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On December 1, the body of a young woman
between eighteen and twenty-two was found in a dry streambed near Casas Negras.
The discovery was made by Santiago Catalan, who was out hunting and noticed
that his dogs were behaving strangely as they approached the stream. Suddenly,
in the words of the witness, the dogs began to quiver as if they'd scented a
tiger or a bear. But since there are no tigers or bears around here I got it in
my head that they'd scented the
ghost
of a tiger or a bear. I know my
dogs and I know when they start to quiver and whine it's for a reason. Then I
got curious, so after I had kicked the dogs to get them to stop acting like a
bunch of pussies, I strode toward the stream. When he stepped down into the dry
streambed, which was no more than a foot and a half deep, Santiago Catalan
didn't see or smell anything and even the dogs seemed to relax. But when he got
to the first bend he heard a noise and the dogs started to bark again and
quiver. The body was enveloped in a cloud of flies. Santiago Catalan was so
startled that he let the dogs go and fired a burst of birdshot in the air. The
flies rose for a moment and he could see it was the body of a woman. At the
same time, he remembered that the bodies of other young women had been found in
the area. For a few seconds he was afraid the killers might still be there and
he regretted having fired his gun. Then he stepped very carefully out of the
streambed and scanned the scene. Just cholla and biznaga cactuses and in the
distance a saguaro or two, and a whole spectrum of yellows, one shading into
another. When he got back to his ranch, El Jugador, outside of Casas Negras, he
called the police and described the exact place he'd made the discovery. Then
he washed his face and changed his shirt, thinking about the dead woman, and
before he went out again he ordered one of his employees to accompany him. When
the police got to the streambed, Catalan was still carrying his rifle and
ammunition belt. The body was faceup, with pants on just one leg, caught around
the ankle. There were four stab wounds to the abdomen and three to the chest,
as well as marks around the neck. The victim was dark-skinned with
shoulder-length hair dyed black. A few yards away they found her shoes: black
Converse sneakers with white laces. The rest of her clothes had disappeared.
The police combed the streambed for clues but they failed to find anything or
didn't know how to go about it. Four months later, purely by chance, an
identification was made. She was Ursula Gonzalez Rojo, twenty or twenty-one, no
family, resident for the last three years of the city of
Zacatecas
. She had been in Santa Teresa for
three days when she was kidnapped and then killed. This last bit of information
came from a friend in Zacatecas, whom Ursula had called. She sounded happy,
said the friend, because she was about to get work at a maquiladora.
Identification was possible thanks to the Converse and a small scar on the
victim's back in the shape of a lightning bolt.

The truth is like a strung-out
pimp in the middle of a storm, said the congresswoman. Then she was quiet for a
while, as if listening for thunder in the distance. And then she picked up her
glass of tequila, which was full again, and said: every day I had more work,
that's the honest truth. Every day I was busy with dinners, trips, meetings,
planning sessions that achieved nothing except my utter exhaustion, busy with
interviews, busy with denials, television appearances, lovers, men I fucked,
why? to keep the legend alive, maybe, or because I liked them, or because it
was to my advantage to fuck them, but just once, so they got a taste and
nothing else, or maybe simply because I like to fuck when and where I please,
and I had no time for anything, my affairs in the hands of my lawyers, the
Esquivel Plata fortune—no longer dwindling, I won't lie, but growing—in the
hands of my lawyers, my son in the hands of his teachers, and me with more and
more work: water problems in the state of Michoacan, highways in Queretaro,
interviews, equestrian statues, public sewage systems, all the local shit
passing through my hands. Around this time, I suppose I neglected my friends a
little. Kelly was the only one I saw. Whenever I had time I visited her at her
apartment in Colonia Condesa and we tried to talk. But really, I was so tired
when I got there that communication was a problem. She told me things, I
remember that clearly, she told me things about her life, more than once she
would explain something and then ask me for money and what I did was take out
my checkbook and write a check for the amount she needed. Sometimes I would
fall asleep while we were talking. Other times we would go out for dinner and
have a good time, but my head was almost always elsewhere, mulling over a
problem yet to be solved, it was hard for me to follow the thread of the
conversation. Kelly never blamed me for it. Each time I was on television, for
example, the next day she would send me a bouquet of roses and a note telling
me how well I'd done and how proud of me she was. She never stopped sending me a
present for my birthday. Thoughtful gestures like that. Of course, as time went
by I noticed a few things. The fashion shows Kelly organized were fewer and
farther between. The modeling agency she ran was no longer the elegant,
bustling place it had once been, but a dark office, almost always closed. Once
I stopped by the agency with Kelly and was struck by its state of abandonment.
I asked her what was wrong. She looked at me with a smile, one of her carefree
smiles, and said that the best Mexican models would rather sign up with
American or European agencies. That's where the money was. I wanted to know
what had happened to her business. Then Kelly spread her arms and said this is
it, encompassing the darkness, the dust, the lowered shades. I had a shiver of
foreboding. It had to be foreboding. I'm not the kind of woman who shivers at
just anything. I sat down in a chair and tried to reason. The rent for those
offices was expensive and it seemed to me it wasn't worth paying all that for a
business that was going under. Kelly told me she still put together some shows,
and she named places that struck me as picturesque, unlikely or unthinkable
spots for high fashion, although I suppose high fashion didn't enter into it,
and then she said she was making enough to keep the office open. She also
explained that now she organized parties, not in
Mexico City
but in provincial capitals. What
does that mean? I asked. It's very simple, said Kelly, suppose for a moment
that you're a rich lady from
Aguascalientes
.
You're going to throw a party.

Suppose you want this party to
be a great party. In other words, a party that will impress your friends. What
makes a party memorable? There's the buffet, of course, and the waiters, the
band, lots of things, but there's one thing in particular that makes all the
difference. What is it, do you know? The guests, I said. Exactly, the guests.
If you're a lady from
Aguascalientes
and you've got lots of money and you want a party to remember, then you get in
touch with me. I oversee everything. As if it were a fashion show. I take care
of the food, the staff, the decorating, the music, but especially, and
depending on how much money I have to work with, the guests. If you want the
star from your favorite soap opera, you have to talk to me. If you want a talk
show host, you have to talk to me. Put it this way: I handle the famous guests.
It's all about the money. Bringing a famous talk show host to
Aguascalientes
maybe isn't possible. But if
the party is in
Cuernavaca
,
I might be able to get him to show up. I'm not saying it's easy or cheap, but I
can try. Getting a soap star to
Aguascalientes
is possible, though that won't come cheap either. But if the star is in a
slump, say, if he hasn't worked in the last year and a half, there's more of a
chance he'll make an appearance. And it won't cost too much. What's my job?
Well, to convince them to come. First I call them, I take them out for coffee,
I sound them out. Then I talk to them about the party. I tell them there's
money in it for them if they make a cameo. At this point, there's usually some
bargaining. I offer a small sum. They ask for more. We approach an agreement. I
reveal the names of the hosts. I say these are important people, provincials,
but important. I make them repeat the husband's and wife's names several times.
They ask me whether I'll be there. Of course I'll be there. Supervising
everything. They ask me about the hotels in
Aguascalientes
,
Tampico
,
Irapuato
.
Nice hotels. And anyway, all the houses we're at have lots of guest rooms.
Finally we make a deal. The day of the party I show up with two or three or
four famous guests and the party is a success. And you make enough doing that?
More than enough, said Kelly, the only problem is that there are dry spells,
when no one has any interest in fancy parties, and since I don't know how to
save, then things are tight. After that we went out, I don't know where, to a
party, maybe, or the movies, or dinner with some friends, and that was the last
we spoke of the matter. Anyway, I never heard her complain. I imagine sometimes
things were all right and other times they weren't. But one night she called
and said she had a problem. I thought it had to do with money and I told her
she could count on me. But it wasn't money. I've gotten myself into a mess, she
said. Are you in debt? I asked her. No, it isn't that, she said. I was in bed,
half asleep, and her voice sounded different, it was Kelly's voice, of course,
but it sounded strange, as if she were alone, I thought, in her offices, with the
lights out, sitting in a chair not knowing what to say or how to begin. I think
I've gotten myself into trouble, she said. If it's trouble with the police, I
said, tell me where you are and I'll come get you right away. She told me it
wasn't that kind of trouble. For God's sake, Kelly, speak plainly or let me
sleep, I said. For a few seconds I thought she'd hung up or that she'd left the
phone on the chair and walked away. Then I heard her voice, like the voice of a
child, saying I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, several times, and I
was sure, too, that her I
don't know
was addressed not to me but to
herself. I asked then if she was drunk or high. At first she didn't answer, as
if she hadn't heard me, then she laughed, she wasn't drunk or high, she
promised, maybe she'd had a couple of whiskey sodas, but that was all. Then she
apologized for calling so late. She was about to hang up. Wait, I said, there's
something wrong, you can't kid me. She laughed again. There's nothing wrong,
she said. I'm sorry, we get emotional as we get older, she said, good night.
Wait, don't hang up, don't hang up, I said. Something's wrong, don't lie to me.
I've never lied to you, she said. There was a silence. Except when we were
girls, said Kelly. Oh, really? When I was a girl I lied to everyone, not all
the time, of course, but I lied. Not anymore.

A week later, as she was leafing idly
through
La Raza de Green Valley,
Mary-Sue Bravo learned that the
reporter who had covered Haas's vaunted and ultimately disappointing declaration
had disappeared. So it said in her own paper, too, which was the only outside
source to pick up the news, a vague, local piece of news, so local that the
only people who seemed interested were the publishers of
La Raza,
According
to the article, Josue Hernandez Mercado—that was his name—had disappeared five
days before. He had covered the killings of women in Santa Teresa. He was
thirty-two. He lived alone, in a small house in Sonoita. He was born in
Mexico City
, but he had lived in the
United States
since the age of fifteen, and he was an American citizen. He was the author of
two books of poetry, both in Spanish, published by a small company in
Hermosillo
, probably at his own expense, and two plays,
written in Chicano or Spanglish and printed in a
Texas
magazine,
La Windowa,
which
sheltered in its tumultuous breast an unpredictable group of writers in this
neolanguage. As a reporter for
La Raza
he had published a long series of
pieces on farmworkers in the area, a job he knew from watching his parents and
working at it himself. He had pulled himself up by his bootstraps, the profile
ended by saying, though it seemed less like a profile, thought Mary-Sue, than
an obituary.

On December 3, the body of
another woman was found dumped in an open field in Colonia Maytorena, near the
Pueblo Azul highway. The body was clothed and no external signs of violence
were visible. Later the victim was identified as Juana Marin Lozada. According
to the medical examiner, the cause of death was a fracture of the cervical
vertebrae. Or what amounted to the same thing: her neck had been snapped. The
case was handled by Inspector Luis Villasenor, who, as a first step,
interrogated the victim's husband and then arrested him as the prime suspect.
Juana Marin lived in Colonia Centeno, in a middle-class neighborhood, and
worked at a computer store. According to Villasenor's report, she was probably
killed somewhere indoors, possibly in her own home, and then her body was
tossed in the field in Colonia Maytorena. It wasn't clear whether she'd been
raped or not, although the vaginal swab revealed that she'd had sexual
relations in the previous twenty-four hours. According to Villasenor's report,
Juana Mann was reportedly involved with a computer teacher from an academy near
the store where she worked. Another version had it that her lover worked for
the
University
of
Santa Teresa
television
station. Her husband remained in custody for two weeks and then was released
for lack of evidence. The case remained unsolved.