“These guys know La Eternidad is going to be as important as Acapulco and Vallarta, and they want to get in on the ground floor.”
When the first group of fifteen was massacred on the outskirts of the city, the mayor went to Mexico City to explain the situation and ask for federal support. He was carrying a thick file Margarito had prepared. He returned the same night. Margarito went to meet him and found him more taciturn than usual.
“They didn’t even hear us out,” he’d said. “They threw your report in the trash. They gave us one suggestion: pass every mass killing to the federales, because the crimes involved don’t fall under local jurisdiction. Translation: if you don’t find drugs on the bodies, plant some, and leave it for the attorney general.”
Over the next twelve months, the criminals grew increasingly cruel in their attacks, trying to outdo one another. Instead of driving out their competition, though, they created a spiral of hatred and revenge. And all the weapons coming into the port! Ten years ago, you had to order the standard-issue police sidearm from the state capital. Now you could buy one at your local supermarket if you were desperate enough to pay ten times what you would if you just drove to the gringo side of the border.
“I know,” said Ricardo. “I got the report. Your name is all over it. If you had any idea of the things you’re accused of … They even have statements from people close to you. If I were you, I’d be looking for a good lawyer.”
The chief bristled at this last remark. Could there be a traitor on his team? It took him years to find a few efficient, loyal men who couldn’t be bought. He could be proud of Macaria, the lawyer in charge of his paperwork; of Herminio, La Tonina, El Dorado, and of course, though to a lesser extent, El Flaco. Oh, and then there was Roberta Pedraza, a.k.a. La Gordis, fresh out of the police academy, a good officer with good attitude. They’d hit it off right away. So he leaned forward and said, “At the moment, there are two documents circulating that mention my name. There’s the Report on Criminal Activity in the Gulf of Mexico prepared by the US consul to La Eternidad, and the study that hack from the Commission on Human Rights put together. No one cares about the second one, so it’s got to be the first. Right?”
Noticing the surprise on his son’s face, the chief added, “The consul has no idea where his bread is buttered. Diplomacy’s great and all that shit, but we’re the ones who have to bail him out when his plans go ass up. Day before yesterday he stuck his foot way in it, and they asked for his resignation.”
“Maybe so, but the part about you is this thick,” retorted his son. “They even have statements from the DEA.”
There that Don Williams goes again, thought Margarito. Sticking his nose where it doesn’t belong. His son looked him in the eye.
“Find yourself a good lawyer. It’s the only advice I can offer you.”
Margarito shifted in his seat.
“Look, Ricardo. All I want is for you to ask yourself if maybe, just maybe, they’re using you to get to me before throwing you out on your ass too when it’s over. No matter how well you do your job, you might find yourself in the same position I’m in after a few years. It comes with the territory.”
“No, I don’t think so. Two things make us different: torture, and the company you keep,” he said. “There’s no excuse for that.”
From the driver’s seat, El Dorado looked at his boss in the rearview mirror to gauge his reaction. The chief shook his head.
“Three years ago, while you were in Canada, we caught a guy who’d cut up six women with a chainsaw. When we brought him in, he was beaming with pride over what he’d done. He was a rich kid from a good family; he’d killed all those girls out at his parents’ beach house. There were reports of two other women who’d gone missing, and he told us he had them, that they were bleeding to death in some hideout. He wouldn’t tell us where. We searched the whole port and the surrounding areas and came up empty. You know how we got the clue that led us to them? I locked myself in with him for the night. And we saved the girls, even though one of them lost a leg. Gangrene had set in by the time we got there.”
“There are other ways to interrogate someone.”
“Sure there are, but tell that to those girls. And that goes for all the other cases, too. As for the other thing, the questionable company I supposedly keep: any asshole who gets hung up on that doesn’t have a clue what this job is.”
His son stared out the window for a moment before responding.
“You talk about the end justifying the means and all the good you’re trying to do, but the Chainsaw Killer was an exception, not the rule. What is an everyday thing, though, is the money you take from them and your abuse of suspects in your custody. What do you think you’re known for in the national papers? I know. I’ve seen the clippings.”
Now I see who turned you against me, thought the chief. His wife, who’d always saved every newspaper article that mentioned him. He stifled the urge to go off on her. Ever since Ricardo turned fifteen, his parents had been at war for influence over their only son. His mother, the eminent Dr. Antonelli—an Italian who decided to move to Mexico, the first woman with an advanced degree in the port, and the dean of its budding university—bought him books, CDs, foreign and art house films; encouraged him to study Italian and other languages; took him on trips to the capital and abroad; sent him to finish high school in the United States so he could perfect his English. In short, she always wanted him to have horizons broader than his father’s. On the other end of the spectrum, his dad: the man who’d sponsored and facilitated his first night of drinking, his first party with mariachis, and even his first experience with a prostitute—or would have, if Ricardo had let him. He’d treated him and his friends to endless banquets at trendy restaurants. The chief had thought he might be able to get closer to his son once he moved abroad, far from his mother, but that wasn’t the case. The wounds the boy had suffered as a child never did quite heal.
The chief had tried to put his best foot forward when they worked together and always sent Ricardo on interesting errands, but his son wasn’t blind; it didn’t take him long to notice how shady the people were who came to visit his father or how his meetings were always at strange hours and places, like a massive unfinished hotel, a ranch on the outskirts of the city, or yachts that never spent more than a couple of hours docked offshore. He was also quick to realize that his father had a safe house off the highway where he took the more difficult detainees, the ones it was better to interrogate in private. Once, after he hadn’t seen him in the office for two days in a row, Ricardo had gone looking for him in the cantina and found him there in a foul mood, with bandages on his knuckles, drinking tequila with El Flaco and El Dorado. The Commission on Human Rights had recently filed a complaint against his father for inflicting permanent damage on a suspect in his custody. Ricardo had asked if beating detainees was a regular thing for him, and Margarito replied, “Look. Sometimes we bring people in who just aren’t going to talk. Who have so much confidence in their connections and their resources that they figure instead of charging them, we’ll end up letting them walk and apologize to them, to boot. When you’re dealing with the real lowlifes you can’t just put them back on the street. You have to break their confidence. And the only way to break these guys is to go after them little by little, like cracking an egg without crushing it. You have to be patient and let it sink in that no one knows where they are and no one is coming to help them until they confess what they did and sign a statement. That’s how police do it across the country, how we’ve always done it. There are even classes on how to do it.”
His son’s face darkened and he’d walked out of the cantina. He never set foot in headquarters again, not even to tender his resignation.
The theory of the egg wasn’t the only thing that had put distance between Ricardo and his father. There were also the rumors accusing him of protecting Los Nuevos, all those mysterious meetings, and the fact that he so obviously lived above his police officer’s s
alary: a house in the city and one on the beach, trips to the border, a new car and a younger lover every year, jewelry, watches. For as long as Ricardo could remember, especially in middle and high school, his classmates had either beaten him up or avoided him entirely. His mother got him a scholarship to study in Montreal. He hadn’t spoken to Margarito much since then, and when he returned to La Eternidad, it had been two years since the last time he’d seen him.
“We can go case by case. But I need you to hear me out, and you should meet the players you’ll be dealing with. These guys mean business.”
“You mean your friend’s competition? I know a thing or two about the individuals in question. They defected from the Mexican military.”
Margarito nodded.
“They’re military, yeah, but not just Mexican: we’ve picked up guys from the Guatemalan armed forces too, and even a few Kaibiles. Then there’s the little gang that went to the United States and came back as La Cuarenta. Keeping them from shooting each other or killing anyone else is a tough job.”
“Not that you’ve been all that good at it.”
He opened the local newspaper, which had been on the seat next to La Tonina. The headline read: TWENTY MASSACRED. Below the words was a photo of a pile of corpses in a vacant lot on the outskirts of the city. The killers had set fire to the bodies and left them out in the open, making it clear they had no intention of burying them. Though local residents had been tipped off to their presence by the unusual number of buzzards circling, it had taken them two days to find the bodies or maybe to gather the courage to report what they’d found. Somehow twenty people were murdered out in the open, and there were no witnesses or forensic clues. According to the article, all had been shot execution-style. A professional job, the kind Margarito knew all too well: it took only a crew of three, maybe four, highly trained individuals to round up that many unarmed civilians, bring them out to the lot, and execute them. He’d told these guys over and over: “Rob them, run them off, but don’t kill them. That’s no good for any of us.” But they didn’t listen. Ever since war broke out between the two organizations, at least ten people would disappear every two weeks or so, which was how long it would take either group to kidnap the men who divided up their competition’s product for sale on the street. At first, the victims would just vanish, buried out on some ranch. These last two months, though, they’d been turning up whole or in pieces at key locations around the city. The twenty they killed this time broke all the records. At the press conference, Margarito said only that the investigations were ongoing, per his agreement with the cartels.
“It’s very convenient, washing your hands of all this by bouncing it up to the federales.”
“I can’t give you all the details on the fly like this, but it’s a temporary situation. It’ll be over soon.”
“When they finish killing each other off, you mean?”
“When they reach an agreement. Did you hear about what’s going on in La Nopalera? Do you know how long the new chief of police lasted? An hour and a quarter. An hour and a quarter,” Margarito repeated.
The conversation ground to a halt just as they pulled up to a red light.
“What are you going to say at the press conference?” Margarito asked. “Think carefully, because there are going to be reporters there from Proceso and La Jornada, and they’re going to ask you some tough questions.”
“Such as?”
“Such as what are you going to do about all the mass killings we’ve seen this year.” The chief gestured toward the newspaper that rested on the seat between them. “How will you respond to that?”
“That solving those crimes is a top priority, even if they did occur on the outskirts of the city. In fact, I plan to handle those cases myself.”
“Are you fucking crazy? That’s a fight you can’t win. Let those assholes kill each other off and stay the hell out of it,” Margarito bellowed as his son watched him with something like pity. “Think about La Nopalera. An hour fifteen.”
As they waited for the light to turn green, Ricardo said, “I heard they kidnapped Mr. De León’s daughter. And that you were behind it.”
Margarito shrugged.
“Day before yesterday I brought a suspect in, a guy from Veracruz. I’ve got him in custody and we’re preparing his statement. Looks like he’s about to confess.”
His son looked at him, trying to gauge if his father, who was an excellent liar, was telling the truth.
“They say you’re asking for three million dollars,” Ricardo added.
Margarito smiled at his son.
“If someone wanted to give me that much cash, I certainly wouldn’t stop him. Now that I’m retired and all.”
“And what do you have to say about the Three Stooges?”
Bracamontes, El Gori, and the Block were always popping up in El Imparcial de la Sierra, and Fearless Juan had written about them in Proceso.
“The mayor forced those guys on me. I have to put up with them.”
Ricardo shot him a disgusted look.
“How can you stand to have those psychopaths on your team?”
As they reached one of the city’s shopping centers, the light caught beautifully on the mist rising off the street, but the chief didn’t seem to notice.
“You like what you see here?” he asked, pointing at the car dealerships and restaurants that so fascinated his son. “You might be surprised to learn how many of these places, even the ones run by folks you know, have ties to the trade in one way or another. You can’t get around it these days.”
His son said nothing.
“Have you heard anything about Treviño?” Ricardo asked eventually. Margarito shrugged and looked out the window.
“Not a word.”
Technically, it was true. But he’d hear something soon enough.
That was all he said. If there was one thing he knew, it was that his son was going to try to get Treviño back on the force. The chief wasn’t surprised they’d gotten on well when they’d worked together, but he couldn’t stand Treviño.
Margarito looked at his son and saw the hatred in his eyes. After a few moments of silence, he added, quietly, “Do me a favor. Keep El Flaco, El Dorado, and La Tonina around. They’ve known you your whole life. If anyone can keep you safe, it’s my men.”
“The boss wants me to bring in a new team, fresh from the academy. A team that isn’t crooked.”
“Then make sure they get early retirement. Don’t leave them hanging.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
Margarito watched his son stare out the window at a few grubby children washing cars nearby. This man was nothing like the son he’d raised, that generous, understanding person who never had a harsh word for anyone. Something had killed his compassion. If only he knew, thought the chief, the metric ton of shit that’s waiting for him. Come see me in three or four years and tell me this job is easy.
“Yeah, see what you can do,” he said, still following his son’s gaze.
It wasn’t even ten in the morning yet, but the malecón was already full of trios, soloists, nomads, masseurs, tai chi instructors announcing their services on sandwich boards, hairdressers braiding cornrows on the sand—droves of tourists, beggars, and vendors walking up and down the beach selling rosaries and other religious paraphernalia, blankets, rugs, crafts, beach attire, sandals, embroidered blouses, grilled shrimp on a skewer, silver jewelry.
Two guys walked past dressed like thugs. Police instinct cut through Margarito’s reverie and he sensed the heavy, dark energy criminals give off.
“Pass me the radio,” he ordered La Tonina. “See those guys over there at nine o’clock?” he asked El Flaco as soon as he had the microphone in his hand. “Go see what they’re up to.”
“Yes, boss.”
“But don’t go yourself. Send a squad car.”
“I’ll get out here,” said Ricardo. They’d reached the parking lot of city hall. Margarito knew there was something importan
t he still had to tell him, but the Suburban had pulled up to the front gate. Before his security detail got out of the vehicle, the soon-to-be chief of police looked at him and said, “See you, Pop. These were tough times you had to deal with.”
The minute his son stepped onto the pavement, picked up his suitcase, and headed for the stairs, Margarito grabbed his walkie-talkie and ordered his men to keep an eye on him.
“Flaco, go with him. Don’t let him out of your sight.”
“Are you coming too, boss?”
“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”
He turned to La Tonina and El Dorado.
“You go keep an eye on him too. And leave the keys.”
When they stepped out of the vehicle, Margarito got into the driver’s seat and ran every light until he got to El Santo Refugio de los Pescadores.
For a long time already, nothing calmed him like visiting that church and its adjoining convent. He parked the Suburban next to an immense ceiba tree and hurried inside. The novices, who had just finished their morning chores and were getting breakfast ready for the senior citizens they cared for there, saw him come in.
“Will you be staying for breakfast, Chief?”
“No thank you, my dears. I’m in a rush. I’ll just be seeing to something.”
He crossed the atrium, where the three nuns in charge were seating the convent’s fifty or so residents in chairs around the garden.
“Coming to pray at this early hour, Chief?”
“If you only knew what time I woke up this morning,” Margarito replied, without slowing down. “Very busy these days.”
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