long fingers, and a harmonious build: a homunculus made to scale. The only shocking thing about him was his enormous eyes, tapered and yellow like a coyote’s. Other than that, he was dressed in typical Huastecan attire: white shirt and pants and a red handkerchief tied around his neck. His legs were hidden by the grass, so Treviño couldn’t tell whether he was wearing boots or huaraches.

  The detective knew there was something dangerous about the visitor, but he couldn’t say why he found him so terrifying. He was clearly unarmed and barely came up to the detective’s waist. Still, when the little man walked up to him, Treviño’s blood ran cold.

  “Good evening,” he said. “Because evening it is.”

  Treviño nodded, thinking he might faint, while the homunculus looked him up and down.