The Shadow of the Shadow (6 page)

Tomas Wong crossed to the end of the warehouse looking for
the clerk. When he finally found him, lost among the giant rolls
of cloth, the man gave him a dozen vague excuses about why the
wood he needed hadn't come in yet. "Somebody's scamming here,"
thought the Chinaman. That was the kind of game the nonunion
workers played. If it had been a union man, it would have been
different. The union had its code of honor. The workers fought
head-on with the bosses. If someone needed extra money, he could
earn it organizing for the union. The code had been born with the
union and passed down from veterans to newcomers. No one had
ever bothered to write it down but everyone knew what it said:
Never talk to the foremen unless your work requires it; always
work out production problems among the workers; cover for sick
or tired comrades; support and nourish the apprentice.

Now as Tomas headed back toward the yard loaded down with
wood for the shipping crates, the "All-seeing" suddenly stepped in
front of him.

"You lousy Chinese bum," he growled.

The Chinaman dropped the wood onto the floor. He spoke
slowly:

"Look, in the last thlee months two folemen have got themselves killed in the mills hele alound San Angel and Contlelas.
You know why that is, Maganda? Because they couldn't lealn to
stay out of the way, to not get mixed up with the stlike between
the wolkels and the factoly. I don't talk much. You do youl job, I'll
do mine, and that's as fal as it needs to go."

"You think you're pretty hot stuff don't you, Chiney? You think
you can scare me?"

Tomas only hit him once, with his already swollen hand.
Maganda fell backward, a cut over his right eye. He looked up
uneasily from the floor, but the Chinaman's cold stare cut him
short.

The Chinaman picked up the wood and walked away. When
he reached his comrades, who had watched the whole thing from
a distance, he put down the lumber and massaged his hand. The
swelling was getting worse.

"...A SORT OF BLUE-GRAY GABARDINE, and a blue
velvet ribbon around her neck. White lace cuffs, and a bonnet,"
explained the journalist.

"Who ever would've thought you had such an eye for feminine attire?"The poet laughed as he mixed the bones.

"It's amazing when you consider the fact I only saw her for a
second. When I got down to the street, I ran right past the body
and went into the building to look for her, but she wasn't there. I
swear I looked everywhere."

"Do you think she killed him?" asked Verdugo the lawyer,
pouring himself a generous glassful of Havana brandy and stretching
his legs out under the table. He wore an elegant pair of new boots
purchased with the proceeds from his latest successful case.

"Who can say?" Manterola scratched his rising hairline and
pictured the woman's fear-filled face seconds after the man broke
through the window and fell three floors to the street.

"You'd think this was some rinkydink little town, the way
things are going around here-first the trombonist and now
this. And they say this town's getting so big you never run into
anybody you know anymore..."

"You want to go filst of you want me to?" the Chinaman asked
Manterola.

"That hand of yours is never going to get any better if you
keep on busting heads," answered Manterola, giving his partner
the go-ahead with a wave of his hand.

The Chinaman played the double-threes, and the poet and
the lawyer pulled their chairs up to the table. The ritual had
begun. Now the conversation mixed with the dry click of the
bones, forming a tangle of words and dominoes, double-fives
and five/fours. The cantina was far from quiet. Two melancholy
drunks sat drowning their sorrows at one end of the bar; a kid
played an out-of-tune guitar at a table by the door; and a Lebanese fabric merchant, talking at the top of his lungs, was trying
to convince his two drinking buddies of the potential profits to
be gotten by establishing a new mule route over the mountains
to Acapulco, traditional bastion of the Spanish where his countrymen have never managed to get a foothold. And if that weren't
enough, Reckless Ross sat at the other end of the bar telling a
bored bartender how three years ago in Chicago-before he
found himself obliged to "travel around countries the size of a
postage stamp giving shows in fleabag theaters,"-he broke
the U. S. motorcycle speed record. His narrative came liberally
embellished with the roar of a motor emerging from a throat
heavily lubricated with shots of mezcal.

"So what'd you think when you checked out the guy's wallet?"
asked the poet.

"Took a little balls on your part, didn't it?" added the lawyer
Verdugo.

"Never fear, play away," said Manterola noticing the Chinaman's hesitation.

"You just pay attention, okay? I've got this one lapped up,"
said Tomas, setting the two/one onto the table.

"Watch it, poet, I smell a trap," said Verdugo, more than
anything else to gauge his opponents' reaction.

"I didn't search him," explained Manterola. "A traffic cop had
already gotten there by the time I gave up looking for the lady.
When I told him I was a reporter, he showed me the guy's wallet
and that's when I got the big surprise..."

The poet pulled his own surprise, playing a two and forcing everyone else to pass. Enjoying his move in silence, he played the
two/three.

"Playing it pretty close to the chest there, eh partner?" nodded
the lawyer Verdugo admiringly.

"Just luck is all," said the poet.

"Looks like we're screwed, Tomas," said Manterola.

"It isn't ovel yet," said the Chinaman flatly.

"Anyway, that's when I find out the guy's name is Colonel
Froilan Zevada, and I say to myself, `Now isn't that a hell of a
coincidence.' Enough to make a man nervous. Two Zevadas in
one week. First yours and now mine..."

"I hear you," said the poet. "If you'd only seen the way they
blew that trombonist's brains out, you'd know what nervous really
was.

"You surely don't expect me to believe that was the first time
you ever saw anyone's brains blown out? After all the time you
spent in the Northern Division where they'd blow a fellow's
brains out at the drop of a hat," said Verdugo.

"And then eat them," put in the Chinaman.

"Go ahead and have your fun, but the fact is it was a little too
much to have to watch a fellow's head blown open while he was
playing the Alvaro Obreg6n March."

"I hadn't thought about that," said the lawyer.

The Chinaman turned the game to fours, forcing everyone to
pass, and giving his partner the next move.

"See what I mean, inkslingel?"

"Trust in the eternal wisdom of the Orient, that's what I
always say. Dios nunca muere. God never dies."

"Wasn't that Confucius who said that?" asked the poet.

"Don't ask me, I'm an atheist," said Tomas Wong. He
smiled.

"Do you remember the photograph of that young woman you
found in the trombonist's pocket?" asked Verdugo.

"What? Do you think...?" said the poet.

Manterola looked up from the dominoes and stared at the
lawyer. "Licenciado," he said, "you have what they call a powerful
recall."

FERM 1N VALENCIA HEARD THE BLARE of car horns
as he walked along Reforma toward the offices of a mining
engineer who'd contracted him to write "a few love poems at
a modest price." The fellow had been struck bitterly by his love
for a chorus girl from the Arbeu Vaudeville Theater but, as he
himself admitted, was incapable of putting six words together in
a row with any kind of feeling.

The poet turned his head and was greeted by an unexpected
sight: a long line of cars moved slowly in his direction. At the
head of the line were six Fords with about a hundred men
marching on foot behind them, followed in turn by some three
hundred cars and trucks. Picket signs waved in the air: "Ban the
time card!" "No more police assaults!"

As the protesters drew level with him, the poet made up his
mind and jumped onto the running board of one of the passing
trucks.

"Got room for a fellow traveler?"

"Make yourself at home," said the driver, sealing their pact
of solidarity with a nod.

The poet tried to decide whether to go along with the march
or finish one of the verses he was working on for the engineer.
But the rhymes in his head took over for him and he floated in
that cottony paradise all the way until the caravan of cars and
trucks turned into the Zocalo, horns blaring raucously.

Most of the demonstrators left their vehicles parked in the
wide avenue and the poet got down from the truck and started
off toward his appointment with the engineer. Then from the
balconies of City Hall someone started firing on the demonstra tion. Panic seized the crowd of drivers spread across the plaza,
and the demonstrators ran for cover, some toward the National
Palace, others toward the shops that fronted the square.

The next day, after conferring with the poet, Pioquinto
Manterola would write in El Democrata: "Nobody could have
guessed what was about to happen. The tragedy spread its bloody
wings over demonstrators and spectators alike."

The drivers counterattacked, hurling stones at the windows
of City Hall. Firemen tried to disperse the crowd with water
hoses. Then came the charges of the mounted police, which the
drivers met head-on in their vehicles. A pair of gendarmes rolled
on the ground beside their dying horses. The sirens of the Red
Cross and the White Cross added to the confusion. A certain
Captain Villasenor, whom the poet recognized from earlier days
in Ciudad Juarez, was swept away by a crowd of taxi drivers
charging through the arched doorways of City Hall.

A cab driver lay bleeding from a bullet wound. The poet,
hidden under a delivery truck, watched the parade of feet,
wheels and hoofs passing before his bulging eyes. Stones flew
through the air. The streetcars stopped their circuit around the
plaza. Finally the city employees who had started the riot by
firing on the demonstrators abandoned the balconies under the
hail of stones.