The Black Minutes

7

The first thing Rangel did was to start looking for his main suspect. He began in a neighborhood where all the streets are named after trees: pine, olive, cedar, oak; the next one had streets named after gemstones: lapis lazuli, amethyst, topaz, diamond; and in the third all the streets were named for flowers: rose, iris, hyacinth. Rangel, who lived on the highway to Paracuán, crossed all these streets until he came upon a large wall and then he turned onto a street named after orange blossoms.
There was a mansion on the biggest block in the best part of the Buenavista neighborhood, right next door to the golf course and the lagoon. The owner could go in and out of his house without his neighbors seeing; there were two entrances for the car, one on each side of the mansion.
Rangel parked under a huge avocado tree, with no particular idea about what he expected to find, and he focused on reading his magazine, Proceso. On the high white wall, a young man was painting over a recent graffiti scrawl that shouted in bright red letters, ARREST THE JACKAL. The young guy looked at Rangel out of the corner of his eye, and when he was finished, he gathered up his things and went in through a side gate. A minute later, the door opened and an incredibly tall white guy, dressed in a suit and tie, walked over to mess with him.
“Hello, could I see some identification?”
Man, Rangel thought, this sure is a classy bodyguard. The guy was a foreigner, with thick muscles and a haircut that reminded him of American army soldiers.
“What?”
“Your driver’s license. Some ID.”
“Why?”
“You’re on private property.”
Rangel looked at the wall. “As far as I know, the street belongs to everyone.”
“Not here. Show me your ID.” He spoke in Spanish with a heavy Texas accent.
“Where are you from?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“Oh, American? Why don’t you show me your papers? Do you have your F-three visa, or are you working illegally?”
The gringo glared at him. “Look, I don’t wanna fight. You better get a move on.” And then, in English, he added, “Have a nice day.”
Vicente spat out the window. F*cking a*shole, like he was the law or something. Before turning the corner, he saw the bodyguard writing down his license plate number, and he beeped his horn at him five times.
Ever since his uncle Lieutenant Rivera died, Rangel didn’t have a good relationship with any of the guys on the force: he went into the office, did what he had to do, and talked as little as he could with his coworkers. But that Tuesday, as soon as he clocked in, he looked so tired that El Chicote asked him, “Hey, Rangel, who do you work with? I’m going to get you an assistant, you need a madrina so you can get more work done.”
“Whatever, Chicote. The chief kicked Chávez out of the meeting this morning, said he didn’t want outsiders working in the office.”
“Yeah, but no one’s going to find out; besides, you need one; you look really beat up. How long’s it been since you had a good night’s sleep? At least two days?”
Rangel said he didn’t need anybody, but he got someone anyway. A half hour later, El Chicote told him they were looking for him on the first floor. To his surprise, it turned out to be the same guy—in his forties in a plaid shirt and coke-bottle glasses—who was at headquarters the day before, when they called him from the Bar León. He introduced himself as Jorge Romero. “They call me the Blind Man—the Blind Man—because I’m trustworthy: I don’t see anything, I don’t know anything. If you wanna give a suspect a few shocks, I’m your man. I’ve done it before with Chávez.”
“What? You helped Chávez interrogate suspects?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re a specialist in administering electric shocks?”
“Well, yeah,” said the Blind Man.
Rangel had the feeling he was just trying to impress him. Obviously he needed this job and would do anything, even lie. Certainly Chávez never needed anybody’s help to do his interrogations.
Rangel explained he was looking for an assistant. Deep down, he still thought his time as a policeman was a temporary thing while he did some soul-searching. Besides, his recent self-esteem problems were strong evidence that hiring a lackey would send him down the path to complete corruption.
The man with coke-bottle glasses was disappointed by the rejection and spent several hours on the first floor, helping El Chicote with the mop, looking for little jobs, running errands for the officers. At 10:30, when Rangel went down for his notes, he noticed his Chevy Nova, normally covered in a layer of dust, had returned to its original white color.
“At your service, sir,” said a voice behind him, and he saw the Blind Man, a rag in his hand, cleaning another car.
“F*ck,” Rangel said, and gave him five pesos.
“Thanks a lot, boss, and just so you know: whatever you need, I’m here to help.”
Rangel acted like he didn’t hear him and started the car fast. There’s no way around it, he thought. If I act nice, I’m going to get stuck with him. He already got five pesos out of me.
The rest of the morning, he talked with teachers, neighbors, security guards, and old ladies. Ever since El Mercurio published the news about the reward, the police just couldn’t keep up. As soon as they hung up one call, another came in, and they spent all day listening to both real and made-up stories of people reporting on a neighbor, a relative, an employee, or even their own boss. Rangel even got one call from a hysterical woman who swore she’d seen a huge creature, half-man half-wolf, running around at night, stalking the docks and the market: “It’s the naguales,” she said. “As soon as they arrest all those witches, the Jackal will disappear.”
But Rangel wasn’t a therapist. He said, “Good-bye, ma’am,” and hung up. Witches, he said to himself, that’s all I need, goddamn stupid people, this is too f*cking much already. Ever since he was little, he’d heard everyone has a double, a nagual, in the mountains, and this double takes the form of an animal. Whatever happens to the animal happens to its human counterpart. Some of his friends joked that his nagual was an eagle or a panther, and people said the state governor, thanks to a witch’s help, had several naguales at the same time. F*cking lies, he thought, these people don’t have enough to do. I wonder what my nagual is.
“Has anyone seen Mr. Taboada?” Lolita had the mayor on hold, Mr. Torres Sabinas himself.
“I saw him,” said Romero. “He was going into the Rose Garden.”
How strange, Rangel thought. What’s El Travolta doing in the city’s priciest restaurant? And why would he meet with Torres Sabinas?
“Did you see yourself yet?”
El Chicote was handing him the evening edition of El Mercurio, but since he was frowning so much, he decided to just leave.
As if the morning edition hadn’t been irritating enough, the evening paper recycled La Chilanga’s photos all over again. F*ck, he said to himself, goddamn traitorous bitch, this is just too much. When he finished the last of his cigarettes, Rangel crumbled up the pack and flung it out the window.
“Another pack?” It was the Blind Man, fishing for a few coins.
Rangel sighed. “Raleighs . . . no, better get me Faros,” and he handed him a bill worth very little.
F*ck, he thought, now I’ve lost ten pesos. He told himself Romero had to be really hard up to put up with this humiliation. El Chicote told him he had a wife and three kids. But I’m not giving him anything else, Rangel said to himself. If I’m nice, I’ll never get rid of him.
He picked up the copy of El Mercurio and looked for a distraction, but he couldn’t find McCormick’s column. Why am I going around in circles? He remembered Julia Concepción González’s body. Every time he read through the report, he got the feeling that he was forgetting an important bit of information, but he couldn’t put his finger on what it was.
Looking for inspiration, he stood up and walked into the hallway; once there, he looked over an old bookshelf. It didn’t offer very many options: a law book, a highway map, a copy of the Gulag Archipelago— who knows how it got there—Jaws, a couple of National Geographics that had pictures of the port, six Oil Workers’ Union brochures, and Treatise on Criminology by Dr. Quiroz Cuarón. Dr. Quiroz was his uncle’s greatest teacher and an internationally renowned expert. He caught and studied some of the most sought-after criminals in the world and knew exactly how the mind of the killer worked. He taught classes in Scotland Yard. He was so famous that even Alfred Hitchcock hired him as a consultant while filming Psycho. If my uncle were still alive, Rangel said to himself, I’d get in touch with him.
Rangel was immersed in deep thought when the most unstable person on the force came in: Luis Calatrava aka the Wizard. In charge of the old checkpoint on the way out of the port, he just barely passed as a police officer. Long-haired and with a thick beard and ratty clothes, he only put on his uniform when he had to show up in the office. The chief had gotten tired of suggesting he should cut his hair; the guy just wouldn’t obey.
Now he stopped to say hello. “What’s up, Rangel? I haven’t seen you lately.”
Ever since they assigned him to that awful job, the Wizard lived right at the checkpoint and spent the whole day sitting there, watching the cars. It was rare to see him in the city. It was about a forty-minute ride from the checkpoint to headquarters, but the Wizard preferred to show up for his paycheck out of the blue, once every month or so, when a couple of pay periods had passed. At his boring job, there wasn’t much to do or anywhere to spend money. Ever since Rangel could remember, the Wizard spent all his time listening to the radio, reading, and watching the people driving by. Once every twenty-four hours, he chose a victim. He’d signal for the person to stop and he’d confiscate their newspaper, just so he’d know what was going on in the world. Rangel remembered the first time he saw him, as he was on his way to the port to look for work. The ratty-haired guy signaled for him to stop and pointed at La Noticia: Would you give me your newspaper, carnal? There’s nothing to do here. Rangel gave him the newspaper and didn’t see him again until later, when they turned out to be coworkers.
In theory, the presence of the Wizard was meant to discourage drug dealers and other smugglers. Since Paracuán is at the crossroads of three states and close to the river and the sea, the route should have been an ideal one for trafficking in illegal goods. The reality was that it was almost always the same nondescript ranchers passing by, and there wasn’t much to do. They assigned the Wizard to that post because he was irritable and impossible to deal with, a kind of never-ending punishment. Calatrava didn’t have a car, but all he had to do was ask for a ride to the dock and then take a bus from there to the center of town; despite that, he preferred to live as an exile—he said he was studying physics—and not visit the city. Just so he didn’t have to see him, the chief assented to Lolita taking his reports over the phone. Ever since Rangel went to live in the house facing the river, it was inevitable that he’d run into Calatrava at least once a day. El Chicote said that Calatrava lived off what he fished from the river: crabs, shrimp, and even sea bass. All of which he caught without even leaving the office, with a few fishing lines he hung from bars in the window.
“Well?” the Wizard asked him. “When are we gonna drink some beers?”
“One of these days,” Vicente said to him, and let him walk by.
One night when Vicente was in a good mood and didn’t have anything else to do, he bought a six-pack at the Negro’s gas station and went to give it to his neighbor.
“I don’t drink alone,” the Wizard said. “Do me the honor of staying.”
They finished off the six-pack of Tecates and drank the last of a questionable bottle of aguardiente that the Wizard bought by the liter. The next day, Rangel had one of the worst hangovers of his life. He didn’t go back for months, but the night of conversation helped him to keep up a good relationship with the Wizard, who every once in a while left messages for him at headquarters. “Looks like they’re shipping drugs in a green truck, license plate 332 TBLB” or “I’ve got a hunch the owner of a white Ram is a pimp, license plate 470 XEX.” Sometimes the Wizard would ask him to pick up some alcohol, soap, or toothpaste for him; Rangel even had to lend him money once.
“Aw, shit, what’re you writing down on there?”
“I’ve got a logbook.”
The Wizard kept an excessively bizarre diary in a book with a green cover, in which Rangel had seen him writing. That Tuesday, when they ran into each other in the office, the Wizard reminded him it was lunchtime.
“What’s up, Rangel? Wanna get a beer?”
“I wish, man. I’ve got a lot of work to do.”
“Well, then, what do you think? When are you gonna come by?”
“Yeah, well, another day; soon.”
“Friday?”
“Could be. I’ll look for you.”
Just then, Lolita showed up and interrupted them.
“Mr. Rangel, Mrs. Hernández is on the line.”
“Who is it?”
“The mother of the girl who disappeared, the one from Colegio Froebel.”
“No, goddamnit,” Rangel said. “Tell her to get in touch with Officer Taboada. He’s in charge.”
“I already told her that, but she insisted on speaking with you.”
“Tell Wong to pick it up.”
Lolita came back a minute later. “He says he can’t right now.”
She turned toward his desk at the back of the room, where the Chinese guy was giving him the finger: F*cking Rangel, whaddaya think I am, an idiot or what? That’s Taboada’s job, man.
The clock read ten o’clock on the dot. Rangel said to himself, If this woman keeps calling, I’m going to have a very long day.
At one o’clock, a guy selling guayaberas came into the headquarters. Cruz Trevi?o bought one from him, Crazyshot bought another, and, before he left, the salesman left two more on El Travolta’s desk.
“You wouldn’t want to buy one, would you, sir?”
“No, thanks.”
“You can spread out the payments.”
“Some other time.”
“It’s not a shirt, it’s a way of showing your support for the president of the country.”
Ever since President Echevarreta made guayaberas fashionable, all the government employees were wearing them. Not only that, they also put photos of him on their desks, as if Echevarreta were a saint handing out miracles, able to deliver them from evil. Just then, Lolita stuck her head into the hall. Since he didn’t get along with the girl, the guayabera seller waved good-bye and walked out with his things.
“Oh, you’re over here? I called your extension but they didn’t answer. Mrs. Hernández is looking for you on line one. It’s the fourth time today.”
What a f*cking pain, he thought; this lady just doesn’t get it.
“Tell her I’m not in the office, that I’ll be back tomorrow.”
The girl nodded angrily and added loudly so everyone could hear her: “And Licenciado Barbosa on line two.”
It seemed like everyone who was there—Wong, the Professor, the Bedouin—lifted up their heads to look when they heard that name. Oh, shit, Don Agustín Barbosa was the mayor of Ciudad Madera, one of the leading opposition mayors. Those were the days when going against the will of the establishment was practically impossible. Barbosa, who, thanks to his renown as a lawyer and independent businessman had beaten out the establishment candidate and won the elections, was not viewed kindly by the chief. Rangel had seen him twice, both times while he was with his uncle, and they had a cordial relationship. How strange, he thought, why’s Barbosa looking for me? And since the secretary was waiting for an answer, he said, “Thanks, Lolita. Forward the call to my desk.”
The Bedouin shook his head in disapproval. A minute later, Lolita connected him with the mayor of Ciudad Madera’s office.
“Don Agustín just left,” his secretary said. “He said you should catch up with him at his restaurant. It’s very important.”
OK, he said, I guess I’m going to the Excelsior.