Mammoth Book of Best New Horror (52 page)

    
"Seguro."
The driver replied, turning the wheel sharply, weaving his way across four lines of traffic. Armstrong was jolted over to the left and clutched at the leather handle hanging from the front passenger door. The right-hand seat at the front had been removed, as was the case with all the green taxis, giving plenty of leg-room and an easy entrance and exit. Like most of the taxi drivers in Mexico City, this one handled his vehicle with savage intent, determined to get from A to B in the minimum possible time. In this almost permanently gridlocked megalopolis, the survival of the fastest was the rule.

    Armstrong lit up one of his untipped cigarettes and gazed out the window. Brilliant sunshine illuminated in excruciating detail the chaos and decay of the urban rubbish dump that is the Ciudad de Mexico, Distrito Federal, or "D.F." for short. A great melting pot of the criminal, the insane, the beautiful and the macho, twenty-five million people constantly living in a mire of institutionalized corruption, poverty and crime. But despite all this, Mexico City's soul seems untouched, defiant. No other great city of the world is so vividly alive, dwelling as it does always in the shadow of death. Another earthquake might be just around the corner, the Popocateptl volcano might blow at any hour, and the brown haze of man-made pollution might finally suffocate the populace. Who knows? What is certain is that the D.F. would rise again, as filthy, crazed and glorious as before.

    They were approaching La Condesa, a fashionable area to the north of the centre that had attracted impoverished artists and writers ten years ago, but which had recently been overrun with pricey restaurants and cafes.

    Armstrong had arranged to meet with an English-speaking acquaintance at the bookshop cafe El Torre on the corner of Avenida Nuevo Leon. This acquaintance, Juan San Isidro, was a so-called underground poet specializing in sinister verse written in the Nahuatl language and who, it was rumoured, had links with the
narcosatanicos.
A notorious drunk, San Isidro had enjoyed a modicum of celebrity in his youth but had burnt out by his mid-twenties. Now a decade older, he was scarcely ever sober and looked twice his actual age. His bitterness and tendency to enter into the kind of vicious quarrels that seem endemic in Latin American literary circles had alienated him from most of his contemporaries.

    Armstrong suspected that San Isidro had requested a meeting for one of two reasons; either to tap him for money, or else to seek his assistance in recommending a translator for a re-issue of his poetical work in an English language edition in the United States. It was highly unlikely that San Isidro was going to offer him a work of fiction for one of his upcoming anthologies of short stories.

    The taxi pulled up alongside the bookshop.

    
"Cuanto es?"
Armstrong asked.

    
"Veintiun pesos"
The driver responded. Armstrong handed over some coins and exited the vehicle.

    Standing on the corner outside the bookshop was a stall selling tortas, tacos and other fast food. The smell of the sizzling meat and chicken, frying smokily on the hob, made Armstrong's mouth water. Despite the call of
"Pasele, senor!",
Armstrong passed by, knowing that, as a foreigner, his stomach wouldn't have lasted ten minutes against the native bacteria. Having experienced what they called "Montezuma's Revenge" on his first trip to D.F. a year ago, there was no question of him taking a chance like that again.

    Across the street an argument was taking place between two drivers, who had got out of their battered and dirty cars to trade insults. Since their abandoned vehicles were holding up the traffic, the rather half-hearted battle (consisting entirely of feints and shouting) was accompanied by a cacophony of angry car-horns.

    El Torre was something of a landmark in the area, its exterior covered with tiles, and windows with external ornate grilles. A three-storey building with a peaked roof, and erected in the colonial era, it had been a haunt for literati of all stripes, novelists, poets and assorted hangers-on, since the 1950s. During the period in which La Condesa had been gentrified some of El Torre's former seedy charm had diminished and, as well as selling books, it had diversified into stocking DVDs and compact discs upstairs.

    Part of the ground floor had been converted into an expensive eatery, whilst the first floor now half-occupied a cafe-bar from where drinkers could peer over the centre of the storey down into the level below, watching diners pick at their food and browsers lingering over the books on shelves and on the display tables. As a consequence of these improvements, the space for poetry readings upstairs had been entirely done away with, and Juan San Isidro haunted its former confines as if in eternal protest at the loss of his own personal stage.

    As Armstrong entered, he glanced up at the floor above and saw the poet already waiting for him, slumped over a table and tracing a circle on its surface with an empty bottle of Sol beer. His lank black hair hung down to his shoulders, obscuring his face, but even so his immense bulk made him unmistakable.

    Armstrong's gaze roved around and sought out the stairway entrance. He caught sight of the only other customer in El Torre besides himself and San Isidro. This other person was dressed in a dark grey linen suit, quite crumpled, with threadbare patches at the elbows and frayed cuffs. The necktie he wore was a plain navy blue and quite unremarkable. His shoes were badly scuffed and he must have repeatedly refused the services of the D.F.'s innumerable
boleros.
They keenly polished shoes on their portable foot-stands for anyone who had a mere dozen pesos to spare. The man had an olive complexion, was perfectly clean-shaven, and about forty years old. His short black hair was parted neatly on the left-hand side. He had the features of a
mestizo,
a typical Mexican of mingled European and Native Indian blood. There was something in the way that he carried himself that told of a gentleman down on his luck, perhaps even an impoverished scholar given his slight stoop, an attribute often acquired by those who pore over books or manuscripts year after year.

    He was browsing through the books on display that were published by the likes of Ediciones Valdemar and Ediciones Siruela that had been specially imported from Spain. These were mostly supernatural fiction titles, for which many Mexican readers had a discerning fondness. Armstrong was glad, for his own anthologies invariably were comprised of tales depicting the weird and uncanny, a market that, at least in the Anglophone countries, seemed to have self-destructed after a glut of trashy horror paperbacks in the 1980s. But these were not junk, they were works by the recognized masters, and a quick glance over the classics available for sale here in mass-market form would have drawn the admiration of any English or American devotee.

    Here were books by Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood, M. R. James and Ambrose Bierce, amongst dozens of others. Most striking however, was the vast range of collections available written by H. P. Lovecraft. The browsing man in the dark suit picked up one after the other, almost reluctant to return each to its proper place, although if his down-at-heel appearance were an indication, their price was surely beyond his limited means. New books in Mexico are scarcely ever cheap.

    Armstrong looked away. He could not understand why this rather ordinary gentleman had stirred his imagination. He was, after all, merely typical of the sort of book-addict found anywhere and at any time. Meanwhile Juan San Isidro had noticed Victor's arrival and called down to him.

    
"Ay, Victor, quiero mas chela! Lo siento, pero no tengo dinero."

    Armstrong sighed, and made his way up the stairs.

    When they were eventually sitting opposite one another, Armstrong with a bottle of Indio and San Isidro with a fresh bottle of Sol, the Mexican switched from Spanish to English. He was always keen to take whatever opportunity he could to converse in the language. A huge bear of a man, he'd recently grown a shaggy goatee beard and the T-shirt he wore bore the logo of some outlandish band called Control Machete, whose music Armstrong did not know and did not want to know. Years ago Armstrong had foolishly mentioned San Isidro's literary efforts to the publisher of a small press imprint in California who was looking for cosmic or outre verse. The result had been a chapbook with a selection of San Isidro's Aztec-influenced work translated into English, and thereafter Armstrong had never been able to entirely shake off his "discovery".

    "So," San Isidro said, "how are things with you? Still editing those
antologias?"

    "There's scarcely any money in them Juan," Armstrong replied, "unless I've managed to wrangle something original out of Steve King, the publishers want to nail my balls to the wall."

    "You know him? King? Do you think he'd give me a loan? He's very rich, no? Help out a struggling brother artist?"

    Armstrong tried not to smile inappropriately. He could only imagine how quickly San Isidro would piss away any handouts he'd receive on booze. No one other than their agents, accountants, lawyers or publishers milks cash-cow authors.

    "He's a busy man. I don't think he'd appreciate my…"

    "You mean he's a
pinche cabron.
Keeps his money up his
culo
where no one else can get at it. That's why
todos los gringos
walk around with their legs apart, like cowboys, no? All those dollar bills stuffed in there."

    Armstrong was relieved to be British. Even liberal Americans who came south, seeking to atone for the recent sins of NAFTA and a long history of land grabbing, were objects of ridicule here. They might get away with such conscience posturing in the north, in cities like Monterrey that were closer to the border and which looked to rich US States like Texas for inspiration, but in Mexico D. F.
gringos
are only ever
pinches gringos
and no amount of self-loathing or atonement on their part could ever erase the fact. The British, on the other hand, despite their Imperial past, were redeemed by virtue of having given the Beatles and association football to the world.

    "Why did you want to see me, Juan?" Armstrong asked, taking out his packet of
Faros
and putting them on the table. His companion looked at the cheap brand with amused contempt. Nevertheless, this attitude did not stop him from smoking them.

    "I want you to take a look at some
cuentos"
San Isidro replied, puffing away on the cigarette he'd taken. "Read them and make me an offer. They're in your line of work."

    He delved into a shoulder bag lying underneath the table and took out a pile of papers, individuated into sections by rubber bands, and handed them over.

    "I thought you didn't write short stories." Armstrong said.

    "I didn't write them. I'm acting as the exclusive agent. They're in English, as you see, and they're the type of horror stories you like. I handle all his stuff," San Isidro replied.

    "Who's this author," Armstrong said, looking at the top sheet, "Felipe Lopez? I can't say I've heard of him."

    
"Elsenor Lopez
has only been writing for a couple of years. He's my personal discovery, like you discovered me, no?
Es un autor autentico,
not some hack.
Mira al cabellero
down there, the one who's looking through the books? That's
elsenor Lopez.
He doesn't want to meet you until you've read his stuff. I told him I knew you, and that you weren't the same as all those other
culeros
who'd rejected him."

    So that man in the crumpled grey suit was San Isidro's first client, Armstrong thought. He hesitated for a moment but then relented. At least this man Lopez had the appearance of being literate.

    "Alright," Armstrong said, "I'll take them away with me and call you once I've read them. I can't promise anything though."

    "Why not sit here and read them now,
companero?
I tell you, these things are a gold mine. We can have a few more
chelas
while I wait for you to finish. He also does his own proofreading, so you won't need to
trabajar mucho
yourself."

    "Short stories," Armstrong riposted, "are fool's gold, Juan. I told you, there's no real money in them anymore. Have another on me if you like, but I've got to go. I'll be in touch."

    With that closing remark Armstrong stood up, left a hundred pesos note on the table, and made his exit. He didn't notice whether or not
el Senor Lopez
saw him leave.

    Over the next few days Armstrong almost forgot about the stories by Felipe Lopez. He hated being asked to read fiction by an unknown author that had been praised by one of his friends. All too often he had to prick their enthusiasm, usually fired by beer and comradeship rather than from an objective assessment of literary merit. And San Isidro had never acted as an agent for anybody before; he was far too consumed by his own literary ambitions. So it appeared obvious to Armstrong that San Isidro was paying back a favour of some sort. Though it seemed unlikely given the down-at-heel appearance of Lopez, but perhaps it was a case of San Isidro owing him money.

    Armstrong was staying close to Cuauhtemoc metro station in an apartment owned by Mexican friends of his. The couple, Enrique and Maria, were in London for a few weeks, staying in his flat there in an exchange holiday. It was something they did every other year to save on hotel bills. There were only three days left before they were due to cross each other high over the Atlantic in flights going in the opposite direction. Enrique and Maria were both involved in publishing themselves, and he'd struck up a friendship with them in 1995 whilst attending a fantasy and horror convention held in San Francisco.