The Black Minutes (21 page)

“Did you know they pay their witnesses?” Johnny asked. “They give a hundred dollars for each solid piece of information to get people to spill everything about their tragedies. What happened, when, how, where. And details.”

“A hundred bucks for every piece of information?” The girl leaned forward on the table.

“They’ve got that kind of money. They sell a million papers a week. What do you think?” Johnny said to the detective. “Come on, boss, do your town a favor and work with the objective press. My colleague here is Julio Scherer’s niece and published in
Proceso.”

“Hey, I don’t think so. What are you insinuating? They publish me because my pictures are good, not because of who I’m related to.” Her eyes were shimmering.

Right then, Rangel felt a knee leaning against his own, and when he looked at the girl, he noticed that she was looking at him, too.
Ah, caray
, is she doing that on purpose? Johnny tried to make
conversation, but Rangel gave one-word answers, staring at the girl, whose smile was getting bigger and bigger. The situation was starting to improve when the journalist stood up.

“Let’s go, Mariana, this isn’t the guy. They stood you up.”

Then he got it all. No shit, he thought, they came to meet with their informant.

“Who were you going to meet with?” he asked them.

“We can’t tell you, it’s a trade secret,” Johnny replied.

“You don’t know?” he asked the girl.

Before he could push her, Johnny burst out, “I’m really sorry, but a reporter doesn’t reveal his sources.”

There was no way to get them to say anything. Since Vicente was still staring at the girl, she said to him, “Man, look here: we’re trying to do activist journalism, work that produces a social consciousness. Didn’t you see the pictures from Vietnam, from My Lai? The photograph is a weapon of social struggle.”

She said she was part of the Revolutionary Dissident Group of Reporters “Vamos Cuba”; McLuhan this, that, and the other; that the photograph had a social function; that we have to raise the people’s consciousness so the public learns about the people’s poverty and capitalist exploitation.

“You’re the right-hand man of the capitalists,” said Johnny.

“What the hell,” Rangel joked, “I’m not the Federal Security Administration.” He wanted to point out to the girl that he was just working as a police officer while he found himself, that this job was temporary, he didn’t take it seriously, but instead of saying it, he just repeated, “What the hell,” and walked away, steaming.

As he was leaving, he looked at the girl, totally disappointed. Damnit, girl, I was gonna take you to the beach.

The first thing Rangel did was to start looking for his main suspect. He began in a neighborhood where all the streets are named after trees: pine, olive, cedar, oak; the next one had streets named after gemstones: lapis lazuli, amethyst, topaz, diamond; and in the third all the streets were named for flowers: rose, iris, hyacinth. Rangel, who lived on the highway to Paracuán, crossed all these streets until he came upon a large wall and then he turned onto a street named after orange blossoms.

There was a mansion on the biggest block in the best part of the Buenavista neighborhood, right next door to the golf course and the lagoon. The owner could go in and out of his house without his neighbors seeing; there were two entrances for the car, one on each side of the mansion.

Rangel parked under a huge avocado tree, with no particular idea about what he expected to find, and he focused on reading his magazine,
Proceso
. On the high white wall, a young man was painting over a recent graffiti scrawl that shouted in bright red letters,
ARREST THE JACKAL
. The young guy looked at Rangel out of the corner of his eye, and when he was finished, he gathered up his things and went in through a side gate. A minute later, the door opened and an incredibly tall white guy, dressed in a suit and tie, walked over to mess with him.

“Hello, could I see some identification?”

Man, Rangel thought, this sure is a classy bodyguard. The guy was a foreigner, with thick muscles and a haircut that reminded him of American army soldiers.

“What?”

“Your driver’s license. Some ID.”

“Why?”

“You’re on private property.”

Rangel looked at the wall. “As far as I know, the street belongs to everyone.”

“Not here. Show me your ID.” He spoke in Spanish with a heavy Texas accent.

“Where are you from?”

“That’s none of your business.”

“Oh, American? Why don’t you show me your papers? Do you have your F-three visa, or are you working illegally?”

The gringo glared at him. “Look, I don’t wanna fight. You better get a move on.” And then, in English, he added, “Have a nice day.”

Vicente spat out the window. Fucking asshole, like he was the law or something. Before turning the corner, he saw the bodyguard writing down his license plate number, and he beeped his horn at him five times.

Ever since his uncle Lieutenant Rivera died, Rangel didn’t have a good relationship with any of the guys on the force: he went into the office, did what he had to do, and talked as little as he could with his coworkers. But that Tuesday, as soon as he clocked in, he looked so tired that El Chicote asked him, “Hey, Rangel, who do you work with? I’m going to get you an assistant, you need a
madrina
so you can get more work done.”

“Whatever, Chicote. The chief kicked Chávez out of the
meeting this morning, said he didn’t want outsiders working in the office.”

“Yeah, but no one’s going to find out; besides, you need one; you look really beat up. How long’s it been since you had a good night’s sleep? At least two days?”

Rangel said he didn’t need anybody, but he got someone anyway. A half hour later, El Chicote told him they were looking for him on the first floor. To his surprise, it turned out to be the same guy—in his forties in a plaid shirt and coke-bottle glasses—who was at headquarters the day before, when they called him from the Bar León. He introduced himself as Jorge Romero. “They call me the Blind Man—the Blind Man—because I’m trustworthy: I don’t see anything, I don’t know anything. If you wanna give a suspect a few shocks, I’m your man. I’ve done it before with Chávez.”

“What? You helped Chávez interrogate suspects?”

“Yes.”

“And you’re a specialist in administering electric shocks?”

“Well, yeah,” said the Blind Man.

Rangel had the feeling he was just trying to impress him. Obviously he needed this job and would do anything, even lie. Certainly Chávez never needed anybody’s help to do his interrogations.

Rangel explained he was looking for an assistant. Deep down, he still thought his time as a policeman was a temporary thing while he did some soul-searching. Besides, his recent self-esteem problems were strong evidence that hiring a lackey would send him down the path to complete corruption.

The man with coke-bottle glasses was disappointed by the rejection and spent several hours on the first floor, helping El Chicote with the mop, looking for little jobs, running errands for the officers. At 10:30, when Rangel went down for his notes, he
noticed his Chevy Nova, normally covered in a layer of dust, had returned to its original white color.

“At your service, sir,” said a voice behind him, and he saw the Blind Man, a rag in his hand, cleaning another car.

“Fuck,” Rangel said, and gave him five pesos.

“Thanks a lot, boss, and just so you know: whatever you need, I’m here to help.”

Rangel acted like he didn’t hear him and started the car fast. There’s no way around it, he thought. If I act nice, I’m going to get stuck with him. He already got five pesos out of me.

The rest of the morning, he talked with teachers, neighbors, security guards, and old ladies. Ever since
El Mercurio
published the news about the reward, the police just couldn’t keep up. As soon as they hung up one call, another came in, and they spent all day listening to both real and made-up stories of people reporting on a neighbor, a relative, an employee, or even their own boss. Rangel even got one call from a hysterical woman who swore she’d seen a huge creature, half-man half-wolf, running around at night, stalking the docks and the market: “It’s the
naguales,”
she said. “As soon as they arrest all those witches, the Jackal will disappear.”

But Rangel wasn’t a therapist. He said, “Good-bye, ma’am,” and hung up. Witches, he said to himself, that’s all I need, goddamn stupid people, this is too fucking much already. Ever since he was little, he’d heard everyone has a double, a
nagual
, in the mountains, and this double takes the form of an animal. Whatever happens to the animal happens to its human counterpart. Some of his friends joked that his
nagual
was an eagle or a panther, and people said the state governor, thanks to a witch’s help, had several
naguales
at the same time. Fucking lies, he thought, these people don’t have enough to do. I wonder what my
nagual
is.

“Has anyone seen Mr. Taboada?” Lolita had the mayor on hold, Mr. Torres Sabinas himself.

“I saw him,” said Romero. “He was going into the Rose Garden.”

How strange, Rangel thought. What’s El Travolta doing in the city’s priciest restaurant? And why would he meet with Torres Sabinas?

“Did you see yourself yet?”

El Chicote was handing him the evening edition of
El Mercurio
, but since he was frowning so much, he decided to just leave.

As if the morning edition hadn’t been irritating enough, the evening paper recycled La Chilanga’s photos all over again. Fuck, he said to himself, goddamn traitorous bitch, this is just too much. When he finished the last of his cigarettes, Rangel crumbled up the pack and flung it out the window.

“Another pack?” It was the Blind Man, fishing for a few coins.

Rangel sighed. “Raleighs . . . no, better get me Faros,” and he handed him a bill worth very little.

Fuck, he thought, now I’ve lost ten pesos. He told himself Romero had to be really hard up to put up with this humiliation. El Chicote told him he had a wife and three kids. But I’m not giving him anything else, Rangel said to himself. If I’m nice, I’ll never get rid of him.

He picked up the copy of
El Mercurio
and looked for a distraction, but he couldn’t find McCormick’s column. Why am I going around in circles? He remembered Julia Concepción González’s body. Every time he read through the report, he got the feeling that he was forgetting an important bit of information, but he couldn’t put his finger on what it was.

Looking for inspiration, he stood up and walked into the hallway; once there, he looked over an old bookshelf. It didn’t offer
very many options: a law book, a highway map, a copy of the
Gulag Archipelago—
who knows how it got there—
Jaws
, a couple of
National Geographic
s that had pictures of the port, six Oil Workers’ Union brochures, and
Treatise on Criminology
by Dr. Quiroz Cuarón. Dr. Quiroz was his uncle’s greatest teacher and an internationally renowned expert. He caught and studied some of the most sought-after criminals in the world and knew exactly how the mind of the killer worked. He taught classes in Scotland Yard. He was so famous that even Alfred Hitchcock hired him as a consultant while filming
Psycho
. If my uncle were still alive, Rangel said to himself, I’d get in touch with him.

Rangel was immersed in deep thought when the most unstable person on the force came in: Luis Calatrava aka the Wizard. In charge of the old checkpoint on the way out of the port, he just barely passed as a police officer. Long-haired and with a thick beard and ratty clothes, he only put on his uniform when he had to show up in the office. The chief had gotten tired of suggesting he should cut his hair; the guy just wouldn’t obey.

Now he stopped to say hello. “What’s up, Rangel? I haven’t seen you lately.”

Ever since they assigned him to that awful job, the Wizard lived right at the checkpoint and spent the whole day sitting there, watching the cars. It was rare to see him in the city. It was about a forty-minute ride from the checkpoint to headquarters, but the Wizard preferred to show up for his paycheck out of the blue, once every month or so, when a couple of pay periods had passed. At his boring job, there wasn’t much to do or anywhere to spend money. Ever since Rangel could remember, the Wizard spent all his time listening to the radio, reading, and watching the people driving by. Once every twenty-four hours, he chose a victim. He’d signal for the person to stop and he’d confiscate their newspaper,
just so he’d know what was going on in the world. Rangel remembered the first time he saw him, as he was on his way to the port to look for work. The ratty-haired guy signaled for him to stop and pointed at
La Noticia:
Would you give me your newspaper,
carnal?
There’s nothing to do here. Rangel gave him the newspaper and didn’t see him again until later, when they turned out to be coworkers.

In theory, the presence of the Wizard was meant to discourage drug dealers and other smugglers. Since Paracuán is at the crossroads of three states and close to the river and the sea, the route should have been an ideal one for trafficking in illegal goods. The reality was that it was almost always the same nondescript ranchers passing by, and there wasn’t much to do. They assigned the Wizard to that post because he was irritable and impossible to deal with, a kind of never-ending punishment. Calatrava didn’t have a car, but all he had to do was ask for a ride to the dock and then take a bus from there to the center of town; despite that, he preferred to live as an exile—he said he was studying physics—and not visit the city. Just so he didn’t have to see him, the chief assented to Lolita taking his reports over the phone. Ever since Rangel went to live in the house facing the river, it was inevitable that he’d run into Calatrava at least once a day. El Chicote said that Calatrava lived off what he fished from the river: crabs, shrimp, and even sea bass. All of which he caught without even leaving the office, with a few fishing lines he hung from bars in the window.