The Shadow of the Shadow (19 page)

CIPRIANO APPROACHED TOMAs in the mill shop and
took him by the arm.

"Tomas, you think you could put someone up in your house
for a few days? I wouldn't ask you if it wasn't important."

Tomas nodded.

"If he doesn't mind being a little clowded. The place is full up
these days."

"What's that? You get married or something?"

"It's a long stoly. Bling him by my place in the molning."

"You know the Rialto Movie House in San Angel? Across
the street there's a restaurant run by old Magana's widow, the guy
who got killed by scabs at the Carolina. Tomorrow morning at
ten-thirty there'll be a guy inside reading Les Miserables. If he's
wearing a hat keep your distance, but stick around and follow him
when he goes out. Watch out, because he might have picked up a
tail. If he's not wearing a hat, then it's safe to go ahead and make
the contact."

The supervisor walked by and the two men broke off talking
and went back to work.

An hour and a half later Pioquinto Manterola, who'd left the
hospital the day before sufficiently shaken up by the episode of
the poisoned chocolates, went with his friend the lawyer Verdugo
to submit his declaration before chief of special services Nacho
Montero at the seventh precinct house. According to the police
investigation, the chocolates had been left at the hospital's front
desk by a bellboy from the Bristol Hotel, 316 Jesus Maria Street.
One out of every three was laced with cyanide. The dead woman
had been unlucky enough to bite into a poisoned chocolate the first time around. Each poison bonbon had enough cyanide to kill
a horse, and in spite of the fact that the confections were made
with almond paste it would have been difficult not to have tasted
the poison. But by then, of course, it was too late. "Enemies?" the
reporter answered the policeman's question. "Who knows? A man
in my profession can't help making a few through the years but it
would be hard to say just who they might be."

Out in the street a light drizzle had started to fall. A pair of
horsemen spurred past a limping Ford. Verdugo opened the door
of his bulletproof Packard and helped the journalist inside.

"I've about had enough of this. It's time we did something."

"The widow swore to me the whole thing's got nothing to do
with her or her friends..."

"Who's it got to do with, then?"

"Beats me. But you're right about one thing. It's time we did
something."

"No one comes and says they're not guilty if there isn't some
reason to suspect they are. No one comes around giving answers if
there isn't somebody asking questions."

"I suppose you're right. And anyway, it's the only lead we've
,,
got.

"Two days ago, some guy started taking potshots at the poet
and nearly killed him. I say it's time we tighten the screws and see
if the shadow comes out of the darkness and shows itself."

"What shadow?"

"Them, the enemy. That's what the poet calls them. And he
says our little domino club's the shadow of the shadow. Lyrical,
isn't it?"

"Not bad. Valencia ought to come and work with me at the
newspaper.

While the lawyer and the reporter talked, the poet stood
outside the delivery entrance of the Hotel Regis trying to sell the
head cook six grade-A Toluca hams he swore could easily pass
for Spanish Santanders. The poet had received the hams, which were really from Tlaxcala and not from Toluca at all, as payment
for a poem he'd written for the fifteenth birthday of a rancher's
daughter from Santa Ines. After a fair amount of wrangling, he
managed to trade them for seventeen pesos and a coupon good for
six meals in the hotel restaurant.

A little while later, as he was trying to exchange the meal
tickets for an equivalent amount of drinks at the bar, he ran into
the North American Bertram Wolfe arguing with a reporter from
the Hearst chain in one of the booths. The poet had met Wolfe
before, an English teacher at the National Preparatory School
and a friend of the muralists who were then decorating the school
with their enormous paintings. The poet had taken a liking to
the gringo from the very first time they'd met. His Spanish had
improved considerably in the last few months and he talked about
his experiences in the country with a passionate affection. He
worked for a leftist news agency out of New York, wrote for the
American Communist party newspaper, drank with moderation,
and had a beautiful wife named Ella. All the same, the poet would
have gone on and sat alone in a booth at the back to work out a
poem he'd been carrying around in his head if he hadn't overheard
the pair of gringos talking about the dead man Manterola had
been investigating a week ago in the same hotel. He was getting
used to the way the threads of this strange story kept crossing and
recrossing without the slightest respect, so he pulled up a chair and
joined them.

There's not much else to say about that day's events except
that, while the Chinaman worked at the mill, Rosa looked out the
window of the tiny house in Contreras to see a pair of shadows
keeping watch from down the street; Pioquinto Manterola slept
restlessly through a series of nightmares in which a naked woman
in a leghorn hat crawled on top of him to embrace him, with a pair
of huge meat cleavers in her hands; and General Pancho Murguia
crossed the border from the United States to head up yet another
unsuccessful rebellion against Obregon's government.

THE POET WALKED THROUGH the Majestic's swinging
doors. Tomas, standing at the bar, didn't seem to notice the breeze
blowing in from the street, but Manterola and Verdugo, seated at
the customary table, smiled in greeting.

They had to play this game of dominoes, and not so much for
the way the bones fell on the table, but somehow to take control of
the strange story that'd woven itself around them like a play where
some absentminded director forgot to hand out the scripts and
the actors found themselves caught up in the middle of dialogues,
murders, parties, orgies, and songs without any clear idea of what
part they were supposed to play. The poet knew it, and he walked
straight to the table and sat down. Even Tomas felt strangely
attracted by this new urgency and he left his glass half-drunk on
the bar and went over to join his friends.

This new change in the rules hung subtly in the air and
the bartender, unable to understand, sensed it as some kind of
threatening presence. He kept his distance from the marble table
where the dominoes, black side up, mixed and turned under
Pioquinto Manterola's agile hands.

They wouldn't like to admit it, but tonight for the first time
ever they sat down without choosing partners, drawing their chairs
up to the table without any particular order.

"Hele we go, gentlemen," said Tomas as he set the double-six.
With that as the signal, the reporter pulled a sheet of paper from
his vest pocket and unfolded it slowly.

"I made up a list of questions to see if we can start to figure out
this mess we've gotten ourselves into."

"It's time we went on the offensive," said the lawyer Verdugo,
playing the six/four.

"If those fouls thele ale youl idea of an offense, then you'le
in double, fliend," said Tomas, taking a strange pleasure from the
others' uneasiness. By now his mask was like a part of his own skin
and it amused him to see how his "inscrutable Oriental bearing"
threw his companions off their guard.

"Double-fours," said the poet.

"Double trouble," said Manterola.

"No, I wasn't referring to the fours, Tomas," said Verdugo.
Then turning to the reporter, "Let's get on with it, Manterola. This
whole thing's gone and woken me out of the sleep I've been in ever
since November 1887."

"What happened in November 1887?" asked the poet. "Oh,
that's your birthday, isn't it? I guess I'm a little slow on the uptake
tonight."

"Well, I didn't put them in any particular order, but here we
go. Number one: What's Margarita the Widow Roldan got to do
with Colonel Gomez, Conchita, Celeste the hypnotist, Ramon the
Spic and long-distance ejaculator, the lieutenant whose name we
don't know, and the French aristocrat about whom we know even
less? And after that, what have they all got to do with one another?
What brings them together? Who else frequents the widow's
house, and why?"

"Not bad for starters, inkslinger," said the poet. He eyed the
five the Chinaman set down on the table, and concluded that his
partner's opening sixes were merely the luck of the draw. Following
his instincts he rearranged his hand, separating the two sixes he'd
been holding in reserve, placing one in line next to the blanks and
the other upside down with the rest of his threes.

"Do you want answers or have you got more questions?"
inquired Verdugo with an embarrassed smile, both wanting and not wanting to go deeper into this strange story that had taken
them prisoner.

"We'll do the answers later," said the reporter. He played
another four, leaving the original six still open at the other end
of the row of dominoes. Then he returned to his sheet of paper
and read in a dull, even voice: "Number two: Who killed Sergeant
Zevada? Who killed Colonel Zevada? Let's assume for the time
being the murderer or murderers were the same, which brings us,
of course, to why? Next we have to ask ourselves what connects the
Zevada brothers to the widow, Gomez, and the others. Are they
connected, how are they connected, and to which ones? All of them
or just some? We know the Zevada brothers knew Margarita, or at
least one of them had her picture in his pocket and that's how we
found the widow and her friends, by tracing the photograph. And
we also know the widow was in the building on Humboldt Street
when Colonel Zevada fell out of the window. That's all we know."

"Bravo," said the poet. "A hell of a question." The Chinaman
sat in silence, caught between the game and the conversation,
debating whether or not to try and turn the game back to sixes. He
sensed that his partner the poet had misinterpreted his strategy
of holding out with the rest of the sixes in his hand, although the
poet certainly hadn't done much to open the way for him either.

"Go on," said Verdugo with a wide smile. "At the moment we
seem to have more questions than answers."

"Double-twos," said the journalist, setting his domino down
with the rest.

"Sixes," said the Chinaman, breathing an inaudible and private sigh of relief. He played the six/two.

"Well, that's one mystery solved," said Verdugo.

"Number three," said the reporter. "Why did the dumber of
the Zevada brothers have his pockets full of jewels?"

"All right," said the poet, "all right. Twos, sixes, jewels. It all
goes to show that when you don't understand anything there's
nothing you can do but let the water run under the bridge."

"Four: How many left-handers are there in this story?"

"Before we go on to number five," said Verdugo, "I suggest
that instead of classifying the Zevada brothers as the smart one
and the dumb one-unless you know something the rest of us
don't-we just call them the trombonist and the colonel," and he
lightly tapped one of his dominoes on the tabletop, passing the
hand.