The Shadow of the Shadow (33 page)

I N T H E GA RAGE somewhere in Candelaria where they were
spending the night alongside the ruby-red bulletproof Packard,
there was an old broken-down piano where, to the poet's surprise
and delight, Verdugo sat playing Chopin's Polonaises, one after the
other. The poet, installed in the Packard's backseat with the door
open, silently wrote some notes for an ad campaign he hoped to sell
to the Stuart Company, given the sorry state of their current material
(Stuart's Hemro Ointment cures hemorrhoids, a progressive disease).

"Good evening, friends," said Manterola, walking in through
the metal door with Tomas Wong.

"We're all here. Did you bring the dominoes?"

"You bet I did. But keep on playing, Verdugo. There's no
hurry."

"That's good, because there's no table, either," said the poet.
"Where's your buddy, Tomas?"

"He's out meditating, Felmin. He wanted to think things ovel
and figule out if evelything we got him into this week jives with his
plinciples."

"And does it?"

"I think so. You could say that in a solt of indilect and suigenelis
way, we've been giving it to the state left and light."

"The army, the cops, the banks. Not too shabby," said the poet,
dragging three dilapidated chairs over to the piano.

"On top of the piano?"

"As soon as Verdugo finishes with Chopin."

"Not even I can finish off Chopin," said the lawyer, pulling the
lid down over the keys.

"Any word from the newspaper?" asked the poet.

"Not yet. I called a little while ago, but Alessio wasn't there.
Dammit, I get the feeling they're not going to want to go ahead
with it... The boys at the paper said there was a bunch of gendarmes
hanging out on Humboldt Street. Gomez called a press conference,
to make his counterattack, I suppose, but none of the reporters
showed up."

"Now that's what I call solidarity, inkslinger," said Verdugo
with a smile. Without the Chopin, their voices echoed hollowly
in the garage.

"All the gendalmes that alen't staked out in flont of youl
newspapel ale down in San Angel. They've got the whole town
sealed off."

"The strike about to start?"

"If they don't set Malquez flee by tomollow," said Tomas,
losing himself in his thoughts.

"And if they don't print it, what are we going to do? Are we all
going to go after Gomez together?" asked the poet.

"If they don't print it, it's because the government wants to
hold onto Gomez-it means they're protecting him. So then it
doesn't matter what we do...there's not going to be enough city
for us to hide in. They'll hunt us down like rats."

"What would they want to protect Gomez for? What good's
he to them?"

"The cops ale a piece of shit."

"I agree with you on that score, illustrious child of the rising
sun. You don't need to be an anarchist to think that. But I still don't
understand. The cops are a piece of shit, but they've got their rules
all the same. I don't understand any of it."

"You know what, inkslinger? I've still got more questions than
answers. Now we know who sent the three gunmen to kill us, but
who tried to poison you in the hospital?"

"Gomez, I suppose."

"And why did he have the Zevada brothers killed?"

"I think I can answer that one," said Verdugo. "Zevada was
the idiot kid in this whole story. After the Agua Prieta Revolt,
the conspirators lost their chance to pull off a rebellion in the
oil country. Things had changed too much. With Carranza dead,
there were no longer tensions between him and Obregon's forces.
Obregon had loyal generals stationed in San Luis Potosi and
Monterrey, and later on Gomez, Zevada, and Martinez Fierro all
got transferred out of the oil country. Their plan fell apart. Gomez,
on the one hand, took up with the victors and started in fixing
things up for himself in Mexico City. Martinez Fierro retained
command over his troops. But Zevada was too slow on the uptake
and he found himself out of the action. What I figure is that he
tried to blackmail Gomez, who paid him off at first with jewels,
and later on with a one-way trip out a third-story window."

"Do you really want to know what happened, poet? For now,
let's just cross our fingers and hope they print the story," said
Manterola, stifling a yawn.

The days had been all too long, the nights too short, and fear
had been everywhere in the air.

"I give up. Get out the dominoes and let's choose partners."

"Six/one," said Manterola.

"Six/four," said Verdugo.

"Double-zelos," said Tomas.

"One/three," said Fermin Valencia.

"EL DEMOCRATA, SECTION TWO, Manterola here,"
said the inkslinger into the telephone mouthpiece.

"Manterola, this is Colonel Gomez," said a cavernous voice
over the telephone. "I'm going to give you a chance, even though
you don't deserve it. You have sullied my honor, sir. So I challenge
you to a duel. Just the two of us, alone. Stand up in front of me like
a man, come out of the shadows..."

"What honor?" asked the journalist after a brief pause.
"Colonel, you can take your honor and stick it up your ass." He
hung up and sat staring at the telephone. It dawned on him that
he ought to remember that voice forever, those few brief words.
It was the only more-or-less concrete thing he had, the only real
contact with his enemy, with the man who'd turned his life into "a
tale told by an idiot," as Verdugo had said.

"Cheggidout, cheggidout," said Gonzaga, walking by in his
eternal mental haze. "That's some friend you've got there."

Manterola ignored the illustrator and turned back to his
typewriter like a man possessed by a sacred fury. His fingers
smashed the keys-time was running out. He was a professional
and, although he was only waiting for his editor's decision, he
couldn't keep from writing his daily piece. It was a rambling story
about the rumors circulating in Durango that Pancho Villa had
set out from his Hacienda Canutillo in search of buried treasure.
Gonzaga read over the reporter's shoulder for a while, then went
off to draw a picture of Villa in a cave, kneeling in front of a chest
full of coins shining in the torchlight.

The newsroom was hot with activity just before deadline. Ruvalcaba read hurriedly through the editorials that came to
him from the director's office. A pair of reporters sweated over
the lead stories, one about Finance Minister Adolfo de la Huerta's
comments following his return from negotiations with the
American banks in New York, and the other about the general
strike called by the San Angel textile workers in response to the
gendarmerie's kidnapping of their leader Marquez.

Suddenly the subtle odor of violets wafted across the keys of
his typewriter and the journalist looked up, adjusting his wirerimmed spectacles, to see Margarita Herrera, the Widow Roldan,
standing in front of him.

"May I speak with you?" asked the widow, under Gonzaga's
watchful stare.

"I'll be with you in a minute, ma'am," said Manterola,
continuing to type furiously, trying to escape from the woman's
piercing eyes. He yanked the last page out of the typewriter and
was about to mark his corrections when a strange movement at the
door to the newsroom forced him to look up again.

"Whore! Worse than a whore!" shouted Ramon the Spic,
charging toward the widow with a knife in his hand.

Manterola tried to intervene but his desk stood in the way.
The woman stood up, or started to, but her legs gave out under her
and as she fell back onto her chair the Spic drove his knife twice
into her breast. Manterola finally managed to reach the collapsed
woman, taking hold of her arm and ignoring the Spic who just
missed the reporter's ribs with a thrust of his bloody dagger.
Gonzaga took a few steps back, the better to observe the action so
that he could draw it later on. Life can be so ephemeral, so fleeting,
if one isn't careful to take in all the details.

Fortunately for the reporter, Rufino the messenger boy arrived
in time to bean the Spic on the side of the head with a bronze
paperweight thrown from across the room. He fell unconscious at
the widow's feet.

`Tm dying, sir. I'm only sorry we met so late," murmured the widow, sagging in the reporter's arms and staining his shirt with
the blood that oozed slowly from her breast, masking her wounds,
soaking into her white blouse.

"Some loves are idiot loves, like our own," said the journalist.
That was all he could think to say as the woman lay back, gulping
in air that never made it to her lungs.

The entire newsroom had assembled to watch the tragedy.
Like a last sorrowful honor guard, Manterola's office mates,
sweating, shirtless, their extinguished cigarettes clamped between
their teeth, stood in silence around a woman who had poisoned
her husband, taken up with a corrupt colonel, been murdered by a
Spanish jewel thief, and now lay dying in a crime reporter's arms,
the same man who had once wished he could have fallen in love
with her.

"The murderer's dead, too, Manterola... You did him right,
Rufino. Holy hell, man, what an arm," pronounced Valverde, the
rookie sports writer who had studied a couple of years of medicine
before joining the paper.

Gonzaga sat again at his desk, manipulating the pencils and
charcoal sticks like an illusionist, trying to finish the drawing
before the afternoon shadows darkened forever over the dead
woman's bloodstained face.