Don't Send Flowers

by Martin Solares

  His first reaction was confusion: with his goatee and his coyote eyes, the visitor reminded him of the devil, as depicted by the Catholic Church. If the devil was an unusually lively person in constant movement, like a spring.

  The newcomer studied him for a moment, then asked if he was La Santa’s kid and why he’d been looking for him. Margarito explained that he’d gone looking for him, yes, to ask for work. When the man asked about his mother, he replied that she was on some retreat with her followers, that she’d been gone for ten days already and he didn’t know when she’d be back. Then the man with the goatee asked if he could speak to him for a moment out in the street, as if some strange law kept him from setting foot inside without an invitation. Margarito wasn’t the type to chicken out, so he went. Out there, on a bench, without so much as shaking his hand first, the visitor began to speak.

  “I’m Lieutenant Elijah Cohen. Your father and I worked together a long time ago, down at the shipyard. He was a good man, but gullible. I see he didn’t manage his money too well, either, even though he made quite a bit. It’s a shame, his son living in poverty like this. Do you want to come work for me?”

  Margarito didn’t like being around this strange character, who skipped every pleasantry and had the nerve to speak badly or, rather, candidly, about his family’s troubles. Then he saw the precinct’s famous Jeep parked on the corner.

  He was about to make a run for it: he’d stolen a television earlier that day, and he thought they’d come to arrest him. Anyone who worked on the force in La Eternidad during that rough stretch in the eighties would remember Lieutenant Elijah Cohen. It was a tough decade, but headquarters had the right team for the job: Chief Albino was there to lead the force and make nice with mayors, congressmen, and other politicians, while Lieutenant Cohen was there to solve the mysteries of La Eternidad. Cohen was the eldest son and black sheep of a wealthy family of entrepreneurs. He was famous for his intelligence, but even more so for his impatience. Though the people of La Eternidad weren’t generally known for their candor, Cohen grew up in a Jewish family that never beat around the bush. While most locals took great pains to surround themselves in a cloud of niceties, Elijah preferred to blow right through them. His life’s passion and greatest talent was studying people. He liked to talk with people from all walks of life and hypothesize about their inner workings, their desires, how they pursued them, what resources they had, how they tended to behave.

  The years he’d spent needing to work all sorts of jobs to stay alive had given him both an understanding of a wide range of human temperaments and an edge of caustic irony that tended to emerge at the worst possible moment. Unsurprisingly, he’d never had many friends.

  “I know you have a criminal record. You steal, either to live or for fun. Aside from that, is there anything I should know?”

  “No, sir,” Margarito lied.

  “I also know you’re a man and can handle yourself in a fight. I was standing near you last Carnaval, when you laid those ranchers out. I was going to step in, but then I realized you didn’t need the help, that you could manage those three on your own. The one you knocked out was a boxer. Who taught you to fight?”

  “Dunno. Picked it up on the street.”

  Elijah flashed a bitter smile.

  “I used to be just like you: a hothead with no one to guide me. It might be that I’m getting old, but I’m tired and need someone around who can jump in when it’s time to put on some pressure. If you think you’re that person, you just hit the jackpot.”

  Margarito’s life up to that moment had been no picnic. His relationship with his mother had consisted of the following: he would make all sorts of mischief to get her attention, like the time he stole her savings, then she would yell and try to hit him, and he’d run into the street. The more ferocious her insults and her urge to hit him grew, the longer he steered clear of Los Coquitos. No one should have to feel like his own mother hates him. For Margarito, it was the worst feeling imaginable, even worse than knowing his father was dead. That didn’t get any easier, either, and it didn’t help to hear: But if you barely even knew your father, why do you care?

  For a while, he made money cleaning windshields along the highway to the airport, until the owner of a grocery store gave him permission to wash cars out front of his place. He’d had to run from the police more often than he would’ve liked. In those days, it was hard to say who Margarito’s friends were; most of the time he’d beat up any kid who went near him. The only one who stuck with him was Flaco Ibarra, who back then was a fat kid with a permanent grin. Margarito would knock him around until he was blue in the face, but El Flaco just kept smiling. Then, because a government inspector—unfazed by her threats to put a hex on him—threatened to report her if she didn’t, La Santa agreed to finally send Margarito to school.

  “It won’t do him any good. Just look at how his brothers ended up: one of them’s dead; the other dresses like a woman. I don’t know how this one’s going to turn out, but he’s no angel. None of my children turned out well.”

  His first days at school were a nightmare. The older kids made fun of his name: Margarita, Margarita, small and round like a gordita. They laughed at his threadbare clothes, calling him names like Dumpster and Handouts. They made fun of his mother, calling her La Bruja, the witch. Margarito would shove, scratch, or give them a black eye in response—when he wasn’t being pinned down, that is, kicking and biting in self-defense.

  The school principal wasn’t surprised by the anger little Margarito carried inside him or how often he beat the other boys up. It was pretty much a daily occurrence; you might say it was the only way he knew how to interact with his classmates, as if hitting them were his way of introducing himself. By the end of the first month, he’d already beaten up nearly every one of the boys, even the ones who were bigger than him, and he had started to hassle the girls who made fun of him. He would tug at their dresses, call them names, and shove them as he passed by. What will become of this child? the principal would wonder. It can’t be easy to have La Santa for a mother.

  Once, just once, it looked as though his life might go a different way. It was when he met Miss Lupita. Already alerted to the problem child in her classroom by the school principal, instead of punishing him for stealing food from his classmates, Miss Lupita observed him throughout her first day and stayed on the sidelines when he’d get into fights. The next day she asked him to stay behind during recess.

  “All right, Margarito. Come share my lunch and let’s chat a bit.”

  Miss Lupita was a very pretty young woman with curly black hair who’d just finished her degree in education. It was the first time anyone had treated him like an adult, and Margarito was so startled by it that he actually acted like one and answered his teacher’s questions more clearly than he’d thought he could. When the boy finished telling her about his brothers and how his mother treated him, she seemed to grow very sad.

  “You’re one of those angry young men,” said Elijah, locking him in that blue stare of his that always made Margarito uncomfortable. “I was just like you, at your age. Until Albino handpicked me to work at headquarters. If you want to make a good career for yourself, there are some things you have to learn, and fast. Anyone can learn this stuff by trial and error, but I’m going to show you a shortcut. I only ask one thing: stay loyal. Don’t be like those other deadbeats, and you’ll make a lot more than they do. More importantly, you’ll live a lot longer.”

  They were regulars at his favorite bar, a little spot with a palm-thatched roof across from the malecón where people would gather to enjoy the seafood, empanadas, and soup. It was one of the only places Margarito always felt at home.

  Three months after hiring him, Elijah was already passing him the toughest cases, and everyone said he’d be chief one day. After spending his early years running from the police, he was about to become one of La Eternidad’s finest.

  Elijah taught him a lot and demanded a lot from him, but what
Margarito made working for him was barely enough to live on. His prospects finally started looking up one day when he was out on assignment.

  Someone had killed a smuggler known as El Gato just as he was getting home. They were examining the scene of the crime when El Dorado, who’d been assigned as his partner that day, pointed to a briefcase hidden behind a few plants in the entryway.

  “Hey, check it out! Look what I found!”

  Officer Margarito set the briefcase on his knees and opened it. Inside was an overstuffed manila envelope, and inside that …

  “Holy shit!”

  Stacks of hundred-dollar bills with the bank’s currency bands still on them.

  “There must be … I don’t know … at least a hundred grand here.”

  “Son of a bitch, no wonder he tried to run.”

  Margarito had never seen that much cash in his life.

  When they lifted the envelope, out fell a couple of documents and a business card with a message written on it. As soon as he saw the insignia on the card, Margarito knew they couldn’t keep the money.

  “Are you crazy?” El Dorado asked.

  “I might be crazy, but I’m not high. I know who this belongs to. Don’t know him well, but I know him.”

  When he went to return the case to its rightful owner, the men guarding the door of the mansion scoffed at his threadbare pants and worn-out boots. It took him a good forty minutes to convince them he needed to deliver the case to its owner in person, and then another half hour went by before the union leader’s right-hand man, a congressman named Camacho, could be bothered to see him. Margarito was sick of counting the palm trees in the garden, but he wouldn’t open the briefcase for anyone else. Camacho removed his dark glasses at the sight of the money.

  “Did Elijah Cohen send you?” he asked.

  “No, sir,” said Margarito, swallowing hard. He knew how much of a risk he was taking. “I haven’t told anyone about this.”

  The congressman still didn’t trust him.

  “You say you’re from here, from the port. You’re not related to the González family that had that notary’s office on Calle Morelos?”

  “I don’t know them, sir. We’re from out on a ranch but we moved here, to Los Coquitos.”

  “Wait here.”

  He showed Margarito to a room, from which the young officer could hear him talking loudly on the phone with someone, erupting from time to time in good- and ill-natured laughter. He came out fifteen minutes later, visibly more relaxed.

  “So you’re La Santa’s kid?” he asked. “You should’ve led with that.”

  Camacho had put two and two together and couldn’t believe what had come out. Under his mustache, his grin nearly reached his sideburns.

  “El Gato’s dead? Makes no difference to us. The union has nothing to do with smuggling or crime. Nothing, you hear? Our leader is a man of great moral stature.”

  Based on the stench wafting his way, Margarito guessed that the man had been drinking since the night before. So he answered more shrewdly than he’d thought he could. As if he had no ulterior motive.

  “That’s exactly why I brought this here, sir. It seemed crucial to remove these papers from the scene of the crime. To protect the union’s image,” he added, handing him the papers and the business card he’d found at the bottom of the envelope.

  The smile faded from the man’s face. His eyes moved between the papers and Margarito for a long while. Then he got to his feet.

  “Wait here.”

  Margarito watched uneasily as two bodyguards showed up to secure the room, then patted him down and asked for his weapon, but he didn’t put up a fight. No way is he going to have me killed in his own home. Who’d ever heard of a major public figure hiding a corpse in his living room? He’d have to be stupid. Five minutes later, he was invited into the union leader’s office.

  Camacho, holding a Cuba libre, sat next to the man in charge. The briefcase was on a table next to the desk. When he saw Margarito, the great Agustín Fernández Vallarta stood and extended his hand.

  “Come in, young man. Come in.”

  He’d only seen him in photos before, always wearing those iconic dark glasses. As usual, he’d grown his mustache out in a thin horizontal line just above his upper lip, which made his wide mouth look even bigger and gave him a vaguely simian appearance overall. But what surprised Margarito most were the man’s stature and the size of his hands. It was easy to imagine him starting out as a longshoreman and working his way up the ladder before jumping over to the administrative side of things and into the leadership of the petroleros, not letting anyone get in his way.

  Margarito knew he was face-to-face with one of the most powerful men in the country. All he needed to do was call a strike among his workers, and the price of gas would go up around the world. But this was not a man who often looked beyond his nation’s borders, unless it was to survey one of the mansions he’d bought in Las Vegas, Padre Island, or Houston—his favorite cities, where he’d go to get away from it all whenever he got the chance. He traveled whenever he wanted, wherever he wanted. It wasn’t unusual to hear of his arrival from Paris, Rome, Spain, or New York—always under the pretext of union business, and always with his mistress and entourage at his side.

  He’d read in Proceso that the leader of the oil workers had founded the union with the president’s support in the 1940s, had traded bullets with Communists bankrolled by foreign interests, and had enjoyed the gratitude and support of the Mexican government until the union grew so strong that the same government suddenly needed to bow down to it.

  All the while he was sending his enemies to the funeral home behind the scenes, in public the union leader spent his time taking meetings and weaving a tight web of favors granted in exchange for absolute loyalty and obedience. Nothing more, nothing less. He would treat his most trusted staff to an extravagant meal once a month and meet with the engineers that designed the oil wells, the architects in charge of building the workers’ houses, and senators and congressmen from around the country. He would ask each of them what they needed, and they would request personal gifts: money to pay for a daughter’s quinceañera, a new car for the wife, a home loan. They almost never asked for the machinery, specialists, or jobs needed in the poorest areas of the state. Inviting his contacts on one of his international trips, paying for their family vacations, giving them cars or even houses—it was all a drop in the bucket for him. Millions of dollars passed through his hands every day. There wasn’t a single job in the union that didn’t require his approval. No matter how qualified or well-intentioned candidates were, no matter how strong their desire to serve their country, they first had to convince one of the man’s inner circle to give them a chance.

  He was very impressed with Margarito’s sense of ethics, the union leader said, underscoring the word ethics.

  “I hear you’re La Santa’s boy. Is your mother still alive?”

  Good question.

  “The last time I saw her, she was still living in the same neighborhood.”

  “I see. And your brother was a member of the Caracol collective, no?”

  “Yes, sir.” Margarito didn’t know what to say. How did this man know so much about his family? “That was my brother Antonio, but he’s dead now.”

  “And you have another brother, the son of a Protestant pastor?”

  Margarito wasn’t sure how to respond without completely humiliating himself.

  “That’s my brother Enrique.”

  “Who goes by Raquel these days and works as a dancer out on the docks in Veracruz. Who’s your father?”

  Margarito shrugged. The union leader and his representative exchanged a glance. It was just a flash, but Margarito caught it. The leader turned, walked behind his desk, and went on from there.

  “All right, kid. The union appreciates your support. If this had fallen into the wrong hands, it could have damaged a reputation that was years in the making. What am I saying, years? A lifetime.
The life of the union. I won’t forget this. Here.”

  The moral leader handed him half the smuggler’s money. The policeman refused to take it at first, but the leader insisted. Then the congressman indicated it was time for him to leave and closed the door gently behind him.

  To Margarito’s surprise, they reached out to him three times over the next few weeks, always through one of the congressman’s bodyguards. Margarito, go find a dancer they call the Russian and bring her to the beach house; Margarito, a few associates in town from Mexico City are looking for boys and a little something to sniff, go pick them up three grams. And, of course, the king of them all: Margarito, there’s a file sitting on the police chief’s desk: a report on those guys that ended up dead on Las Peras bridge. That file’s better off here. Go bring us whatever your boss has on the case. Obviously, he did. When he’d completed this last assignment, the leader surprised him by calling him in at seven o’clock on a Sunday morning. He barely noticed how icy the water was as he showered that morning. He shaved, ironed his best shirt, and splashed himself with the last drops in his bottle of Old Spice. He had a date with destiny.

  As had been the case every day since Mr. Agustín Fernández Vallarta took over the leadership of the union, there were vehicles stationed at strategic points along the blocks surrounding his mansion. There were no bodyguards inside, though, because the leader didn’t employ any. No sir, not a single one. The people lining the streets were just close friends and associates concerned about his health and well-being, a few of whom might have carried a badge or passed through a state prison at some point. They didn’t miss a thing behind their dark glasses—courtesy of the leader—as they showed off their shot- and submachine guns, bought by them for their own personal use. The leader never paid for a single gun. You couldn’t tie him to the sale of so much as a firecracker. Anyway, there they were, standing on the corners, keeping an eye on everyone who went into and out of that neighborhood, just as they had done every day since Agustín Fernández Vallarta decided there was no reason to go to the union offices when he could work just as well at home. And especially since the union leader became something more like a spiritual leader, always ready with a warm handshake and a word of advice. Every morning, a long line formed in front of his home under the sun’s first rays: people begging for an audience, hoping to ask him for a favor, or returning to thank him for a favor bestowed. This son of a bitch makes more miracles than San Martín de Porres, Margarito thought. And, lo, a miracle occurred: they did not make him wait.