The Black Minutes

The Black Minutes

Martín Solares

Translation by Aura Estrada
and John Pluecker

Copyright © 2006 by Martín Solares
Translation copyright © 2010 by Aura Estrada and John Pluecker

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Published simultaneously in Canada
Printed in the United States of America

ISBN: 978-0-8021-9703-0 (e-book)

Black Cat
a paperback original imprint of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
841 Broadway
New York, NY 10003

Distributed by Publishers Group West
www.groveatlantic.com

To Vesta

Residents of Paracuán, Tamaulipas

Book One: Your Memory Has a Thousand Gaps

Book Two: The Equation

One

Two

Three

Four

Five Black Minutes

Book Three: The Spiral

Postscript

The Paracuán Police

• Rosa Isela, a beautiful girl doing her social service work at the Paracuán police headquarters

• Camarena and Rodrigo Columba: young graduates of the police academy

• Joaquín Taboada, El Travolta, current chief of Paracuán’s municipal police

• Ramón Cabrera, also known as El Macetón (the Big Flowerpot)

• García, Taboada’s predecessor

• Lolita, secretary

• Rufino Chávez aka El Chaneque (the Goblin): Taboada’s right-hand man

• The forensic expert, Ramírez

• Jarquiel, El Profe (the Professor), police officer

• Wong, El Chino, police officer

• Salim, El Beduino (the Bedouin), police officer

• Zozaya, El Evangelista (the Evangelist), police officer

• Tiroloco (Crazyshot), police officer

• Mena, Gordolobo (Fatwolf), police officer

• Luis Calatrava, El Brujo (the Wizard), checkpoint guard

• Dr. Ridaura, forensic doctor and respected biology professor

• Vicente Rangel González, detective

• Jorge Romero, El Ciego (the Blind Man): Rangel’s
madrina, i.e
., his lackey

• Emilio Nieto, El Chicote (the Whip), receptionist, prison guard, car washer, and courier

• Cruz Treviño, chief of the judicial police, previously a municipal police officer

The Locals

• Bernardo Blanco, a young journalist

• Don Rubén Blanco, Bernardo’s father

• Johnny Guerrero,
nota roja
(crime-beat) reporter for
El Mercurio

• La Chilanga, photographer

• René Luz de Dios López, imprisoned for killing four girls

• Fritz Tschanz, Jesuit priest

• His Holiness the bishop of Paracuán

• John Williams, influential businessman in the port, owner of Cola Drinks

• John Williams, Jr., called Jack

• Tobías Wolffer, local congressman

• Rodrigo Montoya, director of the Paracuán archives

• Lucilo Rivas, Bar León manager

• Raúl Silva Santacruz, witness

• Juan, El Chimuelo (Gaptooth) and Jorge, El Chaparro (Shorty), butchers

• El Lobina, fisherman

• Don Isaac Klein, restaurant owner

• El Profeta (the Prophet), ice-cream vendor

• Lucía Hernández Campillo, Inés Gómez Lobato, Karla Cevallos, Julia Concepción González, Daniela Torres, the victims of the Jackal

The Visitors

• Lieutenant Miguel Rivera González, legendary policeman from Paracuán

• Mr. Traven Torsvan, writer

• Dr. Alfonso Quiroz Cuarón, internationally renowned criminologist

• Rigo Tovar, singer

• El Rey de los Marcianos (the King of the Martians), alien

• Cormac McCormick, ex-detective for the FBI

• El Albino, crime-beat photographer

The Narcos

• El Chincualillo (the Little Pain), wholesale drug dealer

• El Cochiloco (the Crazy Pig), leader of the Colombians

• El Chato Rambal (the Flat-faced Rambal), head of the port cartel

• Vivar, the Paracuán cartel’s lawyer

• Mr. Obregón, the Paracuán cartel’s leader

The Politicos

• Licenciado Echaverreta, president of Mexico

• Juan José Churruca, government minister for the state of Tamaulipas

• José “Pepe” Topete, influential politician

• Daniel Torres Sabinas, Paracuán mayor at the end of the seventies

• Agustín Barbosa, Ciudad Madera’s first opposition mayor

• Edelmiro Morales, leader of the professors’ union in Tamaulipas

The Invaders

• The officers from the Federal Security Administration

I had the most important nightmare of my life so far while traveling in a bus down a highway flanked by pine trees. I haven’t been able to figure out what it means, at least not entirely
.

It was nighttime, but I couldn’t sleep. Every time I started to nod off, the headlights of oncoming cars or the jolting of the bus jarred me awake. I knew I was finally asleep when I couldn’t hear the engine drone anymore and the headlights turned soft and blue and stopped bothering me
.

I was having a pleasant dream, one that was even, in certain respects, a musical one, when I sensed that a sarcastic person, someone who knew me fairly well, had moved into the seat behind me. The visitor waited until I was used to his presence; then he uncrossed his legs, leaned forward, and, breathing down my neck, said:

Isn’t it true that in the life of
every man there are five
black minutes?

The idea frightened me so much I woke up, and since there was no one in any of the seats around me, I spent the rest of the night drinking water, watching the moon, and trying to calculate if I’d already reached my quota of black minutes
.

That’s what I was doing when I pulled in to Paracuán
.

The first time he saw the journalist, he reckoned him to be twenty years old and he was wrong. The journalist, from his perspective, reckoned the plaid-shirted rancher to be around fifty, and he guessed right. They were both traveling south. The journalist was on his way from the United States, after quitting his job; the man in the plaid shirt was coming back from a job in the northern part of the state, but he didn’t say what it was. They knew they were getting into Mexico because the air on the bus was too thick to breathe.

When they crossed the Río Muerto, they saw a two-jeep convoy. As they got to Dos Cruces a pickup full of
judiciales
passed them, and at Seis Marias they ran into a checkpoint inspection by the Eighth Military Zone. A soldier with a lantern signaled the driver to pull over; the driver took the bus down a dirt road and stopped it in the beam of a huge floodlight, between two walls of sandbags. On the other side of the highway was a big canvas tent with a set of radar machines, and farther down three dozen soldiers were doing calisthenics. During the search of the bus, the journalist turned on his reading light and tried to read the only book he had with him,
The Spiritual Exercises
by St. Ignatius of Loyola, but just a minute into it he felt deeply uncomfortable and looked in the direction of the trenches. Just beneath him, behind the sandbags and the thicket of palm trees, two soldiers stared at
him, full of resentment. He wouldn’t have cared, if it weren’t for the high-caliber machine guns they had trained on him. The rancher said he’d probably look the same, if he had to spend the night at the mercy of the mosquitoes, in hundred-degree heat, crouched behind a bunch of sandbags.

The inspection was carried out without incident. The sergeant who looked them over did it only out of duty and scrutinized the luggage lazily. Meanwhile, the young journalist took advantage of the wait to drink a yogurt, and he offered another to the rancher. In exchange, the fifty-year-old offered him some
pemoles
, the cornmeal cookies they eat in the Huasteca. The rancher asked if he was a student, the young man said no, he’d already finished his studies, in fact had even quit his first job, as a reporter for the San Antonio
Herald
. He was thinking of taking a year off and living down at the port; perhaps later he’d go back to Texas. He showed the rancher a picture of a blonde woman with her hair pulled back. The rancher remarked that she was very beautiful and said he shouldn’t have left such a job. The journalist responded that he had his reasons.

The young man examined his fellow travelers: they looked to him like rough, uncultured types. There was the plaid- shirted rancher, shirttail untucked to hide his gun; a somber smoker, who traveled with a machete wrapped in newspaper; and, toward the back, one who seemed worst of all: a mustachioed giant who was eating oranges without peeling them. The young man was still looking them over when it came time for the second inspection.