The Demands of the Dead (22 page)

Jose went into the kitchen and brought us snacks—nachos and guacamole and beer.

Walter said nothing, using a tracker trick, one I never quite mastered, to almost disappear in plain sight, have everyone forget you are there, by extremely unassuming body language.

Jose focused on me. “You are a consultant with the police?” He asked.

“Something like that, yes. I’m with Corporate Research and Analysis Resources, investigating the deaths of officers Diaz and Gonzalez.”

“So, you have a background in security?”

“I would say in investigation, not in security,” I said.

“Still, police know security matters. There is something I would like you to do for me, in the morning. I don't know who to trust and I am hoping you can help.” He stood up. “Take as much time as you need, your rooms are just around the corner. I'll be down here by 7.”

Jose left.

I whispered: “What the hell...?”

Luis stared at the nachos and the graying avocado, avoiding my eyes. Walter stood up next, finished his beer in one drag. “Well, goodnight chicos,” he said.

Luis and Walter slept soundly but I was up before dawn, trying to run down whether anyone might know we were here, or whether there were new dangers from being here. I didn't think we were followed in the night, so any dangers now came from our host.

I met Jose in the living room just before 7am. He was impeccably dressed again, but this time for the outdoors – jeans, boots, t-shirt, and vest, all served to emphasize his small stature. He handed me a mug of coffee.

“Coffee from the highlands is better, I know. But this is from nearby. Maybe you'll like it,” he said.

“It's fine.”

“This
finca
belonged to my family for a long time. My brother decided to give it to me when he moved away. I have Indian blood too, you know.”

“That's... great,” I said.

“I think,” he whispered to me, “that this house is being watched.”

This is a job for Walter. He's a better scout than I'll ever be. I'll just go wake him up,
I t
hought. But then, Walter needed to keep working here, and had managed to stay under the radar so far, whereas Jose already knew about me. So I said, “Well, let's take a look.”

Jose owned about sixty acres, half forested, on either side of a river, and the other half pasture, cut by his own little road. All lowland, all easily watched from hilltops on other people's property, but all fenced as well, for the cattle. “Do you trust your neighbours? Any holes in the fences?” I asked.

“I know them,” he said. “No holes.”

I decided to start with the obvious approaches, walking along the road.

“This way,” I said. Jose was fit, and kept up my pace. “You were working in Hatuey at the time of the murders?” I asked him.

“No. I quit the PRI a month before.” Jose kept looking up the road, behind, to the woods on our left, the grass on our right, as if he was waiting for his old PRI buddies to burst out of the tree cover and shoot us down.

“But you were working in Hatuey quite recently.”

“Yes.”

“In what capacity?”

“I didn’t actually have a formal title. I was the director of the federal and state election campaign in the municipality, would be the best way to say it. The federal elections are first, in July. But the work is the same.”

“What is ‘the work’?”

“Seeing that the PRI wins the election. Maintaining lists of voters, their allegiances, their families, how much aid they’ve received, seeing to them.”

Our conversation was punctuated with birdcalls and a concert of cicadas. I saw some recent tracks leading off the road. “You have workers using this road how often?”

“Most days,” he said.

I followed a trail that went off the road and towards the trees. I told Jose to wait, and followed it into the woods a few dozen yards. A flock of parrots were eating the fruit of a big fig tree, flitting around and dropping fruit on the ground.
The tracks stopped, led me back to the road.
Nothing.

I came back to where Jose waited, and asked: “Seeing to the voters?”

“Yes. Making sure everyone on the lists receives their aid, making sure the lists are up-to-date, offering aid to those who might use it, and so on.”

“Where does the money come from?”

“Different sources. The PRI raises funds. Government resources are also used. There are actual government programs that I had some influence in—but they are administered by the government, not the PRI.”

As if they weren’t the same thing. “What programs are those?”

“There is an agricultural subsidy, called Procampo, for farmers. And a further one, Progreso, specifically for women in the countryside.”

“And how do you make sure those funds go to PRI voters?”

“I had the lists, I gave them to the agencies who distributed the aid, they took care of it. That was it. You know, in some ways all the work of the NGOs here is just replacing Procampo for rebels and PRDistas.”

I gave up on trying to track from here. The road was pointless. Too much traffic, and no way to tell what was what. People could be infiltrating Jose's farm every other day and I wouldn't be able to tell from the road.

“Do any of your workers travel by river?”

“No,” he said.

I took him into the woods, down towards the river, and looked for signs as we walked along the rocks of the riverbank. A yellow and green bird, one I didn't recognize, kept just ahead of us as we walked, stopping until we got close, then flying ahead again.

“You said you had your own funds to give out as well?”

Jose answered as he hopped from one rock to another. “I had some discretion, yes. With funds and... privileges. We saw to it that certain things were allowed, and other things were... overlooked.”

“So you obviously have connections with the judicial system, the army, police, Public Security”

“Yes.”

“Paramilitaries too?”

He swallowed. “Yes.”

Jose had been a real power broker in his municipality. If he was switching sides, he was giving up a lot, and maybe was in real danger now.
What did he stand to gain – or, maybe, what did he know that I didn't?

You might want to upgrade those fences and dig a moat
, I thought. I said: “Who disbursed those funds of yours?”
“We had some local contacts who were loyal. Also those agencies you

mentioned.”

I had to make him spell it out. “The army and police distributed PRI funds in the communities?”

“Yes.”

“Did you have a list of the party affiliations of all the police and soldiers?”

“Yes.”

“Were they all PRI?”

“No. Many soldiers are only nominally affiliated. Some police too. Others ally with the PAN.”

“Hang on,” I said. I thought I saw something. A trail, from the river to the road, shoddily covered up. With a small, wire snare trap hooked to a branch. Trying to catch an agouti, by the size of it.

You don't have assassins, Jose, you have poachers.
I broke the branch with a kick, dismantling the trap, and went back to Jose.

“What did you find?” He asked.

“I'll tell you in a minute,” I said. “Did you know the party affiliations of Diaz and Gonzalez?”

“They were both PRI.”

“Were they involved in dispensing your funds at all?”

“Diaz worked with us sometimes.”
Right. Diaz got into a lot of things.
“And the things you said you overlooked for PRI supporters, or saw to it that they were overlooked, did that include drug trafficking?”

“Yes.”
“Were there ever any problems with that, involving Diaz and Gonzalez?”

“Diaz told us more than once that he was being pressured to make arrests against traffickers.”

“Pressured from whom?”

“He never said. So we tried to avoid that aspect of things.”

I waited for more, but Jose was silent. I went for another walk, found another covered trail from river to road with a set snare, which I again dismantled. When I got back, Jose was ready to talk.

“I didn’t tell you earlier—I didn’t get a chance to. But shortly before I... left my post, Diaz and Gonzalez changed their party affiliations.”

“To what?”

“They didn’t switch to the opposition. They just dropped their PRI affiliation. Our other contacts in the police force told us neither of them could be counted on. Diaz stopped doing work for us.”

“And Gonzalez never had.”

“No.”

“And all this was about a month ago?”

“Six weeks.” That put it a week before Jose quit the PRI and five weeks before the murders.

“But you don’t know if any plans were made to retaliate against them for leaving the PRI or to win them back, or of any other officers who dropped their affiliations?”

“No.”

“Are you sure of that?”

“Yes.”

Nervousness had gotten the better of him and now he was lying. I thought about leaning on him, threatening to expose him if he didn’t give me the rest. But whatever Jose was, I wasn’t a blackmailer. And he had already stuck his neck out pretty far. Probably farther than he wanted to. And I still didn't entirely understand why. Until he told me.

“I have Indian blood,” he said.

“Yes, you mentioned that.”

“Do you think if they win, that they'll let me keep this place?”

Finally, I understood.
He really thinks they can win.
It didn't look that way to me. But then I thought, if he really thinks the Zapatistas could win, enough to go against the PRI, I don't want to stop him from thinking that. “I don't know. They do seem... generous. So maybe.”
Too generous, maybe.

My mind wandered. The cicadas, who had been singing all morning, reached a crescendo and went quiet. I looked towards the woods.

“Well, you said you would tell me what you found.” he said.

“I just had a quick look,” I said, “but I don't see that anyone is here to try to do you harm. There are poachers who are taking wild animals from your forest.”

Jose exhaled with relief, which quickly enough turned to indignation. “And my workers never told me about it?”

“Not
workers
,” I said. “You have an older man working for you, someone who's from this area and lived along the river, about your height but thirty pounds heavier, wears thick heeled leather boots. He works with the poachers. Maybe they're his relatives.”

Jose blinked, stunned, but it was all there like an open book in the tracks. “Ernesto,” he said. “It can't be.”

“The poachers are coming from the river,” I continued as we walked back to the house, “setting traps between the river and the road. If you could get someone to do patrols along the river, you could probably stop them.”

Luis and Walter were waiting outside.

“Wait, Mr. Brown, please,” Jose said. “Please come with me. I need to talk to Ernesto.”

This didn't seem like any of my business. “I don't --”

“-- Jose,” Walter said, pointing. “Your gate guard is gone.”

That set Jose running into the house. I told Walter what I found. “I don't want to get involved between Jose and this family,” I said.

“You've been here this long and you really think that's all this is?”

“What do you --”

Jose came out carrying a Remington hunting rifle. Luis took a step behind us. “Whoa --” I said, stepping towards him with a hand up.

“Mr. Brown, Ernesto is armed. His son left his post. I just want to be careful when we talk to him. Will you come with me?”

“Is that really necessary?”

But Walter touched my arm and mumbled, “we should go see.”

We walked down to Ernesto and Adelia's house – a wooden shack, really, with a separate outhouse, quite a contrast with Jose's mansion up the hill – but it was empty. They were gone, their son was gone, their stuff was gone, and whatever weapon Ernesto kept, was also gone. Walter made a quick trip around the shack and to the woods and back.

“They left last night. By boat,” he said.

“Which means someone picked them up, probably just after we got here. Which means,” I said, turning to Jose, “that you had better come with us today, in our car, and not come back here for a while.”

Night was always better for attacks, but this place was isolated, so they could attack by day, especially if they came and went by boat. But if Jose's old PRI buddies hadn't come for him in the night, they were probably waiting for us to leave, which they probably figured we would be doing around now.

Jose ran to his house, and we followed.

“Luis drives,” I said. Suddenly our car, which we'd been keen to get off the road, had become the safest one in the driveway.

Jose came out of his house with a small bag and the rifle. “Leave that.” I said. He had a moment of indecision. I raised my voice. “Lock it up and leave it. Now!” He did what he was told.

The whole thing took twenty minutes from when we left the shack. We had eluded Jose's assassins.