Don't Send Flowers

by Martin Solares

  “The mayor,” began the leader, as soon as he saw Margarito, “asked me what it would take to make me happy again. And I said to him: ‘You miserable filthy rat, a blind man could see the con you’re trying to run a mile away. Don’t think for a minute you can buy me. You can’t buy me with your little favors. I could end you with a phone call. You can’t buy me, but I’ll give you a chance. I’ll take you at your word, you mangy dog, because I’m smarter and more experienced than you, and I know what this port needs, so listen up: we need a new chief of police in this city.’ And the blood drained from his face, because he’s a nobody, and he’s been a nobody as long as I’ve known him: he used to shine shoes outside my office, and that’s all he deserves. He knows he’s on his way out, that he’s got his back against the wall, so I say to him: ‘The new chief has got to be Margarito González.’ What a sigh of relief that bastard gave. You’re all right by him, you know that? Actually, it made me wonder about you a little, the sigh of relief that bastard gave. When I said your name, I saw his soul return to his body. He smiled and said, ‘Yes, sir, right away.’ So there you have it. They fired Albino at two o’clock this morning; he should be down at the office now clearing out his things.”

  It took Margarito a moment to react. The leader looked at him impatiently.

  “What’s the matter, kid? Cat got your tongue?”

  Margarito leaned forward to shake his hand.

  “I won’t disappoint you, sir.”

  “You already are. Look at those clothes. You can’t go to work like that. Stop off and see Camacho before you go. He’ll help you with whatever you need and give you a little something extra for incidentals. What year is that revolver from? Because that thing’s definitely not a pistol.”

  “It’s a Smith and Wesson.”

  “It looks like it fell out of last century. Buy yourself one of those new ones. No, wait. Fellas!”

  Three of his entourage rushed into the room. The leader whispered something to one of them, who ran off and came back carrying a wooden case that he handed to Don Agustín. Without even looking at it, he walked over to where Margarito was standing and handed him the Colt .38 automatic. Margarito had heard of these guns, imagined them—even dreamed of them—but he’d never seen anything like it: solid metal, a real miniature cannon. The alloy on the grip was pleasant to the touch and textured with that famous crosshatch: once you wrapped your fingers around it, you didn’t want to let go. Against the pitch-black steel, a silver stud on either side of the manufacturer’s imprint gave the piece the elegant look of a cobra. The new chief of police lifted the weapon; it was as heavy as his mother’s old-fashioned iron, and he thought to himself, noticing the sharp protrusion on the grip: I bet this thing would be good for giving someone a knock on the head. It had a nine-round magazine and a hair trigger: with the safety off, it would take only a sneeze. From the other side of the desk, the union leader seemed pleased by the impression he’d made.

  “It’s the same one police officers use in the United States. Standard issue.”

  “Don Agustín,” said Margarito, practically on his knees. “I’m at your service.”

  “I should hope so, my boy. If anyone challenges me, I want you to take care of him. Don’t forget who your leader is.”

  The first thing he did was drive the Jeep back to Los Coquitos, in his civilian clothes. He had an envelope with a thousand pesos in small bills in his shirt pocket and a bottle of good tequila in his right hand. He parked the Jeep in front of the kiosk and took the long way around the block to avoid drawing attention. When he walked up to the wooden house with the sheet metal roof, his old lady was chatting with a neighbor out front, and there was a black cat sitting with them. Both the neighbor and the cat ran off when they saw him coming, but the statuesque old woman dressed in white didn’t budge. She simply furrowed her brow as he approached.

  “I didn’t know I had any children. What? They don’t give you my messages?”

  “Mother.” The chief swallowed hard. “I need to talk to you.”

  “I don’t see why. You’ve got a roof over your head. I know you’re shacked up with that floozy upstairs from Don Cristóbal’s bar. That you drink every day and put that powder up your nose.”

  “Mother,” he said. “I’m the new chief of police.”

  The witch known as La Santa stared at him with eyes as wide as saucers; took another look at the Jeep parked in front of the lottery kiosk, paying special attention to its turret lights; and realized her son wasn’t lying—not about this at least. For the first time in as long as he could remember, Margarito saw his mother’s face brighten, even if only for a second. She quickly went back to her look of displeasure and her crocheting, which she had set aside when he arrived; just as quickly, her expression softened again and she looked Margarito in the eye.

  “You still offering a reward for El Tilapia?”

  The new chief of police nodded, stunned.

  And that was how Margarito’s relationship with his mother was restored, and how her legend continued to grow.

  Margarito’s working relationship with his mother lasted until shortly before she died. After months on bad terms over something that was said one liquor-soaked night, she asked him through several different channels to pay her a visit. She wouldn’t walk again, not on her own, anyway. Margarito remembered how much trouble she’d had moving around those last few months.

  “I walk like a parakeet,” she would say. All the aches and pains of old age had come crashing down on her at once.

  The day he’d gone to see her on her deathbed, La Santa had ordered him to sit down and listen. Convinced she was going to put a curse on him or criticize him with her last breath, Margarito was unprepared for what he heard.

  “You’ll be put to three brutal tests before your time runs out. And you will understand what you’ve sown. Why we’re put on this earth.”

  Margarito looked at the neighbors surrounding his mother, who shook their heads.

  “She’s delirious.”

  “I’m not delirious. There’s something else.”

  She lay back and took Margarito’s hand.

  “You have another son out there. You have to find him—and acknowledge him,” she said and immediately added: “Strange. I feel a wave pulling me backward. Am I being carried off by a wave?” Her house was six miles from the beach, but no one rushed to correct her.

  When it was all over, her faithful neighbor Ubalda and nearly a dozen girls between twelve and fifteen years old, all of whom his mother had taken under her wing, stood around her bed and wept. When Margarito got to his feet, he handed Ubalda an envelope.

  “Here. Make the arrangements how she would have wanted.”

  He stood there like a zombie while the neighbor and girls tended to his mother’s body. As he was about to leave, he noticed a flash of red between the dead woman’s fingers. He hesitated a moment before going over to pry them open. Of course he would have liked for her to reach out all of a sudden, for her death to have been some kind of mistake (who wouldn’t, in his place?). But La Santa’s strange journey through this life had reached its end, so Margarito opened her hand and turned it over. How funny. Now I’m the one reading your palm, mi Santa. His mother had one last surprise in store for him: clasped in her palm was one of the little prayer cards she’d had made up when she was younger and people still believed in her powers of divination. Scrawled across it in a shaky hand was: For Margarito. That, he definitely didn’t expect. He took one last look at La Santa, tucked the prayer card away, and hightailed it out of there.

  First, they brought in the head of Nuevo León’s police force. No one liked that, so he got killed one night as he walked through his front door. Then they made a general from San Luis named Aragón the chief of police, but the little angel only arrested Mr. Obregón’s men and didn’t hit the new guys with so much as a feather duster, so Obregón’s people had him executed on the beach. Next came Chief Albino, then Lieutenant Elijah, sad memo
ries both: the first one forced into retirement, and the second murdered in his own home. And now it was Margarito’s turn.

  The murder of Elijah Cohen marked Margarito’s life as few things had. It’s not every day you’re called on to identify the mutilated body of your mentor. The crime, which was never solved—yet another of the precinct’s many disgraces—was exceptionally vicious, and it gradually became a point of reference. Whenever a cop was about to piss off the oldest criminal organization operating in the port—one that had managed to operate under the radar for decades—whenever anyone was about to act against the best interest of that group, there was always some helpful colleague nearby, ready to repeat the mantra: “Remember what they did to Elijah?”

  Of course Margarito remembers. It was 1981, and he’d made a long weekend for himself and gone on a three-day bender. When he got back to the precinct, everyone had seemed nervous around him. No one would talk to him or make eye contact. Cops always know when one of their own is in a bad way. They don’t need evidence; their intuition is more than enough.

  “What happened?” he asked one of the secretaries.

  “Ask the chief,” she said. “He wants to talk to you.”

  And the girl hurried off to deal with some urgent imaginary business at the other end of the office, never taking her eyes off him.

  “Where were you last weekend?” asked Chief Albino, who was accompanied that day by the two most trusted members of his security detail. One sat on either side of Margarito.

  “I was on a little getaway with a young woman.”

  “Does this young woman have a name and telephone number? Can she corroborate your story?”

  Margarito, surprised, raised an eyebrow.

  “I’ve even got receipts, if you like.”

  “Let me see them,” said the chief, holding out his hand. “And while we’re at it, might as well give me your gun.”

  Margarito obeyed both orders. He was well aware that involving the gorgeous Italian girl he was seeing would be disastrous for the relationship, but the young police officer had no choice but to give up her phone number and address.

  “Right now, she’s at my place.”

  The chief sent someone in a patrol car over to check out Margarito’s alibi, took the gun, and asked, “So you really don’t know what they did to Elijah?”

  “What happened?”

  The chief explained to Margarito that a bus driver had found his body where it was dumped on the outskirts of the city and had called it in as soon as he got back to the depot. Barefoot, naked from the waist down, blood-soaked shirt, arms and fingers broken, his torso looking like ground meat from all the stab wounds, an expression of intense pain on his face. His arms were outstretched, and a heavy rag had been shoved down his throat to muffle his screams. It almost looked as if his corpse was still fighting against the inevitable. They didn’t hack off his tongue or genitals, the way they did with rats and rapists, but they did take his eyes.

  Margarito never forgot the image of the man who’d taught him so much. He’d seen something he shouldn’t have seen or refused to cooperate with someone, and that was the end of him. To be honest, though, Margarito had seen it coming.

  Lieutenant Elijah’s lucky star had begun to fade when he started distancing himself from his friends in the criminal underworld. He didn’t trust Margarito anymore, so he’d taken to giving him assignments that were total wastes of time: patrolling neighborhoods where nothing happened, serving as a messenger or driver for one politician or another, following up on reports filed by mischievous kids or little old ladies with nothing better to do.

  He knew trouble was brewing when Elijah’s informants—the skittish, untrusting types he’d meet with in bars—vanished from the piers. They were all on the run. One time, on an errand for a politician in the bar of the port’s fanciest hotel, Margarito realized he was somewhere he shouldn’t be when he saw Elijah sitting at a table in the back, chatting casually but without a smile on his face with one of the port’s better-known dealers: Antonio Gray, who sold marijuana on the malecón. It was him, no question about it: the thick beard, the crisp checked shirt that looked fresh off the rack, the designer pants and fancy shoes. He’d realized that his boss and mentor was into some serious shit when he saw the look on the other man’s face. Elijah had pretended not to see him, and a little while later they found his body.

  He knew no one was going to step up to investigate Elijah’s death. The lieutenant’s murder was so shocking that the newspapers treated it with absolute discretion, publishing only an obituary and a notice paid for by the family, indicating where the funeral would be held. That was all. It was the kind of thing the government kept quiet.

  He spent the next few weeks searching his soul and wondering which, of all the cases Elijah was working at the time of his death, could have made his mentor as nervous and irritable as he’d been in his final days. Honestly, he’d been unbearable. Margarito questioned the officers who worked with Elijah while he’d been off duty, but all he got was the sense that none of them had anything resembling a lead. He spoke with El Tigre Obregón, who was still alive back then and had gone to the funeral, but the man swore up and down he had nothing to do with it.

  “Whoever did this is a monster.”

  In this general climate of suspicion, Margarito kept a close eye on the officers around him for the next few weeks. Hell if he didn’t miss the old man.

  He had only one fight with Elijah in more than ten years that he could remember, but it was decisive. Elijah had told him how an organization that had recently arrived from the other side of the country had killed two men in the trade with unprecedented brutality down near the beach. He’d never seen anything like it, he said; it was totally unacceptable. Then he cracked a wry smile.

  “You think your buddy El Tigre Obregón was a little angel all those years? He iced his share of enemies and traitors too. We just haven’t figured out where he buried them yet. I’m not holding my breath, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we got a tip one day and discovered a bunch of missing persons in a secret graveyard out there on one of his ranches in the sierra. The only difference between the guys who were already here and the ones arriving now is that the old guard liked to do things quietly, keep clear of the rest of society, and the new guys are in a hurry. They want to make their presence felt, mark their territory. They want to rule by fear. Like we were all born yesterday.”

  Elijah leaned toward him.

  “Don’t forget Mr. Baldomero’s ranch—or the one they said belonged to him. Ten years ago, we got a report that there’s people buried out there, and we went out to investigate: twelve bodies we found, killed execution-style. Just as we were checking to make sure they weren’t people from the port who’d gone missing, an order comes in from the higher-ups: Leave it alone. So we did.”

  “What are you proposing?”

  “We’ve put up with these bastards long enough. Let’s get rid of the problem.”

  “You’re nuts, Elijah.”

  “We’ve always gone at this thing half-assed. We’ll do it right this time. There’s an airplane arriving from Bolivia on Tuesday: we take out the pilot, seize the coke, and use what we get for it to buy weapons. Then we run those assholes out.”

  “Not interested.”

  “But that’s just the beginning. We need to get a group together, people we trust, and go after Los Nuevos and the people close to your godson. Otherwise Los Nuevos are going to gather some serious fucking momentum, and there’ll be no stopping them. We need to hit them now.”

  Margarito hesitated, beer in hand. Long enough that old Elijah saw his window and took it: “So? You in?”

  Margarito set the bottle on the table.

  “You don’t take advice, so I won’t bother giving you any.”

  “I trust you’ll keep quiet. Otherwise, you’re dead.”

  “Don’t threaten me.”

  “It’s not a threat; it’s the truth.”

  Marga
rito stood and left without another word. And that was the end of that friendship.

  There’s a little room deep down inside Margarito, a little room he keeps locked with a dead bolt, where he mourns the way his relationship with his mentor fell apart. He went to see the old man later that night, after several tequilas. La Tonina was with him. When he saw Margarito, Elijah had said, “So it’s you they sent.”

  It went so badly for him because he tried to defend himself. He almost got away a couple of times. Like when he tried to sneak out the kitchen window. If La Tonina hadn’t grabbed him by the legs and used those knives, he would have been long gone. It’s true: his body ended up in pretty bad shape, so in a gesture of goodwill toward the family, Margarito decided it would be best to dump it somewhere deserted. So it wouldn’t be found. His only mistake was leaving the job to La Tonina. It didn’t take them more than a half hour to find him, out there on the outskirts of the city.

  So, whenever someone asks if he remembers what happened to Elijah, Margarito has to be careful not to give the answer he desperately wants to: “No, not really. I was pretty drunk that night.”

  8

  At ten past seven he picked up his cell phone and, against his better judgment, called the office. He knew that whoever organized the attack could find him if the phones at headquarters were tapped, but even the most skilled technician would need the conversation to last at least sixty seconds to locate the signal. Still, it couldn’t hurt to be careful.