“Stolen. Two weeks ago. Do you want the owner’s address?”
“No thanks. Won’t do me any good.”
“I’ll put it on your bill. That’s three you owe me now.”
“I’ll be by the end of the month…In the bar?”
“That’s the place.” García hung up.
Next Héctor called a detective agency in Monterrey, asking them to track down the man who had obtained a passport in Costa Rica in 1934, listing his residence in that city. Then he phoned the police station in Ixtepec, but the recalcitrant bureaucrat who took the call refused to give out any information on La Tolvanera.
He remembered having passed through there once, crossing the Isthmus of Tehuantepec from Oaxaca on his way to Veracruz, but that was all.
He jotted the third name, with the corresponding Mexico City address, onto a scrap of paper, and wrote a note for Gilberto, asking him to check discreetly whether the man still lived there, without actually going to the house itself. He paper-clipped a fifty-peso bill onto the note and set it to one side of the desk.
After that he telephoned Marisa Ferrer, but the maid said only that she had gone out without leaving a message.
Then he turned his attention to the girl’s diary. If there were clues, that’s where they had to be. It was just a matter of finding them.
He got up and took a soda from the secret cupboard. He lit a cigarette, and remembered he was still hungry. He cursed his cold-bloodedness, his capacity for calm. He hated his inability to show emotion. So he spent five minutes wondering if Greenjacket and Armgrabber were capable of hurting the girl. For an instant, he felt a kind of rage, and then returned to his typical coolness. He took a last swig from the soda pop and confronted the diary.
A quarter of an hour later he summed up his notes:
1. Bustamante is a girl.
It took him a while to figure out that the old habit of calling friends by their last names that prevailed in his own school days now extended to Catholic girls’ schools as well. He finally figured out that the strange situation of a boy named Bustamante with a boyfriend was really just a girl named Bustamante with a boyfriend.
2. The class notes mixed into the diary had nothing to do with the case.
All the same, it would be necessary to talk to Gisela, Bustamante, and Elena’s other friends at school.
3. Elena has something worth over 50,000 pesos. Whatever it is, it’s dangerous, and she can’t get rid of it. And who knows how she got it?
That was the key to the whole thing right there. Es. and G. (Esteban? Eustolio? Esperanza?) wanted whatever it was she had.
4. But it all has to do with something she knows about her mother and her mother doesn’t know she knows. Could she have taken the 50,000-peso-whatever-it-is from her?
No, because then there would be an allusion to the possibility of her mother’s discovering that something was missing…In that case, Elena must have some kind of information about her mother. She knows something; it’s not that she has something her mother owns. Whatever it is, she got it from someone other than her mother.
Where then to pull the first thread? From Marisa Ferrer, of course.
He picked up the telephone and dialed her number again. The maid gave him the same answer as before, and Héctor left his office number and asked that she phone him.
If I wasn’t so damn tired, I’d go get something to eat, he told himself, ignoring the noises in his belly and dropping down into the old armchair. He glanced at the gallery of photos on the wall, a corpse, Emiliano Zapata, a girl with her arm in a cast, and fell asleep without even bothering to take off his shoes.
***
“He’s gonna drive himself crazy.”
“In my village there was this guy who used to just sleep any old place, and then one day he fell asleep out in front of this faggot’s house, and when he woke up the guy was giving it to him in the rear.”
“I think he sleeps here all the time so he doesn’t have to make his bed at home. He’s kind of a slob, our don Belascoarán.”
Héctor slowly raised one eyelid, like someone opening the creaking blinds in a bank window. Gilberto the plumber and Carlos Vargas the upholsterer stood watching him with motherly attention.
“Watch out, the bat’s waking up…”
“He’s got vampire eyes…”
“Wha’s happnin’?”
Each one held a sandwich. They grinned broadly at Héctor.
He jumped up suddenly and grabbed the food, one sandwich in each hand.
“Put it on my bill,” he said, glancing around for his wrinkled coat.
“Hey, I’ve been robbed…”
“You’ve got a message there on the desk about a job, and I left you a note about some extra work I’ve got for you,” he said, speaking first to the upholsterer and then the plumber.
“You can keep the sandwiches,” said Gilberto. “Just don’t forget next time it’s your turn to buy the sodas.”
“Did you pay the super for the cleaning yet?”
“Take, take, take, that’s all I ever hear. And with inflation the way it is…”
“The only inflation you know about comes in your old lady’s belly every year,” interjected the upholsterer dryly.
The plumber winced.
“Watch out, buddy…you can dish it out, but we’ll see if you can take it, too…”
“What time is it?” Héctor interrupted.
“Just after three.”
Héctor couldn’t wait for the elevator and flew down the stairs instead, bracing himself on the handrail at every landing to keep himself from falling head over heels.
Once in the street, he jumped into his car and jammed his foot onto the accelerator.
He hated the city and he loved it. He was getting used to living in the midst of contradictions.
He bought a pack of cigarettes at a stand in front of the Carousel Cinema, and carefully scrutinized everyone arriving for the showing of the movie about Zapata. A pair of old campesinos caught his eye, but they were only in their fifties. Too young, after all. No ninety-five-year-old men showed up to buy a ticket.
He got back in the car and headed out toward Pedregal.
One seventeen Aguas Street was a starchy-looking place, like a papier-mâché castle without damsels or dragons, painted a creamy gray and surrounded by a gray railing which blocked a clear view into the large garden. Several dogs barked at him and he wondered if they weren’t the real masters in that upper-class city within a city, called Pedregal de San Angel.
“Who is it?” asked an electronically distorted voice through the intercom.
“I’m looking for the ex-wife of engineer Alvarez Cerruli.”
“I’ll see if she’s available. Who’s calling for her?”
“Belascoarán Shayne.”
He pronounced his name twice and waited.
At last a gardener came to open the gate, and, protecting him from the dogs, guided Héctor to the door.
The woman received him in a modishly decorated sitting room. She carried her forty-odd years well, dressed like a North American housewife of thirty, in a tan skirt, a long-sleeved cream-colored blouse, and her hair tied back with a ribbon.
“I understand that you’re here to ask me about my exhusband,” she began. “I’m willing to talk to you only because if I refuse, you’re bound to think that I know something of interest about his death. I’d rather talk to you and get it over with than have somebody digging around in my personal life. I want that to be very clear. This is the first and last time we will talk.…So now, tell me who you are, and what you want to know about my ex-husband.”
Héctor handed her his license and waited for her to return it to him.
“I’m looking for something in your husband’s
past that might explain why he was killed. Maybe if you could tell me…”
“Gaspar was an upstart, a social climber. He married me for my money and my family’s prestige. Our marriage was just another couple of steps up the ladder of his career. I made a mistake and I paid for it. Now I’m free.”
“Is there anything in his past…Any unusual relationships? Financial problems? Something from when he was younger?”
“He was an upstart, a hustler, a loner, without friends, few acquaintances. He never had problems with money—as a matter of fact, he was overly cautious. He was very clever, you know, but rose slowly through the ranks…I don’t know what I could tell you that could be of any help.”
Héctor listened in silence. It didn’t feel right, there was something missing from the picture. The woman stood up, and Héctor had no choice but to do the same. She led him to the door.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t help you more.”
“Not as sorry as I am. I apologize for wasting your time.”
Héctor headed out through the garden, leaving the woman in the doorway.
“There’s one thing, Detective.”
Héctor turned his head.
“It might help you to know that my ex-husband was a homosexual.”
***
Back at the Carousel Cinema, he turned the new piece of information over in his mind. He bought some fried meat and tortillas and assembled his tacos while he watched the people entering the theater. No one of interest showed up for the second show.
He got back into his car and set out toward Marisa Ferrer’s Florida neighborhood. His breath tasted sour in his mouth, his neck hurt from sleeping in the armchair at the office, and traffic was backed up along Insurgentes all the way to the Hotel de Mexico. He wished someone conducting an opinion poll would get in the car and ask him a few questions. He’d tell them he didn’t have the slightest idea why he’d become a detective.
The maid opened the door and let him in without asking any questions.
Marisa Ferrer was waiting for him in the living room.
“Any word?” the detective asked.
“No. I talked to some friends of mine in the police department, but they didn’t know where to start.” She hadn’t cried, but she appeared extremely tense, like a fighting cock ready to attack.
“I want to ask you something. It’s something that could be very important in helping me find your daughter, so listen carefully and think about it before you give me your answer. Is there anything that you’ve hidden from Elena that she could have found out about lately?”
She hesitated momentarily.
“My lovers…”
“Have there been very many?”
“That’s a private matter.”
The tension increased between them.
“Are you sure there’s not something else?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Do any of your daughter’s friends ever come over here?”
“She was going out with a boy named Arturo up until a couple of months ago. He would come by, and a few of her girlfriends from school…”
“Anyone named Esteban?”
She thought for a minute.
“Esteban, no, not that I remember.”
“Where did she go when she went out with her friends?”
“To the movies, or to one of those hamburger places out on Insurgentes. Like all the kids these days…She used to go to the bowling alley a lot until she broke up with Arturo. But then later on she started going there again on her own.”
“This Señor Burgos I met here the other day…”
“You didn’t like him, did you?”
Héctor shook his head.
“That’s unfortunate. He’s an old family friend.”
“Is that all?”
She didn’t answer. She sat fingering the stitching on a pillow on the couch, playing with it. Then she started to cry.
Héctor left the room and headed straight for the door. He didn’t like the situation one bit. It irked him that he had waited so long before trying to figure out where Elena had met Es. and G. (it sounded like a brand of Scotch).
They had come into the picture after the 50,000-peso-whatever-it-was, in response to Elena’s request to help her get rid of it.
Why was there a case of soda pop in the back of their car?
He turned and went back into the living room. Marisa Ferrer had stopped crying, and now sat staring straight ahead.
“Which bowling alley?”
“The Florida Bowl, a few blocks from here.”
***
He decided to skip the third showing of the movie. Old Man Zapata wasn’t likely to be out so late. The night was warm and pleasant. Héctor thought he heard the wings of a bird flutter overhead. He leaned against the car, smoking. Then he walked slowly to the pay phone at the corner.
“Is Elisa there?…Elisa? Can you do me a favor? But you’re going to think it’s kind of strange. I want you to go talk with a forensic specialist and ask him if an engineer named Osorio Barba who was murdered a couple of months ago was a homosexual…Talk to the guy who did the autopsy for the police…Give him some money, and I’ll pay you back.”
He hung up. Now was the time to stir things up, but how? First he tried the drive-ins along Insurgentes. They’d done a good business once, when the kids had hung out there in their fast cars and drag-raced along the strip. But now they were just shadows of what they’d once been, converted into middle-class watering holes, filled with kids out for their first solo drive, flirtatious packs of teenage girls, and bored waiters. No sign of Greenjacket or Armgrabber. He didn’t remember much at all about the third one. He had a vague picture of a fat boy with curly hair, but he hadn’t ever gotten a good look at him.
He drove out toward Navarte, as far as Luz Saviñón, and stopped in front of a modest middle-class home. A moving van was pulled up to the door.
“Is the maid around?”
“She went home days ago. The owner’s cleared the place out.”
“The owner?”
“Yeah, the engineer’s brother. I work with him at the mattress factory…”
“Mind if I take a look around?” Héctor showed his license.
“Go ahead. But there’s hardly anything left.”
Héctor inspected the abandoned house. It looked as if it had been hit by a tornado, furniture scattered about recklessly, everything packed up hurriedly and without affection.
In the bedroom there was nothing but the mattress leaning against one wall, the bed dismantled, an empty closet, two pictures lying on the floor.
It was past ten o’clock. He thanked the mover and walked outside to his car. He pulled a small notebook from his pocket and tried to organize his thoughts, only to lose himself in a hodgepodge of names and facts.
“When are the three stories going to come together?” he wondered, half joking, half waiting for an answer.
What about Burgos? What did he know about him? Nothing, except that he didn’t like his face…Him and a few thousand other people whose looks Héctor didn’t like.
There was always the bowling alley and the case of soda pop. Those two seemed to go together, offering a possible answer to the question of where Elena met Es. and G.
Then there was Marisa Ferrer dissolving into tears. Not a very convincing sight. What was she hiding?
There was one gay engineer, dead, and another engineer named Camposanto who could invite him to a party, according to the fat worker in the lonchería.
There was also Rodríguez Cuesta’s strange, unaccountable un easiness. And the increasingly militant conflict with the union.
Plus Alvarez Cerruli’s predecessor in death, a corpse named Bravo Osorio Barba. Was he a homosexual, too?<
br />
There was a girlfriend named Bustamante, and a boyfriend named Arturo.
The ex-wife of the dead engineer, a maid who’d already gone home to her village, a lawyer named Duelas, a tall, dark-haired independent union leader, and a scab in a tan suit from the pro-government federation.
And three men that had gotten passports through the Mexican Embassy in Costa Rica in 1934.
If that wasn’t enough, there was also a mysterious shoe box with papers from old man Belascoarán, Héctor’s father, and a wad of letters sitting in his pocket he hadn’t had a chance to read.
And he had to buy the soda for the office, do his laundry, keep on living his life.
He’d started the list as a joke, but by the end, he felt completely overwhelmed. In order of priorities, he ought to start with the bowling alley, but he opted for the least important instead, remembering his old buddy El Cuervo Valdivia on the radio.
XEFS broadcast from the offices of Radio One Thousand, on Insurgentes, in the Florida district, and after wandering for awhile through a maze of hallways and studios, Héctor found the room where El Cuervo did his show every night from eleven o’clock until dawn. But El Cuervo hadn’t arrived yet, so, shaking off his fatigue, Héctor decided to quit procrastinating and go investigate The Florida Bowl.
Was he afraid?
He’d been afraid often enough to know what it felt like. But very seldom had he felt fear of physical violence; mostly it had been a fear of loneliness, fear of responsibility, of making a mistake. This particular feeling was different. It was more like the combination of fear and fatigue. Not a bad state of mind for a man about to enter combat, he thought.
The din of rolling balls and falling pins slapped him across the face like the crest of a wave. He looked around for the pair of faces he wanted to see—from table to table, among the groups of bowlers, in the kitchen behind the revolving door, inside the office, and at the front desk where the cashier was passing out shoes and score sheets.
Nothing. He walked slowly to the counter.
What was he supposed to say?
He decided to take the direct route.
“I’m looking for a girl named Elena,” he said, staring sternly at the overweight man smiling behind the counter.
An Easy Thing Page 10