Mexico City Noir

I’M NOBODY BY EDUARDO ANTONIO PARRA

Narvarte

Feet moving: a step, another, then one more. Eyes stare at the squares that make up the sidewalk. Stubborn hands grip the supermarket cart carrying all his things: a poncho, a plate and a pewter spoon, two shabby blankets, a plastic cup, a sun-bleached photo of a woman and a boy, a sweater, a paper bag filled with butts and three cigarettes, barely worn sneakers, a bottle with traces of liquor, several pieces of cardboard, and two empty boxes. His life: what remains of it. He pushes. He moves forward, barely registering the faces passing in the opposite direction. I don’t look. I never pay attention. I haven’t seen a thing, chief, I swear. Around here, I don’t even look at the houses or buildings, just the street signs to know where I’m going. He walks on, not listening to the roar of the engines, or the screams of the horns around the public square, or the voices, or the screeching of tires. I’m nobody. No. I didn’t hear anything. I never hear anything. He was a skinny thing, you know. He doesn’t notice the food vendors, even though they arouse something in him, at the bottom of his belly. He goes on, not feeling the rain, the heat, or the cold. He just keeps moving, measuring the sidewalk through the cart’s wire grid, swerving the wheels to avoid the curbs and holes. Like he does every day, all day long.

Yes, he walks without hearing, without seeing. Always the same. Until the arrival of one of the gray-uniformed security guards from the Secretariat of Communications and Transportation, who opens the door to the parking lot before settling behind the tollbooth window. If it’s the old man with the white mustache on the day shift, he pokes him in the chest with the stick hanging off his waist. But if it’s the fat red-faced guy, he kicks him in the ribs-but softly, without any intention of hurting him.

“C’mon, Vikingo, it’s dawn already. Get a move on.”

And, still between dreams, he asks himself who that Vikingo they’re referring to could be, until, in the midst of a stomachache, cramps, and his own mind’s fogginess, a distant image comes to him of a dim red mane and an unkempt beard, which he remembers seeing in a mirror or reflected on some window. I am Vikingo. But not before-he didn’t have a beard before. But yes: Vikingo. Nobody. And so he struggles clumsily to stand up while his swollen tongue pries itself off the inside of his mouth to offer one, two, a thousand apologies.

“Sorry, chief, I didn’t hear you, I swear…”

“You don’t have to swear anything to me. Look how filthy you are today. You asshole, you probably cut yourself with a bottle, right?”

“I’m nobody. No. I didn’t hear a thing.”

“Look, take your damn cart and get outta here. People are gonna be coming to work soon. If the supervisor sees you, he’ll probably fire me for letting a huevón like you sleep in the doorway.”

That’s why he’s up so early, moving his feet and pushing his cart. At first, slowly, trying to ignore the swelling of his joints, the violent beating in his temples. He crosses the avenue amidst cars braking and motorists’ profanities as they head downtown, and he inhales the morning smog as he nears the public square where he parades his humanity before the rushing clerks, the old women on their way home from 8 a.m. Mass at Romero de Terreros, and all the morning joggers.

Everyone turns away, some with disgust, others with fear, when they see his enormous figure dressed in multicolored pants, T-shirts, sweatshirts, sweaters, and the grease-stained coat he drags behind him. Vikingo lifts his gaze, but then covers his eyes with his hand, as if the brightness of the sun brings him bad memories. Later he slowly rounds the public square, over and over again, hoping that at the end of these turns, blackness will have settled in the skies above the city. He doesn’t rest on any of the stone benches, he doesn’t go near the fountain, he doesn’t stroll in the garden, he doesn’t walk between the trees. He never leaves the brick-colored pavement. He walks for hours to exhaust himself, to stop thinking. To get rid of the images from a life he lived many years ago. To give the neighbors time to throw something worth eating or drinking in the trash. To forget about what happens on the streets at night: what happened last night.

Something that has nothing to do with his surroundings makes him stop suddenly. He directs his focus to the treetops; the honking of the zanates reminds him of a man fleeing between shadows. The man screamed, just like those birds are doing right now. Insults could be heard. Yes. Was it yesterday? Or a different night? His memory strives to capture the data, but it’s too foggy. He resumes his walk and shakes his head in denial. No, I haven’t seen a thing. I swear, chief. I just walk. I don’t know how to do anything else. I just walk around. I like Narvarte because it’s a neighborhood with a lot of trees and birds. Nobody bothers me. I walk around the area not seeing a thing, not hearing a thing. I’m nobody. I don’t even have a name.

The screeching birds distract him again. Vikingo searches the tangle of branches until he distinguishes a brown fluttering in the foliage. He smiles and steps off again. I never see anything and never hear anything. Just the birds. A step. Another. Then one more. Like that, chief. Yeah, you know, right?

The wheels of the cart squeak as if they want his attention. He reviews his load and readjusts it without slowing down. He used to carry more things: portfolios with papers from work, a wallet with IDs but no money, a ring of keys, a comb, a watch, a neck tie. That was another time, before he moved over near Parque Delta, which filled up whenever there was a baseball game with people who called him Vikingo because, according to one of the drunks, he looked a lot like a guy who played for the Diablos Rojos. When they demolished the park to build a mall, he had to look for another place to live and lost his things in the process. Or was it one of the times he was picked up by the police? He’d rather not remember.

He maneuvers to avoid two young women dressed in matching skirts and coats who carry greasy paper grocery bags. He dodges a man wearing a tie who scrapes his teeth with a toothpick. A senior citizen looking for a bench to rest. And a raucous group of teenagers sporting white shirts and pants making their way home. He goes in circles, in many circles. The soles of his feet begin to burn. A step. Another.

I don’t even have a name, chief. Yes, Vikingo. That’s a name? Although I did have one before. Yes. Fernando, I think. Like the boy in the photo. The one with his mother. When he was alive. Now I’m nobody.

A woman in a helmet and a blue uniform with a billy club in her hand crosses the public square just a few meters ahead of him and Vikingo is gripped with fear. He slows his steps. The image of the fleeing man reappears in his memory. No, I’m not Fernando. Fernando was that other guy. He was falling. He ran into me and the others shouted his name. I didn’t see anything. I’m nobody.

He stops. His breathing is agitated. He asks himself if he has already gone this way.

A girl is standing nearby, staring right at him. She looks him up and down, from his messy red hair to the scabs on his ankles. She glances, surprised at Vikingo’s hands, and moves away with a gesture of repulsion. Yes, girl, I haven’t washed, he thinks to himself, but he immediately forgets about her to peer out across the boulevard that opens before him, a meridian full of dry palms and wide sidewalks crowded with people around the taco, tamale, cake, and juice stands. The air is loaded with dense, sweet, sticky smells. He drives the cart toward the flow and this time, yes, he clearly hears the hissing of tires and the insults. One of the drivers even opens the car door, furious as he gets out of his vehicle, but as soon as he gets a good look at the vagabond he shuts the door without saying a word.

Vikingo reaches the sidewalk across the street and pauses at a lamppost where there’s a poster: Mistreatment Meeting. As they walk by, the men and women look at him intently. They examine his clothing with curiosity, as if they can’t believe a man can wear so many things. Then they see his stained sleeves, his hands, and they quickly move away from him. He raises his face and inhales the city air: there’s a strong scent of excrement and blood. A step. Another. Then one more. He walks. He pushes. Just like he pushed last night. He was Fernando. Yes. Fernando what? I’m nobody. I didn’t see anything, chief, I swear. This way.

Clerks, housewives, and students chew and drink with determination, their faces reflecting pleasure and haste. They talk incessantly among themselves, joke around, laugh. Their sounds reverberate in Vikingo’s eardrums. Some finish eating and light cigarettes, blowing smoke toward the sky, where the wisps join all the emanations from the cars. They really do have a life, says Vikingo to himself, without daring to look at them too much. They have names. Fernando or Juan or Lupe. They are somebody. Not me. I don’t even have a name. The blurred memory of the previous night provokes an intense desire in him to feel tobacco smoke scraping his throat, filling his lungs. With his head down, he approaches a guy lighting a cigarette but before he can say a word, the man backs away. So Vikingo drops his head even lower and continues along. He digs inside the brown paper bag. He wants to find the smallest butt, yet comes up with one of the longest. It’s stained, sticky, just like his hands. He brings it to his nose and his mouth floods with copper-flavored saliva. A step. Another. Then one more. I don’t have matches.

He approaches one of the vendors, who has several cuts of meat, clusters of guts, and long sausages frying in a pot. The people eating inside the stall grow quiet when they see him. Vikingo nods, he’s about to walk past when he notices an empty seat at the far end of the counter. The surface is jammed with plates of leftovers, green and red sauces, minced onion, salads, and salt shakers. Sausages hang from above, cut like flowers, as if they’ve been manipulated into serving as décor for the place. A guy in a dirty white apron and a cap splattered with blood strikes a block of wood with a knife; it’s a rhythmic beat, almost musical. Greasy, sharp scents grow more intense, but Vikingo doesn’t smell any of it, only the tobacco that still floods his nasal cavities. He parks his cart next to a garbage can and approaches the man with the apron, who smiles.

“What’s up, Vikingo? You eat already? You want a taco?” “Fernando was running…” the bum says while shaking his head. He holds up the hand with the cigarette. “I need a light.”

“Of course, my brother. Whatever you need. Hold on a sec.”

The man in the apron puts two tacos in front of Vikingo as the others watch uneasily. He lifts a box of matches from his work station, pulls one out, and lights it. Vikingo doesn’t even look at the tacos. He puts the cigarette butt between his lips and leans toward the flame. He inhales. Coughs.

“Hey, what’s on your hands, dude?”

Vikingo glances at the taco vendor’s blood-stained apron. The hand holding the butt trembles. His knees too. He’s in a hurry to get away but talks instead.

“He ran into me and I pushed him away. I don’t know anything. I just walk. A step. Another. I’m nobody.”

“Who ran into you?”

“He was falling…”

“Who?”

“I didn’t see anything, chief. I don’t understand. Nothing. I didn’t hear anything either. I don’t even have a name, although I used to. Thanks for the light. A step. Then another.”

“Damn, Vikingo, you’re getting worse by the day. Órale, look at yourself.”

Now his heart beats faster. He breathes hard, without savoring the smoke, while gastric juices groan in his belly. I’m thirsty and I didn’t see anything. Thirst. He stares at the bottle, where there’s still a little something to drink, but he wants to leave it for later, because he senses he’s going to need it more then. He tries to count each of his steps, each meter traversed, because the image of the running man, of Fernando, has stuck in his memory and he can’t erase it. The street people and the vendors multiply on the sidewalk and he must walk slower to avoid hitting anybody with his cart. Just ahead, there’s a busy metro station. He doesn’t like crowds. He prefers solitude. But the streets here are only deserted at night. Vikingo looks at the sky: the sun hasn’t finished its route. There’s still a lot of time before dusk.

He came toward me. I didn’t see anything, chief. I didn’t have time to step aside. No. All I could do was move my cart. Fernando, yes. But I didn’t see him. And I didn’t hear him either. No. Nothing. I just walk and walk. He was falling. Bent. Holding his belly. He ran right into me and I had to push him off so I wouldn’t fall. That’s why my hands are dirty. There were others behind him.

When the cigarette ember almost reaches the filter, he puts his hand in the paper bag again and plucks another butt. He lights it with the dying end of the last cigarette and desperately sucks in the smoke.

There are fewer people on this block and the passersby don’t look at him as much. A shoeshine boy greets him but he doesn’t notice. He watches the familiar faces in the stores, behind the counters. He knows the neighborhood, the people know him too, and that calms him down. He crosses a street, turns the corner. There are fewer people each time. He finally stops in front of the church. That’s where the chief is, the Big Chief, he thinks, as he stares at the cross in the bell tower and the steps that lead inside. He feels the urge to go in the temple and sit down in one of the pews alongside the old women praying. Perhaps he can find peace there. Yes, sitting in a pew in silence. He used to do it back in the day. Back when he would spend the nights around Parque Delta with others like himself. And before that. When he had a name and lived in a house with a woman and a boy.

But as soon as they form, the memories escape from his brain. He extracts yet another butt and lights it with the previous one. Yes. Fernando ran into me. I didn’t see him. I didn’t see the others either. No, chief, I swear it. I didn’t see the plates. Or the uniforms. I didn’t see anything. I didn’t hear anything. I’m nobody. Not even the shots in the belly. Goodbye, Big Chief. I’ll visit some other day, when it’s calmer.

He takes another glance at the bell tower, at the church doors, and pushes the cart. A step. Another. Then one more.

A black cloud passing in front of the sun makes him think dusk has arrived. Vikingo has a moment of joy and sighs. He reaches for the bottle and caresses it tenderly. He doesn’t open it; he’ll wait to get to the government parking lot later tonight. He lifts the bottle to get a good look at it. Street liquor. How did it end up in his hands? He scratches his head and his nails run into a clump of flat and sticky hair. He smells his fingers: dirt and blood. The bottle was a gift, he remembers now. A gift from Fernando. Poor Fernando. He ran into me and fell. He was already falling. Yes. It’s his blood. Poor man.

When the clouds let the sun’s rays through, a mordant restlessness seizes Vikingo. He picks up his step. He walks. Pushes. I have to get to the lot entrance. I didn’t see anything. The street liquor. No. The dead guy didn’t give it to me, it was the others. The guys behind him, the ones who were after him. I’m nobody. I don’t know anything. The street ends at another street. Vikingo looks for a sign at the corner until he sees it: University. The public square is there to the left. The entrance is a little further. But it’s still daytime. He has to keep walking. Just like when he lived around Parque Delta. Always walking. Why? Because otherwise the guys in blue wake you up, the tecolotes, they called them. And why would they wake you up? Because that’s the way it is. Because they’re the law. And if they take you in, they beat you to a pulp just to amuse themselves. Better to keep walking. A step. Another. Then one more.

A woman crosses his path. She looks at him. Vikingo thinks her face looks familiar. He thinks he remembers her scolding him for being so dirty and stinking so badly, shooing him from the sidewalk, threatening to call the police if he didn’t go away. He wants to go around her but the woman stops to block him. He thinks about going backward, but he can’t remember how to do it; he only knows how to walk forward. The woman is so disagreeable. She comes toward him, grabs the cart, the wire grid.

“I knew you had to come this way, smelly. You’re not going to get away from me. I already know what you did last night. C’mon, show me what you’ve got in your cart.”

Last night. It wasn’t me. I’m nobody. Vikingo freezes. His legs buckle. His heart races wildly. The image of this Fernando in a bloody pool flashes in his memory. Fernando. That’s what the others called the guy they were after. “Fernando! Stop right there, cabrón! You want protection but you don’t want to pay for it? We’ve come to collect, you son of a bitch!” That’s what the guys in uniform were yelling at him. Then the shots. “And you, get outta the way, you fucking bum! And if you open your mouth, you know what’s gonna happen to you!” The images jump to Vikingo’s mind out of order, as if the woman’s scolding has triggered them. Fernando running. His belly spilling blood. I pushed him and I got covered with it. Fernando on the ground. Blood on my hands. And the bottle… They gave me the bottle. “You haven’t seen anything, you bum.” “No, chief. I didn’t see a thing. I never see anything. I don’t hear anything. I’m nobody.” “That’s how we like it, cabrón. Here, take this bottle. It’ll help you forget.” “Yes, chief.” “But we’re always going to remember you. And we’re the law. We can take you whenever we want. You understand?” “Yes, chief.” “What’s your name?” “I don’t have a name, chief. I’m nobody.” “Fine, I like that, now be quiet and get outta here.”

“What’s your name?”

“I don’t have name, chief. I’m nobody.”

“Don’t call me chief. I’m Mrs. Chávez, the head of the neighborhood association.”

“Yes, chief.”

“People are complaining about the drunks and drug addicts who hang around here. I just reported you. You’re the one they call Vikingo, right?” “I’m nobody.”

He tries to get her to let go of the cart, but she holds on as if she has claws. He tries again but with little success. Vikingo’s bones have lost their strength, they feel like putty, watered down, drained of energy. He wants to beg the woman to let him go, to tell her he has to keep walking, but the only things out of his mouth are the same words as always.

“I didn’t see anything. I didn’t hear anything either. I’m nobody…”

“You’re gonna tell me you don’t know anything about the dead guy they found this morning near the government parking lot? They say there was a bum hanging around with a supermarket cart. And you’re the only one around here who’s always dragging a cart. Have you seen yourself? The least you could have done is washed off the blood after killing the man.”

“Fernando…”

The woman smiles triumphantly and her face twists into a malicious mask.

“Yes, Fernando Aranda. See, you do know. Now you’re gonna tell the cops everything.”

“I don’t know anything. I just…”

Desperation gives him strength to move the cart but he still can’t get the woman to let go.

“You’re not going anywhere, you criminal!”

“I swear, I don’t know anything.”

People begin to gather and listen to the argument. Some are from the neighborhood and they know both him and the woman. Others have only noticed them in passing. There’s some murmuring. Vikingo recognizes words like corpse, homicide, killer. He remembers how, whenever there was a dead guy, the uniforms used to come for him and his friends around Parque Delta and they’d interrogate them in the bowels of the police station. He remembers the wet towels stinging his skin, the electric shocks, water spurting into his brain. Screaming in pain. The mocking questions and giving the answers over and over until he was exhausted. The answers the only words left in his brain. In his fogginess, he also remembers that before the interrogations, he knew who he was. His name. His past. A big wave of fury and panic passes through him as he distinguishes the blue and red lights from a squad car on a nearby window. The murmuring increases. The dead, they say. He killed him. He jerks the cart forcefully to loosen it and the woman screams.

“Ay! Beast! You broke my nail!”

The onlookers part as he makes his way toward them, while the woman runs in the direction of the squad car. I don’t know anything, chief. I didn’t see anything. I’m nobody.

Two uniformed cops get out of the car. Vikingo sees them and realizes they’re the same guys who went after Fernando. Without hesitation, he grabs the liquor bottle, opens it, and drains the last bit. The alcohol makes his stomach tremble, then spreads a pleasant warmth through his body. Fernando, that was his name. They shouted his name. I didn’t see anything.

“Hey, you, cabrón! Stop!”

It’s the same voice from last night. They’re even the same words. The only thing missing is Fernando’s name. Fernando. Yes. But, unlike that guy, Vikingo doesn’t run: he just walks. “I don’t know anything, chief. I never see anything. I’m nobody.” He recites his litany as footsteps come up behind him. He figures that history repeats itself, that they’ll take him to the station’s bowels, or to some other cellar, to squeeze the truth out of him, that they’re going to stick him with the murder of a guy he didn’t even know, like they’ve done so many other times, and that after a few weeks or a couple of years in the penitentiary they’ll throw him back out on the streets, where he’ll have to find a doorway to sleep in again and a supermarket cart to keep walking. He wants another cigarette really badly. But there are no matches. “I swear, chief. That’s right.” When the footsteps slow down behind him, Vikingo recalls the face of the corpse from the night before. “I don’t know anything. I’m nobody. I just walk. A step. Another. Then one more.”

PRIVATE COLLECTION BY BERNARDO FERNÁNDEZ

Vallejo

The set of jungle music Lizzy programmed on her iPod to wake her up went off at 7 in the morning. She stretched, untangling herself from the black silk sheets on the king-sized futon.

Just like every morning, the first thing she looked at when she opened her eyes was a painting by Julio Galán on the wall directly in front of the bed in her Polanco apartment.

Fifteen minutes later, her personal trainer was waiting for her in the adjoining gym with an energy drink in her hand. Helga was an ex-Olympic finalist from Germany who accompanied her everywhere.

“Guten Tag,” said the blonde. Lizzy replied with a grunt. Lizzy did forty minutes of aerobic exercise and an hour of weights.

At 9, after a cold shower, Lizzy ate a bowl of cereal with nonfat yogurt and drank green tea while checking her e-mail on her iPhone. Alone in the immense dining room, she peered out her large windows overlooking Chapultepec Castle. Pancho brought her breakfast from the kitchen, where he had prepared it himself.

At 10, in her office parking lot in Santa Fe, Lizzy stepped out of her car, a black 1970 Impala with flames painted on the sides.

On her orders, the car had been salvaged from a shop in Perros Muertos, Coahuila, and sent to Los Angeles for restoration.

She busied herself during the morning hours with financial matters. Tired of the fiscal chaos left by her late father, she had sought advice from an investment counselor who suggested she diversify her portfolio.

She loved verifying her account dividends and was fascinated to see how she was getting richer every day.

At noon, she had a cold beverage, fresh fruit, a high-fiber muffin, and tea. Before lunch, at 2 in the afternoon, she took a call from a gallery in Europe. Although she’d studied at the Toronto School of Art in Canada, she’d abandoned her creative career to concentrate on building a contemporary art collection.

“Lizzy, darling, I have something that’s going to blow your mind,” said Thierry in his thick French accent.

“I’m not sure, Tierritas. Last time you came up with pure garbage.”

“You are going to die, mon amour. I have seven pieces by David Nebrada.”

After a tense silence, Lizzy asked: “How much?”

Money was never a problem.

At 2:30, she entered the VIP room at Blanc des Blancs, on Reforma, where she greeted Renato, an old industrialist friend of her father’s, who was dining with the minister of labor.

The two old men invited Lizzy to join them, a proposal she gently declined before moving along to her favorite table in the back of the restaurant.

On the way, she ran into Marianito Mazo, the son of a telenovela producer, who was sitting with a couple of pop singers enjoying their fifteen minutes of fame. Marianito greeted her with a kiss, introduced the two girls, and invited her to a cocktail party he was having at his parents’ house in the Pedregal the following Saturday.

“I think I’m going to be away then,” said Lizzy, smiling. “Let me check and I’ll have my secretary confirm it with your people.”

After another warm farewell, Lizzy finally sat down. She ordered an arugula salad, salmon carpaccio, and white wine. She ate in silence while checking her e-mail on her cell. After the meal, she called her cousin Omar, who worked as a deejay at an Ibiza nightclub.

“Mademoiselle?” the waiter interrupted. “This cocktail is from the gentleman at that table.”

She looked where he was pointing.

The general solicitor of the republic’s private secretary winked at her from across the room.

That evening, she asked Bonnie, her secretary, to cancel all her appointments so she could get a mud-therapy treatment at a spa in Santa Fe, just a few blocks from her office.

“Don’t forget that you have to go to the warehouse,” noted the gringa with her clipped Texas accent.

“I won’t forget, I’ll go later tonight,” Lizzy responded.

She decided to walk to the spa, much to Pancho’s consternation; he didn’t like her wandering around unprotected. But she always managed to do as she pleased.

The French girl who applied the mud for the massage, a recent arrival from Lyon, couldn’t help herself and said, “You have a beautiful derriere. As firm and smooth as a peach.”

“Thanks,” said Lizzy.

At 8, they arrived at Tamayo Museum in her father’s old armored BMW, Pancho driving. Two light Windstar trucks packed with bodyguards followed them.

She was dressed completely in black leather, her hair pulled back in a bun speared with little chopsticks. She looked almost beautiful.

“Wait for me outside. I don’t want to attract attention,”

she said from the door of the museum.

“Miss…” protested the bodyguard with the cavernous voice.

“Do as I say.”

Pancho ordered the team of eight Israeli-trained escorts-two of them women-to be placed strategically in key positions around the museum. The old bodyguard monitored their movements by walkie-talkie.

The girl’s whims made him nervous, but he had sworn to the Señor, her father, that he’d take care of her.

Inside, unconcerned with her bodyguards, Lizzy distributed kisses to gallery owners, art collectors, curators, critics, and artists. She was an art world celebrity. Everyone knew about her collection and her peculiar tastes. She’d surprised more than a few with her resources. No one asked where her funds came from.

The opening was for a retrospective by an Armenian-American painter named Rabo Karabekian. Eight of the pieces belonged to Lizzy’s collection. As usual, she had asked that they be credited to an unnamed private collection. She didn’t want any publicity.

She had to cross a human gauntlet to greet the artist, who managed to spot her even at a distance.

“Lizzy, baby!” The old artist’s face lit up when he saw his favorite collector.

“How you doing, Rab?”

They chatted animatedly for half an hour. When the press wanted to take photos, Lizzy demurred.

The painter told her that there would be an after-party at the curator’s apartment in Condesa, that he would love it if she came by. She apologized.

“Got some business to take care of, sorry,” and she said goodbye to everyone.

On the way to the car, her cell rang.

“Got ’em,” growled a voice on the other end of the line.

Seconds of silence.

“You have them with you?”

“Correct.”

“I’m going to give you a kiss on the nose, like Scooby-Doo,” Lizzy said before hanging up.

She got in the BMW and asked to be taken to the warehouse.

Pancho silently directed the car toward the warehouse that MDA, their ghost company, had leased in an industrial park in Vallejo. They did not exchange a word during the trip.

The security team at the warehouse waved them in, surprised by the late hour of the visit. A heavy steel door slid open to let the BMW and the Windstars pass.

Bwana, Lizzy’s lieutenant on the north side of the city, received them. He was a cholo, an ex-juvenile delinquent who had learned something about chemistry during his years as a science student. A violent type, he had been raised on the streets of East L.A.

Secretly, Lizzy found him attractive and was fascinated by the wild beauty of his indigenous features; his athletic body, always clothed in baggy jeans, was like a basketball player’s; his naked torso was covered with tattoos of the Virgin of Guadalupe and Santa Muerte; his nipples sported rings.

Sometimes, in her deepest dreams, Lizzy allowed herself fantasies about the muscle-bound cholo. Fantasies that vanished as soon as she woke up.

“What’s up, boss?” said Bwana in greeting just outside the warehouse. He had a.38 sticking out of his pants and a green bandanna covering his shaved head.

“I want this over with. Where they are?”

“This way,” he said as he entered the warehouse. Lizzy followed, leaving behind her escorts and the warehouse security guards.

Bwana guided her through narrow corridors of boxes labeled with Korean characters. Pancho walked behind them, a few meters back, with a canvas backpack on his shoulder that caught Bwana’s attention.

Lizzy had specified that the walkways be designed like a labyrinth. Only a few people knew the way to the center. The architect, a gay old maid who used to walk his dogs on Amsterdam Avenue, had been found dead on the freeway to Toluca after he’d finished the job.

The cholo was saying something to his boss but she found it impossible to understand because of the rapid mix of Spanglish and border slang. Every time they reached a door, Bwana keyed an access code into the electronic lock that protected the crossing.

When they arrived at the center of the warehouse, Bwana entered another code. This time, a trapdoor opened, revealing stairs that led to an underground chamber; these were covered by a layer of high-density foam rubber, just like a recording studio.

Moans could be heard coming from below. Barely audible, more like murmurs.

“Welcome to special affairs, boss,” said Bwana.

Lizzy descended the steps. The basement was dark. A switch was touched and a light went on, revealing where the sounds were coming from.

A man and a woman were tied with barbed wire to vinyl chairs and gagged with cinnamon-colored gaffer tape. The woman had a ruptured eye. They were covered with dry blood, a pool of excrement gathered at their feet.

“They stink,” mumbled Lizzy.

Pancho obediently sprayed both bodies with the Lysol he carried in the canvas backpack. The man and woman twisted from the sting of the aerosol.

Lizzy approached the woman and looked with curiosity at her ruined eye.

“You said she was with him when they got him?”

“Correct. She’s his bitch. Bad luck.”

The Constanza cartel boss turned toward the bound man.

It was Wilmer, assistant to Iménez, the Colombian capo with whom Lizzy had been negotiating just weeks before. Bwana’s people had discovered they were bringing Brazilian amphetamines on their own into the country.

Bad idea.

Wilmer had been the person in charge of the operation. Then, he was a real mean motherfucker. Now, what was left of him whimpered like a kicked puppy.

Lizzy noticed a tear sliding down his filthy cheek.

“Deep in shit, everybody’s the same.”

Then she kicked the man’s jaw aikido-style. She felt the bone crack under her foot. The blow knocked him to the ground. His scream would have echoed in the chamber had it not been soundproofed.

The woman began to struggle, trying to shout from under the tape sealing her cracked lips.

Lizzy tore the tape off in one quick move. In the process, she also tore off a good bit of skin.

“What did you say?”

“Please… pu… pu-leeze… you… I have… a daughter…”

On the ground, the man sobbed. Lizzy flipped him over with the tip of her boot. “Cry like a woman for what you couldn’t defend as man,” she said, then reached her hand out to Pancho.

The bodyguard removed a wooden bat with a Mazatlán Deers logo from the canvas backpack; it had a dozen fourinch steel nails sticking out of it. Lizzy had inherited it from her father.

“We deal with amphetamines here,” she said to the man on the ground, “and I don’t like sudacas who get in the way. This is what happens to anybody who tries to horn in on my market. Consider this a declaration of war.”

She advanced toward the man with the bat in her hand. Pancho was silently thankful to have only one eye and to have the scene play out on his blind side. Discreetly, Bwana turned his gaze to the door.

When the woman in the chair saw what was about to happen, she began to scream uncontrollably.

THE CORNER BY PACO IGNACIO TAIBO II

Doctores

Don’t even think you’re making me happy, okay? Don’t even think it. Don’t say a word, just shut up, puto. Don’t even open your fucking mouth or I’ll shut it myself… Everything is your fucking fault.”

The last two words didn’t actually come out like that, but more like “foshin foolt,” because of all the blood in his mouth. Then he spit, half vomiting, half choking. And then he died. Of course he had to die like that, like a pendejo, trying to blame somebody else.

Agent Manterola approached the dead guy and took his car keys, his wallet, and the pair of very big, very dark sunglasses off his head that made him look like a Mayan mummy. Then, after thinking about it, he dropped them back on the ground near the body. Manterola grabbed the guy’s nose and pulled on it. Dead guys aren’t so scary. He took off one of the guy’s shoes, just for the hell of it, and put it on his belly. He didn’t even glance at the other body, that stupid fucking corpse, because it had been that one’s fault that the whole mess started in the first place.

Now it was the fault of the fucking pins with the multicolored heads. Fucking diaper pins, Manterola muttered to himself. And he was right. Modernity had arrived at the Office of Urban Crimes, but only in the form of two old computers, though they had somehow managed to get their hands on a huge map of Mexico City, where they marked crime scenes with the multicolored pins. Red for murder, pink for sex crimes, yellow for altercations, green for assaults, blue for kidnappings, lavender for robberies in taxis, orange for carjackings. The Boss of Bosses had passed through the office earlier in the day and had been furious when he saw that that fucking corner couldn’t take one more fucking pin.

So when Manterola got to work, with his funeral suit on-in other words, the same old gray suit he wore every day-with new huevos a la Mexicana stains on the lapels and a black band on his sleeve, he wasn’t surprised to find the commander there staring at the map, waiting for him.

And he wasn’t surprised by what he said either: “What do you think I, the commander, or the chief, or the head of government, thinks when he sees that fucking corner can’t take one more fucking pin?”

Manterola knew he was going to have to pay for not taking better care of his partner, for letting him go ahead on the raid where he ran into that wacko with the machete in his hand.

“What do you want me to do, boss?”

“You tell me. And whatever it is, do it alone. I’m not assigning you a partner because they always get killed. But whatever you’re going to do, just do it. Silvita will deal with the paperwork.”

Manterola gazed over at the map with the intensity of a Japanese tourist standing in front of the Mona Lisa at the Louvre.

The cursed corner, focus of everything. The intersection of Doctor Erasmo and Doctor Monteverde in a neighborhood of doctors, just two blocks from the Viaduct. A lower-middle-class neighborhood which had turned destitute and disenfranchised during the crisis in the ’70s, when auto-repair shops became stolen auto-parts dealers.

There was no glamour here. It was a symbol of sleazy and desperate times. It had no relation to the great criminal corners, like the one behind Santa Veracruz in the ’50s, or Loneliness Square, where a homeless death-squad drank industrial-strength alcohol until they dropped, where it was said they’d steal your socks without touching your shoes. It had no relation to the edge of Ixtapalapa, very near Neza, where the Mexican state police committed their crimes in the ’80s. It was the kind of place that Leone would have filmed one of his Westerns.

So for the novelist José Daniel Fierro, the call from the top dog in Mexico City’s government wasn’t a good thing, no matter how unusual it was, in spite of the fact that the only things he liked lately were unusual.

“Fierro, what can we do with Mexico City’s worst corner, the most dangerous one, the one with the most crimes?”

“Give it to Los Angeles. Aren’t we sister cities or something like that? Hollywood would love it.” José Daniel heard a chuckle on the other end of the line, then tried a couple of other proposals. “You could move there, rent an apartment. With your bodyguards you’d scare them off to the next corner… Or send all the cops on vacation to Acapulco and then watch the crime rate come down.”

This time the chuckle wasn’t as hearty.

“I’m serious,” said the government official. José Daniel had known Germán Núñez for years, since the dark days of the PRI when they’d been beaten up together at a political demonstration. He’d had his right eyebrow sliced by a blade and Germán had been kicked in the nuts so hard he’d had to stay in bed for a week putting up with his friends’ jokes.

“And you called a novelist for this?”

“Exactly. A writer of detective fiction. I’m sending you a dossier with a bike messenger. You’re going to love this story.”

José Daniel Fierro, novelist, and Vicente Manterola, cop, analyzed the cursed corner for the reasons already stated. But they didn’t have the same data. Fierro reviewed a study with a statistical appendix. Manterola had a pile of files that went back a couple of years. Perhaps because they were notably different people, from different cities, with different skeletons in their closets and disparate personal histories, they reached different conclusions.

“If I could fuck with two of these gangs of car thieves, I could take down half the damn robbery pins, easy, and maybe some of the assault ones, because when they don’t have cars to steal, that’s what they do, and maybe even some of the yellow pins too, because half the time they’re fighting each other,” Manterola said in a low voice to the head of the Ezcurdia squad, who stared at him with no love lost, since one of those gangs gave him a cut so that he’d always make himself scarce.

“If you fuck with one gang, I’ll tell the other to go steal someplace else, to go rip off cars in Toluca for a month,” the squad leader said in response. “I don’t want any problems with the head of government.”

“Let’s have a festival on that corner, a cultural festival,” José

Daniel suggested to the head of government. “Do you want some meat, my royal sir?”

“If I want meat, I’ll go to the supermarket, pendeja,” Manterola said to a transvestite, whose real name was undoubtedly something like Manolo-or Luis Jorge or Samuel Eduardo, because now, thanks to those fucking Venezuelan telenovelas, it had become fashionable to give babies two names. The guy didn’t actually look too bad: nice legs, even nicer ass, and no question that if he’d run into him in the dark, he’d have given him a whirl.

Manterola knew all too well that more than one of his colleagues liked to be with queens, but always with their macho thing of who-fucked-who. If you did the fucking, you weren’t the fag in the picture. The puto was the other guy. Lord have mercy, what assholes his colleagues could be. Like the dude who said he was disgusted by the whole thing but that his body “asked for it” sometimes.

It was getting dark. To get rid of the faggot, Manterola just ignored him and leaned up against a lamppost at the corner of Doctor Erasmo and Doctor Monteverde, right in front of a grocery store called La Flor de Gijón which shone its neon through a swarm of flies. He watched the movements inside for a while: maids buying bread, two kids who went in for soda carrying a huge plastic bag. An s.o.b. with the face of an s.o.b. buying cigarettes. Some dude, Cuban or coastal-impossible to tell the difference in the dark-mouthing a cumbia and lazily picking up a six-pack of beer. The old man at the register looked like he’d opened the store after being left back from Cortés’s first expedition. Having absorbed all of this, Manterola entered.

“Good evening.”

“Fuck, that’s the first time in my life a cop has greeted me with a good evening,” said the old man-pale like a Spaniard-with a toothless smile.

“How many times have you been robbed?”

“None so far,” replied the old man, with an expression that made it clear he expected nothing good to come from a police visit.

“Even though you’re on the most dangerous corner in all of Mexico City,” said Manterola.

“What do you mean?”

“You’re gonna gimme that story too?”

“Who else told you that?”

“A writer.”

There’s going to be a cultural event of some sort on your corner. It’s a kind of party, a festival, but sponsored by the government. You have to speak with a man whose last name is Mechupas, said the note scribbled on the Post-it on his desk. Manterola put his hands on his head and discovered his hair was wet with sweat. He’d never heard of such a thing.

He put his files in order, with the one for Fermín Huerta on top. That was the guy, El Mandarín. That was his Saint Peter at the gates of heaven. But what the fuck was this about a party?

Mechupas was obviously the writer José Daniel Fierro.

“Well, my esteemed officer, if you don’t like it, you can call Mexico City’s head of government yourself,” he said, offering a worn business card. “Here’s his number.”

Manterola eyed the Boss of Bosses’ business card and read the message on it: This is the information we discussed.

Later, he checked in again on the novelist. He was a big guy, with a mustache like Pancho Villa; it was probably best to just be straight with him.

José Daniel, who knew a lot about shady characters, saw the doubt in the cop’s small eyes right away. Let’s see if this guy learns to respect those of us who don’t wear ties, he said to himself.

Let’s see if I can learn to respect people who don’t wear ties, Manterola said to himself at that same moment, even if they’re a bunch of lazy pendejos.

“So?”

“We’re going to have a festival, and you’re not going to arrest anybody, nor raid anything, nor insult anybody, nor shoot anybody, nor bother anybody, nor fuck with anybody on that corner, which I understand is under your jurisdiction.”

“Señor Fierro, we have a very important investigation underway,” Manterola said ceremoniously.

“Well, you can shove it up your ass,” said Fierro, who wasn’t much liked by the state police anyway, and who was seeing red because Manterola had come into his life asking what the fuck he was thinking throwing a party on his corner.

“So what is my role here then?”

“Work with me. And if you have any questions, call the head of government, or your boss, or the Boss of Bosses,” said Fierro while lighting a delicate filtered cigarette and smiling.

Manterola surrendered for the moment. “What do you want me to do?”

“Help me find El Mandarín,” said Fierro, who’d done his homework.

He was called El Mandarín, not just because he was Chinese but also because he had dyed a red streak in his hair that made him look like a peeled mandarin orange. Manterola knew he wasn’t a car thief; the guy was a middle manager in the acquisitions department of a large and growing enterprise that included various parking lots, a half dozen garages, about a hundred employees, an office with multiple bookkeepers, connections with public officials in three different states who supplied fake papers, a customs chief in Veracruz and another in Coatzacoalcos, and even space on various marine freighters. What he did wasn’t even a crime-a crime is stealing from old women, beating up your wife, kicking a baby-this was business. El Mandarín knew that if all the cars stolen in one year in the Valley of Mexico were lined up, they would reach Cuernavaca, more than seventy kilometers away. That was why it was great business.

El Mandarín was eighteen years old, the senior member of his gang, which was an immense responsibility, so he didn’t steal cars on Tuesdays or Thursdays because he was too busy studying Russian. He’d heard a few things: that Volkswagens sold well in North Africa because they were air-cooled instead of water-cooled; that small trucks did well in Guatemala; and that Dodge was all the rage in Eastern Europe, where everybody spoke Russian.

Manterola and José Daniel found him at the entrance to his high school and he made no move to run. It would have been different in his own neighborhood, but he had no idea where he could run around here.

“I guess I’m fucked,” he said, and resigned himself to a simple smile.

You only go back at night when you want something. I return to the dark so that it’ll keep me from the day’s perverse routines, from the failures of love. José Daniel Fierro was writing on his keyboard when the doorbell got stuck. He bitched all the way to the door because one of his legs had fallen asleep. It was 4 in the morning.

Manterola measured him with a killer gaze.

“You want to have a charanga or a chimichurri or a chimiganga or whatever the fuck you call it-a masked ball on that corner? That’s all we need-you let them wear masks while they rob us, you give all those assholes an excuse to dress up as wrestlers so they can fuck with us.”

Fierro sighed and pulled out a cigarette.

The festival was one of the biggest successes in the history of the Neighborhood of Doctors. Years later people would still be talking about how well Tania Libertad sang, how delicious the carnitas were, how beautifully the kids read their poetry, and especially about the endless conga started by El Mastuerzo when he screamed out, “Viva Emiliano Zapata!”

There were no problems with the police. Community members stopped two domestic disturbances, kept kids from drinking beer, and even caught a bike thief who’d come over from Buenos Aires.

José Daniel Fierro gave the corner a leading role in the last few chapters of his novel; he even violated his own literary sensibilities and ended the story with an over-the-top kitschy description of two teens kissing at dusk at the intersection of Doctor Erasmo and Doctor Monteverde.

Agent Vicente Manterola was arrested in Puebla for raping a queen who was friendly with the local governor. While he was detained, a prisoner who didn’t like how Manterola was looking at him took one of his eyes out with a scrap from an empty soda can.

El Mandarín ended up in North Africa, driving a gypsy cab in Casablanca.

The corner was no longer cursed after the festival. The multicolored pins moved malevolently to other corners of Mexico City.

The owner of the Flor de Gijón retired and, since he’d saved a small fortune, went to live in the country of his birth. The day he left Mexico, he nearly bumped into José Daniel Fierro at the airport, but the writer didn’t recognize him since he was too busy buying duty-free cigarettes.

THE UNSMILING COMEDIAN BY F. G. HAGHENBECK

Condesa

I heard Andrea Rojas’s name the same day I met Cantinflas. She was nice, smart, and had a fine sense of humor. Not Cantinflas. He was like the other stars at Cinelandia:

simply a star.

While President Lyndon B. Johnson prepared to send a man to the moon, I decided to stay for a couple of months in Mexico City. I wanted to do pretty typical things: go to a wrestling match; bet on the bull in a bullfight at Plaza Mexico; drink a bottle of tequila at a bar in Tenampa; and enjoy a banana split at the Roxy. I also wanted to do an atypical thing: take care of my mother while she recovered from surgery. Her convalescence had yanked me out of my half-life as a beatnik bloodhound in Venice Beach. Nothing mattered much to me. Anyway, it’s always pleasant to spend time in the place where I was born. But not a lot of time, because the city is a treacherous lover. Those who love and live here only deal in pain.

Knowing that I was hanging out on my old turf, my exboss recommended me for a local job. Ever since he’d retired, he parceled out work like Santa Claus. I supposed I’d been good that year: it brought me Cantinflas.

The interview was outside the city, in a luxurious subdivision called Jardines del Pedregal de San Ángel, nestled in volcanic rock from an eruption as ancient as my Ford Woody. The house was great. It looked like a giant concrete sandwich with huge windows and austere furniture. The view was glorious; snow-covered volcanoes could be seen through a cactus garden.

I was led to the waiting room. I think it had higher aspirations than just to wait. It could have been a soccer field or a national stadium. I sat in a chair next to several trophies. After reading the plaque on a statuette that said Fortino Mario Alfonso Moreno Reyes, a.k.a. “Cantinflas,” had won the Golden Globe, I got bored. But a loud voice soon stirred me from my reverie.

“I was told you’re good. But I’d like references, Mr. Sunny Pascal.” The voice came from behind a door and then the comedian entered. I found myself before Mexico’s most successful actor. He wasn’t much taller than me. That was something. (In Los Angeles, I was considered Snow White’s lost dwarf.) He was dressed in a loud wine-colored chamois jacket. White turtleneck and dark glasses as big as a windshield. He walked slowly. Carefully. As he got closer, I noticed he must have been about fifty years old, but that recent cosmetic surgery made him seem forty or so. He still had some bandages. His prim face had the look of money: gringo dollars.

“I know you’ve won a lot of awards but, to me, that doesn’t make you an actor,” I responded. My insolence was gratuitous. He didn’t say anything. Instead, there was a pause that hung in the space between us.

“I suppose you’ll need to be paid in dollars,” he pressed me as he sat down in one of the chairs. Somewhere in Denmark, somebody was surely opening a champagne bottle because Cantinflas had bought one of their designs.

“Just like you got paid for Around the World in Eighty Days and Pepe,” I answered even more insolently. He didn’t smile. He didn’t have much of a sense of humor for a comedian.

“Those films were failures. The gringos don’t understand my common man’s sense of humor. Here in Mexico I’m king,” he explained, as he opened a silver case and extracted a cigarette. He offered me one. I declined. I didn’t want to be a walking cliché. I’m the only detective I know who doesn’t smoke. “I will pay for your silence. Carmandy assures me you’re the type who can keep his mouth shut. That’s important because of my reputation.”

“You can trust me. In fact, I knew Doris Day when she was a virgin.” I gave him my most ingenuous smile. He didn’t so much as blink. He was certainly greedy with his humor. He saved it all up for the camera.

“I’ve received some letters. They want money… a lot of money. They say they have information that could hurt me,” he told me as he smoked. It was impossible to see his eyes behind the shades. I was starting to feel uncomfortable.

“Is it true?”

“That’s none of your business. You just follow orders,” he grunted. I stood up. I straightened my black guayabera and turned toward the door. He made a gesture with his hand to stop, so I sat back down. “I’m sorry. I’m used to the barbarians who run this city’s police department.”

“Exactly what do you want me to do, Mr. Moreno?” I asked, trying to sound professional. The beatnik beard and my huaraches weren’t helping.

“Andrea Rojas. Pay her off. Tell her it’s the only time I’ll pay for her silence. The press and the police have already cleared me of any wrongdoing in Myriam’s death,” he groused. He said her name as if he’d stepped in dog shit. Through his dark glasses, he could see from the expression on my face that I didn’t know what he was talking about. “Myriam Roberts, an American model. She killed herself at the Alfer Hotel a couple of years ago. She left a suicide note for me.”

Cantinflas took a piece of paper from his jacket and handed it to me. It was a simple note written in a fine feminine script. It could have been a love letter or a grocery list.

Dear Mario,

Please forget me. You could never love me and I could never understand this place. Be good to yourself. You have been good to me but you could never love me, yet I really loved you. I know you’ll be good to our son.

When I finished reading the letter, I gave it back to him. He folded it carefully and put it back in his jacket pocket, the one over his heart.

“Are you going to tell me the whole story or just the condensed Reader’s Digest version?”

The comedian shrugged his shoulders. “The police questioned me. I’d known her for many years. The boy’s name is Carlos. I adopted him, he’s my son now. I don’t want her to continue threatening my family. Find Rojas, pay her off, and make sure she never bothers me again.”

At the door, a secretary appeared, more stacked than the pyramids at Teotihuacán. Her miniskirt barely contained her, and her beehive practically hit the ceiling. She gave me a bundle of dollars and a letter, assuring my silence.

“Even if you don’t take the job, you’ll have to sign the confidentiality agreement. I don’t want you to sell the story about my cosmetic surgery to Mike Oliver for three tequilas, and I don’t want this house surrounded by bloodsucking photographers.”

“I accept. Don’t worry. Carmandy is right, I’m a lot cuter when I’m quiet.” I pocketed the dollars and signed the agreement. We Mexicans are proud. We don’t like to air our dirty laundry. We don’t like it when the rest of the world finds out we have bad breath.

In the mid-’60s, Mexico City was dressed up and made to look like a fashionable urban center. President López Mateos built a Los Angeles-style highway, to which he gave the flirty name, El Periferico. The city delighted in the contrasts between modern buildings, colonial constructions, and rustic homes. It was sprinkled with cabarets, from the finest like the Source and the Casino Terrace, to the Fifth Patio and the Empire. My love of cocktails had free rein at all of them.

I left the comedian’s house with the bundle of bills and an address to make the delivery. I hid the cash in the secret compartment where I usually stashed the Colt. Such an absence of humor had made me thirsty. My mouth was begging for a drink even though it wasn’t yet noon. I drove my Ford Woody through streets with names lifted from a Walt Whitman poem: Rock, Water, Fountains, Rain, Breeze, Clouds. I was mentally composing my own poem when I noticed that an enormous cobalt-blue Lincoln Continental was following me. It was as imposing as a pirate ship. The car cut me off, forcing me to stop, and out stepped a huge brown dude who looked like a miniature King Kong.

“Who the fuck do you think you are to stick your nose in our business, pendejo?” He spit on my windshield. King Kong Jr. wore an absurdly wide pink tie that carried evidence of his breakfast. The suit was actually a couple of sizes too small. But what I disliked most was that he stunk of garlic.

“It’s been a long time since I thought I was much of anybody, bud,” I calmly answered. But it was a mistake. I knew it when I saw his fist come through the window like a medieval battering ram. The impact practically knocked me out of the car. I would have trouble breathing through my nose that night.

The friendly gorilla hit me two more times. Once I was out of the car and on the ground, he gave me two kicks, which I can still feel. When there was enough blood on the pavement, he went through my pockets.

“Who brought you in, cabrón? It was that asshole Rojas, right?” He repeated his questions as he went through my papers. He took his time. I don’t think he’d ever finished elementary school. He gave them back to me with a grunt. “A maricón gringo detective! That’s all we need!”

He checked out my car; he went through everything. I watched him toss out my Los Castros record, a bra whose owner I couldn’t remember, and an empty bottle of tequila.

“Where’s the money?” he asked. Just so I understood him properly, he made his point by kicking me again.

“I have three dollars and twenty pesos in my wallet,” I blathered.

The gorilla bent down until we were almost face-to-face. If I’d been a romantic guy, I might have kissed him. But he wasn’t my type: blond and curvy.

“You fuck with me and I kill you. Do you understand me, gringuito?”

“I’m Mexican,” I managed to say. But he didn’t hear me. He took my dollars and left. It took a good while for me to get up. I don’t use a watch so I had to depend on my bladder. When the need to pee became greater than the pain, that’s when I made my move. The street was still empty. All I could see were the big doors on the mansions. I unzipped and began to unload my bladder. I had barely started when I heard a police siren. They’re never there when you need them. But they fined me on a morals charge.

I recuperated with five tequilas. There might have been more. I slept for two days straight and, when I got bored with the game shows on TV, I went back to work. I checked out the address on the paper the secretary had given me. It was in the Condesa neighborhood, just a few steps from the Roxy ice-cream parlor. I drove to an apartment building in front of a beautiful park with big trees and a duck pond. There were Orthodox Jewish mothers in the park with their baby strollers and old Spanish Republicans too, smoking aromatic cigars and still dreaming of killing Franco. It was an island in the city’s chaos. A sigh for immigrants.

There was a bike repair shop next to the side door of the building. They were also for rent, those machines which cause only pain and tears. An employee was reading La Prensa while eating tamales.

“Good afternoon, how you doing?” I asked as if I had nothing better to do.

“Bad, but it’ll get better when school lets out,” the bike mechanic said without a pause in his sacred lunch. In Mexico City, the lunch hour is blindly respected. Even if there were a war between Soviet and American missiles, everybody would still go out for lunch and get something greasy and spicy.

“I’m looking for a friend. She lives in this building. Maybe you know her: Andrea Rojas.”

“Miss Rojas? She lives in apartment 202. She’s sleeping,” he said, still chewing.

“Must have been quite a night. Drinks, partying…”

The guy opened his eyes wide as tortillas and laughed.

“No time for that! Don’t you know she’s in school and works too? She was drawing the whole night, doing her homework. I got her dinner so she wouldn’t lose any time.”

I must have looked like an idiot. My inkling had been a bust.

“I better not wake her then,” I said as I left. The mechanic continued eating.

I bought some ice cream, pistachio. I played lookout from one of the park benches. Andrea Rojas emerged a couple of hours later, after a herd of kids had rented some bikes and entertained themselves by leaving pieces of their knees all over the pavement.

She left the building and waved at the mechanic. He said something to her and pointed at me. Andrea Rojas turned toward me; I could see her better. Well, it sure was a pleasure to look at her. Her hair was black, very dark. Pine nut-colored skin highlighted her eyes. A slender but firm body. Every curve was where it should be. Dressed in a miniskirt, wearing black stockings. She also wore a beret tilted slightly to the left. She was a goddess, beautiful and hip.

“I don’t remember having you as a friend. But you’re not a cop: you’re too short and too shabby. Who are you?” she asked, her hands on her hips.

I considered responding right away, but decided to take my time so I could enjoy her. “I’m a friend of a friend.”

“This mutual friend, does he have a name or did his parents not have enough money to baptize him?” She was quick. She’d be a hard bone to chew.

“Moreno. Some call him Mario. Some don’t.”

Her deep black eyes stabbed me like a pair of knives and she cursed under her breath. “Tell him to quit fucking with me!” she barked.

I got up from the park bench and followed her. I had to hurry; she was fast.

“Funny you should say that. He said the exact same thing.” Andrea Rojas turned around in disgust. She raised her shoulders and screamed, “I’ve already told him it isn’t me! I didn’t send that note-” But before she could finish scolding me, I noticed the cobalt-blue Lincoln approaching us. I immediately threw the girl to the ground. The bullets whizzed right above our heads. By the time I got up, the car had vanished. Andrea remained on the ground. I liked that she didn’t cry. I’m attracted to strong women.

“We need to talk. And you have no idea how badly I need a drink.”

“Motherfucker, I need two,” she said, her face white as a ghost.

I almost proposed on the spot.

We walked a few blocks, slowly entering the trendy new neighborhood where bars, restaurants, and shops vied to trap unwitting tourists: the Zona Rosa. We followed my nose for cocktails and chose a tiki bar named the Mauna Loa. I told her who I was, what I did, and I told her about my life. That took about twenty minutes. When it was her turn, she talked for more than two hours. I didn’t care: a mai tai accompanied by those black eyes was pretty close to paradise.

She told me she studied architecture at the university. In her free time, she worked as a nanny and belonged to a student group that liked to talk politics, smoke pot, and fix the country with their ideas. That’s where she’d met her boyfriend. His parents were dead and his only kin was an uncle who lived in Guatemala. She was independent, exciting, and beautiful. I’d just landed the top prize.

“… young people should come together, the future is in our hands,” she said excitedly.

“I don’t see how I could change the world. I’d need to be Superman and put on that cape to defend justice. So long as I don’t have superstrength and the power to fly, I think I’ll stick with surviving,” I confessed. It was pretty low-grade philosophy, but it was mine, and I wasn’t just going to give it away either.

“Maybe that’s what you should do: be a superhero and save the needy, not work for the oppressors,” she scolded. She was even more attractive when angry.

“Like your old boss, Mr. Moreno? Is that why you black-mailed him?” I went at her hard. I didn’t need to be that cruel but I had to earn my money.

“He only hired me to take care of his son. He was married to another woman and didn’t know what to do. I helped him with the boy after the suicide,” she said offhandedly.

“And there wasn’t an extracurricular relationship? He’s pretty famous.”

“You think I was involved with Mr. Moreno? You’re a pervert!” she said, but she was laughing at me. My case was falling apart. She wasn’t blackmailing him. “He paid for the funeral and the services when Miss Myriam died. I don’t know if he loved her but he kept his promise to take care of the boy without letting the scandal affect his wife. Even so, the police always tried to implicate him.”

“The police?”

“Yeah, those guys with the shields, the guns, and faces like dogs. If you don’t know them, I’ll gladly introduce you.” She sipped her drink with a sly grin and let herself be contemplated. She knew I was caught in her web. “And you? Do you have a woman?”

“Not that I know of,” I blurted, thrown off by the question. “Do you have a man?” she shot at me. She was getting her revenge.

“No, I don’t have anyone or anything-animal, vegetable, or mineral. What about your boyfriend?”

“That’s in the past. He studied philosophy and letters. He loved social causes more than me. That’s why I left him.”

“Wow, a real Superman. Did he use that old trick with the eyeglasses to make himself appear as a nerd? I can do that even without the eyeglasses.”

She didn’t respond. Instead, she made a face-half smile, half disgust. After a moment, she said, “I’m not the person who sent those notes to Mr. Moreno. Anyway, it’s been nice.

I need to get home. Pancho Villa hasn’t eaten.” She put her beret back on.

“The guy in the blue car could be waiting for you. It won’t be good for your health,” I said. That didn’t stop her. She was a rock.

“Well, I’d have to go back someday. If they want to hurt me, I can’t stop them.”

“Let me go with you. I could be your hero…” I mumbled as I dropped a couple of bills to cover the drinks. I followed her to the door. “Pancho Villa?”

“My black cat,” she said in a schoolgirl’s voice. I melted.

By the time we got to her building, the kids who’d rented the bikes were gone, probably drinking hot chocolate at home. Nighttime gave the neighborhood a different air, refreshing it with the sound of families murmuring around their TVs. The mechanic was still at the shop. He’d replaced the tamales with a bottle of beer, some tacos, and a buddy.

He waved when he saw us. While Andrea searched her bag for her keys, I saw an enormous black cat at the window-sill. I figured it was General Villa and smiled at him.

As soon as Andrea opened the front door to the building, my nose was assaulted by a strong garlic smell. I recognized it.

I knew it was emanating from an orangutan wearing a wide tie. When I tried to stop Andrea, King Kong Jr. leaped from a corner, gun in hand. He threw his arm around the girl’s neck like a snake. I cursed myself for having left the Colt in the car.

“I told you to keep out of this, gringuito,” the guy grunted. Andrea didn’t even try to make a move. She knew this man wouldn’t hesitate to shoot her.

“I know he gave you money to give to her. But this is my doing. She doesn’t have a clue what’s going on. You shouldn’t have interfered, you asshole,” he sneered. Andrea didn’t seem surprised.

“You’re the cop in charge of Miss Myriam’s case,” she deciphered. The gorilla twitched unhappily, but didn’t let go. For an instant, he looked upset about being fingered. Then he went back to what he knew best: being a motherfucker.

“Shut the the fuck up, you fucking hag! And you, where’s the cash?”

I raised my arms. I was at the threshold of the building entrance. “It’s in my car.”

“Don’t lie to me or I’ll kill her!” he screamed.

I raised my arms even higher. “It’s hidden in the place I normally stash my gun. That’s why you didn’t find it last time,” I explained. He turned to look at Andrea. Ever the rock, she just stared back at him with her black eyes, attacking him for having involved her in something so unseemly.

“Let’s go. Don’t pull any shit.”

We moved toward the street. I walked slowly. The bike mechanic and his buddy were in the midst of their partying. If we made it to the car, trying to take off with the money would surely get us both killed. I quickly glanced around, then lifted one of the bikes and threw it with all my might at King Kong Jr. He wasn’t expecting it. He let go of Andrea to aim his gun. The bike hit his hand and knocked the weapon toward him, but his finger was still on the trigger. The bullet crossed his eyes. Just like in the movies, the gorilla dropped dead to the ground. There was no blonde to cry for him. The mechanic got up and approached the body. “Hijo de la chingada!”

“It’s fucking good.” I brought the cup to my lips and slurped the margarita, then put it back on the silver tray. I looked around. The place was beautiful. We were in a colonial hacienda, on the patio, serenaded by chirping birds and a gurgling fountain. A waiter, as discreet as an obstetrician, had just brought our drinks. Cantinflas had his own assistant on hand. It looked as if the newly opened restaurant at the San Ángel Inn was the place to be. All of its patrons seemed to work in the movies, TV, politics, or had at least been involved in sex scandals.

I removed the bundle of dollars from my pants pocket and put it on the table next to my drink. Mr. Moreno stared down at the bills for a second, then they disappeared into his mustard-colored jacket.

“I took my fee from the money. I hope there’s no problem with that,” I told him as I drank the wonderful elixir.

“Then you can guarantee that I’ll never be bothered by that blackmail attempt again? I’m surprised you don’t need the money…” he said with a funny smile; he had erased all traces of his surgery for this public appearance.

“I guarantee it. That’s not your problem anymore. I recommend you find another one,” I responded, finishing off my drink. It was a fact: the San Ángel Inn was the best place for a margarita.

“How do I know you’re telling me the truth, Mr. Pascal?”

“The same way I thought you were telling me the truth when you hired me. And, actually, you lied that time.” I moved a little closer to him. He didn’t budge. He rested on the stool with his legs crossed. “You neither told me you’d hired an ex-police officer to pay the blackmail, nor that when they asked for more money, you fired him because you wanted it to go away. You also never told me it was the same cop who’d interrogated you about the suicide.”

I waited for a reaction from the movie star. He really did deserve a Golden Globe. He didn’t even arch an eyebrow.

“I owe you an apology,” he said, as if he’d merely bumped into me.

I shook my head, disgusted, and got up. A waiter showed me the bill for the margaritas I’d been drinking. I passed it to the famous comedian.

“My pay includes expenses,” I said. The curtain had fallen. I was in the way now. I wanted to leave the terrace but found I couldn’t. I had to know the truth. “I keep asking myself if you knew that cop was the person blackmailing you in Andrea’s name. Maybe you hired him to protect her. Maybe you feared he’d hurt her. You wanted to save her. You wanted me to kick his ass and you’d come out of it squeaky-clean. Was that it?”

In an instant, he put in play the simpleton character that he’d had such success with in his movies. His voice changed, he moved differently. In other words, he ceased being Mario Moreno and became Cantinflas.

“That’s the thing, chato. I’m not the one to tell it, and you aren’t the one to hear it, but rest assured that it’d be pretty tough to figure out…”

He left me with a great big smile. The only one he ever gave me.

Andrea Rojas was waiting for me outside. She was watching the construction on the corner: a Polish factory being converted into housing units. It was being painted in loud colors: blue, yellow, and red.

“Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo used to live there,” she told me. “Each one had their own apartment but he had a bridge built over to her bedroom, since he lived on the other side. Isn’t that romantic?”

“I would have made the bed bigger. It’s a cheaper solution.” I was a little drunk from the margaritas. Andrea looked at me and I fell into her black eyes.

“What are you doing over there? Those people don’t want us. They think we’re trash. You should come back to your hometown. The country’s changing. We could do things. We could bring justice to our people. Why do you have to go back?”

In that moment, I had about a million coherent responses. In almost every case, I told her she was right. But for some reason I didn’t say any of them aloud. I simply held her face and gave her a long, moist kiss. She returned it, and gave me another. I felt like I was in paradise again. Then she pushed me back.

She shook her head sadly. She didn’t understand me. I don’t understand myself either. She turned and walked off down the street. It was the last time I saw her. Years later, I heard she was at Tlatelolco in ’68 when the army shot at student demonstrators. She vanished that night; I never found out what happened to her or her body. That’s why, on nights when I’m a little drunk and get choked up, I imagine she managed to flee from the massacre and take refuge in Guatemala. Maybe she finished her studies and had a daughter who would become a masked hero fighting for justice in our country, just like she’d dreamed.

But I know that can’t be true, because in Mexico, films always have happy endings.