Tequila Blue (3 page)

*

En route to the office I was furious. I was counting on that money for Gloria's expenses. I was a bit behind in looking after her, and although she never goes short Gloria likes to moan over
nothing. From her voice on the phone and some of the things she had said to me, I could tell she was on the verge of an attack of nerves.

It was twenty-five past ten, and I had an appointment with the gringo's wife at half past. Just time to call in on Luis and sort out the sale of the guns.

For half a mile I was stuck behind a stupid old bat who shouldn't even have been in charge of a supermarket trolley. I had to switch my siren on and run into her bumpers a couple of times for her to get out of the way. As I sped past she looked over at me in terror. I gave her the middle finger in a classic suggestion she should go fuck her ancestors.

“The deal's done, Luis,” I told him when I finally got to the bar. “The parabellums are eight hundred dollars. I'll let you have them for seven hundred, so you'll make a hundred on each. I'll bring them tomorrow. But I need a bit of an advance to buy them.”

Luis looked at me suspiciously.

“That's way over, Carlos,” he said. “I've been offered some long-barrelled .38s for four hundred. You'll have to drop the price.”

I struggled with the sausage and potatoes lying listlessly on my plate, took a good swig of coffee and then started slowly in on my chocolate flan.

“Six bullets, short range, no precision: that's a revolver for you. Plus you've no idea where they've come from. And God forbid, but if anyone is caught some day with one of them in his hand,
you can bet your boots even the most stupid cop will discover it was the very one used in the latest unsolved murder. I'm offering you clean weapons, with twelve bullets in the magazine as well as the one in the chamber, with a decent range and top accuracy. There's no comparison.”

“I know. It's the price that's the problem. Can't you go any lower?”

“How much are you willing to pay?”

“No more than six hundred.”

I did a quick mental calculation. Perhaps I could get Amaya down to five hundred then sell them to Luis at six-fifty.

“Let me see,” I said. “It won't be easy. I'll need an advance.”

“No way, Carlos, and for the same reason there's no contract. You bring the rods, and I'll pay in full. But get a move on. If I'm buying from you, it has to be tomorrow.”

“I'll get them to you today.”

If you feel humiliated and find you want to get heavy with a friend, the best thing to do is to make yourself scarce. Not to mention the fact that the remains of my breakfast were staring up at me from the plate.

At some time between one and one-thirty a.m. on Saturday morning, Jones entered the Malibu Hotel with a blonde-haired, blue-eyed young woman of average height who was wearing trousers and leather boots and jacket. She did not come near the desk but stayed in the shadows. There was nothing unusual about this, as it was common among the type of women who came to this hotel. At three in the morning, the blonde woman came down, but now she had turned into a blond man (apparently it must have been a transvestite). S/he paid for the room and asked for her companion to be wakened at nine.

With regard to the change from woman to man, Juan Avina Recalde, the hotel manager, confirms this was the case and states that he sees them every day, knows their little tricks and is never fooled by them.

At nine that morning Jones's dead body was discovered. He was lying naked on the bed, with a bullet from a .9mm revolver in his head.

The details surrounding the crime lead to the supposition that this came about as the result of an argument between homosexuals
.

I slid into the office and took a good look at the woman waiting for me. She was young, fair-haired, shapely and with a look about her that confirmed
my theory that the essential thing about a woman is not so much the way she is built but the light shining from her windows. No female is sexy if she goes through life with a face like a funeral.

Estela Lopez de Jones was doing her best to give the appearance of being the grieving wife. She wasn't very good at it. She was too much the TV soap opera heroine about to swoon in despair. I summed her up at once: a cheat. I couldn't see her making that hole in her husband's head, but I could imagine her waiting for the blond criminal stretched out with a glass of whisky and romantic music in the darkness of a plush room, then screwing him till dawn.

I offered her my condolences, asked her to take a seat then searched in my desk drawer for Estela Lopez de Jones's initial statement. It would help me follow the sequence of events and check on any possible discrepancies.

Estela Lopez de Jones was Colombian. Without the make-up, her face looked very different. Her honey-coloured hair was pulled back in a ponytail, her twenty-four years poured into a black tailored suit. She had been living in Los Angeles since the age of nineteen. Before marrying Jones, she had been a checkout girl in a cheap clothes store owned by her father.

I remembered something important. I apologized for keeping her waiting and stepped out of the office.

Laura was on the phone – talking to some boyfriend of hers, to judge by the beatific smile – and
wasn't exactly enthusiastic when I asked her to go to the bank for me.

I made out a cheque and left the amount blank.

“See how much is in my account and fill it in. Leave five thousand pesos in so they don't close it down. Go on, there's a good girl, Laurita. You can come in an hour later tomorrow. I'll fix it.”

Laura is skinny, lazy and spiteful. She can't type a page without making a spelling mistake on every line, and she's always trying to pick up any pair of trousers that passes her desk. With me she's given up. I did her the favour once, but she soon started behaving as though she were my wife, so that was an end to it. She's hated me ever since. Luckily, I'm her superior.

We also have an assistant in the office. What you might call an
office boy
, if that weren't too frivolous and yankee a term for a federal government office in Mexico City. His only talent is never to be around when you need him, and when he is there, to take a whole morning to go to the bank on the corner and back. That's why we call him Silver Bullet; and on rare occasions we succeed in getting him to buy us cigarettes or a sandwich.

Maribel and dona Juana, the lady in charge of cleaning, are also there.

The others are professionals, clerks and cops. And although most of them are hardly even up to running errands, we have to keep up appearances.

I could see the gringo's widow was getting impatient. I excused myself again and began to
go through the most important points of her statement with her.

She had been living in the United States for five years and had been married to Jones for eighteen months. Her husband ran a very successful advertising agency. The staff could only feel grateful to him, although in all truth (even though this was hardly relevant) there are always envious and selfish people willing to speak evil of others and to forget the benefits they have received.

“Let's turn to the day of the unfortunate event,” I said, to bring her back to business.

“The sixth of January began as a wonderful day,” said Estela Lopez de Jones, half-closing her eyes as though evoking a tender memory. “Jones used to spoil me a lot, perhaps to make up for the difference in our ages. And that day he gave me a huge fluffy tortoise as a present. It was so big we joked we could use it as a mattress.”

Two images flashed through my mind: Jones making this an erotic Twelfth Night with the gift of a tortoise on which, if he was lucky, he had had his last fuck or, at worst, had imagined doing it; the other, Estela Lopez de Jones naked and in action on the tortoise with the criminal.

“That morning, my husband had work to do,” she went on. “We had lunch at a restaurant in the Zona Rosa. In the afternoon he had to see people and more work. He came home at about eight. We had something to eat, then Valadez came. I went to bed at half past ten. I watched TV for a while,
then fell asleep. That was the last time I saw my husband alive.”

At this point Estela Lopez de Jones appeared to be overcome with emotion and raised her unpainted nails to her blue eyes. Thirty seconds went by, which I used to observe her, light another cigarette and remember that Valadez was someone well worth investigating. He was a Cuban who had left the island when Castro came to power and had lived several years in Miami before settling in Mexico.
He has travelled to the United States ten times in the past three years. He frequents nightclubs and spends a lot of money. He hands out business cards claiming to be a “business and investment adviser” and others where he says he is an “artistic manager”. He has been charged five times, twice for fraud and three times for swindling. He has been close to Jones since he arrived in Mexico
. Eventually Estela Lopez de Jones heaved a sigh, said “I'm sorry”, reached into her bag for a paper handkerchief to wipe away her tears, then got out a packet of John Players.

“What happened after that?” I asked.

“The next morning I was told he had been found dead in a disreputable hotel.”

I looked at the time on my watch, and it was late. A minute afterwards I said goodbye to the widow, warning I would be visiting her again the next day.

*

I bought three dolls and a box of sweets at the Sanborn's opposite the Chapultepec cinema. I
could see it already: Gloria would be waiting for me, the most loving and cheerful of women, she would find a moment when the kids weren't around to have a “serious” word and go through the list of all that she needed, combined with an affectionate reproach for spending so much on presents when I could have used the money for repairing the washing machine. I put my foot down on the accelerator. I was in a hurry to be with Gloria and to forget Lourdes.

“Hi there, sir!” Benjamin, Sonia and Berenice greeted me in joyful unison.

They were pleased to see me, though they were pretending the opposite. When they are pleased with me, they call me daddy; when they are upset, they call me sir. I've never had the slightest doubt that it's Gloria who tells them which way to greet me.

After handing over presents and money, after reassuring disbelieving eyes that I would be having dinner there again the next evening, I was daddy once more, I was my love, daddydaddydaddy.

Gloria is a gorgeous woman from Puebla. She is twenty-nine, with fine white skin, auburn hair and huge hazel eyes that are quick to show when she's happy or sad. Her main difference with Lourdes is that sometimes she gives off such a sense of happiness that her face and body positively shine. Lourdes is beautiful too, but she's more edgy and sharp. Her hysterical character is starting to bring wrinkles of disappointment to her face, and she hardly ever laughs spontaneously.

After we had lunch, a chat around the table and then a very satisfactory siesta, at twenty past five in the afternoon I explained to Gloria we had been
robbed of a thousand dollars. I led her to the phone and dialled the money exchange number.

“This is Carolina Esparza,” she told them, without batting an eyelid. “A cousin of Maria de los Angeles. Is she there?

“I know she doesn't work there any more,” she said, all smiles, “but Angeles told me she would be in the office this afternoon sorting out some loose ends. So, well, I don't know . . .

“Yes, I understand,” she said, eyes gleaming, squeezing my knee. “Yes, yes . . . No. Don't go to the trouble. I'll get in touch with her myself. Yes, very kind, goodbye.”

“They're expecting Rosenthal,” she told me. “They said Angeles might possibly be with him.”

I called the office. The irony and curtness in Maribel's voice were deliberate. None of the men we can usually call on for a special mission were there. The only males around were Silver Bullet and the Commander. I asked to speak to the boy.

“Listen, but don't speak,” I told him. “There's two hundred dollars in it for you. I need you to come with me on an easy job. I'll be waiting for you in twenty minutes on the corner of Reforma and Estocolmo, on the west side. Now get off the phone, but don't hang up. Tell Mirabel I want to speak to the boss. And you, set off to meet me.”

“Which is the west side?” asked Silver Bullet.

I explained and repeated how urgent it was. Maribel was playing dumb, giving herself airs and trying to make me feel inferior. I had to be short
and sharp to get her to put me through to the Commander.

“For the good of both of us, I hope you're in luck, Officer.” The Commander's voice was gloomy and ambiguous, and that “good for both of us” sounded ominous.

*

Silver Bullet dresses as if he were his own father and stuffs his nineteen years into a body typical of someone who gets no exercise and eats nothing but tacos. He has a round face, round eyes and a rat's tail moustache. I could tell he was really excited, because he had his hands out of his pockets.

As he got into my Atlantic, I explained: