2666 (95 page)

Nineteen
ninety-seven was a good year for Albert Kessler. He had given lectures in
Virginia
,
Alabama
,
Kentucky
,
Montana
,
California
,
Oregon
,
Indiana
,
 
Maine
,
 
Florida
.
 
He had been to different universities and
talked to former students who were professors now and had grown children, some
of them even married, which never failed to surprise him. He had traveled to
Paris (
France
),
London
(
England
),
Rome
(
Italy
), where his name was known
and those who attended his lectures brought along his book, translated into
French, Italian, German, Spanish, so he could scrawl some warm or clever
remark, which he was happy to do. He had traveled to
Moscow
(
Russia
) and
St. Petersburg
(
Russia
)
and
Warsaw
(
Poland
), and he had been invited to
many other places, which suggested that 1998 would be another busy year. The
world really is small, thought Albert Kessler sometimes, especially when he was
flying, in first or business class, and for a few seconds he forgot the lecture
he was going to give in
Tallahassee
or
Amarillo
or
New
Bedford
and looked out at the fanciful shapes of the
clouds. He almost never dreamed about killers. He had known many of them and
tracked down many others, but he hardly ever dreamed about any of them. The
truth was, he didn't dream much or he was lucky enough to forget his dreams as
soon as he woke up. His wife, with whom he'd lived for more than thirty years,
often remembered her dreams, and sometimes, when Albert Kessler was home, she
would tell them to him as they had breakfast together. They would put on the
radio, a classical station, and have coffee, orange juice, frozen bread that
his wife put in the microwave and that came out delicious, better than any
other bread he'd ever had anywhere. As he spread butter on his bread his wife
would tell him what she'd dreamed the night before, almost always about
relatives of hers, most of them dead, or about mutual friends they hadn't seen
for a long time. Then his wife would shut herself in the bathroom and Albert
Kessler would go out into the front yard and scan the horizon of red, gray, and
yellow roofs, the tidy sidewalks, the late-model cars that his neighbors'
younger children left parked in the gravel driveways. In the neighborhood
people knew who he was and they respected him. If a neighbor came by while
Albert Kessler was in the yard, he would wave and say good morning, Mr.
Kessler, before he got in his car and drove off. They were all younger than he
was. Not too young, doctors or midlevel executives, professionals who worked
hard for a living and tried to do no harm, although on this last point one
never did know for sure. Almost all of them were married and had one or two
children. Sometimes they had poolside barbecues in their backyards, and once,
because his wife begged him to, he came along to one and drank half a Bud and a
whiskey. No policemen lived in the neighborhood and the only person who seemed
to have his wits about him was a college professor, a bald, lanky man who
ultimately turned out to be an idiot, someone who could only talk sports. A cop
or an ex-cop, he thought sometimes, is most at home with a woman or another
cop, a cop of his same rank. In his case, only the second part of that
statement was true. It had been a long time since women interested him, unless
they were cops and they worked on murder cases. At some point, a Japanese
colleague suggested he spend his free time gardening. The man was a retired
policeman like him and for a while, or so it was said, he had been the ace of
Osaka
's crime squad.
Kessler followed his
advice
and when he got home he told his wife to let the gardener go, because from then
on he would personally take charge of the gardening. Of course, it wasn't long
before he made a mess of everything and the gardener came back. Why did I try
to cure myself of stress I didn't feel, through gardening, no less? he asked
himself. Sometimes, when he got home after twenty or thirty days on tour,
promoting his book or advising crime writers and thriller directors or hosted
by universities or police departments mired in insoluble murder cases, he gazed
at his wife and had the vague impression he didn't know her. But he knew her,
there could be no doubt about that. Maybe it was the way she walked, the way
she moved around the house, the way she invited him to come with her, in the
evenings, when it was beginning to get dark, to the supermarket where she
always went and where she bought the frozen bread they ate in the mornings,
bread that seemed to have come straight from a European oven, not an American
microwave. Sometimes, after they'd done the shopping, they would stop, each
with his or her cart, in front of a bookstore that carried the paperback
edition of his book. His wife would point to it and say: you're still there.
Invariably, he would nod and then they would continue browsing the mall stores.
Did he know her or didn't he? He knew her, of course he did, it was just that
sometimes reality, the same little reality that served to anchor reality,
seemed to fade around the edges, as if the passage of time had a porous effect
on things, and blurred and made more insubstantial what was itself already, by
its very nature, insubstantial and satisfactory and real.

I saw
him only once, said Haas. It was at a club or a place like a club that might
just have been a bar with the music turned up too loud. I was with some
friends. Friends and clients. And there was this kid, sitting at a table, with
people who knew some of the people with me. Next to him was his cousin, Daniel
Uribe. I was introduced to both of them. They seemed like two polite kids, they
both spoke English and they dressed like ranchers, but it was clear they
weren't ranchers. They were strong and tall, Antonio Uribe taller than his
cousin, you could tell they went to the gym and lifted weights and took care of
themselves. You could tell they cared about their appearance. They had
three-day-old beards, but they smelled good, they had the right haircuts, clean
shirts, clean pants, everything brand-name, their cowboy boots shiny, their
underwear probably clean and brand-name too, two modern kids, all in all. I
talked to them for a while (about boring things, the kind of things you talk
about in a place like that, men's things, as they say, new cars, DVDs, CDs of
rancheras,
Paulina Rubio,
narcocorridos,
that black woman, what's
her name, Whitney Houston? no, not her, Lana Jones? not her either, a black
woman, now I can't remember who), and I had a drink with them and the others
and then we all left the club, I can't remember why, everybody was outside all
of a sudden, and there in the dark I lost sight of the Uribes, it was the last
time I saw them, but it was them, and then one of my friends hustled me into
his car and we got out of there like a bomb was about to go off.

On October 10, near the Pemex
soccer fields, between the Cananea highway and the railroad, the body of
Leticia Borrego Garcia, eighteen, was found, half buried and in an advanced
state of decomposition. The body was wrapped in an industrial plastic bag, and,
according to the forensic report, the cause of death was strangulation with a
fracture of the hyoid bone. The body was identified by the girl's mother, who
had reported her disappearance a month before. Why did the killer bother to dig
a little hole and try to bury her? Lalo Cura asked himself as he poked around
the site. Why not just dump her by the side of the Cananea highway or in the
rubble of the old railroad warehouses? Didn't the killer notice he was leaving
his victim's body next to the soccer fields? For a while, until he was asked to
leave, Lalo Cura stood there staring at the spot where the body had been found.
A child's or a dog's body might have just fit in the hole, but never a woman's.
Was the killer in a hurry to get rid of his victim? Was it nighttime, and was
he in an unfamiliar place?

The
night before Albert Kessler arrived in Santa Teresa, at four in the morning,
Sergio Gonzalez Rodriguez got a call from Azucena Esquivel Plata, reporter and
PRI congresswoman. When he answered the phone, afraid it would be some family
member calling to tell him there had been an accident, he heard a woman's
voice, firm, imperious, commanding, a voice that wasn't used to apologizing or
accepting excuses. The voice asked whether he was alone. Sergio said he'd been
asleep. But are
you
alone, man, or not? asked the voice. Then he recognized it, or his auditory
memory was triggered. It could only be Azucena Esquivel Plata, the Maria Felix
of Mexican politics, the grande dame, the Dolores del Rio of the PRI, the
Tongolele of the lustful fantasies of some congressmen and nearly every
political reporter over fifty, or actually closer to sixty, all of them sinking
like crocodiles in the swamp, more mental than real, presided over—some might
say invented—by Azucena Esquivel Plata. I'm alone, he said. And in your
pajamas, yes? That's right. Well, get dressed and come downstairs, I'm picking
you up in ten minutes. Actually, Sergio wasn't in his pajamas, but it seemed
hardly tactful to contradict her from the start, so he put on jeans, socks, and
a sweater and went down to the building entrance. At the door was a Mercedes
with its lights off. Someone in the Mercedes had seen him too, because one of
the back doors opened and a hand with bejeweled fingers beckoned for him to get
in. In a corner of the backseat, bundled in a plaid blanket, was Congresswoman
Azucena Esquivel Plata, the grande dame, who despite the darkness, and as if
she were the bastard daughter of Fidel Velazquez, hid her eyes behind
black-framed sunglasses with wide black bows, like the kind Stevie Wonder wore
occasionally and that some blind people used so the inquisitive couldn't see
their vacant eyeballs.

First
he flew to
Tucson
and in
Tucson
he boarded a small plane that landed
at the Santa Teresa airport. The
Sonora
state attorney general remarked that soon, in a year or maybe a year and a
half, construction work would begin on the new Santa Teresa airport, which
would be big enough for Boeings. The mayor welcomed him and as they were
clearing customs a mariachi began to play in his honor, singing a song in which
his name was mentioned, or so he thought. He decided it was best not to ask and
smiled. The mayor pushed aside the customs officer who was stamping passports
and it was he himself who stamped in the illustrious guest. As he did, he froze
in place, stamp raised and smile stretched from ear to ear, so the
photographers gathered could take their pictures at leisure. The state attorney
general made a joke and everyone laughed, except for the customs officer, who
didn't look happy. Then they all climbed into a convoy of cars and headed for
city hall, where, in the main assembly room, the former FBI agent proceeded to
give his first press conference. He was asked whether the case file for the
killings of women in Santa Teresa, or something like it, was already in his
hands. He was asked whether it was true that Terry Fox, the star of the movie
Stained,
was really a psychopath—in real
life, that is—as his third wife had announced before she divorced him. He was
asked whether he had been to
Mexico
before, and, if so, whether he liked it. He was asked whether it was true that
R. H. Davis, the author of
Stained
and
Killer Among the Children
and
Code Name,
couldn't sleep without the
lights on. He was asked whether it was true that Ray Samuelson, the director of
Stained,
had barred
Davis
from the film set. He was asked whether
anything like the Santa Teresa serial killings would be possible in the
United States
.
No comment, said Kessler, and then, in very deliberate fashion, he paid his
respects to the reporters, thanked them, and left for his hotel, where he had
reserved the best suite, which wasn't called the presidential suite or the
honeymoon suite, as it would be in most hotels, but the desert suite, since
from the terrace, which faced south and west, there was a sweeping view of the
Sonora desert in all its grandeur and solitude.

They're
from
Sonora
, said Haas, and also from
Arizona
. How does that
work? asked one of the reporters. They're Mexican but also American. They have
joint citizenship. Is there such a thing as Mexican-U.S. joint citizenship? The
lawyer nodded without lifting her head. So where do they live? asked one of the
reporters. In Santa Teresa, but they have another house in
Phoenix
. Uribe, said one of the reporters,
the name sounds familiar. It sounds familiar to me, too, said another reporter.
They wouldn't be related to that Uribe from
Hermosillo
, would they? Which Uribe? The dude
from
Hermosillo
,
said the reporter from
El Sonorense,
the
shipping guy. The one with the fleet of trucks. At this point
 
Chuy Pimentel got a picture
 
of the reporters. Young,
 
poorly dressed, some looking ready to sell
themselves to the highest bidder, hardworking kids with tired faces who
exchanged glances and set in motion a kind of shared memory. Even the envoy
from
La Raza de Green Valley,
who
looked more like a ranch hand than a reporter, understood and applied himself
readily to the task of remembering, of tightening the focus a few degrees.
Uribe from
Hermosillo
.
The Uribe with the trucks. What's his name? Pedro Uribe? Rafael Uribe? Pedro
Uribe, said Haas. Does he have anything to do with the Uribes you're talking
about? He's
Antonio
Uribe's father, said Haas. And then he said: Pedro Uribe has more than one
hundred cargo trucks. He transports merchandise from various maquiladoras in
Hermosillo
, and Santa
Teresa too. His trucks cross the border every hour or half hour. He also owns
property in
Phoenix
and
Tucson
. His brother, Joaquin Uribe, has
several hotels in
Sonora
and Sinaloa and a chain of coffee shops in Santa Teresa. He's Daniel's father.
The two Uribes are married to Americans. Antonio and Daniel are the oldest
children. Antonio has two sisters and a brother. Daniel is an only child.
Antonio used to work at his father's offices in
Hermosillo
, but he hasn't worked anywhere for
a while. Daniel was always a fuckup. Both are proteges of Fabio Izquierdo, a
narco
who himself works for Estanislao
Campuzano. It's said that Estanislao Campuzano was Antonio's godfather. Their
friends are other children of millionaires, but also Santa Teresa cops and
narcos.
Wherever they go they spend
money like water. They are the Santa Teresa serial killers.