The Demands of the Dead (18 page)

“That jail was finished just in 1993. It was part of the rural development program. A jail! The program was called ‘solidarity’. The Zapatistas came through and freed the prisoners there during the uprising in 1994. One group of prisoners escaped and grabbed a minibus. This,” he said, waiting for the van to turn a corner,” is where that minibus was shot to pieces. 14 men were killed in it. By a helicopter. Made in the USA.

“It’s an interesting system, no? Mexicans make your clothes, we pick your crops, we clean your houses and take care of your kids, and we die doing it all. We run across the border with your dogs and agents chasing us and die in the desert for the chance to do it. You sell Mexico your corn and Mexicans—indigenous—die because they can’t sell their own. You sell Mexico your helicopters and Mexicans die.”

Another foreigner calling himself Mexican. I said nothing.

Francois lit himself a cigarette and opened the window a crack.

I navigated the winding hills in the dark, worried about blind curves and oncoming trucks, but we made it back to San Cristobal after dark without incident.

I was to crash on his couch, and find a bus to Tuxtla in the morning.

Francois's place was what you would expect. From the framed Picasso poster of the Weeping Woman on the wall to the political literature cramming every corner to the cigarette smoke seeping from every pore, the apartment was almost a caricature of a flat you would expect a left-wing French intellectual to dwell in. He poured two glasses of red wine and we cleared places for ourselves to sit.

“There are other places you should see. And other people you should talk to. Luis Muros should be back in San Cristobal in a few days. You should talk to him.”

“Ok.”

“If I had time I would take you to Acteal. I would like you to see the monument to the dead there. I would like you to hear the songs they sing for the ones who were killed, and see them re-enact what happened there. They re-enact the massacre every year.

“I would take you to El Bosque. There was a battle there in 1998. In the spring PRIstas stole the Zapatista coffee crops and there were scattered shootings. Then the police and military came down in June. The Zapatistas didn’t run or hide this time. They fought back. They decided they weren’t going to be massacred again six months after Acteal. But they died. 19 of them. They took 3 army soldiers down with them. They say it was only that fight that prevented a dozen more Acteals.

“It would have been good to show you the village near Palenque where some Indian villagers were burned out of their homes by Public Security officers. 2 officers were killed by snipers then. The snipers weren’t found. That was in March 1997. The police charged some priests with the killings. They tied them up and took them to Tuxtla. They beat them up and held them and didn’t allow them communication. They fabricated evidence against them. Then—they let them go. There were protests and too much contrary evidence.”

I asked: “What is it going to take to get the Garcias free?”

“The same thing that freed those priests. We need to get the information out. You, Mark, have to find them.”

“I will,” I said.

Chapter 8

Francois was awake before dawn, smoking away in the kitchen that joined the living room where I slept.

“I spoke to our people,” he said, skipping the usual good morning. “The Garcias were taken to Cerro Hueco. They're in Tuxtla.”

I had another shower – my lip and ribs were coming along – while Francois made us coffee. I got on the internet on his computer, but there was nothing from Maria.

I got up to go, leaving him sitting in the living room in a pile of books, writing his next article in longhand before he typed it up.

“Francois, yesterday you gave me a list of people to talk to before I close the file on this case.”

He looked up. “Yes?”

“I noticed you didn't mention one person that you know. Lieutenant Sergio Chavez, of Public Security.”

Francois started digging in his piles of books. He picked one up and handed it to me.
Everything You Should Know About Organized Crime in Mexico
, by IMECO.

"I purchased this book here in San Cristobal. It's an excellent book. This is by a group of law-enforcement people, some of whom are retired, some of whom are still working in the agencies. They're called the Mexican Institute for Organized Crime Studies. IMECO. They document the corruption in the system. The ones who still work as police, they are undercover and anonymous. No one knows they're in IMECO.

“They hate that the judicial system doesn't work."

“They probably hate Americans and blame us for corrupting their system.”

“Some of them might,” Francois said.

“Thank you, Francois,” I said at the door, thinking of someone who fit that description. I debated about what to tell him next, about what would constitute a violation of neutrality. Then I said:

“If some of them were careless enough to be photographed at a cafe with a journalist by someone working for the US Embassy, would they be in danger?”

In interrogation training, we were shown a series of photos of faces that, in fractions of seconds, went from neutral to showing anger, contempt, disgust, happiness, sadness, and fear. The idea, propounded by a psychologist from the West Coast, was that people could show emotions - and an interrogator could pick up emotions - faster than the conscious mind could process. The training modules we were put through were designed to let us make those unconscious processes conscious.

I was pretty sure that Francois, while he played it cool, had just flashed me a look of pure terror, and not for himself.

“They might be in danger,” he said. “If the Embassy were to talk to their superiors in the police... they might... need a warning.”

“I hope they get one, then.” I turned to the door.

Based on instinct, I peeked through the blinds at a window that faced the street below. There it was, the white pickup of La Migra, parked on the curb like a sentinel. I hoped it was because they were on to Tourelle, and not to me.

“
We are going to need a new plan,
” I said, pointing out the window with my eyes.

“Wait two minutes,” he said.

In two minutes, Evelyn came to the door.

“We'll be going out the back way,” she said.

She was driving someone's red Honda Civic and we soared through the two-hour early morning without hitting a single military checkpoint, in almost complete silence.
She doesn't trust the car,
I thought.

“Got any music?” I asked.

She put on Manu Chao, a favorite singer among Zapatista activists, from the border of France and Spain, who sang in four languages I knew, a song about someone having to run from the law and hide from immigration authorities.
Clandestino. Ilegal.

“Good choice--” I said.

“--thought you might like it,” she said, before I finished.

We drove to a hotel Evelyn frequented and already had booked ahead, so I didn't have to give my name and passport number at the front desk. I called Francois and he told me, quickly, that the Garcias were safe in jail in Tuxtla, but that showing up there when we could would remind the authorities there were foreign eyes watching.

We didn’t talk until we had swept her room. Not perfect security, since the room was on the ground floor and the absence of electronic bugs didn't stop anyone from just listening outside the window, but we spoke fast English so that they would need a first-language anglophone to understand us.

“Since we last met, I found out I don't know you at all, Mark,” she said.

“Sorry,” I said.

“I still don't understand what you are --”

“-- but you know we have friends in common.”

“That, and I know you have figured out that the police whose case you're working on were killed by the narcotraffickers. So....”

“So yes, I will come with you to Tapachula.”

It made sense to go. The Garcias were accounted for, for now. I had told Walter I was going there. I had told Beltran I was going there, before he sent the paramilitaries after me. Tapachula was still in Chiapas, but it was far from Beltran's command and maybe safe from that immediate threat. No one was looking for me there, so I could fry in Tapachula. Tuxtla could wait until I was ready to leap back into the fire.

We called it a deal and went out for lunch. We had huaraches on the streetside: a thick tortilla with a mix of meat and vegetables fried up and spread on top.

I took the first shift driving, the 190 west. Before we got to the 200, to circle back south east, we stopped at a cantina. I had a chicken quesadilla and a beer. Evelyn had one and a coke. Before she took over driving, we walked in the parking lot.

“I'm in trouble with the police,” I said.

“I figured.”

“You're writing a series on the drug war?”

“I'm tracing the routes the drugs take through Mexico and how people are affected by them along the way.”

How people are affected along the way.
One of Shawn's least successful projects had been trying to help young people get out of the drug trade. He could never offer an alternative that would be as lucrative, and he got only grief from police and lawyers who thought he was trying to run social programs for young criminals. For myself, I came out of the crack epidemic anti-drug but pro-legalization. If I hadn't quit altogether, I would have joined Law Enforcement Against Prohibition.

“Can your people in Tapachula explain how the drug traffickers work with the police?”

“I think so, yes.”

The long straight drive on the 200 gave us a view of the the La Sepultura biosphere reserve on the left. I kept looking over Evelyn's shoulder until it got dark.

We got into Tapachula very early in the morning. Evelyn had arranged accommodations for us at someone's house. They weren't home. They'd left the key under a mat. We unlocked a dingy apartment, just a bed and a pair of plastic chairs, a sink and stove, and a separate bathroom outside.

I searched the room for bugs but Evelyn seemed sure of the place.

The washroom, about as pretty as the rest of the place, had enough running water for my purpose, which was to launder my one suit of clothing. We'd be here long enough for them to hang dry.

Evelyn was waiting when I came out of the washroom in my change of clothes. I sat in one of the chairs, put my feet on the other, and was thinking about trying to doze in this position when Evelyn came out of the bathroom with her wet hair down, wearing a T-shirt, and nothing else. Through force of will I kept my eyes on hers and said: “Good night, Evelyn.”

“Don't be a fool, Mark. Just keep to your side of the bed.”

For the next six hours, I lay mostly awake, my back turned away from a pretty girl in my bed, thought about a wasted year, and, as I finally fell asleep, made some very serious resolutions about what I was going to do when I got home to Maria.

When I woke up Evelyn was already up, dressed, fresh and banging away with pots at the stove making coffee. I thought, from the banging and her distant “good morning”, she might be irritated with me for no particular reason.

Whoever left us the place was kind enough to leave some supplies. I decided on an ask-no-questions policy.

I got cleaned up in the dirty bathroom, saying hello to a very large cockroach above the sink, and came back to a cup of coffee, which Evelyn had made but pointedly told me to get from the stove top for myself.

"Our source is coming here, at noon," She said. It was past 11 already.

“He used to be a high-level trafficker. He knows the business. He knows the connections with the justice system, everything."

"Why is he alive?"

"We can't use his name. Don't ask him anything personal."

As Evelyn poured herself a second cup of coffee, there was a knock at the door.

"Who?" She yelled at the door.

"Sammy." That was it. No secret codes. Maybe Evelyn recognized the voice. She opened the door a crack, just wide enough for Sammy the 'ex' trafficker to slide through.

I stood up and searched him. He was carrying a loaded Heckler & Koch HK USP in a shoulder holster under his jacket, which he gave up after an offended glance at Evelyn, who shrugged. I removed the cartridge – a compact, 8 rounds – and gave it back to him. I couldn't give him the pistol, though, because there was a round in the chamber, and if I took the round out of the chamber, it would come flying out, and I would have to go on the floor to get it. I kept it instead.

“You get the pistol back when you leave,” I said.

"Who the fuck is this guy?" Sammy indicated me.

"He's John. My… bodyguard."

"Is he staying?"

"Yes."

He removed his loose black jacket, revealing a dark blue silk shirt underneath, and hung it neatly on the back of the plastic chair. Clean shaven, caesar haircut with gel, manicured hands, gold rings. He had come from an air-conditioned car, not the hot sun.