Death in Veracruz (28 page)

“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 dot.”

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.

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.

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?”