“Well, what do you know?”
“I know there’s a kid called Nick Godoy and he has a tattoo just like the one the kid who was dancing with the dead girl had. If you told Mecía to give me a hand so I’m not at this alone and maybe if forensics actually processed evidence this century, maybe—”
“Aguirre, Mecía is busy. There’s more than dead hookers from Santa Julia to deal with, you realize that?”
“What does it matter what colonia she was from?” Ana asked.
But of course Ana already knew the answer. A dead girl from a bad neighborhood who had saved her pennies so she could spend a night out on the town—who maybe was hooking, not just partying, as Castillo said—couldn’t get expediency or much attention.
“Aguirre, we both know this junkie is likely long gone from here. Do the paperwork and close it, all right?”
Castillo grabbed his mini-tablet, which was resting atop a pile of file folders, and began swiping his index finger across it, their meeting apparently concluded. Ana paused by the door and looked at him, skinny fucker with his cheap tie and his monumental indifference. She slammed the door shut, which gave her some small satisfaction.
*
At the Tacuba subway station Ana saw two dozen police officers—called “Robocops” because they were wearing superheavy uniforms, gear more appropriate for an old Schwarzenegger flick than anything else—take out their clubs and start beating the living shit out of a bunch of illegal street vendors who were peddling their wares near the stairs. The local city government was cracking down on street vendors and vagoneros, and this in turn meant cracking skulls. Sure, they called it “relocating,” but it did not amount to that and the vendors always came back, anyway. She assumed that the Robocops whacking people left and right were there to settle a score or impart a personal lesson, and not on official business, because normally the method they employed to scare off the vendors was throwing tear gas at them.
Ana kept walking. Outside there were more established vendors in stalls occupying most of the sidewalk. Since they didn’t have access to proper power outlets and carried no generators, they stole power from the public electric poles. As a result poles at the street corners were tilting precariously to the side, under the weight of a myriad of cables, though they never quite plummeted to the ground.
The competition at Tacuba was fierce, and at night each stall blinked with Christmas lights, lightbulbs, tiny neon signs, the music blaring and voices rising. There were vendors offering nuts and dried fruits, headphones, pencils and pens and markers, bubble gum, oatmeal bars. Illegal DVDs and video games for kids were located next to a stand dedicated to hardcore pornography. It was hard to walk around Tacuba with the swell of people and stalls, but Ana was tall and strong and she imposed herself even without her uniform so that most people wisely moved a bit to the side.
She cut to the left, took a side street, then wandered down an alley until she left the bustle of the street vendors behind and continued down quieter streets. She passed a shop selling pi?atas and a barbershop until she reached a small green building, its paint peeling, a large neon pyramid indicating she had reached the Center of the Unified Faith. Mexico was still resolutely Catholic, and most of the faithful in Tacuba worshipped at the old-fashioned Parroquia San Gabriel Arcángel, a great stone building that had once served as a monastery. The Center of the Unified Faith, however, was one of many New Age churches sprouting up around the country. Apocalyptic churches and the cult of the Santisima Muerte drew substantial crowds, but these New Age joints also had their devotees.
Ana considered smoking a cigarette, but again she was missing a lighter. The front door said PUZH TO OPEN, and Ana did with a sigh. The inside of the temple was as unimpressive as the outside. Plastic flowers and strings of lights constituted the main décor, with a large golden tapestry showing a pyramid hanging behind an empty podium. The faithful sat on plastic chairs and bowed their heads, music with a faint, decidedly inauthentic Middle Eastern whiff piping in through a couple of speakers.