Death in Veracruz

by Hector Camín

  We got to Quinta Bermúdez shortly before 5:00. Crossing through the garden of India laurels, and then the other patio, we entered Pizarro’s inner sanctum where a group of supplicants as large as the one in the morning awaited him. Roibal was seated at the table where we’d had breakfast along with a pale, heavily mascaraed woman of about thirty. She rushed to greet Pizarro with open arms and called him “my love.” To my surprise, Pizarro responded in kind. Throughout the meal he addressed her as “little darling.” He embellished this with such endearments as “my little darling,” “my little girl,” and “my love” whenever he spoke to her. Just as they had for breakfast, the cooks loaded the table for dinner. The spread included mugs for a variety of beers, toasted tortillas with assorted toppings, spiced mole stews, a marinated ham, and fresh tortillas. Yet Pizarro’s place at the head of the table remained pristine except for two servings of yogurt and a plate of tomatoes and lettuce. No one spoke except Pizarro, his little darling, and Roibal when issuing instructions to the cooks. We hadn’t gotten to the mole when Pizarro announced he had business to take care of and withdrew to his office. Roibal went after him. Little Darling and I served each other toasted tortillas and kept on eating for another half hour.

  “I used to be a singer in Tampico,” Little Darling suddenly announced. “Do you know the bar at the Hotel Inglaterra?”

  “I do,” I said.

  “Well, that’s where I used to sing with the Jaibo Tecla Trio. Do you know it?”

  “No,” I said.

  “It’s the most famous trio in Tamaulipas. Their requinto guitar played with Los Panchos, el Güero Higuera. It was one success after another, night after night until Lacho locked me up.”

  “Where did he lock you up?”

  Little Darling picked up a bit of toasted tortilla with her fingernails and put it in her mouth. “In his arms,” she said melodramatically. “Lacho’s arms are my halter as the song from Yucatán says. Do you know it?”

  She began to hum and stayed right on tune:

  I told myself your eyes are my destiny

  and your brown arms are my halter.

  “Now do you remember?”

  “It’s called Premonition,” I said.

  “We’ve been happy. There’s not a happier couple in Poza Rica. Are you from Poza Rica?”

  “From Coscomatepec.”

  “Lacho is the man most loved in Poza Rica. And I’m his woman. I quit singing and gave up my career for him. I’m living in sin for him, because we haven’t married. It’s a common law arrangement as they say. Our love doesn’t need any blessings here on earth. What did you come to ask Lacho for?”

  “I came to interview him.”

  “Lacho likes to be asked because giving is his whole life. He’ll give anything. He gave one of my nephews life. He sent him for a cure in Houston when he was dying, and he was saved. His love has given me happiness.”

  For dessert there were peaches in syrup and caramels from Guanajuato. Little Darling had small bags under her bulging eyes, but they were the same color as Anabela’s.

  “And he’s also given me peace. He rescued me from alcohol and from darkness.” She spoke humbly and with emotion as if praying.

  I heard footsteps behind me and saw Little Darling stare at the floor as if we hadn’t been speaking. It was Roibal. “Lacho wants you to come in,” he said. He held the chair for me as I got up.

  Pizarro was waiting for me with his elbows planted on his desk, fidgeting once again with a rubber band between his fingers. There was a chair placed directly in front of him. He glanced at Roibal, and the guards left the room with Roibal himself in the lead. Without further ado, Pizarro began speaking.

  “Your friend Rojano is going to get his mayor’s job. Just tell him I said to calm down. Tell him to get over his first-time jitters. And not because he might hurt me, as you’re now well aware, but because he might hurt himself and his family.”

  He paused to let what he said sink in. I looked at the figure he’d shaped between his hands with the rubber band.

  “I’m talking about political damage,” he explained. “Damage to his political career, nothing else.”

  “That’s what I understood.” For the first time I attempted to play Pizarro’s game of innuendo.

  He smiled.

  “You were born in Coscomatepec de Bravo, but you’re a Mexico City columnist,” he said. “There are several things I ought to tell you. First, never get into a fight you don’t care about winning. Second, never fight on strangers’ turf. Third, you’ve been told I had people around Chicontepec killed to get their lands. Don’t let that bother you. Civilization has killed more people than you and I could ever mourn. In my opinion, two lives are worth more than one, and three are worth more than two. That’s historical arithmetic and what equality is really all about.”

  He began to pace around the room.

  “I myself have witnessed it. We turned a swamp into a garden. We have yields of fruit, grain and other food crops from land that used to be wilderness. This wealth is the work of thousands of hands, and it’s bettered the lives of thousands of people. There’s nothing personal about who dies and who lives. If at a given moment you had to choose between the development of penicillin and the death of everyone in Poza Rica, including yourself, which would you choose? I’d opt for penicillin because that’s what progress is all about. You always have to choose the many over the few. That’s what’s happening in Chicontepec. There are two killings a day in that area, and you know why?”

  “Land disputes,” I said.

  My reply irritated him. As he turned towards me, his speech grew smoother and more measured than ever.

  “Try to understand,” he said in a voice that was barely audible. “Listen to what I’m telling you. People there are dying at the rate of two a day just from drinking mezcal. Have you ever been in one of those jails? I was in the one in Chicontepec last week. One of the inmates had killed his mother. Another a friend he was out drinking with. Another raped his daughter and almost beat her to death. None of them remembered what they’d done. All that death and suffering was pointless. It bore no fruit. Nothing blossomed or contributed to the wellbeing of others. These are the deaths that must be stopped, the barren ones driven by mezcal and ignorance. There are always going to be violent deaths, that’s the law of history. It’s up to us to make sure they’re fertile and creative, that’s all.”

  He stood contemplating the picture of Cárdenas on the wall, his near adolescent features, the big ears, the languid gaze. “How many people had to die for that man to become president?” he said. “Do the numbers, my paisano columnist, don’t be squeamish.”

  He returned to the chair behind his desk and faced me directly.

  “You people, your friend Rojano and you, are amateurs. Like so many others who claim to know and practice politics, you’re just amateurs. You’re people who’ve been given everything or at least enough so you never have to learn the real truth about life.”

  He let the rubber band fall on the desk and fixed me with his unbearable glare. “You don’t know what it is to be powerless, to be forced to put all your eggs in one basket every day, every hour of the day, and every minute of every hour because with each move you make you either win or you die. You can’t let yourself be screwed over because, if you give a single millimeter, it’s all over. They’ll forget you ever lived. The pressure’s on all the time. It keeps on coming all day every day in every way you can think of. And you always have to be the first one through the door because otherwise you don’t get in. And everybody else is shut out too, the losers, the scum, the shit, the people. We can’t have manners. We are what we are, the unwashed masses, the ones the nation shits on. And we’re on the lookout for revenge every day because winning is not enough. We must win twice to win at all. We need victory, and we need revenge, period.”

  There were no more questions.

  “Come anytime you like,” Pizarro said. “You’re at home here even
if you sneak in.”

  I got back to Tuxpan at midnight. On my bed was a carved and polished wooden box. It contained a .45 caliber pistol with a mother of pearl handle and an envelope with 50,000 pesos. Inside the envelope was a card with Pizarro’s inimitable L and his handwritten motto: Destroy to create. Whoever can add can divide.

  Chapter 5

  CHICONTEPEC

  In May 1977, the national desks at newspapers began receiving lists of possible candidates for mayoral elections around the country, including the 207 in Vera Cruz. Rojano’s name didn’t show up, but I took the liberty of calling him a shoo-in for mayor of Chicontepec. The following day I underlined his name and sent the clip to Pizarro with a note saying, “He wasn’t on any of the lists. I put him in on the basis of our conversation. Is that right or has there been a change?” Days later, on a Friday, a messenger showed up with the answer, “It will be Rojano, as we said. Almost all the rest of your list is wrong.” There followed a city-by-city line-up of PRI candidates in the northern part of the state. In closing, Pizarro wrote, “It doesn’t matter how you sound. What counts is what you do. It’s like a horse race, there’s no such thing as a bad start if you’re ahead at the finish.”

  I looked for Rojano in Xalapa, but he was out of town. I found him in Vera Cruz.

  “You’re confirmed by your godfather in Poza Rica,” I said. “Just like we said in March.”

  “You called him?” Rojano’s voice was full of excitement.

  “I have it in writing.”

  “Then it’s a done deal?”

  “It’s a written promise. But if you want my opinion, I hope it gets broken.”

  “It’s our only chance,” Rojano insisted heatedly.

  I had the impression he wasn’t exactly talking about his feud with Pizarro.

  “You’re the one who discovered Pizarro, remember?” I said.

  “Exactly, brother. That’s what I mean. It’s our only chance to stop him.”

  “How are your kids?” I changed the subject on purpose.

  My question wasn’t exactly about his kids either.

  “Fine,” Rojano said. “Anabela left for Mexico City this afternoon. She has a bunch of people to see. Check with her for the latest details. She’s staying at the Hotel Regis. Tell her the news, and see if you can arrange to be here for the candidates’ coming out. If you can swing it, take her to the Museum of Modern Art like you did the last time. She loved the Toledo iguanas.” I understood that the purpose of Anabela’s trip was to make sure my agreement with Rojano stayed on track. Could there have been any other reason for her previous visit? The idea that Rojano and Anabela might be working as a team cast her in a different light, an unpleasant and entirely new one in my eyes. Still, it wasn’t that much of a change. Simply put, she remained his stalwart supporter, his messenger, and his public relations agent. Or, to be simpler still and even more blunt, his partner.

  I didn’t call the hotel. I waited for her to come to me. Despite what Rojano said, I was certain that I was the only reason for her trip, the one contact in a position to serve their purposes in Mexico City. She neither called nor came to see me that Friday, but on Saturday she made her presence felt via a taxi driver who delivered a blue envelope with the first message from Anabela. “If you know I’m here, why are you being so stubborn and refusing to come?” I paid the taxi driver to go back and tell her there was no one home. That night another blue message arrived. “If the mountain won’t go to Mohamed, then Mohamed’s going to the Champs-Elysées tomorrow, Sunday, at three. Then we’ll go where you want.”

  She really did go to the Champs-Elysées at three, but the restaurant didn’t open Sundays. She was forced to wait nearly an hour. First she stood on the corner, then she strolled up and down the tree-lined sidewalk on Reforma. Later she took a seat on a bench near the restaurant, keeping constant watch on the entrance. I observed her from the car for nearly the whole hour. She was less than at ease in the city, and I liked watching her grapple with uncertainty. She was tall, lithe, and a sight to see as she negotiated the red tiles of the sun-dappled sidewalk. She still wore her hair short, like Mia Farrow, as she had at university. She was wearing dark stockings and high heels. A jumble of necklaces cascaded down her chest. At certain points along the sidewalk the sun shone through her light dress and thin shawl revealing the fullness of her legs and the upright silhouette of her breasts. When she looked about to leave, I drew nearer by a half block and, while staying in my car, sounded the horn. She trotted happily towards the car, her hips and shoulders swinging with childlike enthusiasm. She was a couple of kilos lighter. Her face had thinned out, and her features, though sharper, showed no sign of fatigue. She looked as if she’d slept peacefully for days, as if long rest had cleared and even refreshed her complexion.

  “You owe me one, Negro,” she said as she got in the car. “I should have known those French queers don’t work Sundays. That’s why they came to Indian country, right? To goof off, as they say on the street. So let’s see where you take me now because I’m dying of hunger. And you owe me one. You could’ve told me, you creep. Couldn’t you? What are you laughing at?”

  “I’m taking you to a place called the Virgins’ Hideaway.”

  “God help us, why?”

  “Because that’s where they all lose it.”

  “So how many rooms do they have?”

  “How many virgins are there?”

  “You mean they don’t have any rooms? You’re just dragging me into the woods? Don’t laugh. What are you laughing at?”

  I went up to the Palo Alto Motel on the road to Toluca where I requested a suite, a meal, and two cold bottles of French Chablis. However, their only Chablis was from Hidalgo, not France. We had a drink at the bar, then went to the suite. We had fresh asparagus, hearts of palm, and shrimp sautéed in garlic butter. We drank all of one bottle and half of the other before making love or something, based on the pats and gestures, quite similar, once around 5 pm and after about 5:30. We fell asleep briefly, then left the place at 7:00. Night had already fallen, and the highway was choked with a long line of cars returning to the city. We fell silent, and Anabela turned on the radio. At 8:00 I parked the car in front of the Hotel Regis. “Where do you have the information?” I asked.

  I’d have liked it if the question surprised her. It would have been nice not to be so blatant about her role as a messenger, but she replied with utter nonchalance.

  “Here in my bag.”

  Then she added, “The bar here is quite pleasant. Why don’t you come in for a drink?”

  “I’ve got to go to the paper.”

  “After the paper then.”

  “It depends on the time, but I doubt it.”

  “All right. Marc Antonio and Cleopatra saw even less of each other.”

  She handed me a wad of papers. Folded in half, they had all but filled her woven Huichol handbag.

  I gave her photocopies of my column, my message to Pizarro, and his reply. We kissed, she got out, and I went to my apartment on Artes to read the papers she’d given me. They turned out to be a lengthy memo from the PEMEX Office of Projects and Engineering to the Office of the Director General. It outlined an immense federally subsidized project to be centered around a prehistoric waterway near Chicontepec called the paleocanal. According to the memo, the area’s potential oil reserves equaled the sum of all prior discoveries in the country put together. Under the planned project, Chicontepec would within four years become the biggest oil and petrochemical complex in the Americas and one of the biggest in the world. It would be surpassed only by Kuwait’s facilities on the Persian Gulf and the ones then becoming operational in the North Sea. The project called for phase one investments totalling 1.5 billion pesos beginning in 1978; 5 billion in stage two from 1979 to 1981; then 12 billion in phase three after 1981. Pumping an expected 10 billion barrels of light crude would require the building of a complete system of primary and secondary petrochemical refineries and processing plants.
Four instant cities of 80,000 each would spring up, and local farming and cattle-raising capabilities would undergo major expansion in order to feed this new demographic. All that. And right on time to make Francisco Rojano Gutiérrez’s craziest dreams of riding the crest of the wave to wealth and power come true.

  Doña Lila came in at ten and proceeded to fix herself a late-night snack. Looking pale with her hair somewhat uncombed, she sized up her current state by muttering to herself. “You look like a rooftop cat. You’re never satisfied till you’re scratched bare.”

  She made me sandwiches, and I turned on the television to watch the Channel 13 news, then anchored by Verónica Rascón. About 11:00 someone knocked. “I want to sleep with you,” Anabela said when I opened the door.

  I gave her a vodka and tonic and one of the sandwiches Doña Lila made, and we finished watching the news. She removed her makeup, donned a transparent nightgown, and clipped a toenail. We carried on a conversation with the television still on just like a married couple. Later we made love until very late as if we hadn’t seen each other for a long time. In the early morning, half asleep with our arms intertwined, I wondered if this was her way of celebrating the victory my photocopies confirmed for Rojano.

  Doña Lila woke us up by opening the curtains and shouting that the whole apartment smelled like sin. “This is going to take papal absolution,” she said as she approached the bed with a tray of orange juice and coffee. “It looks like every jot and tittle of the sixth commandment has been broken here.”

  She stopped to watch Anabela sip her coffee. Though still sleepy, she looked fresh and relaxed. Doña Lila paused in the doorway on her way back to the kitchen. “Blessed child,” she said. “You can tell me later what disgrace brought you to this den of iniquity because this is the first time I’ve seen the man you’re in bed with wake up next to a woman who wears shoes.”