Tequila Blue

by Rolo Diez

  “This is the punishment for disbelievers,” the priest tells me. “This is what you get for voting for Cuauhtemoc Cardenas.”

  He tips the goblet. As the liquid falls onto my face, its icy needles empty out my eyes then fill the sockets, and the frozen fire slowly penetrates my brain.

  The urge to stay alive forced me upright in bed, screaming and waving my arms in the air. I saw Lourdes’s mocking, angry face and sat motionless while she finished pouring the contents of the beer bottle over my head.

  Then Lourdes spoke, and her words made no more sense than the priest’s litany.

  “I’m tired of being your mother, Carlos!” she said. “I’m tired of your betraying me with every woman you meet! I’ve had it up to here and beyond with all your lies! I’m sick and tired of how useless you are, how you can’t even support your own family! I’m leaving you right now. As soon as I can, I’ll take the children. And do me a favour – don’t say a word. Don’t even think of trying to explain anything.”

  “Hang on a minute!” Soaked and annoyed, uncertain whether to slap her or try to talk, I jumped out of bed.

  Lourdes raised the bottle over her head.

  “Come any closer and I’ll crush your balls!” she threatened.

  I collapsed onto a chair. I let my wife walk out on me without lifting a finger. I understood that her irrationality and egotism had leaped over all the barriers of self-censorship and shame and taken over every aspect of her character.

  I went to the bookshelves – fifteen hundred works, some of them classics inherited from my father, others erotic novels or thrillers, or text-books from my school days, penal codes and other legal volumes – took down Philosophy in the Boudoir by the Marquis de Sade. I pretended to be enjoying reading it until Lourdes slammed the door behind her.

  I lit a cigarette and got another beer from the fridge. I walked round the flat drinking and smoking. Lourdes had not even bothered to make the kids’ beds while they were at school. On the dining-room table I found a sealed envelope for the children, marked “For Carlos and Araceli”. God knows what she could have to say as she abandoned them. I considered steaming the letter open but in the end couldn’t be bothered. I had a shower, then discovered that the bath towel was missing. I was indignant that she could have been so selfish as to take it. I was forced to wipe myself dry using dirty clothes from the basket. I had a shave and put on my brown suit, the only one of my three outfits still relatively decent. Only the previous day I had been thinking of getting Lourdes to take my grey one to the dry-cleaner’s. In my stomach, a third-world protest demonstration was starting up to demand something more substantial than tar and barley juice. A thorough investigation of fridge and larder produced only disheartening results. In my house everything, absolutely everything, gets eaten, in unbelievable amounts. They say that rats are the living beings capable of eating the widest variety of substances. I reckon an objective comparison between rats and my family could lead to a change of opinion. I found two half-rotten bananas, a bit of cheese so old it was fit only for worms and cockroaches, a carton of milk I decided to keep for my children (they’re growing so they need it more than me, besides which I hate the stuff), a few dried-out frozen tortillas and a bottle of chipotle chilli sauce. Fortunately, there were some beers. I always keep one or two handy, so that I can have some cold whenever I feel like it. I have to take care of this myself, seeing how little I can count on Lourdes for anything that might concern me.

  I decided to eat some tacos near the office.

  Before leaving the flat I called the money exchange, where a male voice told me Doctor Rosenthal was away on a trip and they had no idea when he would be back. I put on my tough voice: “This is Officer Carlos Hernandez, and I need to speak to Rosenthal urgently, so please give me his address and personal telephone number.” The person at the other end was obviously worried and answered: “One moment please”, then left me hanging on for ten minutes. Eventually another man came on the line, introducing himself as Perez Blanco, the firm’s accountant. I pictured him as someone who wore a well-pressed grey suit, had thinning, neatly brushed hair, and used tortoiseshell glasses. A dumb-looking asshole, one of those unbearable pedants who think they have the right to say and do whatever they like provided they are unctuous and polite with it. He began by saying he was at my service for anything concerning the business. I pressed him for Red’s address and phone number. As calm as could be, Perez Blanco said he was very sorry but he did not have Doctor Rosenthal’s address, as he had recently moved, to San Angel, he believed. He added that he would be delighted to give me the phone number, but that unfortunately he did not have it to hand. Besides which, he understood that Doctor Rosenthal’s telephone was out of order and had not yet been repaired.

  “This is the police,” I explained. “I’ll give you one minute to get the number and give it to me.”

  “Yes. One moment.”

  I could hear the accountant Perez Blanco breathing heavily. Twenty seconds later, I was dialling Red’s number. A velvety voice came on the line to tell me: “The number you have dialled is out of service; we regret any inconvenience this may cause you.” I suggested something the velvety lips could do for me that would be sure to end all my inconveniences, then hung up.

  I called the money exchange once more. I said who I was and asked to speak to Rosenthal’s secretary. The same male voice from my previous call informed me that as of the day before Miss Esparza no longer worked for them. I asked to speak to Perez Blanco again and was told: “He’s just gone out.” I didn’t have to pretend to be angry when I asked whether Rosenthal himself still worked for them, and the voice at the other end – a spineless, pathetic sort, I surmised – was not pretending either when he expressed concern that no, Doctor Rosenthal was no longer with them, although there were still some loose ends for him to tie up. In fact, they were expecting him to arrive, or at least to hear from him, during the course of the day. I asked for his name – “TeodorGomezAtYourService” – so I barked “Tell him to phone me today without fail.”

  *

  En route to the office I was furious. I was counting on that money for Gloria’s expenses. I was a bit behind in looking after her, and although she never goes short Gloria likes to moan over nothing. From her voice on the phone and some of the things she had said to me, I could tell she was on the verge of an attack of nerves.

  It was twenty-five past ten, and I had an appointment with the gringo’s wife at half past. Just time to call in on Luis and sort out the sale of the guns.

  For half a mile I was stuck behind a stupid old bat who shouldn’t even have been in charge of a supermarket trolley. I had to switch my siren on and run into her bumpers a couple of times for her to get out of the way. As I sped past she looked over at me in terror. I gave her the middle finger in a classic suggestion she should go fuck her ancestors.

  “The deal’s done, Luis,” I told him when I finally got to the bar. “The parabellums are eight hundred dollars. I’ll let you have them for seven hundred, so you’ll make a hundred on each. I’ll bring them tomorrow. But I need a bit of an advance to buy them.”

  Luis looked at me suspiciously.

  “That’s way over, Carlos,” he said. “I’ve been offered some long-barrelled .38s for four hundred. You’ll have to drop the price.”

  I struggled with the sausage and potatoes lying listlessly on my plate, took a good swig of coffee and then started slowly in on my chocolate flan.

  “Six bullets, short range, no precision: that’s a revolver for you. Plus you’ve no idea where they’ve come from. And God forbid, but if anyone is caught some day with one of them in his hand, you can bet your boots even the most stupid cop will discover it was the very one used in the latest unsolved murder. I’m offering you clean weapons, with twelve bullets in the magazine as well as the one in the chamber, with a decent range and top accuracy. There’s no comparison.”

  “I know. It’s the price that’s the problem. Can’t you
go any lower?”

  “How much are you willing to pay?”

  “No more than six hundred.”

  I did a quick mental calculation. Perhaps I could get Amaya down to five hundred then sell them to Luis at six-fifty.

  “Let me see,” I said. “It won’t be easy. I’ll need an advance.”

  “No way, Carlos, and for the same reason there’s no contract. You bring the rods, and I’ll pay in full. But get a move on. If I’m buying from you, it has to be tomorrow.”

  “I’ll get them to you today.”

  If you feel humiliated and find you want to get heavy with a friend, the best thing to do is to make yourself scarce. Not to mention the fact that the remains of my breakfast were staring up at me from the plate.

  Chapter four

  At some time between one and one-thirty a.m. on Saturday morning, Jones entered the Malibu Hotel with a blonde-haired, blue-eyed young woman of average height who was wearing trousers and leather boots and jacket. She did not come near the desk but stayed in the shadows. There was nothing unusual about this, as it was common among the type of women who came to this hotel. At three in the morning, the blonde woman came down, but now she had turned into a blond man (apparently it must have been a transvestite). S/he paid for the room and asked for her companion to be wakened at nine.

  With regard to the change from woman to man, Juan Avina Recalde, the hotel manager, confirms this was the case and states that he sees them every day, knows their little tricks and is never fooled by them.

  At nine that morning Jones’s dead body was discovered. He was lying naked on the bed, with a bullet from a .9mm revolver in his head.

  The details surrounding the crime lead to the supposition that this came about as the result of an argument between homosexuals.

  I slid into the office and took a good look at the woman waiting for me. She was young, fair-haired, shapely and with a look about her that confirmed my theory that the essential thing about a woman is not so much the way she is built but the light shining from her windows. No female is sexy if she goes through life with a face like a funeral.

  Estela Lopez de Jones was doing her best to give the appearance of being the grieving wife. She wasn’t very good at it. She was too much the TV soap opera heroine about to swoon in despair. I summed her up at once: a cheat. I couldn’t see her making that hole in her husband’s head, but I could imagine her waiting for the blond criminal stretched out with a glass of whisky and romantic music in the darkness of a plush room, then screwing him till dawn.

  I offered her my condolences, asked her to take a seat then searched in my desk drawer for Estela Lopez de Jones’s initial statement. It would help me follow the sequence of events and check on any possible discrepancies.

  Estela Lopez de Jones was Colombian. Without the make-up, her face looked very different. Her honey-coloured hair was pulled back in a ponytail, her twenty-four years poured into a black tailored suit. She had been living in Los Angeles since the age of nineteen. Before marrying Jones, she had been a checkout girl in a cheap clothes store owned by her father.

  I remembered something important. I apologized for keeping her waiting and stepped out of the office.

  Laura was on the phone – talking to some boyfriend of hers, to judge by the beatific smile – and wasn’t exactly enthusiastic when I asked her to go to the bank for me.

  I made out a cheque and left the amount blank.

  “See how much is in my account and fill it in. Leave five thousand pesos in so they don’t close it down. Go on, there’s a good girl, Laurita. You can come in an hour later tomorrow. I’ll fix it.”

  Laura is skinny, lazy and spiteful. She can’t type a page without making a spelling mistake on every line, and she’s always trying to pick up any pair of trousers that passes her desk. With me she’s given up. I did her the favour once, but she soon started behaving as though she were my wife, so that was an end to it. She’s hated me ever since. Luckily, I’m her superior.

  We also have an assistant in the office. What you might call an office boy, if that weren’t too frivolous and yankee a term for a federal government office in Mexico City. His only talent is never to be around when you need him, and when he is there, to take a whole morning to go to the bank on the corner and back. That’s why we call him Silver Bullet; and on rare occasions we succeed in getting him to buy us cigarettes or a sandwich.

  Maribel and dona Juana, the lady in charge of cleaning, are also there.

  The others are professionals, clerks and cops. And although most of them are hardly even up to running errands, we have to keep up appearances.

  I could see the gringo’s widow was getting impatient. I excused myself again and began to go through the most important points of her statement with her.

  She had been living in the United States for five years and had been married to Jones for eighteen months. Her husband ran a very successful advertising agency. The staff could only feel grateful to him, although in all truth (even though this was hardly relevant) there are always envious and selfish people willing to speak evil of others and to forget the benefits they have received.

  “Let’s turn to the day of the unfortunate event,” I said, to bring her back to business.

  “The sixth of January began as a wonderful day,” said Estela Lopez de Jones, half-closing her eyes as though evoking a tender memory. “Jones used to spoil me a lot, perhaps to make up for the difference in our ages. And that day he gave me a huge fluffy tortoise as a present. It was so big we joked we could use it as a mattress.”

  Two images flashed through my mind: Jones making this an erotic Twelfth Night with the gift of a tortoise on which, if he was lucky, he had had his last fuck or, at worst, had imagined doing it; the other, Estela Lopez de Jones naked and in action on the tortoise with the criminal.

  “That morning, my husband had work to do,” she went on. “We had lunch at a restaurant in the Zona Rosa. In the afternoon he had to see people and more work. He came home at about eight. We had something to eat, then Valadez came. I went to bed at half past ten. I watched TV for a while, then fell asleep. That was the last time I saw my husband alive.”

  At this point Estela Lopez de Jones appeared to be overcome with emotion and raised her unpainted nails to her blue eyes. Thirty seconds went by, which I used to observe her, light another cigarette and remember that Valadez was someone well worth investigating. He was a Cuban who had left the island when Castro came to power and had lived several years in Miami before settling in Mexico. He has travelled to the United States ten times in the past three years. He frequents nightclubs and spends a lot of money. He hands out business cards claiming to be a “business and investment adviser” and others where he says he is an “artistic manager”. He has been charged five times, twice for fraud and three times for swindling. He has been close to Jones since he arrived in Mexico. Eventually Estela Lopez de Jones heaved a sigh, said “I’m sorry”, reached into her bag for a paper handkerchief to wipe away her tears, then got out a packet of John Players.

  “What happened after that?” I asked.

  “The next morning I was told he had been found dead in a disreputable hotel.”

  I looked at the time on my watch, and it was late. A minute afterwards I said goodbye to the widow, warning I would be visiting her again the next day.

  *

  I bought three dolls and a box of sweets at the Sanborn’s opposite the Chapultepec cinema. I could see it already: Gloria would be waiting for me, the most loving and cheerful of women, she would find a moment when the kids weren’t around to have a “serious” word and go through the list of all that she needed, combined with an affectionate reproach for spending so much on presents when I could have used the money for repairing the washing machine. I put my foot down on the accelerator. I was in a hurry to be with Gloria and to forget Lourdes.

  Chapter five

  “Hi there, sir!” Benjamin, Sonia and Berenice greeted me in joyful unison.


  They were pleased to see me, though they were pretending the opposite. When they are pleased with me, they call me daddy; when they are upset, they call me sir. I’ve never had the slightest doubt that it’s Gloria who tells them which way to greet me.

  After handing over presents and money, after reassuring disbelieving eyes that I would be having dinner there again the next evening, I was daddy once more, I was my love, daddydaddydaddy.

  Gloria is a gorgeous woman from Puebla. She is twenty-nine, with fine white skin, auburn hair and huge hazel eyes that are quick to show when she’s happy or sad. Her main difference with Lourdes is that sometimes she gives off such a sense of happiness that her face and body positively shine. Lourdes is beautiful too, but she’s more edgy and sharp. Her hysterical character is starting to bring wrinkles of disappointment to her face, and she hardly ever laughs spontaneously.

  After we had lunch, a chat around the table and then a very satisfactory siesta, at twenty past five in the afternoon I explained to Gloria we had been robbed of a thousand dollars. I led her to the phone and dialled the money exchange number.

  “This is Carolina Esparza,” she told them, without batting an eyelid. “A cousin of Maria de los Angeles. Is she there?

  “I know she doesn’t work there any more,” she said, all smiles, “but Angeles told me she would be in the office this afternoon sorting out some loose ends. So, well, I don’t know . . .

  “Yes, I understand,” she said, eyes gleaming, squeezing my knee. “Yes, yes . . . No. Don’t go to the trouble. I’ll get in touch with her myself. Yes, very kind, goodbye.”

  “They’re expecting Rosenthal,” she told me. “They said Angeles might possibly be with him.”

  I called the office. The irony and curtness in Maribel’s voice were deliberate. None of the men we can usually call on for a special mission were there. The only males around were Silver Bullet and the Commander. I asked to speak to the boy.