The Last Girl

by Danny Lopez

  “That’s why she came down here—to find it.”

  “And you thought she was working with us.”

  “That’s what I was told. She was supposed to hook up with a team from UNAM.”

  “That is us.”

  I nodded. “So you see. It’s a very intriguing case.”

  “Intriguing?” she said and smiled. She had a beautiful smile. “That is an interesting word to use.”

  “But it’s true.”

  “The disappearance of the axolotl is an intriguing mystery.”

  “There you go.” I laughed. I was thinking of what Dr. Tabor had said, that whoever finds an axolotl in its natural habitat will have their name written up in gold: biologist extraordinaire. “We have a lot in common. We’re both searching for something.”

  “Yes,” she said, “but at least for us, it will hopefully make a change in how we manage the lakes and canals of Xochimilco. And it can infuse the Mexican people with national pride. That is something we are in desperate need of—pride.”

  “Disculpe, profesora,” the young man on the launch said. “Esta parte ya esta medida. Nos podemos mover al siguiente cuadrante?”

  I glanced at Ernesto.

  Flor nodded at the young man and stood.

  I stood and gave her my card. “I’m staying at the Hotel Maria Cristina. If you, or anyone, remembers her, or if you know of another group she might have worked with—”

  “I told you.”

  “Please,” I said. “I would really appreciate it if you got in touch.”

  She glanced at my card and back at me. “I must get back to work.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  WHEN I GOT back to my hotel in the late afternoon, I had a message from Malcolm to meet him at the Cantina Nuevo Leon in the Condesa neighborhood. When I got there he was already drunk. He admitted he’d lost my phone number and that he’d fucked up this morning, but that it couldn’t be helped. He apologized and ordered a round of beers. “But the good news,” he said in his muddy Scottish, “is that Toni Spencer’s coming to meet us here. You can interrogate her to your heart’s content. Right?”

  We toasted with caballitos of 7 Leguas. Why you couldn’t find this tequila in Sarasota was beyond me, but at least it was here. At least I was here. We drank, and Malcolm complained about Mexican politics and the insensitive and incestuous expat community, and about London United. By the time we toasted a fifth time, it was clear he harbored a deep resentment for everything under the sun.

  Just as I was flying high, feeling like Spider-Man ready to swing between buildings, Toni Spencer walked in.

  Toni wasn’t exactly beautiful. She was attractive, elegant. She had tremendous presence. When she walked into the cantina, she owned it. Everyone at the bar turned to check her out. I could see them thinking, evaluating, wishing.

  She looked to be in her mid-thirties. She wore a sweeping black skirt, an embroidered blouse, and a large silk scarf.

  Malcolm whispered to me, “Trust fund baby. Lives for parties and social events. She’s been writing a book for six years—a big bloody novel or some shit. Otherwise does nothing. But she knows everybody in Mexico.”

  She joined us at our table, turned her large black eyes to the side. The waiter appeared instantly at her side to take her drink order: Herradura and a glass of soda water with ice—extra limes.

  Malcolm introduced us. She smiled, her lips tight and without a touch of lipstick. Then she lit a Faro cigarette and blew the smoke out the side of her mouth in order not to blow it in my face. She held the cigarette nicely between her fingers, head up, chin up, eyelids cast down like a lioness. Then she turned her eyes on me. “So what brings you to our tragic city?”

  By our, it sounded more as if she meant hers. She had a mild British accent mixed with a hint of Spanish. Exotic.

  “I’m looking for a woman,” I said. I could tell she was someone you didn’t waste time with. This was a chore for her. She was here as a favor to Malcolm.

  “A biology student,” I added quickly, “Maya Zavala.”

  Toni seemed to ponder this, her eyebrows furrowed just slightly. “Malcolm tells me she lived in La Roma?”

  “That’s what she put on her Facebook page,” I said. “But the further I seem to get into it, the less truth I find.”

  She laughed. “Welcome to Mexico, my dear.”

  But it wasn’t Mexico. I wasn’t buying her magical realism bit. The craziness had started in Sarasota.

  I showed her the photograph of Maya. I watched her eyes move slowly over the image. She pressed her lips together. Her lungs took in a long deep breath. Then she refocused on me. The intensity in her dark eyes vanished. “Yes. I know her.”

  It was as if someone had smacked me across the face. “You’re kidding.”

  “Didn’t I tell you?” Malcolm slapped me on the back and laughed like a drunken leprechaun. “Shit, Toni, you’re fucking brilliant.”

  “Please, Malcolm, don’t be vulgar.” Toni set the photo down on the table. All our eyes fell on it. “She was Pricilla’s roommate in that glorious old apartment on Plaza Luis Cabrera.”

  “Pricilla with the teeth?” Malcolm said. “What ever happened to that bird?”

  Toni glared at him. “She went back to LA.” Then she looked at me and in a snide tone added, “Couldn’t handle La Ciudad.”

  “I liked her.” Malcolm took a long sip of tequila. “She was all right.”

  “What about Maya?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” Toni said, but her tone had changed—concern. “She moved out. Found her own place, I suppose.”

  “So she stayed in Mexico?”

  “I imagine,” she said. “I didn’t hear otherwise.”

  Malcolm glanced at me as if waiting for the next question, see what tricks I had under my sleeve. I leaned forward on the table. “Did she have any friends? Any places she liked to go to?”

  “Maya?” She scoffed. “She was … funny.”

  Malcolm laughed.

  She glared at Malcolm. “Not funny like that.” She waved him off and turned her dark eyes on me. “She was a little odd. Independent. She abhorred groups. She went out when she wanted with whom she wanted. Yes, she was extremely independent. A rare quality in our expat community.” She tilted her head to the side and glanced at Malcolm. “We tend to move in packs, like wolves. Don’t we, Malcolm?”

  “We’re bloody disgusting,” Malcolm said with a goofy smile. “Everyone sleeping with everyone else.”

  Toni raised her chin. “Yes. An incestuous bunch to say the least.”

  “But not her,” I said.

  “If I remember correctly, she was here to find some kind of reptile.”

  “The axolotl,” I said.

  She pointed at me with her cigarette. “Right. The axolotl. But there was something going on. She didn’t want to join the folks at UNAM even though they’d been at it for months. And they had the funding. I remember Anita Solís did a piece on it: the search for the little axolotl. It was quite good, actually.”

  “I remember that,” Malcolm said. “For the AP, right?”

  Toni nodded. “That was in February, I believe. It got play in a lot of newspapers. She was quite proud. But Maya didn’t want any part of that group. She wanted to do it all on her own.”

  “Do you reckon she was kidnapped?” Malcolm said. He wasn’t laughing.

  Toni shrugged. “Don’t be so dramatic. Pricilla went back to LA. Maya must have found her own place. Mondragón said he saw her a few weeks ago at the gallery opening for that Cuban artist—”

  “Fortuna,” Malcolm said.

  “He said she looked quite well.”

  “Her father hasn’t heard form her in months,” I said.

  Toni raised an eyebrow. “Really? Is she a runaway?”

  I leaned back and sighed. “Who knows what she is.”

  Toni smiled. “Knowing Maya she’s probably out somewhere searching for the axolotl.”

  It was possibl
e. Xochimilco was bigger than half of Sarasota. Maybe all of Sarasota. She could be anywhere.

  “I’ll put the word out,” Toni said and took a generous sip of her tequila. She didn’t even chase it with lime. “If she’s around, I’m sure someone’s seen her. No one just disappears from Mexico City. Not without one of us hearing about it.”

  * * *

  I slept late the following morning. After breakfast I called Malcolm but got no answer. I took a taxi back to Xochimilco and found Ernesto hanging around the food stalls trying to hit up tourists to hire him as a guide.

  “Dexter!” He seemed happy to see me. “Where we go today?”

  “Back to the canals,” I said.

  “To find the students?”

  “No,” I said and looked around. It was past noon. There was a lot more activity than the previous morning. People were cooking, getting ready for the lunch crowd. A handful of tourists mingled around the water’s edge, taking photos of the trajinera boats with their painted frames, cute names, and pretty flower arrangements.

  “I just want to cruise around the canals again,” I said.

  “Why not take a trajinera? More fun.”

  “No. Is the old man around?”

  “Sí, claro. Ausencio is always around.” He led me past the road where two large tourist buses had just pulled up. We went back on the other side toward the water and found the old man leaning against the side of a food stall reading an adult comic book.

  We loaded the little wooden boat with a plastic jug of gasoline and a couple of plastic bottles of drinking water and motored slowly into the narrower, more secluded waterways of Xochimilco.

  We passed the Island of the Dolls. It didn’t appear so creepy this time around. From the distance it looked like a bunch of trash. It reminded me of the debris after a tornado passed through a trailer park—all the twisted metal and insulation caught on the trees.

  The day was hot and there was no shade. I was still a little hungover from the drinks. I leaned back and closed my eyes.

  I had no plan. If Maya was trying to find the axolotl on her own, she had to be somewhere in the canals, working with her own team. The labyrinth of canals and lakes was complicated. It was impossible to search with any kind of order unless you had a team, like the folks from the UNAM. But I had no choice. So when Ernesto sat across from me and told me the old man wanted to know where to go, I said to tell him to get lost.

  Ernesto laughed. “Lost, how?”

  “Just cruise. Tell him to take me to the farthest place in Xochimilco. Where no one goes.”

  “You sure?”

  I leaned back and let the sun fall on my face. “Yes, I’m sure.”

  We left behind the populated areas, the deformed chinampas, and went farther out where nature and farming covered the land. We occasionally saw a farmer hoeing his fields, walking between the rows of corn, children fishing, women hanging laundry. Except for the drone of the little engine and the stink of its exhaust, it was a perfect, peaceful afternoon.

  The scenes—farmers with their hats and white shirts, toiling in the fields—reminded me of my grandfather’s farm outside Gonzales, Texas. The place was a shit hole—a dozen acres and a handmade shanty with two cows, several goats, and a bunch of chickens. But when I was a kid, when we came to stay with him after my father died, it was paradise. His land seemed to spread out forever. It was as if he owned the world. And all I could think of back then was that I wanted to live there for the rest of my life.

  He used to tell us stories of how difficult they’d had it back when he was a boy, working in the fields, traveling all year. But we were Americans now—brown-skinned, dark-eyed Americans. He was very clear about that, about being U.S. citizens, about speaking English, about being well educated, about having the same rights as everyone else. It wasn’t that he didn’t want us to be Mexican. He didn’t want for us to suffer the prejudice and humiliation they had suffered. He didn’t want us to break our backs working in the fields. He wanted better for us.

  That’s what got me into journalism in the first place. I wanted to contribute—to help. The world was shit. I had witnessed it in person when that cop shot my father. I wanted to fix things. But it was getting worse. In the end we’ll all end up extinct like the goddamn axolotl.

  I was surprised that we hadn’t seen any boats or workers, biologists, students, or investigators all day. We’d been crusing along the canals for more than four hours and we’d seen absolutely nothing. When we passed the Island of the Dolls for the third time, I started to wonder if the old man was just going around in circles.

  I told Ernesto to tell the old man to take us back. When we arrived in the main hub of Xochimilco, I invited Ernesto and the old man to a late lunch at one of the food stalls in the market. The old man and I drank cold Victoria beers and Ernesto—who insisted his parents said it was okay for him to drink beer, even though yesterday he told me he was an orphan—had an orange Fanta. We ate gorditas stuffed with chicken and huaraches with shredded pork and cheese, all of it cooked by hand and served with a smile by an old lady who kept staring at the old man, Ausencio.

  When we finished, I explained to Ernesto my predicament. I had to find Maya. Our search was getting me nowhere, and I was running out of time. “I have to find her. But this, going around the canals by boat, is getting me nowhere.”

  He seemed to consider this very carefully, his head bowed, his hand on his chin—a real thinker. Then he bounced up and smiled. “Piojo. You must go to see el Piojo.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “Not where, who. He’s a brujo. A doctor man. Witch doctor. He take care of many problems. He can help people see the future. He can help you find your friend.”

  “Right.”

  “No problem,” he said. “I can take you. Is not far.”

  “Give me a break, Ernesto.”

  “Esta bien, pues. You tell me you don’t know how to find this girl. I tell you to go see this man. You say no.” He waved his finger at me. “You don’t find your friend because you don’t try.”

  “Get serious, Ernesto.”

  “This man Piojo, he very good. He give my sister abortion, no problem. No pain, no blood. He help my aunt with cancer. He told me one day I meet gringo, good gringo. We be best friends. And I meet you. Maybe he can find your friend.”

  “Yeah, and maybe not.”

  “Claro. Maybe not. But for three hundred and fifty pesos, is worth a try, no?”

  I did the math—about twenty bucks.

  “Unless, you don’t want to try. Maybe in here.” He tapped his chest. “You don’t really want to find your friend.”

  “What the fuck does that mean?”

  “My father always say, try every possible avenue.”

  “I thought you were an orphan?”

  “I am.”

  Whatever. Ernesto was a little crazy, a con artist. Probably a glue sniffer. But he seemed to have a decent heart. He meant well. But I couldn’t keep boating around the goddamn lakes and canals day in and day out. Besides, the fucking old man and his boat were not cheap. A brujo. Twenty bucks. What did I have to lose?

  We took a taxi to Tláhuac and drove into a maze of small streets in a poor neighborhood that seemed to get poorer by the block. It was like diving into the bowels of a monster only to come out at the other end and drop on a dirty toilet that didn’t flush. We went from paved streets to dirt streets—brown and dusty. None of the houses were painted. All the roofs had long stalks of rebar sticking out like antennas. The electric poles had dozens of narrow colored wires like a spiderweb. Everything looked homemade. And there was no traffic. No cars parked on the side of the street.

  Finally, our taxi pulled over in front of a concrete block house with a Mexican flag waving at the end of the long pole that stuck out of the roof of the second floor. It was the tallest house in the neighborhood and the last one before the real slum spread out like a trash dump with small shacks built of wood scraps and cardboard.
/>   Ernesto knocked on the large metal door. A small old woman led us into a small concrete patio where herbs and flowers grew out of cans and plastic buckets. On the wall there was an altar to the Virgen de Guadalupe with a few candles and wilting flowers that reminded me of my grandparents’ living room.

  We sat on plastic chairs and waited.

  “What now?” I said.

  “No problem.” Ernesto made a gesture with his hand for me to chill.

  I leaned back on the chair. The place smelled of soap and tortillas. A dog was barking somewhere in the neighborhood. I wondered about Maya—how she financed her life here. Mexico City wasn’t cheap. The apartment, the search for the axolotl, food, transportation, it all had to add up to a pretty penny. The only thing I could figure was that the check Nick sent Maya for her rent at the hippie flophouse was somehow making its way back to her. Perhaps via Mike Boseman.

  I pulled out my reporter’s notebook and made a quick note: Maya’s money. Someone had to be sending her money. But that still wouldn’t help get Petrillo and Frey off my back. I had to find Maya. And when I did, I hoped she’d give me the name of someone with a motive to hurt her father.

  After about fifteen minutes a large, heavyset man with long gray hair and a beard walked onto the patio and waved for us to come.

  He led us into a room that resembled an office with a small metal desk, a few chairs, and a narrow military-style cot where it appeared someone had been sleeping. We sat across the desk from the brujo. No signs of witchcraft anywhere.

  Ernesto spoke. The brujo nodded, his eyes moving from Ernesto to the wall, to me and back. I understood something about a woman, the axolotl and something about love. Amor.

  I watched the brujo’s hands, his chubby fingers fiddling over the desk, his fingernails long and dirty.

  “Sí,” the brujo said after a moment. “Entiendo muy bien.”

  Ernesto smiled at me. “No problem. He fix everything.”

  The brujo walked slowly around the desk and pulled a few stones from his pocket and set them on the desk in front of him. Then he took out some herbs from the shelf behind him and some beads from a jar. He moved things around but said nothing. Then he sat and looked at Ernesto. “Como se llama la mujer?”