Death in Veracruz

by Hector Camín

  There was in her spree an element of gloating that she never openly admitted. She simply let the evidence pile up slowly in her wake. By week’s end the first signs of satiety set in, an upset stomach, a measure of erotic overload, the touch of sadness that always accompanies an excess of euphoria.

  We drank the first bottle in silence on the open-air terrace at Champs. Clouds blurred the moon as it made its way through the trees on Reforma.

  “There’s something I didn’t tell you about my last interview with Pizarro,” I said to Anabela while uncorking the second bottle.

  She raised the chilled wineglass to her face and began to rub it back and forth as if caressing her own cheek.

  “On the way back from the interview our friend from Internal Security pulled over at a spot where we could talk in private,” I said. I’d left this part out of the letter, but the omission didn’t seem to bother her. She half closed her eyes and smiled, taking a first step into the soft haze brought on by the Chablis.

  “He arranged the meeting,” I explained. “He went with me.”

  “Your guardian angel,” Anabela said. “What did he tell you?”

  “We talked about Chanes.”

  “About Chanes?”

  “According to our friend from Internal Security, Chanes didn’t attack Quinta Bermúdez.”

  She smiled a gentle smile. She looked skeptical and just a bit drunk.

  “Pizarro died of cancer,” I went on.

  “Cancer from a .38 pistol,” Anabela said.

  “Of terminal pancreatic cancer diagnosed a year ago.”

  “Diagnosed by Edilberto Chanes?”

  “I’m serious.” I took a quick drink. “According to our friend from Internal Security, Chanes was one of the thieves that got ripped off and killed off by the police. The story was in the papers.”

  “In your column yesterday?”

  “It also ran yesterday in La Prensa, the piece about the robbers robbed by the police.”

  “Chanes wasn’t named,” Anabela said. “You didn’t name him in your column.”

  “Neither did La Prensa because the names haven’t been officially confirmed yet. But according to our friend in Internal Security, Chanes was involved. He had nothing to do with events at Quinta Bermúdez.”

  “And you believe your friend in Internal Security?” Anabela continued to rub the wineglass against her cheek before taking a drink.

  “I argued with him about all the coincidences in the case.”

  “And what did he think about all the coincidences in the case?”

  “That they were coincidences. According to him, Chanes is just what he seemed, a small-time extortionist who saw a chance to make money by promising to attack Quinta Bermúdez and get rid of Pizarro. When he saw there was no money in it for him, he dropped it. But it’s possible, according to our friend in Internal Security, that he sent you the pouch in December in hope of scaring you into giving him money later on. He was biding his time on that when the Jaguar Group from the metropolitan police caught up with him and disposed of him in the Tulancingo car crash.”

  “More.” Languidly, she held out her glass for me to fill. “What else does your friend in Internal Security have to say?”

  “Nothing else. That Pizarro died of cancer, not at the hands of Chanes. That Chanes was killed not by Pizarro but by the police. And that we got our signals crossed.”

  “Oh, Negro,” Anabela sighed. “There’s nothing like Chablis to smooth the rough edges. This must be our eleventh bottle of Chablis in the past four days, right?” She stretched slightly. Her cheeks were red, her eyes half closed as if she were rocking herself into a daze. Then she snapped out of it, took a drink, and continued. “So you believe the version of your paisano on Bucareli?”

  “The unanimous version in Poza Rica is that Pizarro died of pancreatic cancer. I checked that out this week.”

  “So you believe him?” She rubbed the full glass against her cheek, making a point of looking half asleep while at the same time mocking me. “Have you already forgotten what he told us in December?” Imitating our paisano’s ceremonious speaking style, she said, ‘You won the fight, ma’am. Pizarro will die of the wounds inflicted by your emissary.’ Then in her own voice. “I didn’t send any emissary.” Then our paisano’s. ‘Leave Mexico, and wait for your enemy’s corpse to be put to rest, ma’am. I have no interest in putting you on trial, ma’am, justice isn’t my job. My job is to keep the peace.’ Don’t you remember that, Negro? What kind of big-time columnist are you turning into? Every few months they tell you another fairy tale, and you go right along with it. More.”

  Her manner turned sarcastic as she held out her glass and shrugged her shoulders. We had a third bottle chilled, then ordered oysters, trout almondine, and the Alaskan crab legs from the display tank in the foyer.

  “Does it sound ridiculous to you?” I said, returning to the version of our paisano on Bucareli.

  “It sounds to me like something out of a movie. Why ply me with such nonsense in December if it was all a lie?” Anabela said, again working the glass back and forth over her cheek.

  “To get you out of the crossfire. To keep you from trying to find another Edilberto Chanes and insisting on getting even with a corpse.”

  “In order to help me, then?” Anabela said ironically.

  “To help himself and keep things from getting too complicated. Suppose Pizarro gets shot. How do you explain that to public opinion? And how do you make amends with the oil workers?”

  “Suppose Pizarro got exactly what Rojano got.” Anabela put her glass down on the table with an air of exasperation. “What would your paisano on Bucareli and his bosses and accomplices in the government do then? They’d do what they did with Rojano. Try not to notice, bury the whole episode, then cover their tracks with dirt because exposing the guilty would make waves, and they don’t like waves. What they want is to calm the sea. That’s their job, to still the waters. Suppose there weren’t any coincidences, that Pizarro was shot in the dark of night when Quinta Bermúdez was attacked. What do your paisano on Bucareli and his lackeys do then? They cover it up. They make up a story about cancer of the pancreas or the asshole, and, on top of that, they get you to believe it. You know why? Because you’re a star witness, and part of what they have to do is discredit the witnesses. So they tell you to calm down, that nothing happened, that it was all a misunderstanding, a series of very strange coincidences. And that takes care of everything, no problems no witnesses. And don’t even think about writing your memoirs some day, don’t get the idea you could fight them by spilling the details about Chicontepec. You follow me? They quietly negotiate a deal with the oil workers by offering them some kind of perk in return for keeping their mouths shut and chat you up with a bedtime story that puts everyone back to sleep. They hustle off to their office and close the file once and for all. Then it’s onward and upward with tales of the heroes and exploits of the Mexican miracle. The truth has nothing to do with it, and, as your paisano said in December, justice doesn’t either. It’s strictly about security and keeping the peace. He said it himself. He doesn’t care about Pizarro’s death, he just cares about the trouble it could stir up. And when Rojano’s death had repercussions that got your paisano’s attention, he gave us escorts, gave us tips, and, when we asked him to, he looked after us like spoiled daughters. The only reason he helped us negotiate with the union was because of what you wrote. You put it in the paper and shook them up. Otherwise, Rojano would have been just another incident—something from the police blotter, and my children and I would have joined him in his cave at the French Cemetery. Pizarro would be king of Chicontepec, and you’d have a vague memory of our time on earth. If that’s not what happened, it’s because we didn’t let it. You, I, and Edilberto Chanes, may God bless him and keep him in gunslingers’ heaven.”

  They brought the oysters and crab and the bottle we’d had chilled. Anabela grew calm again. She relaxed, and went to work cracking open the
crab legs, but her version of events continued to float above the table like a revelation, one of the many that blossomed from my long and nearly always clueless relationship with her. She was implacable and tough, her version strictly the result of having survived. In the years since Rojano’s downfall in Chicontepec, she’d never stopped assuming that she was locked in an all-or-nothing struggle, a nerve-wracking game of chance in which the only way she could assure her own safety and the safety of her children was by making Pizarro disappear. The game’s favorable outcome—whether due to pancreatic cancer or the doings of Edilberto Chanes—was the reason she was sitting in front of me with her children and her inheritance safe in Los Angeles and with her nemesis buried before her eyes a week earlier. The only visible remains of her ordeal were the two small pouches under her eyes. Poorly hidden under a layer of mascara, even they were in part attributable to the alcoholic and sexual excesses of the past few days. This was her saga, her version of events. It was a triumphant and concise chronicle of revenge by survival and of plans carefully laid and carried out in order to survive. To achieve her ends she’d exploited both the press and her friends, myself included.

  The Bucareli version with its long chain of coincidences, misunderstandings and myths about petty criminals seemed more like real life, full of the dramatic flaws that always appear in the loosely woven fabric of human existence. I knew certain things were true, among them the key fact of Rojano’s execution in Chicontepec. But everything else vanished in a stew of self-serving fabrications, lies, false conclusions, spectacular coincidences, and the general messiness of life. By contrast, Anabela’s version was of a geometrically neat struggle, a battle with sharp, cleanly drawn lines whose coincidences clearly resulted from the clash of opposing wills. Chance served only to disguise decisions and outcomes. It was the bottom line of an arithmetic that perfectly summed up Pizarro’s own motto: Whoever can add can divide.

  “So you prefer the version that gives the credit to Chanes?” I said as I finished the oysters and watched her consume her crab claws with evident gusto.

  “I prefer that you take me dancing, Negro. And I don’t have to tell you where.”

  The clock had yet to strike midnight when we entered La Roca on Insurgentes Sur just as we had four years before. It had been the dawn of an unforgettable anniversary of the then sexagenarian and now septuagenarian Mexican Revolution. As always there was a gaggle of whores, goons and local characters in the doorway. Inside, a rumba band alternated sets of ballads and boleros with music from the tropics. We ordered a vodka and a whiskey and were starting to drink when the band began a set of boleros and we got up to dance. Anabela was wearing a pearl gray dress with straps that left her arms and part of her back bare while fitting snugly over her legs and hips. She was, as I’ve not said before, only a few centimeters shorter than I, and even with very low heels she matched my height. There was also the irresistibly idiosyncratic way she went about dancing, facing me straight on and embracing me with her left hand. She made full-body contact with her first steps and by instinct settled herself into me with her firm, muscular legs intertwining with mine so that we were pressed together centimeter by centimeter in the shared rhythm of an embrace. The feel of her thighs, her sex, her stomach, her breasts, her neck, her whole body blended into a single sensation. It was as if she’d melted into me from head to toe in flawlessly perfect union.

  We danced two numbers and left. Still clinging to each other, we crossed to the Hotel Beverly on New York Street. Slowly, with the lights out, next to a window that overlooked part of the city and whose chill glass made us feel as if we were outdoors, we undressed and continued on the rug the prolonged fusion begun at La Roca with hands and mouths pressed together beyond thoughts or words, in a state consisting solely of bodies and murmurs.

  When I woke up at dawn, a red glow suffused the roofs of the buildings, and in the distance the early morning buses rumbled along Insurgentes. Wrapped in a hotel blanket, Anabela stared out the window from one of the sofas. Her long neck let her see over its back. She looked composed and at peace in a remote, self-sufficient world of her own. She made room for me on the sofa, and I made myself comfortable next to her under the blanket.

  “I’m going to live in Los Angeles,” she said. “I’m not coming back to Mexico.”

  “Now you can live in peace in Mexico,” I said.

  “I don’t want that kind of peace,” Anabela said. “The only thing left in Mexico that I care about is you.”

  She leaned back against my chest, letting her fingernails rove mechanically, reflexively over my skin. “And if you were to move to Los Angeles?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Los Angeles has newspapers in Spanish.”

  “Yes.”

  “You could be your paper’s Los Angeles correspondent.”

  “No.”

  “The children would be there. They need a man in the house. Tonchis is always asking for you. And Mercedes writes you letters every week, doesn’t she?”

  “Every week without fail.”

  “We have a good apartment, Negro. And in the fall we’re changing to a house in the suburbs. We don’t have money problems. I have an investment adviser who gets a good return on the money from Chicontepec.”

  “Are you offering to support me?”

  Anabela smiled. “I’m offering you a rich, slightly spoiled widow,” she said softly.

  “Who’d be leaving an indelible stain on the state of Veracruz,” I said.

  “Yes.” She made herself comfortable once again, shifting her position on my chest. For a moment she said nothing, then, “Come to Los Angeles, Negro.”

  “No.”

  “Then are you asking me to stay in Mexico?”

  “I’m not asking you to stay in Mexico.”

  “Don’t you want me in Mexico?”

  “I’ve wanted nothing else since the 20th of November, 1976, remember?”

  “I fell asleep when you thought you’d scored, right?”

  “And you snored.”

  “You overdid the Chablis. If you get all your girlfriends that drunk, you must sleep with rag dolls who don’t remember a thing in the morning.”

  “They all remember,” I said.

  “I know. And they go looking for you in the newsroom at your paper because they want a mention in your column. A one-night stand is never enough, they’re insatiable.”

  “And they all act insulted and leave.”

  “If that includes me, let me remind you I just offered you my personal fortune.”

  “And I’m asking you not to forget that I just declined.”

  “You mean you just want to get flushed down the toilet because you’re a loser.”

  “Because I’m a shit.”

  “You’re not up to providing long-term service?”

  “Medium or long term, no”

  “Neither one,” Anabela said. The tone of her voice changed, and she curled herself back into a ball. “You don’t have it in you.”

  “When are you leaving?”

  “As soon as I make the arrangements.”

  “What arrangements?”

  “I’m getting permission to take Rojano’s coffin out of Mexico. I want it transferred to Los Angeles.”

  “You want to get Rojano’s coffin out of Mexico?”

  “Yes.” Anabela sat up straight. “I don’t want to leave Ro’s body here.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Completely serious. I need permits from the Ministry of Health and the embassy. I already have one from the City of Los Angeles.”

  “You’re going to bury Rojano in Los Angeles.”

  “I already bought a plot for him.”

  “So he’ll be right there for you the way Pizarro is for Little Darling?”

  “Yes. Why does it upset you so? Do you think it’s strange?”

  She supported herself on her elbow while arguing with me. Her mascara had run, and some of her eyelashes were crooked. Though dish
eveled and short on sleep, she looked radiant and inspired by her decision. From the depths of time, I felt the simple power that arose to confront me when trespassing on territory long since conquered and colonized by Rojano, the history that had bound Anabela to Rojano since her teens. Its bright and tender glow still showed through in her smile and restored the youth and vibrance remaining in the deepening hollows of her eyes. I pulled her to me, rearranged the blankets to cover her back, and put my arms around her.

  “I asked if it seems strange to you,” Anabela persisted.

  “No,” I told her. “With you and Rojano it seems perfectly normal.”

  It took another week to make all the arrangements. I called the Health Ministry myself and smoothed the way for her with the press attaché at the embassy. Shortly before the end of May, all the paperwork was in order. On May 22, Anabela flew to Los Angeles to work out the final details for the burial. To avoid issues of preservation and any other obstacles that might crop up Rojano needed to be disinterred in Mexico, taken to the plane, shipped to Los Angeles, and re-buried the same day.

  I returned to my work routine and spent a week in Tampico doing the agreed upon interviews with leaders of the oil workers’ union. One after the other, in each of the four interviews, I asked as if in passing about the causes of Pizarro’s demise. The unhesitating answer in each instance was cancer of the pancreas. With Pizarro gone, his position as head of the union fell to Loya, the mayor of Poza Rica, and Roibal was his aide now. I interviewed him in an ice cream parlor on the plaza in front of the Hotel Inglaterra in Tampico, a few meters from where Pizarro had used the metaphor of a river to explain to me his ideas about power.

  “What did Lázaro Pizarro die of?” I asked Loya half way through a dish of guanábana ice cream.

  “Cancer of the pancreas,” he replied mechanically and with no hesitation. Roibal sat next to him with his eye patch and a glass of milk.

  “Unless you happen to know of another version,” Roibal said drily, ripping a tear in the fabric of the interview. It seemed to discomfit Loya.