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.
“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.”
“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.
“There were also casualties on the other side,” my contact pointed out. “Pizarro and his chief aide left the country on Tuesday to seek treatment for their wounds.”
“What wounds?” Anabela asked.
“The attack nearly succeeded, ma’am,” my contact said. “They got all the way to Pizarro’s office, and they held him for half an hour.”
Anabela took another long drink of cognac.
“That’s the information I have for you,” my contact said. “What do you have?”
He looked not at me but at Anabela, who stared into her cognac.
“Pizarro’s leather warning pouch arrived yesterday,” I said. “They had it delivered via the mayor’s older child.”
The news appeared to disconcert him. He asked to see the pouch, and I went to the bedroom to get it. I placed it in his hands with the motto Whoever knows how to add...directly in front of him. He opened and closed the dividers, running his manicured nails and his fingertips bathed in rosewater over the leather.
“Does it mean the usual?” He sounded annoyed as if his assumptions had turned out to be badly flawed. “Is it addressed specifically to you, ma’am?”
“My son brought it home from school,” Anabela answered drily.
“That’s not what I’m asking,” my contact said. “I’m talking about the name of the addressee.”
“Us,” Anabela said.
“Was there anything written inside?”
“No,” Anabela said. “But you know perfectly well what the message is.”
“No, I don’t,” my contact said. “I need to know exactly what you received.”
Clearly, he was confronted with a fact that went beyond his expectations. He couldn’t have been more upset by the appearance of this piece on the chessboard.
“I must tell you this.” My contact struggled to maintain his self-control. “Edilberto Chanes and his men almost killed Pizarro.”
“Pizarro left the hospital yesterday,” Anabela said.
“To go to another hospital,” my contact replied.
“And on the way he sent us the pouch?” Anabela said sarcastically.
My contact got to his feet and hastily traversed the space from his chair to the bar.
“I don’t mean to offend you,” he said, “but as an objective outside observer, I need to tell you some things that should help guide your decisions and let you understand what’s at stake. Bear in mind that early Monday morning an attempt was made on the life of the most important mid-level leader of the most powerful labor union in the country. It was the work of a hired gun named Edilberto Chanes, who lost his life in an automobile accident while fleeing to Tulancingo. Due to the indiscretion of an accomplice,”—he looked at me as if asking leave to continue—“the Mexican government is now in a position to discover that Chanes was in the pay of the widow of the former mayor of Chicontepec.” He looked at Anabela as if he were now asking her leave to go on. “The widow had long attributed the lynching of her husband by the people of Chicontepec on June 9, 1978, to the machinations of the oil workers’ boss. The main propagator of this tale is a well known journalist who turned out to have been the widow’s lover in the year prior to the mayor’s death, the very columnist who had been the mayor’s friend since both were in their teens.”
“I’m not putting up with this, Negro,” Anabela said.
“This is how things stand politically.” My contact brushed the protest aside, and unbuttoned his jacket. “For over a year and a half the widow and her then husband, Francisco Rojano, had been renewing their friendship with the journalist in order to convince him that the union leader had risen to power through a series of politically motivated crimes. Those crimes, disguised as accidents, were intended to facilitate the union’s takeover of choice lands in the municipalities of Tuxpan and Chicontepec in the state of Veracruz. To convince the journalist they were right, the couple created false files complete with photos and coroners’ reports. However, the labor leader actively promoted the political career of his accuser, Francisco Rojano, and helped him gain the coveted post of mayor of the impoverished municipality of Chicontepec, Veracruz, where Petróleos Mexicanos was expected to invest heavily in coming years. Lust for power, political carelessness, and a dissipated lifestyle led to increasing friction between the mayor and an already sullen, hostile and ignorant community. Finally, the townspeople took matters into their own hands, and in their own crude way, protested the imposition of a dissolute and disreputable outside ruler by publicly lynching him. And all because of his boundless ambition. After just a year in office, the mayor’s local landholdings had grown from 300 hectares to nearly 2,000 and his wife’s from less than 400 to almost 3,000 hectares of the best irrigated land in the municipality.”
“You gave him all that information,” Anabela said evenly. She regained her self-control by staring into her empty goblet, then holding it up to the light. She stood up, walked to where my contact was leaning on the bar, and held out her glass. “Pour me a double,” she said. “Your version of what happened made my hands cold.”
My contact obliged. Anabela smiled and returned to her royal seat. The minister for internal security resumed from his post by the bar. “The oil workers’ union agreed to acquire the widow’s holdings for the inflated sum of 32 million pesos, which came to about 1.5 million dollars in a single payment during the month of November, 1978. A year later the widow hired Edilberto Chanes to assassinate the union leader, whom she blamed for her husband’s death. What else did she blame him for? For having thwarted the further expansion of the couple’s domains in Chicontepec? Probably. Was the nationally known columnist in on the scheme to get even richer? Maybe he was.”
“And Pizarro was the living hero of the Mexican Revolution?” Seated on her peacock throne, Anabela had fully regained her self-control
“Pizarro is a legitimate leader in the eyes of his followers,” my contact said. “He’s given back to the oil workers more than he’s taken from them. That’s the bottom line on his political balance sheet.”
“Abuses and murders included?” I said.
“Yourselves included,” my contact replied.
“Those are the facts as you see them?” I said. “That’s what happened, according to you?”
“No,” my contact said. “If that’s what I thought, I wouldn’t be here. I’ve given you the political version, the objective version. It’s not the truth, but it’s the reality you have to face just as if it were the truth. Objectively and without fooling yourselves.”
“Your words leave me cold, counsel.” Anabela was being sarcastic. “My hands are frozen. The only evidence you left out is the day Edilberto Chanes slept with the widow in Chicontepec and the recording of her saying, ‘Kill him, boy’.”
“I’m not making any accusations,” my contact said. He took a cigarette from his spotless gold case. He’d left his cigar on the table in the middle of the room. “What I’ve given you is a simple reconstruction based on the facts of the case. I’m not interested in putting you on trial. That’s not my job.”
“Isn’t justice your job?” Anabela said.
“No, ma’am. My job is keeping the peace,” my contact said.
“So what are you trying to get at with all this?”
“I want to reach a negotiation.”
“We already negotiated,” Anabela said.
“And the terms of the agreement were blatantly violated,” my contact said. “Because, among other things, you defied a power greater than yourself. You even launched an attack on the life of that power, and now your own life is in danger.”
“I didn’t attack a thing,” Anabela shot back, rejecting the confession implicit in the way my contact framed her behavior. “For three years I’ve been defending myself against a nightmare named Lázaro Pizarro, your reborn hero of the Mexican Revolution, your born leader, your good warlord. Pizarro has cost me my husband, my peace of mind, my inheritance, and the chance to lead a normal life. And the safety of my children. Now, to top it off, that man’s craziness has left a permanent scar on my life. What do you want me to negotiate? How to commit suicide in a way pleasing to Pizarro?”
“I’m not saying you didn’t have your reasons,” my contact said. “What I’m saying is you don’t have the power to confront Pizarro.”
“If you people cared more about justice than keeping the peace,” Anabela said while getting to her feet. “We’d have had the power to contain Pizarro.”
My contact inhaled and released an even stream of blue smoke from his nostrils. He seemed saddened and mildly annoyed.
“If you had chosen justice and fairness,” he said, looking down at the floor, “You’d never have approached Pizarro in the first place. Pizarro would never have given you his support, and you’d never have gotten into a land dispute with him in Chicontepec. You wouldn’t have needed backing from the national press, you wouldn’t have broken your first agreement with Pizarro, and you wouldn’t have been in such a hurry to get rich. The mayor of Chicontepec wouldn’t have been lynched, Pizarro wouldn’t be wounded, and we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
Clearly, impersonally and mechanically, he’d played back a history of savagery regulated by a system of checks and balances beyond the understanding of its lesser actors. Its moral was competence in the service of stability and preserving the polished outer surfaces of the institutions.
“What do you propose?” I asked.
“That the lady and her children leave the country immediately, tomorrow if possible,” my contact said. “Then let’s try to renegotiate with Pizarro and settle the conflict. You may want to write something, get some sort of compensation from us.”
“More concessions?” Anabela asked.
“Probably more concessions, ma’am.”
“I’m not leaving,” Anabela said haughtily.
“Let me explain something,” my contact said. “You appear to have won the last battle in this war because Pizarro is never going to recover fully from his wounds. He lost three quarters of his stomach, and a bullet left him paralyzed and half blind. The paralysis is progressive. He’s got about a year to live.”
“In Houston?” Anabela asked.
“He was transferred to the Medical Center in Mexico City following emergency surgery in Houston. What I’m telling you comes from the Mexico City hospital report.”
“And how do I know you’re telling me the truth?” Anabela smiled as if the news made her feel better.
“You don’t.” My contact watched her, sizing her up. “You have to believe me. But I am telling you the truth. You can leave the country and wait until your enemy’s corpse passes by your doorstep or you can stay here and be an easy target for Pizarro’s last blow, which could be aimed at your children.”
“And if I still won’t go?” Anabela said. Her cheeks were red, and her eyes were on fire.
“Then you’re on your own with no support from us. No guards, no protection.”
“So you’d just throw us to the wolves?” Anabela stared into her backlit glass.
“A guard detail isn’t going to keep Pizarro at bay,” my contact said. “My job at the moment is to make you leave. It’s the only way to guarantee your safety and, as a result, the only way we can do our job effectively.”
“How do you know Pizarro won’t come looking for me wherever I am?”
“We haven’t negotiated with Pizarro yet,” my contact replied. “Once the crisis passes, he’s more likely to prefer concessions. Despite what your experience may suggest, Pizarro is above all a politician, not a killer.”
“The latter day hero of the Mexican Revolution.” Anabela shook her head, her eyes aglow, her hair floating youthfully down over her shoulders. “I need a week to get ready,” she said at last.
“A week may be too long,” my contact answered. “I can get you your tickets in Mexico City and take care of all the details. Visas and so forth. If you need a little money to tide you over while having your accounts transferred from here, we can also help you with that.”
“Under those circumstances, we could leave Monday,” Anabela said.
“Thank you for understanding,” my contact said. “It’s strictly temporary, an emergency measure, believe me.”
“I believe you, sir, but you need to believe me about another thing in exchange.”
“Whatever you wish, ma’am.”
“You seem sure I sent Mr. Chanes after our benefactor in Poza Rica.”
“That’s the information I have direct from the source, yes,” my contact said.
“The information from our journalist.” Anabela pointed playfully and sarcastically at me.
“That’s right,” my contact said.
“What I want to tell you and him is this. I didn’t send Edilberto Chanes anywhere. Chanes approached me in the street one day in Cuernavaca after I’d left the children off at school, and he told me about his designs on Pizarro. I didn’t say yes or no. I just listened and kept my mouth shut. It wasn’t my idea, it was his. I didn’t try to stop him, but I didn’t put him up to it.”
“Chanes had a score to settle with Pizarro,” my contact said. “I understand what you’re telling me.”
“Sir, I’m not asking you to understand.” Her spirits had risen, and at the moment, perhaps with help from the cognac, she was radiant. “What I’m asking you to do is believe me.”
“I believe you, ma’am,” my contact said.
“I’m also asking you to make our journalist believe me.” Looking at me, she turned the goblet around and around in her hand and smiled. She seemed inspired, even happy.
They left for Los Angeles on Monday, December 12, 1979, on Mexicana’s early evening flight. That morning she’d transferred money to First National City Bank of California. It remained for me to rent The Hideaway, sell the van, and pay the monthly credit card installments. We got to the airport at 3:00 in the afternoon in two large cars with antennas and polarized windows. Traveling with us were the guard detail, Anabela’s large trunk, and six more suitcases. Doña Lila held Mercedes’s hand. The little girl was wearing a plaid outfit, a cap, and a scarf. Tonchis, who was nearly as tall as Anabela, joked with Comandante Cuevas. Anabela and I walked behind them in silence through the airport corridors, and behind us was the remainder of our escort.
We got through immigration and customs. At the duty-free shop Anabela spent a 1,000 dollars on a watch for her sister Alma, who was providing them a place to stay in Los Angeles. The guard detail took us all the way to the crowded waiting area. I said goodbye to Mercedes. “Call me whenever you feel like it and tell me you miss me. I’m going to visit you next week.”
To Tonchis, I said, “Take care of your mom. If she tries anything crazy like taking up with a Gringo, let me know right away. I have some hired guns in Los Angeles who can make her change her mind.
“And if she takes up with a Mexican?”
“Grab him yourself and kick him out. I’m leaving you in charge. Let me know everything.”
I then took Anabela to the adjacent waiting area, which was empty. She was dressed for winter in a black fur hat, high boots, a flannel skirt, and an emerald green scarf. The outfit made her seem comfortable and soft. Below the hat her eyes looked placid, and her lips and teeth were brilliant over the scarf. Diamond earrings accented her beautifully formed ears.
“It won’t be for long,” she said, brushing my cheek. Her hand wasn’t as cold as usual.
We stood looking at each other. Her eyes were crystal clear in the intense light streaming through the huge window.
“No one knows where you’re going,” I said or, rather, repeated on instructions from my contact. “And nobody knows the address of the place you’re going. Don’t write, don’t phone. Let some time pass before you go out.”
“I already know that,” Anabela said.
“I repeat so you won’t forget,” I said in a low voice.
“You’re repeating so you won’t have to say goodbye,” Anabela said.
“That too.”
“Well, you’re not getting rid of me that easily, Negro,” Anabela said, turning playful.
“Nor in any other way.”
“Get yourself a boyfriend that kicks and scratches. You’re going to be alone on Artes the way you were when I went looking for you in ’76. Remember?”
I remembered.
“I said a boyfriend because if I catch you with a little lady reporter, I’m coming down from Los Angeles to chop off your prick.”
“I agree.”
Comandante Cuevas stepped into the waiting room where we were and said, “They’re boarding, sir.”
“It’s time, ma’am,” I told her.
“Goodbye, Negro.” Once again she caressed my cheek. Her hands were warm now. She looked at me a moment, then added, “I’m coming back, just like I did before.”
I kissed her lightly but just firmly enough for the flavor of her lipstick to permeate my mouth.
“I’m uneasy about the children,” Doña Lila said on the way back. “I get the shivers, I just don’t know.”
“They’ll be all right,” I told her.
“You’ll be on the loose and surrounded by pussy, but the children… May God watch over them.”
“So long as their mother watches over them,” I said.
“Doña Ana has her mind on everything except her children. I can imagine the kind of protection they’ll get from someone who got mixed up with you.”
“Are you coming to Artes or shall I leave you in the market?”
“You’re changing the subject, but what I said goes.” Doña Lila stared out the car window. “The two of you should have let me raise them as good healthy Veracruzans in Tuxpan far from all these entanglements. Are you expecting company tonight?”
“No.”
“You’re at least letting a day go by?”
“At least.”
“The body makes its demands just the same. I’m not going to criticize you. You’d better leave me in the market.”
I let not a day but several months go by before the reporter from El Sol again crossed the threshold of my apartment on Artes. I didn’t go to Los Angeles for Christmas as I’d promised, and my only communication with Anabela was two letters from Mercedes. Time passed in a sort of relaxed professional rush. I concentrated on my column. I updated and expanded my files and hired an assistant. I fell into an impersonal rhythm on the job with a full calendar, working breakfasts, lunches and dinners, and weekend excursions to different parts of the country where I’d discovered stories worth covering myself. I got results. Every day in the month of February 1980 I succeeded in offering a well documented exclusive of some sort. I was on a roll. In quick succession I disclosed ahead of any other medium PEMEX’s unilateral decision to boost crude exports without bothering to consult the economic cabinet, the emergence of a new far-right group in Guadalajara named Fuerza Nueva, the business ties that generated million-dollar earnings for the head of the Rural Credit Bank, the name of the top CIA operative in Mexico, a summary of a confidential U.S. State Department memo in opposition to Mexico’s Central American policy, the testimony of a chief of police fired for corruption, and the involvement of top Mexico City police authorities in the drug trade.
The final story of the month took up three full columns. It reported the enormous sums PEMEX was transferring to the union on the incredible pretext of granting it exclusive subcontracting rights for the company’s exploration and construction projects as part of a collective bargaining agreement. The union could then outsource the work and charge finders’ fees amounting—by my calculations—to between 1 and 1.5 billion dollars annually (between 25 and 35 billion pesos). The columns also described in detail the company’s parallel transfers to the union of some 800 million pesos for commissions and paid leave. Most of those funds went to paying oil workers who, instead of doing their PEMEX jobs, worked for companies and businesses belonging to the union, especially the so-called “union gardens” of which “La Mesopotamia” and Pizarro’s other agricultural complexes were prime examples. These net transfers of resources went a long way towards explaining the low costs and very low prices that enabled the union to boast about its efficiency to the rest of the country. It paid nothing for either skilled or unskilled labor. Its payroll was met by others.
Never did I feel so immersed in the simple task of investigating and communicating as I did in those days. Never so neutral, so remote from the political and personal implications of my column. I had no ulterior motives. I was objective and dispassionate, at absolute peace with myself.
In early March my contact sought me out. All the news I’d had from him in the intervening months was a card slipped under my door a few days after Anabela’s departure. It said, “Negotiated as agreed, but vacation should continue until further notice.” Was this further notice? We met on March 8, 1980, at a small restaurant in the Condesa District, the Tio Luis, which in times past had been the hangout of the bullfight crowd, on Montes de Oca and Cuautla.
“Working hard?” he said once we’d greeted each other in the protective aura of a display case where the embroidered vest of Manuel Benitez, el Cordobés, was enshrined.
“Hard and well,” I said. My contact asked the waiter for mineral water only to drink, and I followed suit.
I thought back three years to Rojano and his abstemious domestic facade, his self-conscious parsimony.
“It shows day after day in your column,” my contact said. “It’s the best one around these days.”
“Thank you.”
“I’ve got some items for you to consider if you’ll allow me.”
“I’d be delighted.”
“But I’d like to discuss something else with you right now.”
I nodded, and he explained. “Pizarro’s been declared terminally ill. He’s sinking fast. At the rate he’s going, the doctors say he won’t last two months.”
“Is that how much longer the vacation’s going to last?” I said, thinking this was the news he had for me.
“The vacation doesn’t have an end date yet,” my contact said.
“Then why are you telling me about Pizarro?”
“I want you to go see him,” my contact said.
“I’m not interested in seeing him.”
“You will be,” my contact said. “It’s part of the negotiation about the vacationer and her future safety. Pizarro himself had me ask you.”
“How crazy can you get?”
“Are you referring to me or Pizarro?”
“You and Pizarro. Why stir up that hornets’ nest?”
“It’s still an open file, paisano. I don’t want to see more toads jumping out of it. Help me close it because you’ll also be helping yourself. The vacationer isn’t exactly the most placid woman who ever lived, paisano.”
“That’s strictly a private matter. Don’t pry in my private life.”
“That’s all I’m trying to do,” my contact said, “to keep your private life from becoming public.”
“Are you handing me a bill, paisano?”
“I’m asking for your help in closing a file that just happens to concern you. I’ve asked you before, and you’ve helped me through your column. For me the only difference is that this case involves you, and I admire and respect you. What’s more, the interview will be of interest to the vacationer.”
“Leave the vacationer out of this.”
“A remarkable woman, paisano,” my contact said. “I don’t ever want to be her enemy.”
“You never will be.”
“There’s another thing. Your recent disclosures about contracts and transfers has the union very worried,” my contact said. “It’s also in on this negotiation. That’s why Pizarro wants to see you. It’s a political matter if you know what I mean.”
“I do, which is why it’s not negotiable.”
“Everything is negotiable, paisano,” my contact said with a knowing smile.
I went to the restroom and returned.
“When do you want us to see Pizarro?”
He smiled once again.