The Return: A Novel (34 page)

At one of the tables, in the back, in deep shade, sat the priest, Father Santana, his head bent in conversation with a woman. Marder sat at another table and the proprietor came out immediately, smiling, asking what he could offer Don Ricardo. A beer, which arrived in a flash, icy, and a glass, the same, and a plate of tortilla chips with a small pot of
mole
to dip them in. The proprietor was a squat man everyone called Juan Pequeño. After he served the beer, Juan Pequeño lingered, and Marder could see he wanted to say something and so asked him if there was anything he could do for him. After several mumbling starts and apologies, it being such a small matter, far too small to interest Don Ricardo, and so on, the proprietor told his tale:
los malosos
had been ripping off his beer and
pulque
deliveries, and he was a poor man and could do nothing himself, but since Señor, as was well known, had no fear of
los malosos
, had driven them out like dogs, could he perhaps …

Marder said he’d look into it; effusions of gratitude, and the man withdrew. Marder drank his beer and noticed that a small crowd, of perhaps seven or eight people, had gathered in the street, forming what was not quite a waiting line. He noticed, too, that the priest’s woman had left and another woman had moved into the chair opposite him; he had a line as well. Marder looked across and met Santana’s eye for a moment. The eye rolled up slightly, humorously, and teeth shone in a smile. Then the man’s face grew serious again and he turned to his supplicant.

After the final petitioner, Marder pulled out the little notebook he always carried and made notes. When he looked up from this task, Father Santana was sliding into the chair opposite and gesturing for a beer.

When this had been delivered and half of it drunk in one long set of swallows, Marder said, “Come here often?”

A weak joke, but Santana took it literally. “A couple of times a week. It’s hard for the older people to get to the church in town, so I make house calls, so to speak. How often do you come?”

“Never. Or I should say this is the first time. But I’m glad I ran into you. I’m planning to inter the ashes of my late wife in her family’s crypt in La Huacana. I was wondering if you would consent to come along and say the proper words.”

“I would be happy to. Have you considered that the Day of the Dead is almost upon us? Perhaps that would be the appropriate time. I have Masses to say in the morning and other duties, but I would be available later. We could drive up there in the afternoon.”

Marder thanked him and they both drank their beers for a while. No one else approached them. Then Marder said, “What just happened—it’s a little weird, I have to say. I sit down for a beer and all of a sudden I’m holding court.”

“Well, you’re the
patrón.
It’s part of the job. And, to be honest, I’d much rather see you do it than El Gordo or the Piglet.”

“Yes, but I’m not very good at it. I don’t know these people at all. I have no sense of who’s right or wrong, honest or dishonest.”

“You’ll learn. The people here are nothing if not patient. And you’re a decent man.”

“Am I? They think I’m sleeping with a teenager.”

The priest laughed. “Well, of course they do, but they don’t think badly of you for it. The men admire, the women are envious: it’s the way things are. The richest man gets the most beautiful girl, and they have every confidence that you will take care of her and provide for the children. And in any case it’s a preferable outcome to the alternative, which is that she would be snatched up by one of
los malosos
. In fact, I believe that this has already occurred.”

“Yes, I heard that too, and I have no idea what I’m supposed to do about it. Do you have any advice for me?”

“Oh, it’s not a case for advice, my friend. It would be like advising the river how to flow or the tide when to turn.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning this is your fate, obviously, and the people here understand this. Two men arrive in town out of nowhere, bringing a shower of gold and casting out the villains. And we here are of two minds. First we put out our tubs to catch whatever part of the shower we can. Then we sit and watch the show; we cannot take our eyes away, even though we know it will end badly, for this is Mexico, the graveyard of hope.”

“But this is real life, not a telenovela,” said Marder. “We have free will, or has the Church changed that too?”

“No, but the belief in fate is much older around these parts than the Church and its teachings. In pre-Conquest times, when my ancestors fought their wars, the point of battle was not to kill the enemy but to capture him, so he could have his heart torn out atop a pyramid. And for the sacrifice to be perfect, the victim had to be almost uninjured, save for some ritualized cuts. This is why they were called the striped ones. Therefore, when a warrior was cut in this way, he would surrender and resign himself to that fate. They were outraged when the Spanish murdered them in their thousands and even more outraged when the Spanish fought to the death rather than surrender. The Spaniards were ruled by an entirely different story, the story of chivalry, knights fighting for glory and sacrificing
themselves
, do you see, and not their captives. A more compelling story, perhaps, but, in any case, that narrative was victorious. Though not entirely victorious: the two stories blended and became Mexico, and that is why, although we have had white knight after white knight—Hidalgo, Morelos, Zapata, Madero, Villa, Cárdenas—crusade after crusade, still everything remains the same. No, I tell a lie—things are not quite the same. Now we tear out people’s hearts figuratively instead of literally atop a pyramid in Tenochtitlán.”

“That’s a little cynical and bitter for a priest, don’t you think?”

“No, you mistake me, sir. I am neither bitter nor cynical. I remain interested, indeed fascinated, by the story that is playing out. I have hope. Miracles occur, to be sure, and perhaps you are one of them.” He looked past Marder and added, “And here is your beautiful daughter coming down the street. Of course the knight must have a beautiful daughter. A beautiful daughter and an ugly sidekick—it is almost a requirement. Not to mention that the beautiful daughter can transform herself into a man and do man’s work when needed. This is also in the legends, the magical girl.” Then, to the girl, “Good day to you, my dear. What have you in that bag?”

Statch greeted the priest and took from the fat plastic bag she was carrying a cheap prepaid cell phone. “The tower is up. I’m giving out cell phones.”

Father Santana studied the thing, turning it over in his brown hands, an expression of delight on his face. “A marvel rather than a miracle, I think, but it will do for the present. I have been meaning to get one of these, but they’re so expensive here and the reception is so bad. Now I can please my mother and annoy the bishop. Thank you, Señor Marder and daughter!”

Marder did not know how many cell phones had been distributed in the
casa
and the
colonia,
but through the remainder of the day he observed nearly everyone he encountered walking in the way that characterized modern man, with a hand pressed to the ear and a faraway look. While he understood the benefits, he found it made him a bit sad.

He was therefore somewhat withdrawn at dinner, saying little, while Statch and Skelly were almost antic with their success, trading jokes about their exploits and about the phenomenon of José the Telmex nerd, about how the cultures of nerd and machismo had produced a being who managed remarkably to be both at the same time, like a torero with Asperger’s.

Marder went to bed early and checked in with both God and Mr. Thing, praying orthodoxly to the one and superstitiously to the other that if tonight was the night, it should be done completely, not leaving him a husk or impaired, and if not, then that would be preferable for the moment. Marder felt stupid when he did this, but he always did it. He didn’t think that feeling stupid was such a bad thing.

Another ritual at bedtime was to stand naked in front of the window and look out past the terraces to the sea. A half-moon hung low in the cloudless night, making a stripe of cold fire on the backs of the waves. He used to do this in his loft and at various places where he spent the night, vacation lodgings and so on, and on many of these occasions his wife would come up soundlessly and embrace him from behind and kiss him at just the height her lips could reach between his shoulder blades. He never heard her coming, it was always a delight and a surprise and a prelude to a particularly wonderful kind of sex.

Chole’s ghost tiptoed out of the bathroom, and he felt her lips on that spot and let out a cry and whirled around in terror. An enormous moth. Still trembling, he urged the creature out of the window and closed it, then dived into bed and pulled the coverlet up to his chin, like a frightened child.

Marder awoke in the dark to gunshots and a shrill scream. He rose sluggishly out of a dream in which both he and Skelly and a man whose book he had edited twenty years ago were behaving inappropriately with Lourdes Almones. Shaking himself awake, Marder stumbled into shorts and slippers, grabbed his pistol, and ran out of his bedroom.

The screams continued, and he recognized them as coming from Lourdes and their location as the wooded area below the terraces and above the beach, where palms and
cocolobos
grew. Someone turned on the outside floodlights, and Marder therefore did not break his neck crossing the terraces and descending the stairs that led to the beach. There, in a sandy clearing in a grove of palms lit weirdly by slats of light streaming through the fronds, he found the source of the screaming. Lourdes, her face and hair covered with blood, was shrieking curses and beating at Skelly, with him blocking blows and chanting calming phrases at her to no great effect. Lying on the sand was a young man. He was crying out too but more weakly, declaring his undying love even to the point of actual death. Marder knelt down by the man’s side. Marder assumed this was the expected Salvador Manuel García and so addressed him and asked him how he was, promising help was on its way. He’d been shot twice through the torso, one high, one low, and he did not look good, although he had clearly looked quite good previously—a slim, handsome
guapo
with the cropped hair and the tattoos. When he registered who Marder was, García uttered a string of curses. This was all Marder’s fault, it turned out, and García pledged fearsome revenge, describing the excruciations that Marder would undergo at the hands of his compadres in La Familia, interrupting the dreadful catalog only to shout out the name of his beloved.

People were arriving now, from the nearer areas of the
colonia
and the house. The indispensable Amparo was one of these, dressed in a robe and slippers. She took in the scene, yanked her niece away from Skelly, delivered two slaps like whip cracks to the girl’s face, and dragged her weeping away. Marder organized some of the men to carry Salvador Manuel up to the house and used his new cell phone to dial 060 and request an ambulance.

When this was done, he turned to Skelly. “What the fuck, Skelly?”

“He was going to cut her face. As it was, he gashed her scalp pretty good, as you saw. I yelled for him to get away from her and drop the blade, but he raised it again and was going for another swipe when I shot him. This is García the boyfriend, as you probably gathered.”

“Yes. And why did he decide to cut her, do you know?”

“From what I overheard, she was trying to let him down easy, on account of having to go to Defe for her career, and he went nuts and said it was because everyone knew she was fucking you and he was going to kill you and cut her face off, and then he pulled out the knife.”

“So you saved her and she attacked
you
?”

“What can I say—it’s Mexico. They’re living out their parts in a
narcocorrido
. Speaking of which, how are we going to play this?”

“Just a second—how come you were out here?”

“I get up every night to check the perimeter. We don’t have enough guns to mount a full guard with our guys, and I don’t exactly trust the Templos. I was walking the beach—where we’re wide open, by the way—and heard voices, so I walked up the steps to check out what was going on.”

A plausible story, and the darkness kept Marder from reading Skelly’s face. A little too plausible, he thought, but that was a side issue at this point.

“Give me the gun,” Marder said.

“Why?”

“Because it makes a better story if I’m the shooter. I’m a Mexican citizen, and you’re here on papers that won’t stand up. You can have my Kimber, and it’d be a good idea if you went back to your room for a little while, just until the cops have done their business. And before you do that, I’d like you to get with Statch—I don’t want her involved in this. Tie her down if you have to, but keep her away from the cops.”

Skelly started to protest but then grasped the wisdom of this solution, exchanged pistols with Marder, and disappeared in the direction of the beach. Marder climbed back to the house.

The men had rolled a chaise longue out from the terrace, laid García on it, and covered him with a blanket. He was unconscious now and looking gray. Marder went up to his room, dressed, splashed some water on his face, cleared the pistol, picked up his wallet and Mexican passport, and went downstairs, just as sirens announced the arrival of the ambulance and the cops.

In the servants’ apartment, he found Amparo tending to the now-exhausted girl. Amparo seemed to have stopped the bleeding and had cleaned the blood from Lourdes’s face. Marder explained the new story of what had happened and why Lourdes had to confirm it if the police asked. Lourdes nodded her agreement; of course one lied to the police—how else could one live?

That settled, Marder went back to the front of the house and watched García being loaded into the ambulance. When this had departed, two men in good-looking business suits and handsome shoes approached him; both of them were light-skinned with good haircuts. They showed their credentials—
federales
, it appeared. They also announced their membership in the elite drug police: officers Varela and Gil. Varela had a mustache and Gil did not, but besides that they could have been brothers, so similar did they appear. Or perhaps, Marder thought, it was fatigue and the late hour. Marder showed them his Mexican passport and explained who he was.