Tequila Blue (14 page)

We knock back four beers in La Cotorra, and I tell him of my plan. He hesitates, considers my concussion and the possibility that I am permanently deranged. I can see he is in the grip of a desperate struggle between feelings of loyalty and guilt (at having failed me when I needed him) and the certainty that this new adventure is even crazier than all those that have gone before, and that Carlitos seems determined to lead him to prison or death.

Things get more complicated still when I notice that one of the Mengele nurses is sitting at a nearby table, observing me and shaking her head.

No chance. We are what we are. We drink a few tequilas to settle our stomachs, to get rid of that bloated feeling a gut full of beer gives, then I push Quasimodo into the car, and we head for the house in Copilco.

“This makes us quits. This is the last time I'll listen to you, Carlitos,” he says wearily.

I let it drop. I don't give him the reply he deserves. Being sensitive gets you nowhere, and I need him to help me raid Estela Lopez de Jones's house, wring a confession out of her and find proof.

I know she didn't kill Victoria Ledesma, or Jones, or Mr and Mrs Accountant, or Valadez. She was simply in the eye of all the storms. Nobody can
accuse her of anything, there's no clause in the penal codes that condemns opportunism by someone who adds to all the filth but does not get their own hands dirty, someone who tolerates things with a smile, who subtly makes things worse when they speak. I know her style. I can see her wiping away a tear in honour of the person who built up a pile of money for her and heaving a sigh at the thought of the other, already deceased acquaintances. Calm, serene and dignified after the tears. Catwoman at the banquet. Owner of a large share of the business. A retired millionairessassistant in a cheap clothes store who will now be able to live off her investments for the rest of her life. Or so she thinks. And if I know all this, it's because there's no one else left. Just her and the people who ordered the death of three kamikazes threatening the bureaucratic dream in the Jones case. If I know this, it's because there's money in it. I know what's going on, so I can see that, for now at least, Estela Lopez de Jones is the key to unravelling a story of filthy money and violence.

We reach the place. Everything is as it should be. Which would be terrible if it weren't so comprehensible. The Oaxacan maid comes to the door as usual, asks “Who is it?” and lets us in. Her mistress appears, charming and friendly, not in the least bit surprised. When she sees me there's no nervous outburst; she doesn't fling herself on the floor to confess. What the lady of the house does is offer us coffee. She doesn't fling herself on
me clutching a kitchen knife, or even kneel down to stick her face between my legs.

I make the first move. I tell her what I'm looking for and see her become wary. Quasimodo follows the instructions I gave him. His role is not to talk but to show the lady a perverse, repugnant incubus ready and willing to unleash more sexual sadism on her body than that shown by her husband in ten thousand feet of film. The beast looks at her lasciviously, rolling his obscene yellow eyes as he studies the face, mouth, neck, breasts, stomach and legs not only of our anxious hostess but of the terrified Oaxacan maid too. His tongue traces lewd graffiti on his mandrill's snout. One paw fondles his testicles, monstrously huge and abominably shaped in their imagination. Impossible to turn back now. I have to go on with the farce until we uncover fear, because it's in the magic of fear that the truth is revealed. The maid is peering at us from the kitchen, probably wondering whether she should call the police, and what she could say about a perverse policeman who, apart from having to put up with the most ghastly face handed out by the Devil, has done nothing to anybody, and who, even though he is stroking his balls and leering at them with the eyes of a billy-goat on heat, has not touched a hair of anyone's head, or even said an improper word.

“What videocassette?” asks the lady of the house, apparently determined to bluff things out and determinedly not looking at Quasimodo.

“The one related to the Jones murder,” I say,
looking straight into her eyes, as is required in cases like these. She is still calm, too calm. She must have taken sedatives. She must have done, because no one can be that calm with Quasimodo around. She's putting on this show because she doesn't want to admit she's scared.

“As I already told you, I don't know anything about that.”

“Jones filmed sadistic pornography. He organized orgies and blackmailed naive senators who somehow thought that getting a gorilla up their arse would cost them nothing.”

She flushes. I am gratified to see that for the first time I have succeeded in imprinting anger on her stupid porcelain face.

“You're a very coarse person, and I hope never to have to see you again,” she says faintly.

“I couldn't give a damn. What I want is the cassette.”

“I found one, in a hidden space in a desk drawer. Perhaps that's what you're looking for, because it's disgusting.”

“Where is it?”

“I'll bring it for you.”

She stands up and goes upstairs to her bedroom. I'm frozen in my tracks. On the verge of victory, dumbfounded at the possibilities, each of which forks in front of me, offering different, even opposing, outcomes. Have I solved the case? Will I get to know who is behind the crimes? Will I get my hands on an object worth lots of money
or blood? Will it be my turn to bet on all or nothing now: money forever, or six feet underground? One thing is certain: Carlos Hernandez will rise to whatever occasion might present itself.

Like a mechanical automaton in a house of horror, my colleague is still licking his disgusting chops, squinting to suggest his idea of a deranged assassin and continually pawing his bulging trouser-front. Seeing that the widow is no longer present to enjoy the show, he is dedicating his talents to the maid from Oaxaca, who every ten seconds or so comes to the kitchen door and stares at him in terror.

“That's enough, Quasimodo,” I tell him. “You can stop now.”

He puts his tongue away, folds his arms and adopts the stern expression of a public official.

“Aren't we going on with it?”

“There's no need. We've got what we wanted.”

When the widow comes back down, the maid brings the coffee and pours it for us, taking great care to stay as far away as possible from Quasimodo.

“This is it,” Estela says in a neutral tone. She hands me a black oblong which for a split second reminds me of the black spot – the sign of having been condemned to death – that the wooden-legged pirate gives Long John Silver in
Treasure Island
. In itself it's nothing: a videocassette. But premonitions of the future glitter in the dark plastic surface the size of my hand.

“Take it and leave,” she goes on, in that tone of voice I find so pleasant whenever a suspect gives me orders.

I take the cassette and stand up. I gently squeeze her cheek between my thumb and forefinger. She tilts her head back, so I squeeze harder. It hurts. It humiliates her. I want to hurt and humiliate her. I want to hand her over to Quasimodo so he can rape and flog her all night, while I film him at it. No, that's not true. What I really want is to punish and rape her myself. I want to see her sobbing and begging me to stop, and I'll only forgive her when her misery and surrender are complete. She utters a short yelp, and her eyes brim with tears. I must look the picture of hatred, because the maid starts bawling too. Estela Lopez de Jones calls me an animal, a brute, a murderer and promises she'll get me thrown out of the police. “Shut up,” I tell her. “When you're quiet, we'll talk.” Quasimodo advances towards the maid, a finger on his mouth commanding silence. Immediate success: about to pass out, the maid turns white and becomes a statue. The widow is quiet too, sobbing gently. Her cheek really hurts. It will do for several days. At least I hope so. After I let go, she raises a hand to the white spot. Then she collapses into an armchair and goes on crying.

“We're going to watch the film here,” I say. “All four of us. Where's the video?”

“. . .”

“I asked you where the video was.”

Estela chokes back her tears, pouts. I put one finger under her chin and can feel her quiver.

“Upstairs. In the bedroom.”

“Let's go, then.”

A few minutes later it's all organized. Married life with Lourdes has led me to become an expert in unstable women. You need strength and patience in equal measure to create an atmosphere in which the woman no longer questions who's boss, and realizes the benefit of staying calm in order to prevent things getting even worse. Soon we're all installed in the bedroom. Quasimodo and me on the bed, Estela in a chair, and the maid sitting on the floor. The welcoming, plump, round altar presides over the scene. The film begins.

Snow White looks eighteen going on fifteen, with her short skirt and plaits, breasts like apples and 110 pounds of a mixture of innocence and sensuality all wrapped in tissue paper. There are only four, not seven dwarfs, and they are not real dwarfs, just very short men. Half-hidden behind false white beards, their faces are vicious and disturbing. The opening scene shows them having a meal in a clearing in a wood. One of the dwarfs is serving wine. He offers it to Snow White but switches the bottle without her realizing it. The four freaks wink and make obscene gestures to one another. They watch lasciviously as the woman-child sips from her glass. As she finishes her drink, Snow White falls into what appears to be a catatonic trance. The dwarfs pull a mattress out from
under the table. They lay Snow White down on it and start to undress her. For three minutes, they fondle her avidly. Then they go to work with their mouths. One fastens onto a breast; Two sucks the other one; Three goes down between her legs. Bewildered, Snow White enjoys it. Four puts his prick in her mouth; she starts to suck. Four more minutes. The dwarfs strip off. They all have enormous pricks. In every imaginable position, sometimes one by one, at others all together, they fuck Snow White in the vagina, arse and mouth, performing their gymnastics for a further fifteen minutes. Two cops appear. The dwarfs run off naked into the wood. Snow White lifts a feeble hand. “Help me,” she cries then screams.

*

All of a sudden no one is paying attention to the film any more. This is because a thin, fair-haired man has come into the room, gun in hand. He smiles unpleasantly. The widow mirrors his unpleasant smile. The rest of us look serious. Very serious.

“Are these the ones?” Blondie asks, as though there could be any doubt.

Estela Lopez de Jones nods. Then she slaps me as hard as she can. I can see her forcing herself to hide how much it hurts her hand.

I don't know why or how, but the next thing I know is Quasimodo and I are in a van, handcuffed and with handkerchiefs gagging our mouths, although this would not stop me speaking or
shouting if I felt like it. But I don't because I couldn't care less. Also because of how deserted and dark the dirt road outside we're bumping our way along is. I wink at Quasimodo, and he winks back, twisting his snout in a smile under the gag to show he forgives me. I nod gratefully. If we get out of this alive, I'll install him in San Pedro de Los Pinos. He'll be my brother, and I'll use him to scare Lourdes whenever she tries to make me a slave to her outrageous whims.

The van comes to a halt. Estela and the maid haul us out roughly. I consider breaking their legs with a couple of well-aimed kicks, but there isn't time. “Two cops found dead on a back road.” I'm the first. I collapse on the ground. I have a burning sensation everywhere except for my frozen chest. We're only given a fraction of a second to understand death.

“I don't like the look of this. He's got a fever.” Miss Mengele put a hand on my brow; in the other she was wielding a syringe. Hernandez was nothing but shame and joy. Lots of shame and even more joy.

So I got out of the clinic after spending three days there more or less in a coma, diagnosed as having cerebral concussion from severe trauma as a result of the accidental collision between my head and a stone, possibly during my rapid descent of the gully after having been shot at on a side-road on the way to Hidalgo.

I felt strange. Very strange. I couldn't understand what had made me behave the way I did against my boss, given the obvious fact that his is the hand that feeds me, the length of time I have been in the force, my career, my two families and the amount of money I need for their upkeep.

Nobody in their right mind would have done what I did. The only explanation must have been a temporary loss of my reasoning faculty due to concussion.

This was how I understood what had happened; but something inside me refused to accept it. I was assailed by grave disturbing thoughts that I had been on the verge of something tremendous, coded messages which suggested perhaps it had been the most important moment of my entire life, something intimately connected with the being or nothingness of Carlos Hernandez. A very
romantic way of looking at it. Dreams of freedom that can't buy you a thing anywhere and that usually only serve to destroy the person deluded by them.

Something to remember, all the same.

My case might be a maze of complications, but it had more positive aspects too. The Commander had two choices: either he accepted that Carlos Hernandez was a traitor, a common delinquent who broke into his house and threatened him with a gun – and if he did this, that led to another choice, because he then either arrested Hernandez and faced the hazards of a trial, possibly revealing the laxness of his command, which other zealous defenders of law and order would be bound to point out, in the spirit of solidarity so characteristic of our police force. If he chose to do this, it could mean the end of his career, retirement and a future of playing dominoes or sitting outside his front door with a cigar in his mouth staring at women passers-by. If, on the other hand, he decided to liquidate the traitor, he would still have the problem of what to do with Quasimodo and Arganaraz. A difficult choice, because even he can't go around rubbing out everyone. Then again, he could decide to adopt the old adage of “nothing happened here”. Or rather, something did happen – and not just anything, especially not something Hernandez is going to get off with lightly – but something that despite its serious nature can be controlled, particularly as far as the future is concerned. In other words: Hernandez
suffered a temporary fit of madness, a mental overload due to the pressure of work, the sort of unhappy episode that can happen to anyone and lead them to commit outrages they themselves would find it hard to imagine in their normal state. On the basis of this diagnosis, there was hope that Hernandez might recover, as long as a strict and careful watch was kept on every stage of his progress. And despite the fact that this option meant leaving the dangerous individual – i.e. me – at large, it did seem to be the most convenient, least troublesome choice. I suppose my boss consulted someone, and in some elegant office or other one of our honourable citizens told him that if he could guarantee I was kept under control for the moment it would be better not to stir things up, because the main thing was to make sure the Jones case was well and truly closed.