by Hector Camín
“It could be.”
“We have very little time, and I don’t know if we’ll succeed,” he said, turning his chair back towards me. “What I want you to understand is this. You and the widow have gone beyond my range of operation. We’ll certainly keep the guard detail in place, we’ll even reinforce it. What I have to tell you, though, is if the train has left the station, the guard detail won’t be enough to stop it.”
“I know.”
“I hope you keep it in mind. We’ll investigate exactly what happened and try to negotiate with Pizarro. But it’s now up to him and not us to decide. Everything depends on them now. Stay in touch with the guard detail throughout the day. Make sure they always know where you are so that I’ll know. And check with me every afternoon to find out what we’ve got.”
He escorted me to the door and put me out of his office without saying goodbye. By going beyond his range of operation, I’d come under his authority.
I went from there to the newspaper. I needed urgently to track down our correspondent in Veracruz. It took three phone calls to catch up with him at the mayor’s office in Xalapa.
“I want you to run a check on Lázaro Pizarro in Poza Rica,” I told him.
“Right away. Are you after anything special?”
“Just find out if he’s in Poza Rica. See if there have been any recent incidents, if everything’s in order, if there have been any rumors of something out of the ordinary. All you need to do is run a check.”
“Right,” the correspondent said. “If you give me a number where I can reach you, I’ll get back to you in an hour.”
I gave him the phone number of the bar in Les Ambassadeurs Restaurant on Reforma and had him give me his number. Though it was 11:30 in the morning, I headed for the bar. It was empty at that hour, recently swept and redolent of air freshener. I ordered a whiskey on the rocks and let the sensation of being caught in a countdown sink in. I imagined for the thousandth time the emissary’s confession in front of Pizarro after his capture, and how Pizarro might go about sending a return message. On what number of the countdown were the emissaries with the return message? Internal Security’s investigation got under way that same morning, but the fact remained that it was starting late. I also couldn’t discount the possibility that the emissary had been taken out early on, well before he could talk. Pizarro may have considered the whole affair nothing more than the settling of an old score, in which case all the morning had accomplished was to tie me to Anabela once and for all in the black hole of Internal Security’s confidential files.
Two whiskeys later, my imagination remained stalled on the same track, obsessively recycling the same sets of variations until the call came from the correspondent in Xalapa.
“Everything seems to be in order,” he said, “but Lacho’s not in Poza Rica.”
“Where is he?”
“No one knows. I asked for his aide Roibal, but no one could find him for me.”
“Find out where he is.”
“From here in Xalapa, that’s hard to do, sir.”
“Then go to Poza Rica.”
“That’s what I was going to tell you. The union local is giving a dinner for state government officials today in Poza Rica. The secretary of internal security for the state is going and he’s taking a helicopter from here in Xalapa in half an hour. If you tell me to, I’ll sign on and be in Poza Rica in half an hour.”
“Get on the helicopter. I’ll talk to your editor.”
“I was going to ask if you would.”
“I’ll tell him.”
“And where do I call you from Poza Rica?”
“Right here. I’m not going anywhere.”
I called the newspaper and explained to the editor what I needed from his correspondent. He wasn’t fond of done deeds either, but he agreed. I got to my fourth whiskey before checking with Anabela in Cuernavaca. It was nearly one, and she and the children had arrived two hours earlier without incident.
“Your goons have already taken over the yard and the entrance,” she said, pretending to be more annoyed than she really was. “And reinforcements arrived just a few minutes ago. Did you tell the other side something?”
“Not a thing,” I said. “I’m checking on Pizarro in Poza Rica.”
“Very good,” Anabela said, “because if he’s in Poza Rica, we can send him flowers. Are you going to keep me abreast of your investigation or do I have to resort to feminine intuition?”
I gave her the bar’s phone number so she could give it to the guards.
“Don’t worry,” Anabela said. “If I get killed, you’ll find out anyway.”
“That’s not the point.”
“Of course not. But do you realize how long it’s been since we’ve screwed? I’ve just been thinking that if Pizarro’s on the rampage, he better not catch us with any sexual accounts pending.”
“Yes.”
“So then what’s the mystery, what’s to investigate? Send Pizarro some flowers, and come here where it’s warm.”
The Ambassadeurs bar seemed warmer for the moment. It showed early promise as a place to run to, and served as an undercover center of operations.
Around 2:00 in the afternoon a couple of radio reporters and Miguel Reyes Razo, who at the time worked for a major Mexico City daily, showed up at Ambassadors. Though they’d come to eat, they joined me at the bar for an aperitif, which naturally led to my ordering a fifth whiskey. Half an hour later the next call from Poza Rica came in.
The dinner had gone off without Lacho Pizarro, the correspondent said. Loya, who was by then mayor, had attended as his representative. Loya made the appropriate excuses but said nothing to explain the absence. His silence triggered rumors and speculation, but neither the union or Pizarro’s own people knew anything.
“The rumor is that he made an emergency trip to Houston for a checkup,” the correspondent said.
“An emergency checkup?” I said. “What about Roibal?”
“He’s not here either, sir. They left together.”
“Is there a way to verify the Houston trip?”
“No, because, as I said, no one’s talking. I got it in an aside from one of the guards.”
“Offer that guard money and get him to tell you what he knows,” I said.
“Yes, sir.”
“And call me right here as soon as you have something. I’m not going anywhere.”
Reyes Razo and his friends invited me to eat. We took a table in the rear next to a Cuban piano player whose nightly repertoire was a mix of Agustín Lara and Cole Porter. They ordered steak and wine. I had a shrimp cocktail and my next dose of whiskey.
“You’re drinking quite heavily, esteemed master,” Reyes Razo said.
“Fellow travelers are welcome, good sir.”
“You have me at a great disadvantage, esteemed master, but I will allow myself to journey with you a ways.”
He called for the head waiter. “Don Lorenzo, my esteemed master here has been drinking alone for many a half hour. Does such self-absorption seem fair to you, such disregard for basic solidarity?”
“By no means, Don Miguel. It’s absolutely unfair.”
“What suggestion have you to remedy this situation? Because the situation is intolerable.”
“I suggest that you drink with him, Don Miguel.”
“Then you agree that a situation of this sort must not be tolerated?”
“Under no circumstances, sir.”
“Then bring me a double whiskey over lots of rocks.”
We drank in solidarity with one another during the meal at a ratio of two whiskeys to one, Reyes Razo’s doubles to my singles. We’d reached the dessert when another call came in.
“He’s at Methodist Hospital in Houston,” the correspondent said. “He apparently got sick and fainted.”
“When?”
“Early this week.”
It was Friday. The car Chanes and his henchmen were traveling in crashed early Wednesday morning. The a
ssassination attempt must have been Monday or Tuesday. Had they gotten to him?
“What else did the guard tell you?”
“Nothing else. There was no need for money. That’s all he knew.”
I thought I recalled a stringer in Houston who occasionally sent stories to my newspaper. I tried to look him up, but two months previously he’d moved to Los Angeles. I returned to the table with a fresh whiskey provided straight from the bar where the phone was. Its tranquilizing effect was giving way to a bout of active euphoria followed by an insatiable and unquenchable thirst.
“Has your reverence’s paper a correspondent in Houston?” I asked Reyes Razo.
“Only in Falfurrias, Texas, your reverence.”
“Seriously, have you got someone?”
Reyes Razo laughed.
“It’s all they can do to hold onto me. Do you need a connection in Houston?”
“Urgently.”
“Then ask, esteemed master. Say, ‘I need a connection in Houston.’ What would my paper be doing with a stringer in Houston? It’s all they can do to remember where Toluca is. You know how our correspondent in Durango datelined his first story? Seriously, you know what he put? He put ‘Durango, Dux., such and such a date.’ Durango, Dur! Do you think we’d get someone in Houston just so he could put Houston, Hous.?”
“Seriously, your reverence.”
“Seriously, your reverence. The other day for purposes of publicity and my own information, I asked the front office what our circulation was, and I got an answer from the director himself. He acted insulted and annoyed as if I’d called his mother a bad name. ‘And what difference does our circulation make to you, Reyes Razo? Are you our advertising agent or are you going to place an ad to sell your fleabag hound, your used wife, or your defunct Packard? Circulation figures are a state secret at this paper, Reyes Razo. You don’t play around with them, they’re sacred.’ So it turns out that circulation is sacred. Damn, I start back to the newsroom and on my way past the presses I run into El Ulalume, the chief pressman Don Pedro Flores Díaz. El Ulalume is jet black, an ex-alcoholic who never stops preaching. ‘I’ve now gone ten years eight months and twenty-five days without a drink, Miguelito. I’m a new man, I swear I’m a new man’ and the next day, ‘You know how long I’ve gone without a drop of the poison, Miguelito?’ ‘Well, yes,’ I tell him, ‘you’ve gone ten years eight months and twenty-six days, Don Pedro.’ ‘That’s right, Miguelito. I see you keep track for me.’ I got him a watch so he could count the hours too. I really did. So I’m going from the front office to the newsroom and on my way by the presses I run into El Ulalume, and I say, ‘What was last night’s press run, Pedro?’ And he says, ‘Well, last night 30,000 complete copies came off the presses, Miguelito, 3,603 to be exact plus 312 for the night watchmen to sell on their way home. So that comes to 3,365 copies of your paper, Miguelito. But if the information is for advertisers or the general public, I have the latest memo from the front office right here. It’s dated May 31, 1979. It says weekday circulation 152,300; Sundays 224,150.’ Just think,” Reyes Razo went on, “that was the paper’s state secret. And if I were to ask El Ulalume for a copy, he’d keep the copy and give me the original. So, your reverence, what makes you think such a paper would have a stringer in Houston, Hous.? If what you need is a connection, say so, and get it over with. Do you want a connection?”
“Once you finish slandering your paper, good sir.”
“Over and done with, dear colleague. But description’s not slander. Do you want a connection in Houston, or not? You want one? All right. Here you go.” He got out his address book and paged through it. “Come eight, come nine, as my mother used to say. Let’s see. Mendoza, Mexueiro, Miller. Marjorie Miller, your reverence.”
“Marjorie what?”
“Your connection, dear colleague, Marjorie Miller. She runs The Los Angeles Times bureau in Houston, Texas. Or, as they say, she’s based out of Houston, Texas. She’s the author of the most in-depth piece on the Mexican oil boom yet published in the United States.”
He proceeded to describe with numerous digressions how, early that year, he’d served as Marjorie Miller’s guide during her month-long trip to Mexico City and Tabasco to cover the oil story. “A first-class journalist, good sir. She went to the jungle and visited the off-shore rigs where even our Mexican men won’t go. She came down with a case of dysentery so bad I thought I’d have to send her home with a coroner’s report. Do you want her address and phone number?”
He retrieved his address book once again, took off his glasses, and poked through it with his nose so close to the pages he seemed to be sniffing them. “Technical difficulty,” he said, still flipping the pages. “It’s not in here. Partake of another whiskey, your reverence, while this grievous oversight is remedied.”
“He brought the dictionary to eat with us,” one of our tablemates said.
“By oversight I mean error, mistake, foolishness, ignorance, or outrage,” Reyes Razo said. Turning to me, he went on, “I beg your forbearance, your reverence, while I enlighten these ignoramuses. But I leave it to you to explain that ignoramus has nothing to do with ignition or igniting.”
He got Miller’s phone number from his house following a series of heated altercations with his maid and returned exactly one whiskey later with the reply in hand. Marjorie Miller answered the phone.
We exchanged jokes about her contact in Mexico, then I asked her to check for any Mexican nationals admitted to Methodist Hospital in the past five days with specific reference to the surnames of Pizarro and Roibal and with the reason for admission if possible.
She agreed and asked us to call her back at 7:00.
“That’s 8:00 our time, esteemed master,” Reyes Razo said. “There’s an hour’s difference. We are delayed, as they say, by the imponderables of the profession.”
I thanked him for his willingness to keep me company. He had just completed a long and successful series on the dark side of the musicians’ and tourist haunts in and around the Plaza Garibaldi, and was taking time off to prepare his next project. When our table mates from the world of radio left, we took care of the bill between us and retired to the bar to lubricate our forced sojourn. It was 7:00 in the evening. When Marjorie Miller called back at 8:00 all systems were well lubricated.
“No Pizarro,” Marjorie Miller said from Houston. “But there is a Roibal.”
“When was he admitted?”
“Patient G. Roibal entered Tuesday at two en el noche,” Marjorie Miller said in broken Spanish.
“What kind of sickness?”
“The list doesn’t show sickness. That’s confidential at Methodist.”
“Can you find out, Miss Miller?”
“I can try.”
“And there’s no Pizarro on the list?”
“No Pizarro. There’s a Pintado, a Pérez-Rosbach, and Pereyra. That all the P’s.”
“Yes.”
“Then there’s a Rodriguez, then a Tejeda and so on.”
“A Tejeda?”
“L.P. Tejeda.”
“L.P. Tejeda. That’s the one.”
“Be discrete, your reverence,” Reyes Razo said at my side. “You’re audible all the way to Bucareli.”
It was true. My shouting had caught the attention of the other bar patrons. I turned to face the wall and hunched forward over the phone. “When was Tejeda admitted?”
“Tuesday, two at night.”
“With what sickness?”
“The sickness is not on the list. It’s confidential at Methodist,” Miller repeated.
“But can you try to find out why they were admitted?”
“I can try,” she reiterated. “Is it urgent?”
“Very urgent.”
“Can it wait until tomorrow?”
“We must know today, Miss Miller.”
“Today is difficult.”
“Today.”
“I can try. Call me at nine. Same number.”
“Nine on the d
ot.”
I hung up, and Reyes Razo asked, “Pizarro en Houston?”
“Get it out of your head, your reverence. This is a deal between Mrs. Miller and me. How old is Miller?”
“Twenty-seven.”
“Good reporter?”
“First rate.”
“The next call’s at ten. Another whiskey?”
“Only until I start seeing pygmies, your reverence.”
I lost count of the whiskeys, doubles on the rocks for Reyes Razo and singles with soda for me.
“You have something good on Pizarro in Houston, your reverence?” Reyes Razo asked.
“You wouldn’t believe it.”
“Heavy duty?”
“Heavy as a tombstone, your reverence. And quiet as a cemetery.”
“That’s a dress parade of metaphors, dear colleague. Your allusion to cemeteries rules out the murmur of the trees, I suppose.”
“And the howls from the tombs. But this whiskey is much too pale.”
When I redialed Marjorie Miller, my speech was slurred. “The people you look for left Methodist Hospital this noon,” Miller said. “They gave the Hyatt Regency in this city for an address, but I checked the Regency, and those people are not there. About sicknesses, I got nothing specific. Patient Tejeda was admitted to traumatology. Patient Roibal to surgery.”
“Roibal to surgery? He was injured too?”
“Injured? I don’t know. It’s the report I got from Methodist Hospital. More information requires more time.”
“Tomorrow?”
“I can try tomorrow.”
“I’ll call tomorrow, Miss Miller. You’re saving my life.”
“My pleasure. But get some sleep. I can smell your booze through the line.”
“Whatsamara, mis Miller, nou spic inglish?”
“Get a little sleep. The phone line smells of alcohol.”
“When I go to Houston, I’ll give you the whole story straight out.”
“Just say when.”
We ate, then kept drinking until nearly one in the morning, becoming more dogmatic and repetitious as the night wore on. An icy wind blew down Reforma as we left, and I insisted to the point of blackmail that Reyes Razo go somewhere else with me. He refused. He was a lot less drunk than I and was not in the habit of exceeding his limit. I wouldn’t let him help me into a taxi. He paid the fare anyway and made the driver promise to look after me. I could barely keep my balance, but I knew exactly and urgently where I needed to go.