Mexico City Noir (5 page)
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.
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.
