The Black Minutes (17 page)

“What do you say?” his uncle asked the giant. “You wanna mess around with my nephew?”

But the giant didn’t answer.

“Well,” said the owner, “he doesn’t want to go. You’ll have to carry him, lieutenant, but I don’t think you could. He moves washing machines for fun in his spare time.”

“That’s why I came to see you, Gaptooth.” His uncle got in the butcher’s face, and the butcher did the same, like two bulls sizing each other up. “I’m not going to take him with me, just as long as you give the stuff back. Why are you breaking into my friends’ houses?”

Gaptooth opened his huge mouth and smiled broadly, and Rangel understood where the nickname came from.

“Damn, I can’t believe you, boss! Every time you come around here it turns out you’re trying to help out your friends.”

“It’s not my fault I have so many friends. You already know how I work. You probably just don’t like my car. You want me to come back here in La Julia?”

“No, that truck’s damned ugly and it doesn’t have air-conditioning.” “Don’t worry about it, just imagine you’re in a sauna.”

“And what will my neighbors say?”

“That you went on vacation up north.”

The Nagual Prison was up north, built on a hill of the same name.

Gaptooth laughed again, but he didn’t say anything, and Rangel noticed that the giant was discreetly trying to slip out the back door. Rangel’s uncle also noticed and shot a look at Vicente.

They were standing right in front of the butchers, and Gaptooth hadn’t put his sharp knife down. All he has to do is lift up his hand to cut my uncle’s guts out again, he thought. But even though he was at a disadvantage, his uncle was the one who accelerated the situation. Without moving an inch, without deflecting his body despite the danger he was facing, he broke the tension with an impatient remark.

“Look, Gaptooth, you know I was always straight with you. It’s not in your interest to lose this relationship. The ones coming into power aren’t as patient as I am.”

The butcher considered his options. Finally, he nodded.

“All right, Shorty, tell the lieutenant here where you put those things you found in the trash.”

The giant had a deep voice. “At Teobaldo’s shop.”

“With the Spaniard?”

“Yep, there.”

“Ah, goddamn Teobaldo. When did you take him the stuff?”

“Just yesterday.”

“He already paid you?”

“No.”

“Good. That way you don’t have to give him the money back. Let him know we’re on our way over there.”

Half an hour later, Rangel helped his uncle put a television, a sound system, and a jewelry case in the trunk. The owner of the place, a Spaniard with Moorish roots, spit a lot and cussed them out.

“I wonder if this is all of it. At least this much is going back where it came from. And don’t take any more stuff that’s been lost, Teobaldo, because I’ll lock you up. This is the last time I give you a warning, dumb-ass. The next time I’m locking you up for good.”

They made a U-turn and went back the same way they came. The car could hardly climb the gravel incline with the additional weight, the wheels were spinning.

As he accelerated with great care, his uncle spat out, “And all this fucking work so they can say we stole whatever’s still missing.”

Maybe his uncle wouldn’t do it, but any of the other officers would, Rangel thought.

He was appointed to the force a month later, since the chief owed some favors to his uncle. Soon, he started to receive his check every two weeks, much to the surprise of the lackeys who had been waiting for theirs for months. It wasn’t a lot of money, but for other people it was a lot, and that tiny step that was so difficult for Rangel to take, because he thought he was lowering himself, debasing the image that he had of himself, incited a lot of envy among those who worked with him. An example: because of his criminal record, Chávez could never have a stable job and be a normal police officer. According to him, he’d clarified what happened when he stabbed two people—“It was self-defense”—but Chief García didn’t care about that: Chávez was sentenced to being a lackey his entire life, being paid out of the others’ salaries,
living at the expense of El Travolta, his partner, who became even more famous with every arrest Chávez made. Chávez took the risks, El Travolta took the credit.

Rangel went and bought some shoes and a pair of pants with the first pesos he got. He trashed his Hawaiian shirts and the pastel-colored suit he had used as a guitarist. A musician had died and a police officer was born.

His days were long. Wake up and iron a shirt, do a few crunches, exercises for the arms, abs, and legs—so as not to end up with his uncle’s potbelly and his smoker’s cough—then he’d take a quick shower and head out to take the first
águila
(taxis in the port were called
águilas
, or eagles, because of the union emblem that identified them). He never could beat his uncle to the breakfast spot. No matter how early he woke up, by the time Rangel sat down in the Jewish guy’s place, Don Miguel Rivera had already finished his gigantic plate of
chilaquiles
with beans,
salsa roja
, or
verde
; orange juice; and a sweet dark
café de olla
. Then they’d go over the cases one by one. Rangel gave him a report from the day before. If no one was visibly eavesdropping on them, his uncle would entrust him with one or two interesting things that were about to happen: apprehensions, rewards, the interception of a gringo shrimper in Mexican federal waters. Then they would leave to clock in and organize themselves for the day. Or days plural. Two days were never the same.

As soon as the work routine seemed normal to him, Rangel noticed that the dark depression that had afflicted him began to disappear, though not completely. It would always come back like a chronic sickness, and he would have to scare it away each time.

He got a semi-used Chevy Nova a year later. He bought it from a coworker who came from the border. He left the nasty
downtown room he rented and went to live on the other side of the river, in what he called his mansion: an old wooden house he stumbled upon one day while chasing a suspect. It was one of those old houses that exist in many ports, a house built at the beginning of the century in a New Orleans style. There was a large living room, a kitchen, a small dining area, and two bedrooms in the back. The high ceilings cooled off the inside, and it was a delight to sit on the huge terrace looking out on the river. The mansion belonged to a ranch foreman, and the owner was an elderly woman who charged him a symbolic amount to live there. Behind his house, the cornfields began. Between his house and the dock, there was an eternally muddy path, preventing anyone from coming around to bother him. The houses closest to him belonged to two families of fishermen, and they were located a good distance in front, by the river’s edge. The only sound to be heard was the occasional whistle of departing ferries. After living in a noisy room in the city’s historic downtown near the docks, he got to know something like calm those first afternoons he spent in his mansion, when he would listen to music on the terrace, lying in his hammock with a drink in his hand, looking at the indigo sky and the lights reflected on the river.

Soon, he noticed that once a month El Chicote walked by certain desks to hand out checks with a
PETRÓLEOS MEXICANOS
stamp on them. He also realized that on the fifteenth of every month a guy in an ostentatious suit who looked like an accountant would walk by and leave them tips, courtesy of millionaire John Williams, owner of the local Cola Drinks bottler. And as if this weren’t enough, the chief had a monthly meeting in his office with a guy wearing expensive plaid suits, who, it was said, was the owner of three motels and a gasoline station. After meeting with these
people, the chief would always seem to be in a better mood and he’d call a few guys into his office, where he’d hand out some bills in envelopes with the logos of several different government institutions. Then he understood why Chávez and El Travolta spent more money and dressed better than he could, despite making the same. When he asked his uncle how he tolerated all that, his uncle cleared his throat and took a minute before answering.

“Look, Vicente”—he swallowed his saliva—“this is a very complicated job. I’m not saying you shouldn’t do your job, but what I mean to say is that sometimes you can’t . . . or you shouldn’t . . . and if you do, you run into a lot of problems. Your good intentions ricochet back in your face, like you were shooting at a wall.”

One of those afternoons when the guy in the plaid suit came to visit, Chief García sent for him.

“Rangel,” he said, “this is Congressman Tobias Wolffer. Yesterday someone threatened to kidnap his daughter, and I want to help him, because the poor guy’s busy helping the Professors’ Union. I’m going to ask you to drop whatever you’re doing”—the last few days Rangel hadn’t been doing anything—“turn over your cases to someone else, no matter how many there are, and tomorrow, starting at seven
A.M.
you’re going to be on watch at the lawyer’s house, on the lookout for any suspicious activity.”

Then he spoke to the congressman.

“Rangel is one of our most qualified officers. He was the one who solved the kidnapping in Tantoyuca, Veracruz.”

The chief was exaggerating things, but Rangel wasn’t about to contradict him in front of a benefactor. The chief would often play the role of protector of souls for the people who came to ask him for favors. Normally, the visitors weren’t looking for spiritual help, since Chief García was no saint; rather, among his many other duties, he always represented the only legal means to hire a
bodyguard. Rangel asked himself why he had called him, since normally the chief turned to El Travolta, Fatwolf, or Cruz Treviño, who’d earned his trust. Him, on the other hand, they respected, but they didn’t involve him in many things, because he was Miguel Rivera’s nephew. Usually, they saw his uncle as an island set apart from the rest; he did his work well, but without rubbing shoulders with the others, and he didn’t normally skim a little off the top when he solved his cases, unlike the rest of them.

Since Rangel was already an experienced officer, he asked himself what Congressman Wolffer’s secret was. When he tried to look him in the eye, Don Tobias looked away from him. No, Rangel said to himself, no one’s threatened this guy. If he wants a police officer to keep watch at his house, it must be for other reasons; maybe he wants someone to keep an eye on his wife. He probably thinks she’s cheating on him.

The next day, he was at his post at ten minutes to seven. The
licenciado
was waiting for him.

“The last few days, my daughter’s been trying to ditch school. I want you to watch the entrances, and as soon as school’s out bring her home.”

He gave him the keys to a light-blue luxury van and sent for his daughter, a dark-skinned girl who was in sixth grade at a private school run by nuns. She was wearing a thin sweater, even though winter was ending, and it was obvious that she was sweating.

“Do you want me to turn on the air?”

The girl didn’t answer. Where her left sleeve ended, the girl had a huge bruise, as if someone had ruthlessly squeezed her arm. There was a similar mark near her neck—and then Rangel understood the sweater and her long hair, down in this heat. Child abuse; no wonder she didn’t like her dad. Nothing’s going to happen, he told her, but the little girl stayed quiet, looking out the window.

He kept on with that job for eight days. Until Friday the following week when the congressman asked, “She doesn’t give you a lot of trouble, does she? The little brat.”

Rangel answered, “No, but she must have fallen down, because she has some strange marks on her arms. Do you want me to take her to a doctor?” The congressman turned red. “They already looked at her,” he said, “you don’t need to. That’s all for today.”

The worst thing that ever happened to him was his uncle’s death. He thought about quitting. He was left up in the air, without anyone to support him at headquarters, and immediately the other officers set about making his life impossible, above all El Travolta and Chávez, until one afternoon he got into a fistfight with Wong. Even though Wong planted a right hook in his face, Rangel was agile enough to dodge the following punch and give him an impeccable kick. That was enough for them to stop messing with him.

What he regretted most was that his uncle had died suddenly, before he’d finished teaching Rangel the job. That was why he thought about submitting his resignation. Or he’d just stop going. He felt really nervous: he was just a musician faking at being a police officer, he hadn’t finished his training period, and his teacher, the only trustworthy officer, had died. That’s why, every time he found himself in a complicated situation, he asked himself: Would my uncle have done it this way? And it seemed like he could hear a voice giving him advice:
The surprise factor, look for the surprise factor, nephew. The person, the most important thing is the person; learn to get inside his skin
. Or his most memorable advice:
The first impression is the most important, don’t forget that, nephew: who got you this job anyway?
The reason why he was doing well in the job was that the majority of the other officers focused
their attention on a small, set group of people, but he always stepped out of the box and looked farther afield.