The Black Minutes

3

The day got off to a bad start: the congressmen were mad, the attorney general was upset, and the governor was furious. The situation with the journalist was posing a lot of problems. Taboada made a list of issues: the governor, the attorney general, the journalist’s family members, my partner. . . . He examined each one of them, and in the end he decided to start with the most complicated.
He called Agent Chávez. The phone rang and rang but Chávez never answered. How strange, he said to himself, he never turns off his cell phone. After considering his options, he called Agent Cabrera’s house, with the same result. F*cking Macetón, where’d he go? Then he called his secretary, Sandrita, at home, even though it wasn’t seven o’clock yet. It was clear he had woken her up; she took a while to react. He asked her what she knew about El Chaneque.
“Nothing, sir. The last time I saw him was when he talked with you, yesterday morning.”
“Go look for him at his house and tell him to report to me. I’ll see you in an hour at the office.”
Fifteen minutes later, after bathing and putting his clothes on, he opened the door to his car. He grabbed the latest edition of El Mercurio— the paper guy put it on his windshield—to find out that the dead guy’s relatives had published an advertisement against him. Just what I need, he thought. They must have offered a lot of cash to the paper’s editor to get him to publish that letter.
He got to his office at 7:30. The first thing he did was review the journalist’s boxes. He found a small manila envelope with his property-tax receipt: Mile 31, Las Conchas subdivision. He saw the property was near the beach and asked himself what this journalist was up to. A little while later, he heard an old man’s footsteps dragging down the hallway. It must be El Chicote, the old man is always the first one to get here.
“Good morning.” The old man stuck his head in. “Can I get you anything?”
He had an intuition, so he sent the old man to buy all the newspapers, including the ones from the U.S. side of the border. As he suspected, Mr. Blanco’s parents had put an insert in a newspaper in Mexico City and another one in the main newspaper in south Texas, in which they condemned his performance and demanded speedy justice. As if he didn’t have anything else to do.
Sandrita arrived at eight o’clock on the dot.
“Where’s Chávez?”
“I couldn’t find him, Chief. I went to look for him at his house and he wasn’t there.”
“Cabrera hasn’t come in either?”
“No, sir, he’s not here yet.”
“As soon as either one of them shows up, send him to me.”
A few minutes later, the girl transferred a call from Licenciado Campillo, the governor’s personal secretary. He was short and to the point.
“Turn on Channel Seventy. We’ll talk in a minute.”
He turned on the cable box and looked for the channel. A TV anchor in San Antonio, Texas, was talking about the state of affairs in the port. He condemned the death of the young journalist, Bernardo Blanco, and then criticized the shoddy way they were carrying out the investigations. The anchor, a young guy with a blond mustache, was asking ironically if the local police, who were known to have ties to the Paracuán cartel, would resolve the situation. Damn, Taboada said to himself, where’d he get that one from? F*cking dumb-ass reporters. Everyone expected great things from Bernardo Blanco. Just problems, he said to himself, the only thing he had accomplished was creating problems, like the one that for sure was ringing his phone right now.
“Chief, its Cruz Trevi?o on the line.”
“Tell him I’ll call him back.”
Ever since they put Cruz Trevi?o in charge of the judicial police, Taboada hadn’t had a good relationship with his colleague. Taboada didn’t like it when someone beneath him got any power that made him look less important. He passed by the glass case where he kept his high-caliber firearms and stopped at his trophies hanging on the back wall: three deer heads and the head of a bear he killed in a nature reserve. I need to take it to get fixed, the stuffing is coming out.
At 8:15 Agent Camarena walked in.
“Have you seen Chávez?”
“No, sir. Not since yesterday morning.”
Camarena was a very hard-working young man, but in El Travolta’s opinion he wasn’t mean enough or smart enough to do interrogations. He’d have to start learning how.
“Find Chávez for me.”
When Camarena went out, the secretary came in. “Licenciado, they called you back from the state capital—”
“And why didn’t you give me the call?”
“Because you told me not to. If you want, I’ll call him back.”
The chief shook his head and lamented the fact that Lolita had retired, his old secretary who knew all the criminals by name and nickname. Sometimes she could say who was guilty of a crime before the detectives had even left to investigate. But she had retired at the end of the eighties.
Taboada sighed deeply and told her to get him in touch with the state government.
“They say Mr. Campillo isn’t available, he can’t take the call.”
Now he’s the one refusing the call. Just my f*cking luck.
He looked over the property-tax receipt again: Mile 31, Las Conchas subdivision. He was sure he had heard of that neighborhood, but he didn’t remember the context.
Sandrita knocked on the door at nine on the dot and walked into his office. “Mr. Cabrera’s wife called. She said her husband was run over last night. He’s unconscious at the state hospital.”
“Wait, wait. Which Cabrera? El Macetón?”
“Yes, sir.”
What was Cabrera up to? And before the girl could give it to him, he noticed a telegram in her hands. The envelope was from Customs Agency Number Five, but he knew who had sent it before he even opened it. Only one person sent him telegrams, an impatient person. He worriedly read the contents. No f*cking way, cabrón, there’s a misunderstanding, and he fed the document into the paper shredder. Quite an invention, the paper shredder.
He looked around the back of the room and noted that the bear was still deflating. Everything’s f*cked, he thought. He was going to have to go in person. Chávez was normally the mediator for issues having to do with customs, but he was nowhere to be found.
“Sandrita, call the restaurant at the Customs House and make a reservation in my name.”
Five minutes later, she told him, “Sir, they say they’re all booked up for the day.”
What the f*ck, he thought, they’ve never told me that before. The situation had gotten out of control. He couldn’t request backup and he couldn’t go without protection, so he opened the display case where he kept the firearms and took out a .357.