Death in Veracruz

by Hector Camín

  At 1:30 in the morning the dance hall on Palma where I’d last gone with Rojano still looked half empty and lifeless. I ordered Anís de la Cadena as we had then and, face by face, outfit by outfit, set out to find the woman he picked up. I found her waiting in line to use the restroom, and paid the fee to take her out for the night. Stumblingly, I led her to the Hotel del León where we’d slept with Rojano the last time. We took a room, and she began to undress. Before she could finish I tried to hoist her onto my hips and penetrate her the way Rojano had. But she wasn’t the slender woman with crooked teeth and peroxided hair that she was the last time. She was a well-padded mulatta who wasn’t about to let herself be pushed around. She pushed back and staggered out of the room, leaving the door open behind her. I could neither stop her nor go after her. I could barely move. A cold draft wafted between the door and a window that hadn’t been closed. I lay slumped next to the bed with my mouth open, listlessly drooling down the left side of my body onto the floor. With the cold came the unshakable illusion that I was lying, not in a draft on the floor of a hotel room on Brazil Street in Mexico City, but at night on the cobblestones of the plaza in Chicontepec like Rojano beneath the darkened poinciana, all energy gone, awaiting like Rojano the stones, the blows, the torches, the ropes, the flaying, the smothering, the bullet in the temple from Roibal.

  Chapter 10

  THE UPSHOT

  I awakened with the weight of the world on top of me—lying where I fell—on December 9,1979. I spent half an hour in a steaming shower followed by two Bloody Marys, an injection at a pharmacy, and two high potency Valiums. By 11:00, unsteady but revived, I called Marjorie Miller in Houston. Pizarro and Roibal had vanished without leaving any trace in Houston’s top ten hotels. The inquiry into the reasons for their hospitalization hadn’t progressed much either because Methodist kept such information confidential and Marjorie’s contacts had come up dry. So I called the correspondent in Veracruz and had him check to see if Pizarro had shown up in Poza Rica.

  “He and Roibal probably had operations,” I told him.

  “Operations for what?” the correspondent said.

  “Bullets most likely.”

  “Pizarro? Bullets?”

  His surprise told me I was being imprudent.

  “I don’t know for what,” I said. “That’s exactly what I want you to find out.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “If necessary, rent a helicopter and get there today.”

  I gave him the phone numbers for my house and The Hideaway in Cuernavaca.

  Then I lay down for a moment on the bed—11:30 in the morning—overwhelmed by the memory of my own hallucinated image of the night before. The drafts in the hotel seemed to have lifted me out of my body and brought Rojano back to the place of our final encounter. I woke up choking and bathed in a cold sweat. My heart beat unevenly. I felt as if swarms of ants were crawling up my back. My arm was swollen, and drops of perspiration ran down my neck. I was going to turn 40 the following August, but by noon I’d be dead—alone in my apartment on Artes, short of my 40th birthday—from heart failure and a hangover. And fright.

  I went to the kitchen for a glass, dropped ice in it, and poured myself four fingers of vodka, which I downed in two gulps. Then I gagged. My chest caught fire, my hands broke into a sweat, my stomach knotted shut. Fits of coughing wracked my body as it rejected the liquor, stinging my nose as in an allergic reaction. Little by little the throbbing diminished in my temples, my chest relaxed, and a feeling of mild euphoria brought up the image of Anabela naked and tanned against a backdrop of water the color of amethyst and blindingly white sand.

  Before 2:00 in the afternoon, I was on my way up the path of bougainvilleas to The Hideaway in Cuernavaca, my lust for Anabela renewed and consumed by the urge to celebrate. Tonchis and Mercedes weren’t back from school yet—they got out at 6:00—and Anabela was pruning bamboo shoots in shorts and red gardening gloves. Amused but without great enthusiasm, she let herself be guided to the bedroom where we lay with the window open, proceeding slowly at first and then with abandon. She was having her period.

  “Do I pay the fee for service to Mr. Wyborowa?” she said upon finishing. She seemed relaxed and playful while attempting to tease the stained sheet from under her body.

  “Mr. Johnny Walker and the fabulous producers of Anís de la Cadena come first.”

  “My thanks to them all.” She couldn’t get the sheet out from under her. “This matter of the failed emissary even left my hormones out of kilter.”

  She chose to get to her feet and remove all the bedclothes completely. The cover over the box spring had also been stained.

  “Not that much of a failure.” I found a bathrobe and made my way towards Mr. Wyborowa. Mr. Wodka Wyborowa, that is.

  “Did you hear something?” she asked anxiously, holding the sheets in her arms.

  “Something got to Pizarro.”

  “You see? You see, Negro? It was the way to go.”

  “He was a poor devil. And didn’t we agree that you didn’t put him up to it?”

  “Tell me what happened, Negro. Don’t preach.”

  “They went to a hospital in Houston. Apparently they were wounded.”

  “You see?”

  “But they’ve already left the hospital.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She put the sheets in a wicker basket.

  “I mean you have to get out of the country.”

  “Oh, no.”

  “For a while.”

  “I’m not running.”

  “You’ve got to run.”

  “We’ve said enough about that. I don’t want any more arguments.”

  She reached her hands into the linen closet and irritatedly yanked out a fresh set of sheets. They came loose along with two more sets after which one of Pizarro’s original leather pouches tumbled out. I picked it off the floor and looked it over just as I’d once done with those I’d taken from the hands of Rojano. It was the same smooth leather I’d been shown before with the same pseudo-Aztec border and death threat.

  “Give me that,” Anabela said, snatching the pouch.

  “When did it come?”

  “What difference does it make to you? It’s none of your business.”

  “When did it come?”

  “Don’t argue with me. Get out of here. You came to fuck, and you’ve fucked. So stop pestering me. Let me live my life in peace any way I want to.”

  I got hold of her arm and again asked when had it come.

  “Yesterday,” Anabela said. “You’re hurting me.”

  “How did it come?” I persisted without letting her go.

  “Your goons found it in the yard.”

  “You should have told me. How did it get here?”

  “You’re hurting me, Negro. You’re hurting me a lot.”

  “How did it get here? Who brought this pouch?”

  She began to cry and fell back onto the bare mattress.

  “Tonchis,” she sobbed, rubbing her arm.

  “It was delivered at school?”

  She nodded her head between sobs. He’d gotten it yesterday.

  Once again I was dizzy, breathless and overcome by tachycardia, confirming that now as before, alive or dead, I was tied inextricably to Rojano’s mate. I was her accomplice and her victim. Everyone else—Tonchis, Mercedes, and me included—was secondary. As usual, I’d underestimated Rojano’s hold on Anabela, the degree to which, ever since Chicontepec, the one force that kept her going was the urge to regain what had been ripped away from her that night. Her children were simply an extension of herself, and I was just another resource to draw on in her quest for vengeance. Or for something more specific and real than vengeance: self-destruction in a new and chilling bid to share the fate of her beloved spouse.

  I called Mexico City in search of my contact. He claimed to have spent the whole day trying to find me.

  “I’m in your custody in Cuernavaca,” I said.

&n
bsp; “Hidden in plain sight,” he replied. “May I expect you in my office this evening?”

  “Please don’t make me leave here,” I answered. “There’s been a new development.”

  “Have you new information to support your charges?”

  “Information, yes,” I said. “Charges no.”

  “That’s more realistic, paisano. I’ll see you there this evening.”

  I got bread, cheese, ham, and paté from the refrigerator, poured refills of vodka, and took the whole lot to the bedroom. I dialed Marjorie Miller in Houston, but no one answered. I checked my calls at the newspaper in Mexico City. There were messages from my paisano and two from the correspondent in Veracruz, which I immediately returned.

  “They’re not in Poza Rica,” he said, sounding upset. “There’s no sign of them. The prior source had nothing to add. I went to the Quinta Bermùdez and got all the way to Pizarro’s office, but he’s not here. I tried talking to his girlfriend, but she’s gone too. The mayor refused to see me and just sent word that Pizarro had gone to Houston for a routine checkup.”

  “Then where is he?” I said impatiently.

  “Not in Poza Rica,” the correspondent said. “He could have gone to Mexico City.”

  “Why Mexico City?”

  “The Valle del Bravo local has a rest house with a heliport.”

  “Can you check that out?”

  “I can ask around here and see what comes up.”

  I called the paper again and asked for the reporter who covered the airport. I asked him to check the passenger lists of flights from Houston the night before as well as the noncommercial hangars—especially PEMEX’s—for flights to Houston in the past 48 hours.

  Tonchis and Mercedes got home shortly after 6:00. Anabela had put on a white caftan with gold piping. She’d put a Virginia ham basted with pineapple, cloves, and cinnamon in the oven.

  “Negro, why haven’t you been around?” Tonchis said.

  “Because I’ve been preparing a trip for you.”

  “Ah, damn. Hot damn,” Tonchis said.

  “Mom, Tonchis sad a bad word,” Mercedes tattled.

  “A great big trip to Los Angeles to your Aunt Alma’s,” I said.

  Anabela’s only sister, Alma Rosa Guillaumín, bought a condominium in Los Angeles two months after Rojano’s death. She’d moved there with her husband, a Tamaulipan from Brownsville who was in the real estate business.

  “Is that where Disneyland is, Uncle?” Mercedes asked with her perfect diction.

  “And that s.o.b. EJMog,” Tonchis added with an exaggerated Veracruz accent. He was nine by the calendar but years older according to the glint in his eyes and his muscular body.

  “That’s where Disneyland is,” I told Mercedes.

  “And when are we going?” she asked.

  “I’m getting tickets for next Monday,” I said with a sideways glance at Anabela as she set the supper table.

  There was no reaction, not the slightest wince.

  “But, Uncle, on Monday school won’t be out yet.” Mercedes sounded worried.

  “We’ll let the school know.”

  We ate the Virginia ham at 8:30, and Tonchis went to watch television after we finished. Anabela and I stayed behind in the sala, and Mercedes curled up next to me. She had a finely shaped oval face. Her childlike features bore a strange resemblance to those of a grownup woman. She had a very wide forehead, high cheekbones, and sharply defined chin and mouth. Her eyes looked out at the world from behind lashes so long and black they seemed false.

  I began to play with her, pretending to nip at her arms and cheeks.

  “You’re not going to grow up to be like your mother, are you?” I said.

  “Like my mother?” Mercedes said, clearly articulating each word in her child’s voice.

  “Your mother’s crazy, and she lies,” I told her.

  “My mother does not lie,” Mercedes said, “and you smell of liquor. You’re drunk.”

  “When you grow up, you’re going to be like el Negro,” I said.

  “Like you?”

  “Like me. Drunk and with no place to hide.”

  “No place to hide?”

  “No place to hide one thing while saying another.”

  I nipped at her cheek and then her buttocks.

  “I’m biting you to make sure you grow up like el Negro. Except for one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The one way you’re going to be like your mother.”

  “What way is that?”

  “You’ll fall in love with a total jerk.”

  “With you?”

  “With me, no. With the jerk who will be your one and only love.”

  “With you, Negro.”

  “No, not with me.”

  By 9:00 the children were asleep, and Anabela began turning off all the lights in the house.

  “Not so fast,” I said. “There’s company coming.”

  “More goons?”

  “One more.”

  “The one making our travel plans?”

  “Your children’s life insurance.”

  “They don’t need life Insurance.”

  I took her hand and sat her down on one of the wicker sofas. It had a high back that resembled a crown. I sat on the footstool in front of her and held her cold hands in mine. She was unbearably beautiful and remote, striking more sharply than ever the key she’d always struck in me.

  “I don’t get it,” I said, “but let’s suppose I do. You want to go all the way to the bitter end, and for you the end is letting Rojano drag you down with him. First, he beat you up, then he had you under house arrest with his kids, then he hauled you off to Chicontepec. Now he’s forcing you to flee just like your emissary. The question is, are you going to flee or not? It doesn’t matter if you do or if you just let Pizarro decide. With you Rojano always gets the last word.”

  Her eyes misted but didn’t shed a single tear.

  “I don’t get it, but a few hours ago I resigned myself to fate,” I went on. “I also resigned myself to this: it isn’t the fate I bargained for, and I’m going to do what I can to change it. And it better not include the children.”

  “They’re my children,” Anabela said.

  “It’s your fight,” I said. “But now I’m fighting too. I’ve been in this fight all along, but I never understood the rules. Now I do, but I don’t like them, and I’m going to try to change them. But you’re not betting the children.”

  “I love you, Negro,” Anabela said.

  “Not the way I’d like you to.”

  “I do too.”

  “No. But I’m getting the children out of this. This coming Monday they’re going to Los Angeles.”

  “Yes.”

  “And then we’re dealing with the legacy of Rojano without the children in the middle.”

  I checked to see what the reporter at the airport had learned about aircraft activity. There was only one flight he’d yet to verify, a non-commercial plane belonging to the Rural Credit Bank that appeared headed for Iowa, not Texas. There was no sign of Pizarro. I had the reporter book tickets for unaccompanied children on Mexicana with arrangements for them to be delivered by airline personnel directly to Mrs. Ana Rosa Guillaumín at the airport in Los Angeles. Then I had Anabela explain the situation to Alma and promised that in two weeks I’d be there myself to give her a full explanation during the Christmas holidays. Then my contact arrived. It was 11:00 at night on Friday, December 9, 1979.

  Anabela received him seated on her enormous wicker throne, impassive and serene in her white caftan like the queen in a deck of cards. My contact solemnly greeted her, and we proceeded without further conversation to a tense conclave whose significance I stressed by placing on the table in the middle of the sala a box of cigars and a tray with cognac and goblets that rang like tuning forks when they brushed against one another.

  My contact took a cigar and accepted a cognac. Though he was wearing a vest and a light woolen
suit in the mild but constant heat of Cuernavaca, there was not so much as a bead of perspiration glistening on his brow or cheeks. The toll taken by a day’s work was discernible only in the slight growth of his meticulously trimmed mustache, a bit of swelling under his reddened eyes, and a few wrinkles at the corners of his mouth. Otherwise, he was impeccable: shirt, collar, tie, and an unmistakable aroma of lotion and Mapleton tobacco. That night, for the first time, I could see that beneath the fastidious exterior was an actor at pains to preserve his image. He must have bathed two or three times a day and maintained a small portable wardrobe with private stores of toiletries as if grooming were the key to his credibility and efficiency. His persona, with its macabre combination of gloom and good manners, came across simply as the adult incarnation of a civics lesson.

  (“In this business your hands get dirty all the time,” he once told me. “It’s not all that important. You wash them in dirty water at the office, then with rosewater when you get home so they’ll stay clean.”)

  The cigar and the cognac heightened the pink of his lips. “It’s a pleasure to meet you in person,” he said to Anabela. “What can I do for you?”

  “You had urgent information,” I said. “Can you tell us what it’s about?”

  “At your request we did an investigation of the Edilberto Chanes accident,” my contact said. Anabela’s face darkened with anger. She stared down at the floor. She looked at me, at the wall, and then back at our informant. “His trail leads all the way back to the Quinta Bermúdez in Poza Rica.”

  Anabela took a long drink of cognac.

  “Edilberto Chanes tried to seize the Quinta Bermúdez by force last Monday,” my contact went on. “He had nine people with him. Five died in the attack. The others were captured and died on the highway, including Chanes himself.”

  “They were executed,” Anabela stated.