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"Oscar," said his editor, "you're there to cover a
goddamn boxing match."

"This is more important," said Fate, "the fight is
just a little story. What I'm proposing is so much more."

"What
are you proposing?"

"A sketch of the industrial landscape in the third
world," said Fate, "a
p
iece of
reportage
about the current situation in
Mexico
, a
panorama of the border, a serious crime story, for fuck's sake."

"Reportage?"
asked his editor. "Is that French,
nigger? Since when do you speak French?"

"I
don't speak French," said Fate, "but I know what fucking
reportage
is."

"I
know what fucking
reportage
is, too," said the editor, "and I
also know
merci
and
au revoir
and
faire l'amour,
which is the same as
coucher avec
moi.
And I think that you, nigger, want to
coucher avec moi,
but
you've forgot the
voulez-vous,
which in this case ought to have been
your first move. You hear me? You say
voulez-vous
or you can get the
fuck out."

"It's a great story," said Fate.

"How
many black men are involved in this shit?" asked the editor.

"Black men? Say what?" asked Fate.

"How
many niggers have ropes around their neck?" asked the editor.

"How
should I know? I'm talking about a great story," said Fate, "not some
riot in the ghetto."

"So in other words, there are no black men," said the
editor.

"No
black men, but more than two hundred Mexican women killed," said Fate.

"How're
Pickett's odds?" asked the editor.

"Take
Count Pickett and stick him up your black ass," said Fate.

"You
seen the other guy?" asked the editor.

"You
can stick Count Pickett up your black faggot ass," said Fate, "and
ask him to watch it for you because when I get back to
New York
I'm going to kick the shit out of
you."

"You do your job and hold on to your receipts, nigger,"
said the editor.

Fate hung up.

Next
to him, smiling at him, was a woman in jeans and a leather jacket. She was
wearing sunglasses and she had a nice bag and a camera slung over her shoulder.
She looked like a tourist.

"Are
you interested in the Santa Teresa killings?" she asked.

Fate
looked at her and it took him a moment to realize that she had listened to his
phone conversation.

"My
name's Guadalupe Roncal," said the woman, holding out her hand.

He shook it. It was a delicate hand.

"I'm a reporter," said Guadalupe Roncal when Fate let go
of her hand.

"But I'm not here to cover the fight. Boxing doesn't interest
me, though I know some women find it sexy. To be honest, it's always struck me
as vulgar and pointless. How about you? Do you like to watch two grown men hit
each other?"

Fate shrugged his shoulders.

"You won't tell? Fine, I'm not one to judge what you like to
watch. Actually, I don't like any sports. Not boxing, for the reasons I
mentioned, or soccer, or basketball, not even track and field. So you may
wonder what I'm doing in a hotel full of sports reporters instead of someplace
quieter, somewhere I wouldn't have to hear all these pathetic stories of great
forgotten fights every time I come down to the bar. I'll tell you if you come
sit at my table and let me buy you a drink."

As he followed her it occurred to him that he might be in the
company of a crazy person or maybe a hooker, but Guadalupe Roncal didn't look
like a crazy person or a hooker, although Fate didn't really know what Mexican
crazy people or hookers looked like. For that matter, she didn't look like a
reporter. They sat at an outside table, with a view of a building under
construction, a building more than ten stories high. Another hotel, the woman
informed him with indifference. Some workmen leaning on beams or sitting on
piles of bricks were looking at them, or so Fate thought, although it was
impossible to say for sure because the figures moving around the unfinished
building were so small.

"As I said already, I'm a reporter," said Guadalupe
Roncal. "I work for one of the big
Mexico
City
newspapers. And I'm staying at this hotel out of
fear."

"Fear of what?" asked Fate.

"Fear of everything. When you work on something that involves
the killings of women in Santa Teresa, you end up scared of everything. Scared
you'll be beaten up. Scared of being kidnapped. Scared of torture. Of course,
the fear lessens with experience. But I don't have experience. No experience
whatsoever. I'm cursed by a lack of experience. You might even say I'm here
undercover, as an undercover reporter, if there is such a thing. I know
everything about the killings. But I'm not really an expert on the subject.
What I mean is, until a week ago this wasn't my subject. I wasn't up on it, I
hadn't written anything about it, and suddenly, out of the blue, the file
landed on my desk and I was in charge of the investigation. Do you want to know
why?" Fate nodded.

"Because I'm a woman and women can't turn down assignments.
Of course, I already knew what had happened to my predecessor. Everybody at the
paper knew it. The case got a lot of attention. You might even have heard about
it." Fate shook his head. "He was killed, of course. He got in too
deep and they killed him. Not here, in Santa Teresa, but in
Mexico City
. The police said it was a robbery
that went wrong. You want to know how it happened? He got in a taxi. The taxi
drove off. Then it stopped at a corner and two strangers got in. For a while
they drove around to different cash machines, maxing out my predecessor's
credit card, then they headed somewhere on the edge of the city and stabbed
him. He wasn't the first reporter to be killed for what he wrote. Going through
his papers I found information on two others. A woman, a radio correspondent,
who was kidnapped in
Mexico City
, and a Chicano
who worked for an
Arizona
paper called
La Raza,
who disappeared. The two of them were
investigating the killings of women in Santa Teresa. I'd met the radio
correspondent at journalism school. We were never friends. We might've
exchanged a few words at most. But I think I'd met her. Before they killed her
they raped her and tortured her."

"Here,
in Santa Teresa?" asked Fate.

"No, man, in
Mexico
City
. The arm of the killers is long, very long,"
said Guadalupe Roncal in a dreamy voice. "I used to work for the city
section. I almost never got a byline. I was a complete unknown. When my
predecessor was killed, two of the big bosses at the paper came to see me. They
invited me out to lunch. Of course, I thought I'd done something wrong. Or that
one of them wanted to sleep with me. I knew who they were, but I had never
talked to either of them. It was a nice lunch. They were proper and polite, I
was quick and careful. It would've been better if I hadn't made such a good
impression. Then we went back to the paper and they told me to follow them,
they had something important to discuss with me. We went into one of their
offices. The first thing they did was ask me if I'd like a raise. By that point
I had figured out that something strange was going on and I was tempted to say
no, but I said yes, and then they pulled out a piece of paper and named a
figure, which was exactly what I was making as a city reporter, and then they
looked straight at me and named another figure, which was like offering me a
forty percent raise. I almost jumped for joy. Then they handed me the file my
predecessor had put together and told me that from then on I would work solely
and exclusively on the story of the women who'd been killed in Santa Teresa. I
realized that if I said no I'd lose everything. It came out almost as a whisper
when I asked why me. Because you're smart, Lupita, said one of them. Because no
one knows you, said the other."

The woman gave a long sigh. Fate smiled in understanding. They
ordered another whiskey and another beer. The workmen on the building under
construction had disappeared. I'm drinking too much, said the woman.

"Since I read my predecessor's file, I've been drinking lots
of whiskey, much more than I used to, and I drink vodka and tequila, too, and
now I've discovered this Sonoran drink called
bacanom,
and I drink that,
too," said Guadalupe Roncal. "And every day I'm more afraid and
sometimes I can't help being a nervous wreck. You've probably heard that
Mexicans never get scared." She laughed. "It's a lie. We get scared
all right, we just know how to hide it. When I got to Santa Teresa, for
example, I was so scared I thought I was going to die. On the flight here from
Hermosillo
I wouldn't
have minded if the plane crashed. At least it's a quick death, or so they say.
Luckily someone I work with in
Mexico
City
had given me the address of this hotel. He told
me he was going to be at the Sonora Resort to cover the fight and that no one
could hurt me here around all these sportswriters. So here I am. The problem is
that when the fight is over I can't leave with the reporters and I'll have to
stay a few more days in Santa Teresa." "Why?" asked Fate.

"I have to interview the chief suspect in the killings. He's
from the
United States
,
too."

"I had no idea," said Fate.

"How were you going to write about the crimes if you didn't
know that?" asked Guadalupe Roncal.

"I thought I'd do some research. On the phone just now
I was asking for more time."

"My predecessor was the one who knew most about all of this.
It took him seven years to get a general sense of what was going on. Life is
unbearably sad, don't you think?"

Guadalupe Roncal massaged both temples, as if suddenly she felt a
migraine coming on. She whispered something Fate couldn't hear, and then she
tried to flag the waiter but they were the only two at the outside tables. When
she realized, she shivered.

"I have to go visit him in prison," she said. "The
chief suspect—your countryman—has been in prison for years."

"So how can he be the chief suspect?" asked Fate.
"I thought the crimes were still being committed."

"Mysteries of
Mexico
,"
said Guadalupe Roncal. "Do you want to come along? Would you like to come
with me and interview him? The truth is I'd feel better if a man came with me,
which goes against my beliefs as a feminist. Do you have anything against
feminists? It's hard to be a feminist in
Mexico
. Not if you have money,
maybe, but if you're middle class, it's hard. At first it isn't, of course, at
first it's easy, in college it's easy, for example, but as the years go by it
gets harder and harder. Mexican men, I can tell you, find feminism charming
only in young women. But we age quickly here. We're built to age quickly. Thank
goodness I'm still young."

"You're
pretty young," said Fate.

"But I'm scared. And I need company. This morning I drove
past the Santa Teresa prison and I almost had a panic attack."

"Is
it that bad?"

"It's like a dream," said Guadalupe Roncal. "It
looks like something alive."

"Alive?"

"I don't know how to explain it. More alive than an apartment
building, for example. Much more alive. Don't be shocked by what I'm about to
say, but it looks like a woman who's been hacked to pieces. Who's been hacked
to pieces but is still alive. And the prisoners are living
inside
this
woman."

"I understand," said Fate.

"No, I don't think you do, but it doesn't matter. You're
interested, so I'm offering you the chance to meet the chief suspect in the
killings in exchange for your company and protection. I think that seems fair
and equitable. Do we have a deal?"

"It
is fair," said Fate. "And very kind of you. What I don't understand
is what you're afraid of. No one can hurt you in prison. In theory, anyhow,
prisoners can't hurt anyone. They only hurt each other."

"You've
never seen a picture of the chief suspect."

"No,"
said Fate.

Guadalupe
Roncal looked up at the sky and smiled.

"I
must seem crazy," she said, "or like a hooker. But I'm neither. I'm
j
ust nervous and
lately I've been drinking too much. Do you think I want to get you in
bed?"

"No. I believe what you've told me."

"Among my poor predecessor's papers there were several
photographs. A few of the suspect. Three, to be precise. All three taken in
prison. In two of them, the gringo—sorry, I didn't mean that to be offensive—is
sitting and looking at the camera, probably in a visitor's room. He has very
blond hair and very blue eyes. Eyes so blue he looks blind. In the third
picture he's standing up, looking to the side. He's hugely tall and thin, very
thin, but not feeble looking at all. He has the face of a dreamer. I don't know
if that makes sense. He doesn't look uncomfortable. He's in prison, but I don't
get the sense he's uncomfortable. He doesn't seem calm or relaxed, either. And
he doesn't seem angry. He has the face of a dreamer, but of a dreamer who's
dreaming at great speed. A dreamer whose dreams are far out ahead of our
dreams. And that scares me. Do you understand?"