by Rolo Diez
The detectives were cool. No one mentioned the stash of jewels. Some magician had made it disappear from the investigation. I mentioned the case of the gringo and said it was out of my hands. They got me to sign a few bits of paper and let me go, with the usual warnings about the course of the investigation and making sure I was available if called upon.
*
The Commander was having a political brunch at the Diplomatico.
Maribel and Laura stared at me, whispered to each other and giggled like idiots.
The accountant was sitting there, as depressed as any innocent person would be at having to spend the morning in a police station waiting room.
“Just a moment. I’ll be right with you,” I told him, sweeping past. I went to see the three lads in maintenance.
“I’ve got a number three,” I explained. “We’ve got to play the ‘Tell Me What You’re Keeping Hidden’ game.”
“Is he guilty?”
“No, but we need to find out what he knows.”
“How much?”
“Forty each.”
“Eighty.”
“Sixty.”
“You’re on.”
I gave them instructions while they took off their overalls and put on uniforms that were too big for them. In the maintenance room they keep cast-off clothes and unusual sizes. I left them tidying away their gadgets and setting the scene: bare cables, iron gloves, sharp instruments. The maintenance boys never hurt a fly, but they’re great for scaring witnesses who need a bit of encouragement to cooperate.
As I was taking him into the interrogation room, the accountant was desperately trying to get me to speak. He wanted to know why I had called him in, what it was all about and so on. As though I were working for him. I said nothing and allowed him to get even more scared, if possible.
I sat him down opposite the man at the typewriter and called the other one aside to give him details about Mr Accountant’s state of mind.
“I’ll come and get him in half an hour,” I said.
“By then he’ll be ripe for you.”
I went back to the office, where I had a job to do.
Maribel was still looking at me as if she were Lucretia Borgia and I was the monk responsible for cleaning the Vatican toilets.
“I need to get some papers from the boss’s office,” I told her, smiling my best seductive smile.
“No chance. The boss is out,” she replied, dry as a prune.
“I know he’s out. That’s why I’m asking you to open it for me. I’ve already spoken to him,” I insisted.
The girl from Veracruz looked up at me suspiciously, but picked up the bunch of keys.
Inside the office, I blocked the door.
“I’ve got half an hour,” I told her. “Should we go to a hotel, or do you prefer here?”
She glanced down at her watch. I pushed her onto the couch. By the time I emerged twenty minutes later, I had one less problem. I could not work out why the Commander’s secretary was still eyeing me with an air of triumph.
I didn’t deign to pay attention to anyone in the office. That was for Maribel to see to: she was the one who had been stuffed. I went to find the accountant.
He was a sorry sight. Fortunately for him, I arrived just in time to rescue him. I got angry with the lads: “Can’t you idiots tell the difference between a criminal and an honest man!” But I kept them close by so that our witness would not be tempted to go back on what he had already given away. Ten minutes’ chat, with a cup of coffee and cigarettes, was enough to supply me with very valuable information.
Chapter ten
The gold bracelet – real or not? (I never got to find out) – passed from my hand to the desktop and, from the top, passed into a drawer that was immediately locked. Through a flap in the purple-green folds of his face, the Commander was scrutinizing me.
I was thinking that if anyone stuck a fork in his pupils, all that would come out would be pure alcohol, a geyser of black-label whisky, pools of seven-year-old rum, gushing falls of aged tequila, a river of Rhine wine, a sea of burgundy. For their benefit I drew a picture of the situation, emphasizing my belief that Jones’s real business had to do with hetero- and homosexual sadistic pornography. The gringo had set himself up in Mexico because here all that filth was a novelty. And because no one knew of its existence, no one bothered him. Here in Mexico we’re still at the innocent stage of sucking tits and anal sex. In the United States, on the other hand, they’re used to sadism, pornography with animals and children, films of real deaths. Two whores, Alejandra Aguado and Berta Sanchez by name, had filed a complaint that Jones had them brutally whipped while they were being filmed and had drugged them and forced them to take part in orgies with more than ten men. The women had not followed this up, and nobody knew where they were now. Six months earlier, Jones had contracted Victoria Ledesma, a nineteen-year-old prostitute from Sinaloa, as a model for a shoot in Teotihuacan. The film was made. Twelve minutes of panoramic views, aerial shots and close-ups with the girl in various parts of the ruins, with clay flute music and a supposedly poetic commentary. Two months later the body of Victoria Ledesma was dug out of a rubbish dump by a dog. Her breasts had been hacked off, there were stab wounds all over her body, and several specimens of semen in each of her orifices. Nothing could be proved, but the investigation led the police to suspect Jones’s involvement. But he had good contacts in his embassy, and the quality of the evidence against him was such that it was not thought worthwhile to arrest him. The case was still open, and now Jones’s death suggested a fresh line of approach. I told the Commander about Valadez and his dealings with Cruz. And about Cruz’s links to Jones, which only made sense if we assumed the Cuban had told Cruz about Jones’s shady business, and Cruz was the one doing the blackmailing.
“Where did you get the information about Jones?” The Commander put on his best public prosecutor scowl to cross-examine me.
I did not want to get Quasimodo mixed up in this, so I made up some comments made by the detectives when they questioned me over Cruz’s death, suggestions from Estela Lopez de Jones and Valadez and, above all, what the deceased Cruz had told me: all of which, thanks to my brilliance as an investigator, had led me to build up a picture which until now only I had been able to see, but which I was happy to put at his – ruthless pursuer of justice and truth – disposition.
The Commander chopped the air with a “cut the crap” gesture and said:
“Tell me about the man or woman who was with Jones in the hotel on the night of the crime.”
I admitted I hadn’t made much progress on that front. I did not admit I had not even visited the hotel. The fact was I hadn’t had the time. But who can tell their boss that?
“You investigate everything, except for what’s most important,” the Commander snorted. Like all bureaucrats who spend their lives with their arses stuck to a seat, he thinks he’s an expert and has the right to demand everything. “If Jones was filming pornography, and let me tell you that a bit of a thrashing on a backside and a few groans may be exciting, but the idea of filming someone’s death sounds like a drunk’s delirium to me . . . who would buy that kind of thing, eh? Tell me, who would run the risk of spending a lifetime in jail for something that can’t be that profitable anyway? . . . They’d have to be not only the most heartless criminal in the world, but the stupidest into the bargain.” He pointed his boss’s finger at me, the finger of a schoolmaster pointing at a backward pupil, of a cop accusing his good-for-nothing subordinate, and went on: “As I was saying, if that guy was filming pornography, he must have worked with other people. Actors, a lighting crew, and so on. Why don’t you try to find them, Officer, or do I have to tell you how to do your job?”
He’s like a father to me, that’s why I hate him so much.
“I already have, of course, boss.” I improvised a little, using some of the information the accountant had given me. Jones’s accounts were all in order. The filmings were carried out in accordanc
e with all the legal and union requisites. He took on professional people and did it all the Mexican way. That was his cover.
“If you’re talking about cover, first you have to show the pornography exists.”
“I can show lots of suspicious facts: the complaint of sadistic treatment by two women; the link to a prostitute whose mutilated dead body has been found; and underworld rumours about the true nature of Jones’s business.” (I was spinning a yarn: nobody was going to say some of it wasn’t true.) “We’ve established that Jones did not need a crew to film with, he did his own lighting and camerawork. He has a processing lab in his home. I haven’t seen it yet, but I will do later today. Sometimes the gringo employed would-be actors nobody ever saw. They came from Tijuana and San Diego.”
“What else . . . ?”
“Nothing. I’m working on my own and making more progress than if I was part of a team. The gringo was killed, and I’ll bet it wasn’t because the murderer – man or woman – didn’t appreciate the quality of his films.”
There was something the boss didn’t like. I could tell because the mottled flaps closed still further.
“Tell me about Cruz. He was a good witness. Why did you have to kill him?”
As I said, he’s like a father to me.
“Because if I hadn’t, he would have killed me.”
“Fine. Don’t worry. I’ll make sure you don’t have any problems. It’s a clear case of self-defence. We won’t allow anyone to suggest otherwise.” The Commander was starting to defend me – implicitly, that meant I was guilty. I suddenly realized we were both behaving like cats on the prowl. “What we’ve got to worry about are the complications in the Jones case. He had friends in his embassy, and they are pressing for the case to be closed. Whether it’s cleared up or not, they want it closed. There are questions of reputation and cross-border relations involved. We’re the DO here, not illiterate patrolmen. That means we’re supposed to use our heads. Justice has never been an exact science, Officer. It’s all about relations between people and between countries, and higher interests that have to be treated with caution. Don’t forget NAFTA and the foreign debt.”
We carried on like this for a few more minutes, playing verbal ping-pong, swapping promises and threats of blackmail until the Commander gave me three days to wrap the case up, told me to give him a daily report and asked if I needed anything.
“Yes, I do,” I said. “I want Estela Lopez de Jones’s phone tapped, I want a twenty-four-hour watch on her house, and four men in two cars to tail people.”
The boss returned to his speciality: adopting a funereal look and saying “no”. He blathered on about austerity, budgets and multitasking and ended by saying I knew what to do about the phone tapping, and “talk to someone in the office about the tailing”.
Frankly, the Mexican police is run by fools. How can anyone work in conditions like that?
Chapter eleven
Bucareli is a tough, ugly, dirty, polluted, noisy neighbourhood. The day cholera breaks out in Mexico City, it will start in Bucareli, among all the bums and stray dogs, the hordes of rats and mountains of waste paper. But with Bucareli, what you see is what you get. In spite of all the preserved colonial lanes of Coyoacan, all the shopping malls being built in the four corners of the capital, all the fake European nooks and crannies invented for the tourists, Mexico City is a rough place. There’s little room in Bucareli for daydreamers, and a cop is unlikely to forget what he’s there for.
By my second tequila I had the case solved. The key was a blonde woman who could switch easily to being a blond man. Everyone knows the best place to hide a tree is in a forest. And hadn’t we had a blonde woman in front of our faces the whole time? And didn’t that woman have a difficult relationship with Jones? Hadn’t I seen with my own eyes – with these eyes that devour women – how she could put up her hair in a bun? She could do exactly the same wearing the collar of a leather jacket turned up . . . the man at the hotel said he had seen a transvestite. But, apart from the amazing facility witnesses have to transform mulattoes into Negroes, Peruvians into Japanese, a transvestite is simply a man imitating a woman – and isn’t it easy to confuse a man who imitates a woman and a woman imitating a man? Estela Lopez de Jones had been clever. She had done her number in a cheap hotel, and counted on people following their normal line of thinking and being unable to link a decent woman with a hotel used by prostitutes, allowing her to create the illusion that there was someone else involved. Then she transformed this other woman into a man, leaving the narrow logic of any observer in a spin. Her motives were hatred and greed. Hatred, because of what the accountant told me, but I didn’t pass on to the Commander; greed because if that son of a bitch gringo was going around snuffing people and filming it, the only possible explanation was that someone was paying at the very least a million greenbacks for each of those “emotional hits”. Somewhere, perhaps in a Swiss bank, there must be a deposit in Jones’s name that would allow anyone not to have to worry about working ever again.
Not bad going for a shop assistant in a cheap store. My job was to catch her.
I called in at several bars before I found him. Sitting with a plateful of pork tacos and a mamey juice, Silver Bullet looked pleased with himself. When he saw me, he ordered a beer from the waiter. This pleased me, because it’s always nice to see one’s disciples are learning and discover they know it’s important to keep their superiors happy. I had to give him instructions about the way to deal with the Cuban, so I sat on a stool next to him. I began by downplaying what he had achieved so far, to keep him in his place. Nothing is easier for people than to give themselves airs. Everybody seems to need to feel they are in charge of something, to boast “It was me who did it”, “I’m the number one.” So I confirmed he would get his share of twenty per cent, and not the thirty per cent he was asking for, and informed him that yours truly had been busy adding noughts to the right-hand side of that twenty. I told him about Cruz and his death. Silver Bullet never once left off eating but did offer me one of his tacos. You have to know my assistant to grasp the importance of a gesture like that.
“That makes it more complicated with Valadez,” I explained. “Tell him that Cruz is dead. Tell him ‘Hernandez is trying to impress his bosses, and you’re next on his list.’ Ask him for three times as much and make sure he doesn’t leave the city.”
I didn’t have the time, so I was forced to send Silver Bullet to the Buenos Aires garage to ask for next week’s payment in advance. (Anyone who knows Kiko will be aware that this is Mission Impossible, so if the boy pulled it off, he would deserve his fifty per cent.) I didn’t say a word about the Three Marias because I had no doubt he would ruin the arrangement by accepting all payment in kind. Besides which, I needed to talk to Rosario urgently.
When I left him, he was doing his best to look like James Bond. Sucking determinedly on his mamey juice through a straw.
*
I like sitting with Rosario at one of the outside tables in a Zona Rosa bar. I can sense how jealous the stupid passers-by are, and see how their rutting wolves’ eyes stare at my girl. I like the way she hangs on my arm, laughs out loud, brings her face close to mine and tickles me with her curls. As well as enjoying this for its own sake, it gives me intellectual satisfaction of the Pygmalion kind, because as the weeks go by I can see how she is honing her skills. And I’m the best proof of this there is, because I can’t spend five minutes with her before I get an erection. We had a quick drink and finished our conversation in a hotel. What Rosario said left me very confused. My protégée had better information than me on Jones. She and, according to her, all the whores in the Zona Rosa knew that the gringo was making porno movies. He recruited women for fiestas and had a ranch near Hidalgo where he held orgies, to which he invited important personalities. Jones’s reputation fluctuated between bad and worse. Apparently, he was a dangerous pervert. Some women who had worked with him disappeared; others turned up dead with signs of torture. Among her
acquaintances, Rosario had heard stories of bestial abuse, of floggings, tattoos carved out with knives, rapes with a wide range of objects. In the Zona Rosa none of the women would work with him anymore. They had held meetings and discussed denouncing him to the police, but since nobody ever listens to whores, and seeing that the gringo had powerful friends who were politicians and judges, they decided to let him be, but to protect themselves by warning everyone so that nobody else would fall into his clutches. They considered Jones’s death an act of justice. They were pleased that a cockroach like him had been cleared from the streets. Rosario and, in her view, none of the other girls she knew on the game had the slightest idea who could have killed him. She knew the hotel in question and even knew girls who had been there that night, but none of them had seen Jones or the blond man, or had heard anything at all. This might or might not have been true, but they had talked it over and that was that. The only thing certain was that they were all delighted.
I pondered on an intelligence network based on keeping your legs open and your ears pricked, and after experiencing a mixture of humiliation and amazement, I suddenly felt so relieved and happy that, with the money Rosario had given me for her insurance policy – I always tell her: I’m your insurance policy – I took her for a meal and then left her at a cinema with instructions to get more information.
I bought toys and chocolates for the kids, a bottle of Carlos I for myself and a small box for Gloria’s earrings. A healthy desire to do nothing crept over me. While I was driving to the Mixcoac apartment I had a brilliant idea: vacations for everyone. I’d book a good hotel for Gloria and the midgets in Acapulco, and offer myself the pleasure of discovering Cancun. One room for me and Lourdes, another for Carlos and Araceli.
Chapter twelve
I woke at nine to a beer and a caress of my head. The caress was ten out of ten, the beer a little colder than I normally like, but I hadn’t the heart to tell Gloria that, given the love she was showing me. I know the tricks the female mind can play, but I also know how important it can be for a man – especially if he isn’t a hairdresser or a bureaucrat – to get a bit of tenderness first thing in the morning. Malinche must have woken Hernan Cortes in exactly the same way. That’s why we’re all losers, whether we end up crying under a huge tree like Cortes did, or sitting in the living room glued to the TV.