He remembered the headlines flashing in the newspapers, the ticker going round the screens in the subway. Narco vampires were always killing each other up North. That’s all you heard about them. Rough. Sure.
“Anyway, we’ve been having problems with this one guy. Godoy. One of those new vampire lords who have been messing with our operations and stirring the pot. My mother thought she had it under control … and then they killed her.”
“Jesus. So you ran off?”
“My sister said I should be ready. I looked through the window.…”
Atl’s voice trailed off. She looked down at her hands, as if she were concentrating, inspecting them very carefully. Suddenly she snapped her head back up and stared at him.
“They killed my sister, my family. That’s when I ran. Now they’re going to make an example out of me.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Won’t the cops arrest them, anyway?”
“You don’t get it.”
Atl unzipped her jacket and tossed it on the floor. Then she turned her back toward him and lifted her shirt. She had a tattoo between her shoulder blades. It looked like a bird with a long beak, stylized and kind of odd. Sort of like the pictures he’d seen in his history book when they talked about the Aztecs. Like the picture from one of them codices.
“What is it?” he asked.
“My family’s crest. The hummingbird. We’re not a small-time gang. I’m not a small-time thug. The police won’t do shit. Well, except maybe kill me or jail me. Or jail me, then kill me.”
Domingo extended his left hand, reaching toward, but not touching, the intricate drawing. Atl tugged her T-shirt down and threw him an irritated look. He pulled his hand back.
“I need to find a place with an Internet connection,” she said.
“I know a café where they don’t ask for ID,” he said. “That’s … umm … that’s what you want, right?”
Atl scooped up her jacket from the floor and nodded.
*
He took her to the café near the basilica. The person at the door waved them in, taking their money without bothering to check their papers. Even if someone had said something, Domingo knew it would take no more than a few words to convince the employees to let them use a computer.
“That was easy,” Atl said as they navigated a narrow hallway, looking for an empty booth.
“It’s no big deal. There’s this talk about how biometric IDs are super necessary and cops can stop you to look at your papers for no reason, but it’s not a problem. Most of the time no one asks me for papers. I know the places where they never even bother thinking about asking, anyway.”
“Why don’t they?”
“’Cause I’m not important,” he said with a shrug. “If I was a superhero my power would be invisibility.”
“What about sanitation?”
“Sanitation is looking for Cronengs. They don’t care about me.”
Domingo didn’t even know why they bothered harassing the Cronengs. It’s not like they were going to get proper medical treatment; all they did was ship them to that old convent in Coyoacán they had turned into a crappy sanatorium, and if that was full they were off to Iztapalapa. The Cronengs died quick, anyway. They shuffled around the city, with their sores and their tired faces, begging for coins, and nobody really gave a shit as long as they weren’t loitering in the nice areas.
“They do care about vampires,” Atl said.
He found a booth for two and opened the door. It was narrow and it smelled of cheap air freshener, but they squeezed in. Atl pulled out the keyboard and began typing.
“What are you looking for?” he asked.
“The telephone directory. Shit.”
“What?”
“There’s like a hundred Elisa Carreras.”
Atl brushed away the screen. She began typing again.
“That’s better,” she muttered. “There’s only one Elisa Carrera who does translation work.”
Domingo leaned down next to her, mouthing the address.
“How’d you know she’s a translator?” he asked.
“Verónica Montealban was a translator.”
The monitor flickered, cheap thing that it was. Atl gave it a whack with the palm of her hand and the image steadied itself.
“You think she changed her name?”
“Yes. You have a pen?”
Domingo looked in his many pockets and handed her a pencil and a scrap of paper. Atl noted the address on-screen, then flicked the terminal off. She pushed away the keyboard and opened the door, motioning for Domingo to follow her. She walked ahead of him. They were about to reach the exit when someone tapped him on the shoulder. Domingo turned around.
“What’s up, man?” Quinto asked. “You missed my party.”
He was an okay dude, Quinto. A few years older than Domingo, but still pretty cool. He even had a cool haircut, tapered sides and longer at the top, and wore a neat gold earring.
“Hey. Yeah, I know,” Domingo said. “I was kind of short on cash. And I’ve been busy.”
“Too bad. Belén was there.”
Which meant the Jackal had been there. Which in turn meant it was probably a good thing he had missed the whole thing, since the Jackal had it in for him. Nevertheless, it might have been nice to see Belén.
Eh. He wasn’t sure.