Murder at the Watergate (21 page)

And like Garza, she was dead.

Because they believed in something.

There was no reasoning with those in Mexico who held the power. Bargain? Futile. Appeal to their sensitivities, to their religious convictions? A coarse joke.

He squeezed into a battered green-and-white Volkswagen Beetle and gave the taxi driver an address in the clearer, healthier hills to the north. It took twenty minutes to break free of the city and begin the ascent on a road running through long rows of huge cardon cactus until the junipers and pink, red, and fuchsia bougainvilleas replaced them.

The driver turned onto a wide, winding road that passed large, handsome houses set back behind pink, white, and yellow masonry walls. He stopped outside the one with the number Kelly had given him.

“You want me to wait?” the driver asked. “No charge to wait.”

“
Gracias
, no,” Kelly said, paying, and unfolding his way out of the small vehicle.

The taxi pulled away, fumes pouring from its tailpipe. Kelly approached a heavy wooden gate. There was a buzzer to the right. He pushed. A voice came through a small intercom high up on a post.

“Who is it?” a woman asked in Spanish.

“Ramon Kelly.”

“Un momento.”

The gate had a small opening covered with metal mesh through which Kelly could see the front entrance. A man came through it and slowly crossed a circular redbrick drive. He unlatched the gate and opened it enough to see the visitor.

“Ramon Kelly. I have an appointment with Senor Flores.”

The man was short and heavy. He wore a multipocketed tan vest over a black T-shirt. The edge of a shoulder holster protruded through the vest’s opening.

For a moment, Ramon wondered whether the man was about to usher him inside or slam the gate in his face. Then, he stepped back and said,
“Adelante!”

“Gracias.”

Kelly had been in the homes of the Mexican wealthy before; still, this extravagant decor was a surprise. The floor of the entrance hall was gleaming red-and-white hand-cut marble. A large hammered-copper sculpture dominated one wall; Kelly recognized it as having come from Michoacán, a fine example of a votive offering to the saints crafted by Tarascan Indians. Crossed swords defined the wall opposite, causing Kelly to recall words to the Mexican national anthem: “Mexicans, ready your swords and saddle to the call of war …”

“Wait here,” the man said, disappearing down a short hallway and through a door at its end. Ramon waited nervously, moving from foot to foot. He suffered a fleeting doubt about his clothing: jeans, a blue chambray work shirt, cowboy boots, and light tan windbreaker. Perhaps he should have—

“Senor Kelly.”

Ramon turned to see Oswaldo Flores approaching, his hand outstretched. He was tall. He wore a navy blue blazer, gray slacks, brown tasseled loafers, and a teal silk shirt open at the neck to display a heavy gold chain and cross. “Welcome to my home.”

“I am sorry to be here under such unfortunate circumstances. I wanted to attend Laura’s funeral but—”

“No need to explain. Washington is very far from Mexico City. Sometimes too far, sometimes not far enough. Come. Where we can be comfortable.”

The living room of Flores’s home was spacious and warmly appointed. The walls were filled with eclectic and expensive art—an original Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo self-portraits, a huge religious painting by Miguel Cabéra, and three stunning examples of Fernando García Pónce’s abstract works.

“Please, sit,” Flores said, indicating a small floral couch. A leather-inlaid coffee table separated the couch from two high-backed red leather chairs. Flores took one of them, lighted a cigarette, and released a stream of smoke into the air. Kelly had stopped smoking two years ago and now wished he hadn’t.

“The funeral was, as you would expect, a sad day for all of us,” Flores said. His voice was deep and well modulated, his words chosen carefully. There was discernible sadness in his voice, but his brown eyes did not mirror it. They fixed on Ramon with the unblinking persistence of a surveillance camera.

“A terrible experience,” Kelly said. “Senora Flores? How has she taken it?”

“Not well. She and our two other daughters have gone
to our country home to rest. I was to accompany them but business keeps me here.”

“Of course.”

The silence was awkward.

“Would you like a drink?” Flores asked. “Lunch will be served in a few minutes.”

“No need for that,” Kelly said.

“Then I will have to eat alone. The drink?”

“A Coke?”

Flores’s fleshy lips parted in a smile. “You have become a true American,” he said, going to the door, where a housekeeper stood. He returned to his chair. “Of course, Coca-Cola is but one of so many American ideas that are now part of our culture. It is very popular here, too,
sí?
But we do not drink the Diet Coke. Did you know that? I have a friend who works for Coca-Cola. They did studies. We drink more soft drinks per capita than any other nation, but not diet sodas. Do you know why, Senor Kelly? Because Mexicans consider diet drinks to not be manly. Not machismo enough.”

“Interesting,” Kelly said.

“Of little importance, unless you are selling Coca-Cola. I am glad you are here, Senor Kelly. There is so much of Laura’s recent life that I do not know, do not understand. Naturally, when she chose to go to the States to school and then to remain there, her mother and I were deeply disappointed. We have the tradition that—” He waved his hand. “But you know of Mexican tradition. You are Mexican.”

“You’re speaking of an unmarried young woman not leaving the family home until marriage.”

“Yes, of course. Tradition is important. Don’t you agree?”

“Some traditions.”

Kelly’s Coke was delivered, along with a glass of
anejo
tequila, aged and rare.

“To Laura,” Flores said, holding up his glass.

Kelly didn’t return the toast.

“Perhaps you can help me understand, Senor Kelly. As you know, Laura and I did not have a great deal of communication in past months. But I always had the impression she was happy in her life. When the call came—unfortunately, her mother took it—it was as though
we
had died. I am sure you can understand that. It haunts me that she should become so unhappy that life became unbearable. So young, with so much to offer. What could have caused her to become so sad, so despondent that she would take her own life?”

“She didn’t,” Kelly said flatly, sipping his Coke.

Flores’s eyebrows went up. He leaned back, crossed his legs, and said, “Please explain.”

Kelly chewed his cheek and thought for a moment before saying, “Senor Flores, I am not here to cause you any more grief than you’ve already endured. But Laura’s death has grieved me, too, very deeply. We were good friends. We worked closely together, shared many things.”

“Lovers?”

“Much more than that. We were comrades. We believed in what we were working for.”

“ ‘Comrades.’ That sounds political. Communistic.”

“Call it what you will. No, we were not communists.
But we
were
dedicated to seeing things change here in Mexico.”

“Things are always changing,” Flores said.

“But not for the better.”

“You have established yourself as the judge of what change is good or bad for our country?”

“I have established myself—and so did Laura—as one of the judges of inequality in this country. You needn’t remind me that I am Mexican. I am proud to be. But I am ashamed that ten percent of the people here own eighty percent of the wealth. I am ashamed that my country’s leaders become rich with money from the drug runners and corrupt businessmen. I am ashamed that my country’s police live by
la mordida
, lining their pockets from the very people they are supposed to be against. Yes, Senor Flores, I am ashamed of many things in my country. As was Laura.”

“I see,” said Flores.

The housekeeper entered carrying lunch on a tray, but Flores waved her away.

“You come here to my home at a moment of great personal tragedy to talk political nonsense. You visit me presumably to pay your respects, yet you sit and insult me and the memory of my dead daughter.”

“I meant to do neither, Senor Flores, and I apologize if that is what you take from what I have said. You believe Laura took her own life. But that is not true. Do you know of Senor Garza? Morin Garza?”

“Who is he?”

“A man who came to believe also in our vision for a better Mexico. Like Laura, he was killed because of his beliefs.”

“I am a patient man, Senor Kelly, but I am beginning to run out of patience. You tell me my daughter was killed. Murdered! Who did this?”

Kelly slid forward on the couch and extended his hands. His voice took on urgency. “Senor Flores, Laura was killed by the very people with whom you have forged such a close alliance. Your business associates. The politicians who are responsible for your television station, this house, the cars, the country home.”

“You’re
demente
!” Flores said.

“No, sir, I am not mad. Laura was a fine researcher. She had uncovered information potentially very damaging to the PRI. Garza had come to Washington to testify about the filthy corruption of our leaders. Both lost their lives as a result.”

Flores stood, still holding his glass. He shook with anger, the amber liquid in it undulating and threatening to spill over the sides. “You will have to leave,” he said, his voice no longer calm.

“Sir, please hear me out. What I say is true. And because it is, I would expect you as Laura’s father to share my anger at those responsible for her death. I would expect you to come forward to tell of a system that fosters the murder of innocent people whose only sin was to
care
. I urge you to stand tall in your daughter’s name and to—”

Flores answered by flinging the contents of his glass in Kelly’s face. The edge of an ice cube broke the skin on one cheek. Kelly put his hand to the wound, pulled it away, and saw blood on his fingertips.

Flores shouted a man’s name. Moments later, the armed guard who’d escorted Kelly into the house appeared.

“Get him out of here,” Flores said.

The man took steps in Kelly’s direction. Kelly held up his hands, said in Spanish, “Stay away. No need to hurt me. I am leaving.” He walked brusquely past the security guard, flung open the front door, and stepped outside, where another burly man blocked his way. Kelly stepped around him and headed for the gate, broke into a run, clumsily undid the latch, and stumbled into the street. He looked back; the two armed men stood next to each other, eyes trained on him.

He started down the hill; he was on the verge of tears. He walked for ten minutes, his throat tight, eyes burning, heart pounding. An unmarked four-door blue Ford came up from behind. The driver stopped, said through the open window, “You want a taxi?”

“Sí,”
Kelly replied.

“Get in.”

“How much to the city?”

“Not much.”

“How much?”

They agreed upon a price.

As they headed for the center of the city, Kelly clenched his hands into fists and closed his eyes. The driver worked for one of many private car services in Mexico City that pick up street passengers. He glanced repeatedly in the rearview mirror and saw the strange-looking young man with red hair and freckles covering his copper skin curled into a corner of the rear compartment. A crazy man, he thought. On drugs.

He turned. “Hey, you pay me now, okay?”

“What?”

“Pay me now.”

“Yeah. Okay.”

As Kelly fished for money in his pocket, the driver again looked in the mirror. The battered tan Volkswagen that had fallen in behind from where he’d picked up his passenger was still with them, maintaining a constant distance.

“Gracias,”
the driver said as Kelly handed money over the seat.

They approached the Bosque de Chapultepec district on Campos Elíseos. Traffic was thick and slow. The clear air of the highlands was only a memory now in the heavy, smothering pollution.

A truck had broken down, bringing traffic to a halt. Kelly sat up straight and peered out the window, tried to judge how close they were to his hotel.

“I’ll get out here,” he said, opening the door.

As he did, the tan Volkswagen, which had been directly behind, pulled alongside. A man in the passenger seat holding an Ingram submachine gun leaned out the window and pointed it at Kelly. Kelly saw the weapon, giving him a split second to throw himself back across the rear seat before the Ford was riddled with bullets, glass flying, metal ripping, the sound and smell of gunfire engulfing the rear compartment.

The firing stopped. Kelly reached and opened the opposite rear door. He scrambled through it, fell onto the road on his hands and knees, and desperately crawled to the other side, oblivious to the chaos behind him, horns blaring, the Volkswagen’s out-of-tune engine screaming as the driver drove up on a sidewalk, knocking down pedestrians and vending stalls until finding a hole in the traffic and escaping down a side street.

Kelly looked back. His pants were torn, his knees and the heels of his hands bloodied. Women continued to scream, men ran as fast as they could to leave the scene. No one seemed to notice Kelly sitting on the curb, dazed and in pain.

He slowly got to his feet and walked in the general direction of his hotel.

The driver of the tan Volkswagen pulled into a gas station and went to a pay phone. The shooter remained in the car smoking a cigarette.

The driver said into the phone, “It’s Mynor.”

“Where are you?”

“Chapultepec.”

“It’s done?”

“Sí.”

“He’s dead?”

“
Sí
. I think he is dead.”

“You
think
?” the angry voice said.

“He must be. Dozens of bullets. We were next to him.”

“He had better be dead, Mynor.”

“He is dead. Yes, I am certain of it.”

Later that night, Alfredo Montano, the man who’d taken the call from the Volkswagen driver in his office in a hangar at Mexico City’s Benito Juárez Aeropuerto Internacional, entered one of dozens of cantinas lining the airport’s main access road. There he met with two people, a man and a woman.