The Demands of the Dead (7 page)

Tuxtla bustled with car engines, buses honking horns, trucks announcing everything from water for sale to political patronage opportunities. I followed the crowd, letting my mind and my feet wander.

Neither personal vendetta nor family feud accorded with the precision of the bullet holes I’d seen in Gonzalez and Diaz. They were victims either of organized crime or of the guerrillas.

Conditions were not favourable to the guerrillas for starting a hot war this summer. The Mexican army had 70 000 troops here in 266 positions, well supplied and armed, logistically supported. In every skirmish the army took more casualties from friendly fire than any other kind.

On the other side, the Zapatistas had probably 2000 firearms in the whole state. Their main advantage was being dispersed all over the territory, impossible to find when they were in the jungle, indistinguishable from the people when they were in the villages. Good for not losing, but not so good for winning. For a force like that to go on the offensive would be foolish, and to have survived six years in a situation like this, the Zapatistas were not.

I lost myself near the centre of town and realized I’d have to take a cab back. I stopped for a cup of sliced coconut, mango, and banana, the kind American tourist guides warned against.

“Dame una de estas,” I said.

“?Estas?” he said, pointing to the cup. “Seguro?”

At my own risk, I know
, I thought, paying with a large note so I could get some coins.

I found a pay phone and called Marchese’s cell, arranged a meeting at a bar near the central square. When I walked in, he was already sitting at the bar, a leather document folder on the bar in front of him. He was smoking, infiltrating the smell of smoke into a set of fresh clothes he'd changed into since the funeral: a dark red shirt open at the collar and loose-fitting black pants, ideal for a fit man with a barrel chest and broad shoulders. A day’s growth shadowed his face, the scruffiness contrasting with his carefully gelled hair. More at ease in a bar in Tuxtla than a funeral full of police, Marchese might be a more unusual cop than I had originally thought.

With table space for 30 and standing room for 50 at most, the bar was running well below capacity. Marchese was slightly over-dressed—most of the other people in the place wore jeans and drank the full selection of available beer (XX or Corona). A television up in one corner of the room played a loud futbol game to the handful of men in the bar – all fans, apparently, including the bartender who didn’t look away from the screen until I walked up to him and ordered. I watched him watch the game while popping off the bottle cap, passing me the beer, and taking my money without a glance at the money, the beer, me, or anything but the screen.

I felt right away why Marchese liked the place: for some reason I couldn’t figure out, both of us were being treated as anonymously as everyone else, and not like the obvious Americans we were.

We moved from the bar to a booth.

“Good to meet you again,” Marchese said.

“I figured I’d call since I had a moment. I’m glad you were able to meet me. You still heading back soon?”

“Tomorrow, actually,” he said. “Any progress yet on your case?”

“Nope. But you’ve been here a while, Joe. Is there anything I should watch for?”

He leaned back in the booth. “Actually, there's something you should see.”

He unzipped his document folder and laid a series of 4 x 6 color photographs, grainy because they had been printed from digital, on the table, the way we sometimes did in interrogations. The first showed a slight, curly-haired white man in his forties, at some kind of political rally in Paris. “Guy's name is Francois Tourelle. This is a rally outside the US Embassy in France, protesting about our Central American operations. He was involved with socialists and communists in France, but spent most of his time in Central America since the 1980s, and moved here to Chiapas 10 years ago. He has been working as a journalist, covering the Zapatistas, since the rebellion started. Everyone knows him as basically a civilian member of the rebellion and someone who passes information and aid to and from the rebels.”

The next photo, taken from a second-floor window looking down, showed Tourelle sitting for coffee on a patio, paved with grey cobblestone. In the third photo, an athletic, younger Mexican with the build of a plainclothes police approached, and in the fourth, they were sitting at the table together. “This was in San Cristobal de Las Casas last year. One of them is Tourelle. Do you recognize the other?”

I leaned in to the clearest photo, the one where he was approaching Tourelle from behind. In the dark bar, with a grainy photo, I really couldn't tell.

“It's your friend, Brown. It's the Lieutenant Sergio Chavez, Seguridad Publica.”

It's your friend, Brown
. I remembered the same phrase, spoken to me by the brass about Shawn, warning me that there could be consequences for his political activities.

I asked: “You think Chavez is a Zapatista who has infiltrated the police?”

Marchese shrugged, started to pick the photos back up and put them into his folder. “I don't know. What I do know is that this war is a lot more complicated than it looks, and outsiders like us had better remember that not everyone who looks like they're on our side, is.”

“Thanks,” I said. “Can I keep those?”

“I can't give them up,” Marchese said. “I'm not supposed to have them.”

“How'd you get them?”

Marchese smiled.

“Been in the Embassy databases then?” His smile disappeared. “I didn't know,” I said, putting my hands up. “I just guessed.”

“Oh yeah, you're a computer guy. Compstat and all that.”

“And it seems,” I said, “that you've upgraded your skills too.”
Just enough to be dangerous,
I thought.
And now you're interested in my case.
Hoffman's double encryption scheme suddenly seemed justified. “Well,” I continued. “do you think I should confront Chavez?”

“
I think you should
know
who you're working with.”

So, no.
“Fair warning, for me.”
“Could save your life.”

“Thank you,” I said, getting up, my beer untouched. “I will keep it in mind.” I wanted to get out of there, away from Marchese. But he persisted with the veteran-buddy talk.

“Hey, we gotta stick together out here.”

Enough
, I thought. “Speaking of which, you still in touch with your old partner from that class I taught? What was his name? Salant?”

A blind and dangerous thing to say, I knew the partner's name wasn't Salant but I wanted to see Marchese's face. Of course, if there was a connection, I had also just given away my own interest in Salant, which Marchese might not have known about. Well, now he did. I had given something up to get something.

And I did get something. Even in the dark, even in the smoke, Marchese's face twitched and he took a little too long to reply.

“Rhodes,” he said. “He's good, he made Sargeant actually.”

“Good for him. Take care, Joe.”

I went back to the base in a cab whose driver tried to impress me by playing American pop music – the Backstreet Boys. Not to my taste, but I let it play.

Chief Saltillo leaned forward, speaking in a stage whisper like he was letting me in on a conspiracy.

“We want to reiterate how pleased we are,” he said, “to have the collaboration of our friends in the United States in our efforts here.” As he said “we” and “our”, he waved his hand expansively, including Chavez, who sat behind me at our interview in Saltillo's bare office.

His desk had a computer, a picture of what I took to be his family—a much younger wife, two sons and a daughter—a picture of himself and some other policemen staring seriously at the camera, and a neat pile of file folders. Chavez and I were invited sitting in very uncomfortable metal chairs, an interrogation tactic used on suspects, surprising to see in an office.

“As you know, the situation here in Chiapas is very, very complicated. Most of the army does not envision its role as that of policing Mexicans. They think they should be defending Mexico. Now we, we are security, we are police. So we worry about drugs, smuggling, guns, all these crimes. These are all going on in the communities. There are kidnappings, family feuds, feuds over land. These groups of armed people fighting each other. Now of course in a situation like this, where there are these sorts of occurrences, of course there will be people who resist the police presence. They don’t like us here. They would rather not worry about us, they would feel safer to do their crimes. These are the kind of people who killed those young boys. These are the kind of people that you—and I—are looking for.”

I said nothing. Just looked briefly behind me at Chavez, who also sat silently, upright, leaning forward respectfully.

Saltillo continued, searching through his folders to pull out a single sheet of paper. “Your office,” he said, “wanted an updated list of people with foreign passports whose identification was written down at one of our checkpoints here in Chiapas.” He passed me the list of names and numbers.
What office?
I wanted to ask. It sounded like FBI jurisdiction. I realized he must think I worked for the US Embassy.

“Oh, I don't think that I am supposed to be the one to deal with these things --”

“-- Ah, I apologize, I assumed that since Mr. Marchese was leaving the state that you would be...”

I realized that, as much trouble as I could get into for pretending that I worked for the CIA or whatever other covert unit Marchese was working for, there was no way I could convince Saltillo that I didn't. The best way to confirm that I was CIA would be to deny it. And I could certainly make use of the misconception.

I perused the list, took note of a few names, swallowed and took a deep breath to try to hide my shock at one of them, and handed it back slowly and deliberately while I composed myself.

“Er...different roles, Chief Saltillo. Mr. Marchese works... directly for the Embassy.”

Saltillo looked at me for a long time before smiling again. “I have some other information that you both might find useful. Lieutenant,” he said, turning to Chavez and handing him another folder. “This file contains some intelligence we have on some of the rebel supporters who have come out of state to spend time in the rebel zones. Some of them are students, others are journalists and lawyers. Several of them were around Hatuey at the time of the shooting. Similar to the foreigners,” he said, looking back at me, “they try to support the rebellion. Many of the poor Indians in the communities, they are patriotic Mexicans, but these foreigners give them money, guns, and try to get them to rebel in the name of their ideology. One of these foreigners, or people from out of state, could be the killer.”

Chavez spoke up behind me. “Luis Muros,
22 year old sociology
student, Susana Mendez, 19 year old sociology student, Father Raul Cruz – a Catholic pastor from Ocosingo. Sir, are you sure these are suspects in a shooting murder?”

Saltillo did the stage whisper again. “Lieutenant, our history shows how subversion can come from any quarter, especially from the intellectuals who can stir up conflict in these poor communities.”

I pointed to the foreigner file I had returned to Saltillo. “True, Chief Saltillo, but even on the list of foreigners you showed me, there was no one with any military background, and the killer clearly had some training and experience.”

“They conduct military training in the jungles around the villages, though,” he said. “And you should not underestimate the training that some of these foreigners do have.” As he said that last, he held eye contact with me and for a second I wondered if he knew what I was thinking. Then I realized it was an effect, a performance, a trick of the skilled police brass, to make you think they knew what you were guilty about.

“We will keep that in mind,” I said, just as Chavez said the same thing. All three of us laughed uncomfortably.

I went back to my room. Chavez passed me a new set of files, including the one Saltillo had just given him on foreign rebel supporters. There were also personnel files on Gonzalez and Diaz, and a set of schedules made up by Commander Beltran, duty assignments for police on the base at Hatuey.

I pulled out my notebook and tried to write down, encrypted of course, every name that I saw when I glimpsed the list that Saltillo had shown me. I counted twelve names, and I wrote down ten. I didn't need to write down two of the names on Saltillo's list. They were names I knew and remembered very well.

One was Francois Tourelle, the French journalist that Marchese had warned me about.

The other was Shawn Manley, my dead best friend.

Chapter 3

Shawn was dead, but his passport was here. It was obvious what had happened.

When Shawn was killed, Walter found out quickly, probably before even I did. And, like me, he went straight to Shawn's apartment. I found the place ransacked, and thought it was his killers – my colleagues – that had done it. But in fact, it had been Walter. Walter took his computer, which I was looking for, and evidently his passport, which he was using here, where nobody knew Shawn Manley's name or face. Walter and Shawn had a strong resemblance anyway, but with a Mexican trooper at a checkpoint unfamiliar with African-American faces, Walter would have no problem.