The Black Minutes

28

Vicente was watching the Grand Marquis when two guys waved to him. They were coming from the parking lot of the headquarters and each was wearing a suit and tie.
“Vicente Rangel González?”
“Yes.”
The taller one put out his cigarette.
“Miguel Miyazaki, from the Federal Safety Administration. We were waiting for you. Let’s go for a ride.”
“I have to finish up here.”
“With the guy you arrested? Don’t worry about it, they’ll take care of him. You come with us. Or what? You don’t wanna talk?”
“D-d-d-don’t t-t-be a coward,” the second officer stuttered.
Rangel offered them the keys.
“No, you drive, we don’t know the port. Let’s go to the dock. They say you live in a really cool house. Right? Take us to see it.”
Miyazaki sat down on his right and the stutterer got in the back. As Vicente drove, Miyazaki noticed the bulge of the .38.
“Allow me,” he said, and reached out his hand.
Rangel thought about it a second but ended up handing over his gun to the man.
Oh, nephew— he could almost hear his uncle’s voice—you never lend guns or women.
Miyazaki found six cartridges in the barrel, and as soon as he closed it, he pointed it at Rangel’s temple. Vicente looked at him out of the corner of his eye, and the man lowered the pistol.
“Look, Manuel: a thirty-eight Colt, like the old ones.” And he handed it to the stutterer, who looked it over with real delight. “Manuel loves the Colts.”
“It was my uncle’s.”
“It used to be,” the stutterer replied from the backseat.
Miyazaki backed him up with a mocking laugh.
Five minutes later, as they approached the last stoplight, Miyazaki said, “Stop. Don’t run the light. We don’t want to do anything illegal, do we?”
Rangel braked under the huge Cola Drinks sign. The woman on the billboard seemed to be laughing at him, as if she were singing a victory song. From this perspective, she had long sharp canines and was smiling at Vicente.
When they got to the dock, the sun was setting over the Pánico. The last rays of light were shining on the other side of the river.
“Stop there.” Miyazaki pointed to an abandoned lot, and the three of them got out.
A dense cloud of smoke wafted from the other side of the river. A furious wind ripped through the corn fields on shore and Rangel understood.
They had burned down his house. There were only a few smoking logs left, which the firefighters were doing their best to put out. Farther away, sitting on a patrol car, El Chaneque was poking the sand with a stick. And El Albino, always the same El Albino, stuck on rewind, froze when he recognized Rangel.
“That was your house? Look, my friend, there was nothing we could do.”
The stutterer was rubbing his arms, as if he was trying to heat them up. He’d stopped stuttering. “A tragedy, right? A f*cking crazy-ass tragedy. The forensic guys already came for her.”
Rangel grabbed the stutterer by his lapels and head-butted him in the face. This was what the agent was expecting; he pulled out the .38 and fired, but the gun jammed.
“That’s to be expected,” said Lieutenant Miguel Rivera. “That’s normal. The gun doesn’t work anymore; it broke twenty years ago.”
Before Rangel could react, Miyazaki put his own gun to his temple. “Calm down, Rangel, don’t make this any harder.”
As they were crossing the river, he felt a hard object on the seat and found Mr. Torsvan’s German coin. The girl must have slipped it into his pants at some point the night before. When they were halfway across the bridge, he asked himself, How many sides, cabrón, how many sides? and he threw the coin into the river. Then he gripped the steering wheel tightly, very tightly with his hand.