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The next dead woman turned up
in August 1994, on Callejon Las Animas, almost at the end of the alley, where
there were four abandoned houses, five counting the victim's house. She wasn't
a stranger, but, oddly, no one could say what her name was. No personal papers
or anything that might lead to a rapid identification were found in the house,
where she had lived alone for three years. A few people, not many, knew her
first name was Isabel, but almost everyone called her La Vaca. She was a
solidly built woman, five foot five, dark-skinned, with short curly hair. She
must have been about thirty. According to some of her neighbors, she worked as
a hooker at a club downtown or in Madero-Norte. According to others, La Vaca
had never worked. And yet it couldn't be said she was short of money. When her
house was searched, the kitchen shelves were found to be full of canned food.
She also had a refrigerator (she stole electricity from the city lines, like
most of her neighbors on the alley), well stocked with meat, milk, eggs, and
vegetables.
 
She dressed carelessly, and
no one could say she put on airs. She had a new TV and a video player, and the
police counted more than sixty tapes, most of them romances or melodramas, that
she'd bought over the last few years. Behind the house was a little yard full
of plants, and, in a corner, a wire chicken coop with a rooster and ten hens.
The case was handled jointly by Epifanio Galindo and Inspector Ernesto Ortiz
Rebolledo, with Juan de Dios
Martinez
joining them as backup, neither side particularly happy about the arrangement.
It didn't take much digging to discover that La Vaca's life was unpredictable
and full of contradictions. According to an old lady who lived at the head of
the alley, women like Isabel were few and far between. She was the real thing.
One night a drunken neighbor was hitting his wife. Everyone who lived on the
alley heard her screams, which rose or fell in intensity as time passed, as if
the battered woman was in the throes of a difficult childbirth, the kind that
often ends in the death of the mother and the little angel. But the woman
wasn't giving birth, she was just being beaten. Then the old woman heard
footsteps and went to the window. In the gloom of the alley she glimpsed the
unmistakable silhouette of Isabelita. Anyone else would have walked on home,
but the old woman saw how La Vaca stopped and stood there. Listening. Just then
the screams weren't very loud, but after a few minutes the volume rose again
and during all that time, the old woman said to the police with a smile, La
Vaca stood motionless, waiting, like someone who walks down a random street and
suddenly hears
her favorite song, the saddest song in the world, coming from a window. And
it's clear which window it is. What happened next is hard to believe. La Vaca
went into the house and when she came back out she was dragging the man by the
hair. I saw it myself, said the old woman, and maybe everyone saw it, but they
were too embarrassed to say so. She hit like a man, and if the drunk's wife
hadn't come out of the house and asked her for the love of God to stop hitting
him, La Vaca would've killed him for sure. Another neighbor testified that she
was a violent woman, that she came home late, usually drunk, and then no one
would see hide nor hair of her until after five in the afternoon. It didn't
take Epifanio long to establish a connection between La Vaca and two men who
had recently been visiting her, one of them called El Mariachi and the other El
Cuervo, who often stayed to sleep or stopped by every day, and other times
vanished as if they had never existed. La Vaca's friends were probably
musicians, not just because of the first one's nickname, but because they were
occasionally seen walking down the alley with their guitars. While Epifanio
visited clubs with live music in the center of Santa Teresa and around
Madero-Norte, Inspector Juan de Dios
Martinez
kept investigating in the alley. The conclusions he drew were the following:
(1) La Vaca was a good person, according to the majority opinion of the women;
(2) La Vaca didn't work, but she always had plenty of money; (3) La Vaca could
be extremely violent and she had strong ideas about right and wrong,
rudimentary ideas, but ideas nonetheless; (4) someone was giving La Vaca money
in exchange for something. Four days later El Mariachi and El Cuervo were
arrested. They turned out to be the musicians Gustavo Dominguez and Renato
Hernandez Saldana, respectively, and after being questioned at Precinct #3 they
declared that they had committed the murder on Callejon Las Animas. As it
happened, it was a movie that triggered the crime, a movie La Vaca wanted to
watch and couldn't because her friends kept bursting out laughing. All three of
them were pretty drunk. La Vaca started it, punching El Mariachi. At first El
Cuervo didn't want to get involved, but when La Vaca started swinging at him he
had to defend himself. The fight was long and fair, said El Mariachi. La Vaca
had asked them to step out into the street so they wouldn't damage the
furniture, and they obeyed. Once they were outside, La Vaca informed them that
it would be a clean fight, fists only, and they agreed, although they knew how
strong their friend was. After all, she weighed almost one hundred and eighty
pounds. And it wasn't fat, it was muscle, said El Cuervo. Outside,
in the dark, they really started to give each other hell.
They kept it up for almost half an hour, back and forth, without a pause. When
the fight was over, El Mariachi's nose was broken and he was bleeding from both
eyebrows, and El Cuervo was complaining of a rib he said was broken. La Vaca
was on the ground. Only when they tried to hoist her up did they realize she
was dead. The case was closed.

Shortly afterward, Inspector
Juan de Dios
Martinez
went to visit the musicians at the Santa Teresa penitentiary. He brought them
cigarettes and a few magazines and asked how things were going. We can't
complain, boss, said El Mariachi. The inspector said he had some friends inside
and he could help them if they wanted. What do you want from us in return?
asked El Mariachi. Just some information, said the inspector. What kind of
information? Very simple. You and La Vaca were friends, close friends. I'll ask
you some questions, you answer them, that's all. Let's hear the questions, said
El Mariachi. Did you sleep with La Vaca? No, said El Mariachi. And what about
you? Never, said El Cuervo. Well, now, said the inspector. And why is that? La
Vaca didn't like men, she was already macho enough herself, said El Mariachi.
Do you know her full name? asked the inspector. No idea, said El Mariachi, we
just called her Vaca. Real close friends, weren't you? said the inspector. It's
the honest truth, boss, said El Mariachi. So do you know where she got her
money from? asked the inspector. We wondered that ourselves, boss, said El
Cuervo, because we would've liked to make a few extra pesos, but La Vaca never
talked about it. And didn't she have any friends, I mean besides you and the
old women in the alley? asked the inspector. Sure, once when we were in my car
she pointed out a friend of hers, said El Mariachi, some girl who worked in a
coffee shop downtown, nothing special, on the skinny side, but La Vaca pointed
and asked if I had ever seen such a pretty woman. I said no, so she wouldn't
get mad, but really the girl wasn't anything special. What was her name? asked
the inspector. She didn't tell me her name, said El Mariachi, and she didn't
introduce me to her either.

While the police were working
to solve the murder of La Vaca, Harry Magana found the house where Miguel
Montes lived. One Saturday afternoon he kept watch, and after two hours, tired
of waiting, he forced
the lock and went in. The house had only one room and a
kitchen and a bathroom. On the walls were pictures of
Hollywood
actors and actresses. On a shelf were two framed photographs of Miguel himself,
and he really was a kid with an honest face, good-looking, the kind of man
women like. He went through all the drawers. In one he found a checkbook and a
knife. When he lifted the mattress on the bed he found some magazines and
letters. He flipped through the magazines. In the kitchen, under a cupboard, he
came upon an envelope containing four Polaroids. One was of a house in the
middle of the desert, a modest-looking adobe house, with a little porch and two
tiny windows. A four-wheel-drive pickup was parked next to the house. Another
picture was of two girls with their arms around each other's shoulders, their
heads tilted to the left, gazing at the camera with similar expressions of
incredible assurance, as if they had just set foot on this planet or their
suitcases were already packed to leave. This picture was taken on a crowded
street, which might have been in downtown Santa Teresa. The third picture was
of a little plane on a dirt landing strip, in the desert. Behind the little
plane was a hill. Everything else was flat, nothing but sand and scrub. The
last picture was of two men who weren't looking at the camera and were probably
drunk or high, dressed in white shirts, one of them in a hat, shaking hands as
if they were great friends. He looked everywhere for the Polaroid camera but
couldn't find it. He put the pictures, the letters, and the knife in his
pocket, and after searching the house once more he sat down in a chair to wait.
Miguel Montes didn't come back that night or the next. He thought maybe he'd
had to leave town in a hurry or maybe he was dead. He felt depressed. Luckily
for him, ever since he'd met Demetrio Aguila he no longer stayed at a
boardinghouse or hotel or spent sleepless nights wandering from dive bar to
dive bar and drinking. Instead, he slept at the house on Calle Luciernaga, in
Colonia Rube'n Dario, owned by his friend, who had given him a key. The little
house, despite what a person might expect, was always clean, but its
cleanliness, its neatness, lacked any feminine touch: it was a stoic
cleanliness, utterly graceless, like the cleanliness of a prison or monastery
cell, a cleanliness that tended toward sparseness, not abundance. Sometimes
when he came in he found Demetrio Aguila making
cafe de olla
in the kitchen and the two of them would sit in the
living room and talk. Talking to the Mexican relaxed him. The Mexican talked
about the days when he'd been a cowboy at the Triple T ranch and about the ten
ways to tame a wild colt. Sometimes Harry told him he should come to Arizona to
visit and the Mexican answered that it was all the same, Arizona, Sonora, New
Mexico, Chihuahua, it's all the same, and Harry thought about it and in the end
he couldn't accept that it was all the same, but it made him sad to contradict
Demetrio Aguila and so he didn't. Other times they would go out together and
the Mexican was able to observe the gringo's methods from close up. He didn't
like their harshness in principle, but he believed they were justified. That
night, when Harry got back to the house on Calle Luciernaga, he found Demetrio
Aguila up, and as he made coffee he told him he thought his last lead had disappeared.
Demetrio Aguila didn't say anything. He poured the coffee and made scrambled
eggs with bacon. The two of them began to eat in silence. I think nothing ever
disappears, said the Mexican. There are people, and animals, too, and even
objects, that for one reason or another sometimes seem to want to disappear, to
vanish. Whether you believe it or not, Harry, sometimes a stone wants to
vanish, I've seen it. But God won't let it happen. He won't let it happen
because He can't. Do you believe in God, Harry? Yes, Senor Demetrio, said Harry
Magana. Well, then, trust in God, He won't let anything disappear.

•

Around
this time, Juan de Dios
Martinez
was still sleeping with Dr. Elvira Campos every two weeks. Sometimes the
inspector thought it was a miracle the relationship had survived. There were
difficulties, there were misunderstandings, but they were still together. In
bed, or so he believed, the attraction was mutual. He had never wanted a woman
the way he wanted her. If it had been up to him he would have married the
director without a second thought. Sometimes, when it had been a long time
since he saw her, he began to mull over their cultural differences, which he
saw as the main hurdle. The director liked art and could look at a painting and
say who the painter was, for example. The books she read he had never heard of.
The music she listened to just made him pleasantly drowsy, and after a while
all he wanted was to lie down and sleep which, of course, he was careful not to
do at her apartment. Even the food the director liked was different from the
food he liked. He tried to adapt to these new circumstances and sometimes he
would go to a record store and buy some Beethoven or Mozart, which he would
then listen to alone at home. Usually he fell asleep. But his
dreams were peaceful and happy. He dreamed that he and
Elvira Campos lived together in a cabin in the mountains. The cabin didn't have
electricity or running water or anything to remind them of civilization. They
slept on a bearskin, with a wolf skin over them. And sometimes Elvira Campos
laughed, a ringing laugh, as she went running into the woods and he lost sight
of her.

Let's
read the letters, Harry, said Demetrio Aguila. I'll read them to you as many
times as you need me to. The first letter was from an old friend of Miguel's
who lived in Tijuana, although the envelope wasn't postmarked, and it was a
catalog of memories of the happy times they'd had together. It made reference
to baseball, hookers, stolen cars, fights, alcohol, and it mentioned in passing
at least five crimes for which Miguel Monies and his friend could have gotten
jail time. The second letter was from a woman. It had been postmarked in Santa
Teresa itself. The woman demanded money and insisted on swift payment.
Otherwise beware the consequences, it said. The third letter, to judge by the
handwriting, since it wasn't signed either, was from the same woman, with whom
Miguel still hadn't settled his debt, and it said he had three days to show up
with the money, you know where, and if not—and here, according to Demetrio
Aguila and also Harry Magana, it was possible to discern a hint of sympathy,
the hint of feminine sympathy Miguel could always count on, even at the worst
of moments—the woman recommended that he leave town as soon as possible and
without a word to anybody. The fourth letter was from another friend, and it
might have come from
Mexico City
,
although the postmark was illegible. The friend, a northerner who had recently
arrived in the capital, described his impressions of the big city: he talked
about the metro, which he compared to a mass grave, about the coldness of the
residents of Mexico City, who never lifted a finger to help anyone, about how
hard it was to get around, since in Mexico City there was no point having a badass
car because the traffic jams were endless, about the pollution and how ugly the
women were. Regarding this he made some tasteless jokes. The last letter was
from a girl from Chucarit, near Navojoa, in the south of
Sonora
, and, predictably, it was a love
letter. It said of course she would wait, she would be patient, that even
though she was dying to see him it was up to him to take the first step, and
she was in no hurry. It sounds like a letter from a hometown girlfriend, said
Demetrio Aguila. Chucarit, said Harry
Magana. I have a
hunch our man was born there, Senor Demetrio. Will you believe that's just what
I was thinking? said Demetrio Aguila.