The Shadow of the Shadow (7 page)

The poet took advantage of a brief pause in the battle to
scramble out from under the truck where he was hiding. He
made his way out of the Zocalo hanging onto the back of a
White Cross ambulance.

The next day he read in Manterola's account how the battle
between the drivers, city workers, firemen, and police had ended
with five dead and more than twenty wounded.

"And you were there?" the mining engineer asked incredulously a couple of hours later.

The poet only raised his eyebrows, not knowing what to
say. It was as if he'd been there and he hadn't. "This goddam town," he thought, not knowing who to blame for the echo of
the bullets that still buzzed in his ears.

THE MAN HELD OUT THE PHOTO without letting go.
The reporter and the policeman tugged on either end of the small
picture for several seconds.

"Much obliged, Captain," said Pioquinto Manterola, finally
pulling it from the policeman's grasp with a sudden jerk.

"Wait a minute."

"Sir?"

"You know something I don't?" asked the municipal police
captain, a thin glassy-eyed fellow groping with his thumbs for the
pockets of a nonexistent vest.

"No. I just wanted to get a look at this picture for inspiration
in another story I'm working on."

The reporter walked out the door, stepping nimbly over a
drunk whose questionable judgment had led him to take his siesta
on the stationhouse steps. There was no doubt about it, the woman
was the same. And from that point everything was easy enough.
A small "F.L." stamped across the lower edge of the picture led
the journalist through the dusty streets of Tacuba to the offices
of Fotos Larios, a photographic studio used frequently by El
Dem6crata. Half an hour later he emerged from the shop with a
photo in his hand more or less identical to the one he'd seen in the
station house, but with an added advantage: it had the subject's
name and address printed on the back.

He hesitated for a moment before heading down Avenida
Juarez, then marched stoically on under a blazing sun, drops of
sweat breaking out over his bald dome and running down the sides
of his face. "When it comes to journalists," he told himself as he loped along, "you've got your cavalry and you've got your infantry."
Manterola crossed the street, neatly dodging a cart driven by a
fellow who'd gotten an early start on his jug of mezcal. The man
seemed to have infected his horses with his own distorted sense
of direction.

The poet waited in the street, composing a bit of deprecatory
verse in honor of General Manrique, the new military governor for
the State of Mexico, requested by Manrique's second in command,
General Vinuelas. He'd been asked to supply an effectively stinging
bit of doggerel that would also guarantee the anonymity of his
employer. He'd experimented with variations on: "A rose by any
other name would smell as sweet; a man by any other name would
reek as...," but it didn't seem to him either original or to the point.
He stood in the middle of the street sipping on a bottle of La
Camelia brand soda pop when he saw his friend the journalist
bustling around the corner with that peculiar walk of his, like a
rheumatic locomotive with a full head of steam, his head jutting
out leading the way.

their friendship dated back to before the domino club. The
journalist had rescued the poet from abject poverty, finding him
odd jobs here and there in the newspaper world. And the poet had
once arrived in time to cut the rope the reporter was trying to hang
himself with, victim of an unrequited love. Neither of them was
inclined to talk much about the past. The poet liked to think of
himself and his three friends as something like the tide scum left
on the beach at the high-water mark: the indefinable children of
a turbulent decade marked by a social upheaval much bigger than
themselves, a series of changes they'd experienced peripherally as
spectators, protagonists, and victims.

"Got it," announced Manterola, wiping the sweat off his bald
head with a white handkerchief from his vest pocket.

"Is she the same one? Let's have a look at her."

"One and the same. And not only that, I've got her name and
address, too."

"Let me see," said the poet, taking a careful look at the
photograph. "That's the one all right. So now what? I never really
thought of you as the detective type."

"I was just saying the same thing to myself." He pointed to the
bottle of soda in the poet's hand. "Where'd you get that?"

"In a store. Where'd you think? Come on, I'll treat you to
one.

While the two men stood drinking their sodas in a shop front
on San Juan de Letran, the lawyer Verdugo stood in front of his
mirror combing a healthy dab of Tres Coronas brilliantine into his
hair. He'd woken up from a nightmare and, after counting the few
pesos he had on hand, decided it would be a good idea to combine
breakfast and lunch into a single meal. Without having to think
too much about it, he decided to head over to the Tampico Club
near the Ciudadela for a double portion of pork chops in chile
pasilla.

With his hair freshly combed and the prospects of a decent
meal ahead of him, the aftereffects of the nightmare began to fade.
Just then somebody slipped an envelope under his door. It was an
invitation to a private moving-picture show in the home of the
Widow Roldan, courtesy of Arenas, Vera & Co. Ltd. The invitation
was signed at the bottom: "Your friend Conchita-social secretary
to the Widow Roldan."

He puzzled over the invitation for a while, concluding finally
that Arenas and Vera were both strangers to him, not to mention Co. Ltd., whoever that might be. As far as he could tell, his
only connection to this Widow Roldan and her luxurious home
(or so he assumed from the address in the Colonia San Rafael)
was through his old friend Conchita, who he'd rescued several
years ago from dire circumstances. From the looks of things,
she'd risen considerably in society circles from the days when she
used to dance the cancan in second-class cabarets, and was now
established as the personal secretary to a wealthy widow. Thinking
it would be good to see Conchita again in happier circumstances and sensing the possibility of a free (not to mention substantial)
dinner, and also because he'd recently become a fan of the silver
screen, Verdugo stuck the invitation in his vest pocket.

He lived in a flat almost entirely devoid of furniture (there
was a bed in one room and a single armchair in what would have
been the living room) in a neighborhood full of houses under
construction half a mile from the Condesa Track, a part of town
that was being rapidly subdivided into lots for sale and which the
ads in the newspapers had started to call Insurgentes-Condesa.
The apartment had previously belonged to one of Verdugo's clients.
The man had taken his own life and left the place to the lawyer
in his will, with the provision that after ten years it be converted
into either a bordello or a gambling house. Verdugo moved in,
figuring that after the ten years allotted by his client he would
simply walk away and leave the keys in the door. For the time
being, and probably forever, the bed and the armchair, a coat rack
and a single dish (in which he fed milk to a stray cat that wintered
over in the apartment) were the only household items he bothered
to keep. Whenever he went out, it was with the certainty that he'd
left nothing behind and he never felt the need to hurry back.

Now he fitted his pearl gray Stetson onto his head and set out
to fight the blazing sun.

As he was stepping off a bus on Balderas, he ran into the
reporter and the poet arguing about the chances for a GiantsYankees repeat up North.

"What's new, gentlemen?"

"Discussing strategy," explained the journalist. "Only with this
guy you can't talk for more than fifteen minutes about the same
thing without him changing the subject."

"The fact of the matter is," said the poet, breaking into a brisk
walk down Balderas without waiting for the others to follow him,
"that this fellow here is an excellent journalist, but when it comes
to detective work he leaves a lot to be desired."

"Maybe it's just that this picture here reminds me of a woman I once held in high esteem," countered the journalist.

Pastel clouds danced around inside his head as he tried both
to evoke and suppress his memories at the same time, painful
memories he'd never been able to let go of.

Verdugo recognized something in the journalist's voice that
brought his own experiences to mind and he wisely cut into the
conversation, interrupting Manterola's reverie.

"What's that? Did you find the woman from the trombonist's
picture? Is she the same one you saw when the guy fell out the
window?"

The journalist nodded and held out the small photograph. She
was a young woman, no older than thirty, with the fine features
and languid eyes currently in fashion. She was thinner than he
would have liked, and dressed rigorously in black. Pretty but with
a certain hardness about her. She sat in a brocaded chair looking
out a window. A halo of sunlight enveloped her face, overexposing
the picture and producing a strangely exotic effect. On the back of
the photograph were the words: "Margarita, the Widow Roldan,"
and an address.

"Now there's a coincidence for you," muttered the lawyer.

"What, do you know her?" asked the poet.

"I've never seen her before in my life. But-today I got an
invitation to go to her house for a private picture show."

"Dammit all to hell, that's just one coincidence too many," said
the journalist.

"As for me, I'm starting to believe less and less in coincidence all
the time," said the poet. "First someone kills the damn trombonist,
then Manterola here watches the trombonist's brother fall out of a
window, and now you get this invitation to the widow's house."

"Maybe it's not coincidence, but fate."

"I don't believe in fate any more either, not since Obregon won
the Battle of Celaya," answered the poet. "All I believe in is just
plain old bad luck."

"Bad luck it is, then," said the lawyer Verdugo.

AT PRECISELY 8: 0 0, the lawyer Verdugo arrived at the
small mansion in the Colonia San Rafael and climbed up the wide
porch steps along with three members of the Torreblanca Jazz
Band and a pair of artillery officers.

No one was waiting to meet them at the door, and they went
on in without having to show their invitations. The customary
pre-party chaos reigned in the main hall. A pair of bonneted
maids dressed in black rushed about with trays of pastries and
two technicians from Arenas, Vera & Co. Ltd. were busy stringing
cables to the darkened salon where the pictures would be shown.
Verdugo leaned against the mantel of the white fireplace and
lit up an Aguila. The two officers followed his example. Finally
Conchita appeared through the swinging door from the kitchen,
accompanied by the rich smells of carne asada.