“Goodness! And you’re going to the chapel?”
“I promised my mother.”
“May God bless you.”
The nuns smiled and watched him head toward the chapel. The chief walked in—there was no one inside but a cripple in a wheelchair—and out again through the back door. He reached the four-foot wall at the edge of the property and, after making sure that no one was watching, hopped into the empty lot on the other side.
No one had cleared the weeds from the lot, or from his soul for that matter, in at least twenty years. The underbrush was up to his knees, but he advanced confidently along the path he himself had worn over the past few days. When he reached the run-down structure, on the outside barely more than a few stacks of cinder blocks and exposed metal support rods, he gave the metal door three rhythmic knocks. A forty-year-old woman peeked out and, when she was sure it was Margarito, slid her gun into her waistband. The main room was empty except for a cot, a patchwork quilt, and a small television set resting on a chair.
“How are we this morning?” Margarito asked, glancing at the two heavy black metal doors on the far wall.
La Muda, who still wasn’t over losing the Bus, nodded several times to indicate that the girl had slept well and everything was under control. He had to admit it. La Muda was an asset: there she was, doing her job, even after they killed her boyfriend.
“She slept?” the policeman asked, a bit surprised.
The woman signaled to him to hold on and showed him a glass vial that contained a powerful sedative, indicating she’d given a dose to the girl, who immediately dropped like a ton of bricks.
“Go easy, that stuff can do some real damage,” said the chief, and the woman shook her head furiously as if to say, I’d never do something like that, not in a million years.
Margarito crossed to the far wall and looked through a peephole in one of the metal doors at the gorgeous sixteen-year-old blonde lying half naked on a mattress on the floor. The cherry on top. If he hadn’t asked La Tonina to tap Mr. De León’s phones, Treviño would have made off with her, and good-bye retirement plan. With what he was about to get for her, he could finally think about taking a break. But you really had to see the girl. It was true what everyone said. She really was the most beautiful thing in La Eternidad, which is saying a lot in a place known for long-legged women with tiny waists, fine features, and blue eyes. To keep her from running, they’d taken her clothes and left her in just a pair of white underpants and a pink cotton T-shirt. The chief admired, as usual, the long blond hair cascading cheerfully across the mattress. He pounded on the door until the girl stirred.
Once he was satisfied she was alive, he turned back to La Muda, who threw her hands up to ask what they were going to do with her.
“It’s almost over. Don’t worry. This will all be behind us tonight. Yes, tonight. Hold on.”
He hurried to the other door and looked through the peephole to make sure Treviño was still here, hanging by his wrists from a chain attached to the ceiling. Margarito told himself he could afford to be a little late to the event and opened the door. He walked over to the man and gave him a quick succession of right hooks to the ribs. Treviño writhed in pain.
“I know it hurts, but relax. You’re not going to die. At least, not in the next two weeks. I’ve been looking for you a long time, and I plan to enjoy this little reunion. I’m in no rush. In case you hadn’t heard, I’m about to retire.”
The chief took off his shirt, hung it on a nail, and turned to give his prisoner another round of right hooks. He paused only to mop the sweat from his face.
“Those were for the Bus. He was one of my favorite associates. If you had any idea how long it took us to plan this kidnapping … I trusted him completely. It wasn’t easy getting him a job with De León. You made it harder for me to collect when you took him out, but things are running smoothly again. When Daddy didn’t hear from you, he gave you up for dead and agreed to pay not just three, but four million dollars for his little girl. A pretty penny, no? I consider it a donation. To my savings account. But if that runs out, it’s no skin off my back; my son Ricardo is about to take over at police headquarters. So you see, it’s all in the family.”
Blood had started to pool at the prisoner’s feet.
“I didn’t like that one of my most trusted men left me swinging in the breeze five years ago, right when we were about to make some real money with our contacts in the trade, but that was your call. What I can’t stand is that you won’t stay gone, given everything you know about yours truly.”
Margarito banged on the door. Within a minute La Muda stuck her head in and he told her to bring him a length of hose. She gestured to ask him if he wanted water.
“No, not water, just the hose. For the gentleman,” he said and made a whipping motion with his arm.
La Muda nodded and closed the door. The chief walked over to the dangling mass and spun it around so they were nose to nose.
“I told you I was going to break every bone in your body, and here we are. You see? I’m a man of my word.”
The door opened and La Muda handed him the length of hose. She also pointed to her watch: it was almost nine.
Margarito squinted at the prisoner.
“Aren’t you lucky. But don’t think I’m done with you. I’ll be back soon to finish my workout. Exercise does a body good.”
He thought about how, in just a few hours, he was going to be filthy rich and Treviño was going to be behind bars or dead, after taking the fall for kidnapping the girl. Working for the law in La Eternidad had always been a lucrative gig, but he had a lot of overhead—the ex-wife, the son at school in Canada, and Los Nuevos. Those bastards just loved collecting dues. But Mr. De León was going to be generous or he’d never see his daughter again. God damn, he hated that guy. Margarito was going to make sure he got what was coming to him. He had to deliver the girl safe and sound if he wanted his ransom. But sound is a relative term.
He needed to hurry. He mopped the sweat from his forehead and put his shirt back on.
“Enjoy your last moments on earth. Hope you like the smell of piss.”
La Muda closed the door behind him and the chief hurried back to the living room and put on one of the two hoods they kept on top of the television. Then the woman, who was already wearing the other one, stepped out of the room for a moment and came back dragging the girl by the hair.
“No, please no. No more.”
“You’re prettier when you’re quiet,” Margarito growled. “Now let’s say hello to Daddy.”
The pressure of La Muda’s gun against her skin kept their guest from bursting into tears. Her knees buckled. She didn’t have the strength to run.
The chief took the cell phone the woman handed to him and dialed the only number stored in its memory, holding a distortion device to his throat. A man picked up after two rings.
“Hello?”
“How are we this morning, Your Excellence?”
“I want to talk to her. Put her on the phone!”
“Not so fast. Do you have what I asked for?”
“It’s been here for two days. How is my daughter? I demand to talk to her!”
“You’re not in a position to demand so much as a scrambled egg, Your Excellence. Shut up and listen.” He turned up the volume on the phone and brought it close to the girl’s face.
“Say something.”
The girl broke down in tears.
“Daddy? It’s me … I can’t … Please come get me … Please.”
“Sweetheart!”
“A sweet fucking pain in the ass is more like it,” interrupted the chief. “She won’t eat, so she doesn’t’ have to piss. You’d better hurry. She’s not looking too good.”
“Honey, are you there? What was your first pet’s name?”
“Oh, for the love of …”
“Bugs Bunny,” said the girl, between hiccups.
“And where did you used to think Santa Claus lived?”
The hiccups kept her from responding for a moment.
“At Grandpa’s.”
The policeman pulled the phone back.
“You’ll receive instructions at noon today. Do as you’re told or you’re all fucked.” He hung up.
La Muda dragged the girl back to her windowless room, locked her inside, and approached the chief. They took off their hoods.
“Good, right?”
She nodded without much conviction. She’d heard a few calls of that kind and this wasn’t the most inspired, but it was fine.
“Stay focused. Don’t open the door for anyone but La Tonina.”
La Muda nodded again. I get it. I get it. There’s no need to yell.
The police chief closed the door carefully behind him and retraced his steps. After checking that there was no one nosing around on the other side, he hopped the wall and walked back through the chapel, passing the man in the wheelchair and exiting the way he’d come.
The mother superior was waiting for him as he reached the main entrance.
“May God bless you, Chief.”
“And you as well, Reverend Mother.”
As the Suburban drove off, the mother superior looked at the smiling, blue-eyed nun at her side.
“The world could use more men like him.”
4
Margarito arrived at city hall just as the ceremony was about to begin. The new mayor and his team saw him enter the legislative chamber through the side door, but acted as though he didn’t exist. Unsurprisingly, every aspect of the event was designed to keep everyone at least ten feet from the new mayor, so he wouldn’t have to shake anyone’s hand.
He wasn’t yet forty, but the port’s highest-ranking councilman was already a household name nationally. The chief had contributed to his fame—though not as the mayor would have liked—with that business about the foreign girl who took a ten-story fall from one of his parties. More recently, after announcing his candidacy he’d visited every major tourist beach in the country—Isla Mujeres, Cancún, Puerto Vallarta, Huatulco, Ixtapa, Los Cabos—and then moved on to Miami, Cartagena, Rio de Janeiro, and even Mar del Plata. He claimed that those places had inspired him to turn La Eternidad into a first-world waterfront and that he was going to transform the town into a tourist destination of their caliber. At least, that was his campaign promise.
He seemed younger than he had the last time Margarito had seen him, like he’d gotten rid of a few wrinkles. And then there was that blond hair—as silky as a woman’s and teased so high it eclipsed even his bad reputation—and his lips, which plumply suggested a plastic surgeon’s intervention. When he saw Margarito, the mayor pursed those lips and thrust out his chin, shaking the locks that framed his face. The chief said nothing, but he was not a fan of the man’s coif.
A moment before the ceremony began, he noticed El Flaco gesturing to him from the hallway.
“What’s up?”
“We got them, sir. They say they’re from Chiapas, but their accents are Central American.” The chief had almost forgotten about the suspicious characters he’d seen near city hall. El Flaco had done a good job. “Their arms are covered in tattoos. Could be a couple of the Maras they’re looking for in Tampico. I sent them to headquarters for a chat.”
“Were they clean?”
“They didn’t have weapons or drugs on them. One other thing …” El Flaco gestured toward the parking lot with his chin. “Your son’s security detail wants us to turn over the patrol vehicles. I told them they can have them once we’ve gone back to the office and signed what needs to be signed. That until then, they can walk. Right, boss?”
The chief looked at his son. “Give them your vehicle and tell El Dorado to take my son in the Suburban. You and I will follow in the other squad car with La Tonina. Everyone else should go back to the office after the event.”
“Yes, sir,” El Flaco replied and left.
Just then Margarito’s cell phone rang with a call he needed to take: it was the federal agent investigating the threat on his life. The night before, fully aware of the risk, the chief had decided he’d need the help of Adrián Melgoza, a young technician from Los Coquitos he’d personally sent through the police academy and who was now working for the federales in the Department of Intelligence. Extortion and kidnapping had become such a huge problem in the past few years that the government had been forced to train a new generation of police officers in computer science and cybernetics so they could identify and trace suspicious calls from the country’s capital. The chief had called Adrián on his private line and asked him to trace the threat, without his superiors’ finding out. The kid had promised to look into it the next day, as soon as he got to the office. So the chief slipped out onto the terrace with all the discretion he could muster.
The best thing about city hall was the little terrace on the second floor, overlooking the water. It was a shame he’d spent so much time inside that building over the years and so little time out there. But he hadn’t come to admire the view.
“I’m sorry,” the agent said. “I did the best I could, but I hit a wall.”
The young man apologetically explained that the caller had used a distortion device, which made it impossible to know exactly where the signal had come from. The only thing he could say for certain was that the call had been made somewhere in the vicinity of La Eternidad.
“Could the call have come from the federal prison?”
The chief knew, because he himself had allowed it, that there was no shortage of prisoners in La Eternidad’s penal system who extorted money over the phone and who used devices to distort the signal so their victims couldn’t trace the call. They called random numbers or homes suggested by a contact on the outside in the middle of the night, claiming to have kidnapped a close relative of the person on the other end of the line. If the victims got scared enough, they’d take out a bunch of cash from an ATM and leave the supposed ransom in a remote location. It was one of the most common forms of quickie kidnapping: the fake kind. The chief knew all the culprits. He’d trained them himself and taken a share of their profits. He had to make money somehow, now that he wasn’t allowed to sell stolen cars. But the specialist put an end to his concerns.
“Not plausible. It’s too far outside the area.” When Margarito didn’t respond, he added, “Would you like us to put a tap on your phone, Chief? That would let us see where the call is coming from, if they contact you again.”
Margarito didn’t even have to think about that one. He couldn’t afford to have them record any of the other conversations he had on his personal phone. And that thing was going to be getting some serious use over the next few hours.
“No, thanks. I’d rather not. But I appreciate your help.”
He was about to pull a cigarette from his pack when he noticed that someone had followed him outside.
A gringo with thinning hair approached, offering a light. It took Margarito a minute to place him: it was Consul Don Williams, one of the most annoying men he’d ever met. He looked gaunt.
“My dear Consul, how are you doing?”
“Margarito. I didn’t think you remembered me. I’ve been waving at you.”
The chief told himself it was time to get a good pair of glasses; he hadn’t seen the man at all.
“Tell me, Consul, what can I do for you?”
“I was just wondering if you’ve found anything in connection to Cristina de León’s kidnapping.”
A seagull flew by.
“Ah, my dear Consul. I can only divulge that information to the girl’s parents. And, as I understand it, you’re no longer advising them.”
Williams shot him a fiery look.
“It was interesting, don’t you think, how your patrol vehicles blocked the exit of Mr. De León’s residential community. Cost us valuable time.”
“I already told you, we were pursuing a fugitive. It was a matter of public safety.”
“Say whatever you like, but when we were f
inally able to respond to the call for help, all we found was one of Rafael de León’s bodyguards, dead in an empty house. And the lead detective on the case, missing. As if the guilty party wanted to cover his tracks.”
“Don’t get too wrapped up in this, Consul. I know more than one guy who spent his last days mulling over these cases. Let it go. Enjoy your retirement.”
The gringo exploded at him.
“You’ll see soon enough what it’s like to fall from power. Everyone’s going to be coming for you. Run while you still can, Margarito.”
The policeman smiled broadly.
“I appreciate the advice. Hey, do you remember the package of product that went missing when they seized that American plane? They say a package like that could buy a house on the beach. In California, say …”
He heard a round of applause and looked inside to see that the mayor had started without him. You son of a bitch, he thought. What an asshole you turned out to be.
“If you’ll excuse me, I should head back inside. See you around, Williams.”
He turned back one last time before opening the door.
“Malibu. That’s the beach I was thinking of.”
They’d had so many run-ins over the past few years they hardly bothered him anymore. He’d lost track of the consul for a while, and now he was back. Some gringos could get attached to a jail cell after working there for a day.
Margarito took the first empty seat he saw in the audience. He scanned the other attendees and was surprised to see his ex-wife in the front row, next to the deadbeat who followed her everywhere, supposedly her new partner. Pino Panetta was his name; he was another Italian who’d decided to put down roots in La Eternidad. Slim and blond, he owned the restaurant La Buona Notte and was known in the late nineties—when Margarito and his wife were separating—for being quite the ladies’ man. A real Casanothing, thought the chief, who couldn’t stand the guy and used to encourage his men to park the department’s old Jeep in front of his restaurant, blocking the entrance. He smiled at his wife, but she just rolled her eyes. The chief cursed under his breath when his greeting was returned by a nod from her companion.
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