An Easy Thing Read online

  Life goes on.

  Walking into the kitchen, he turned on the radio, heated some oil in a pan, and started to chop up tomatoes and onions for a steak à la mexicana. He found some chiles in the refrigerator, and as he salted and peppered the steak, he thought about his life.

  It was a joke. Just one hell of a big joke. Thinking that he could be a detective in Mexico. It was crazy. There was nothing else like it, nothing to compare it to. But when, in the course of six short months, there had been six different attempts on his life (with a scar to show for every one of them), when he had won 64,000 pesos on a television quiz show, when there were days when a small line of potential clients formed in his office (well, okay, so two people make a line); and better yet, when he had managed to solve (drumroll, please) the famous case of construction fraud at the Basilica, as well as the mysterious death of the goalie from the Jalisco soccer team; and more than that, having managed just to survive all those months and still take it all so seriously, and to take it lightly, too, but seriously above all—then, and only then, did the joke cease to be a joke on him alone, and it became part and parcel of the city itself, of the whole damn country even.

  If there’s one thing this country won’t forgive you for, it’s that you take your life too seriously, that you can’t see the joke.

  Damn loneliness.

  Damn loneliness, he thought, turning off the stove.

  And during the same six months, in Veracruz, the army had run a group of starving squatters off a fruit plantation belonging to an ex-president of the republic.

  Mama shouldn’t have gone and died.

  I shouldn’t still be playing at cowboys and Indians.

  And yet, what else was there to do? What better way to live this crazy life than to jump right into the frying pan, just like that juicy steak à la mexicana.

  Is Zapata still alive?

  The radio caught his attention for a moment:

  Nosotros,

  Que desde

  que nos vimos

  amándonos estamos…

  Nosotros

  que del

  amor hicimos

  un sol maravilloso

  romances…

  You and I,

  From the very

  first time we met,

  we knew it had to be love…

  You and I,

  we took our love

  and made from it

  a brilliant shining sun…

  It was far better, after all, than to be forever chasing the dollar, a new car, the needle-dick life, middle-class security, tickets to the symphony, neckties, cardboard relationships, cardboard sex in a cardboard bed, the wife, the kids, upward mobility, a salary, a career; the rat race he had fled from suddenly one day six months ago to go hunt down a strangler. A killer who in the end he found mirrored inside himself.

  Is Emiliano Zapata still alive?

  He burned his hand taking the frying pan off the stove.

  Mama, why’d you have to go and die?

  The woman with the ponytail smiled at him from the windowsill.

  Shit, is this what they call taking stock of your life?

  Nosotros,

  debemos separarnos

  no me preguntes

  maaás.

  No es falta

  de cariño…

  You and I,

  It’s time for us to part,

  don’t ask me questions

  any more.

  It’s not for lack

  of affection…

  sang the radio.

  Héctor Belascoarán Shayne made a face and stuck out his tongue, as he set a sizzling steak à la mexicana on the kitchen table.

  ***

  Stuttering badly, the elevator carried Héctor up from the dazzling sunshine of the street to the bluish half-light of the third-floor landing. He walked over to his office door, and paused in front of the metal shingle that read:

  Héctor Belascorán Shayne: Detective

  Gilberto Gómez Letras: Plumber

  “Gallo” Villareal: Sewer and Drainage Specialist

  Carlos Vargas: Upholsterer

  The sign greeted him every morning, a constant reminder not to take things too seriously. After all, what self-respecting film noir detective would share an office with a sewer expert, an upholsterer, and a plumber?

  “Looks like a fucking tenement house,” he thought.

  Smiling weakly, he opened the squeaky door and stepped inside. He hung his leather jacket with the copper buttons on the coatrack, and thought again about his decision not to dress in black. The smile disappeared from his face.

  Things had changed drastically since his last visit. A stack of skeletal, partially upholstered furniture was piled up in one corner, blocking the window, and two new desks had appeared, filling the empty space and completely rearranging the geometry of the room. Yet, in spite of the overall changes, his own things had been left undisturbed: a secondhand desk; two old chairs bought on the cheap from a movie lot, looking exactly as if they belonged in a detective’s office; a dilapidated file cabinet, its varnish peeling; the tear-off calendar, showing the date from a week ago; the coatrack; the ancient black telephone.

  He dropped into his chair, and pulled the cord on the venetian blind. It fell noisily into place, breaking the morning into hard strips of light.

  A note waited for him on his desk:

  Please consider possible addition of pinup of meche carreño in monokini. Approved by acclamation in vote by office mates.

  PS: sorry to hear about your mother.

  PPS: you idiot! If you’re going to leave your damn gun around the office, remember to put the safety on!

  —Gilberto, gallo, carlos

  He smiled wistfully, letting his eyes drift around the room until he spotted the bullet hole made by his .38 in the ceiling. The rays of light passing through the venetian blind gave the office an almost hallucinatory feeling. Picking up his mail, he sorted through it: bills from the Chinese restaurant across the street, a request for an interview from a men’s magazine, ads for ladies’ underwear, and a reminder to renew his newspaper subscription to Excelsior.

  He wadded it all into a big ball. He wasn’t interested in being interviewed. And Excelsior could go screw itself; just look at the cheap rag it had become.

  Using the ball of paper, he dusted off his desk. Not a bad start to the day. Easygoing, peaceful, quiet. If only it would stay that way.

  From his pocket, he took a photograph of Emiliano Zapata that he had cut out of an illustrated history of the Mexican Revolution, and placed it in front of him on the desk. He sat in silence, contemplating the picture.

  An hour later, he turned and, using some tacks stolen from the upholsterer’s toolbox, pinned the picture beside the window frame. The sad stare of don Emiliano followed him as he paced the room.

  The sad stare of Zapata betrayed.

  Then he pulled the bag of coins from his jacket pocket, spilling them out onto the desktop, where they jingled and danced, reflecting bright bits of light as they rolled about.

  “May I?”

  A woman hesitated in the half-open doorway, looking like someone out of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.

  “Come on in.”

  She was about thirty-five years old, and dressed for a different party. Her tight-fitting black pants were tucked into her boot tops, and her see-through black silk blouse sparkled like so many fishing lures. Her long hair was gathered up inside a fine black net. She seemed irrevocably out of place in the squalid office, with its stacks of broken-down furniture and monkey wrenches lying around on the desktops.

  “I want to hire you to do a job for me,” she said.

  Héctor motioned her
to take a seat, and stood staring at the strong set of her jaw, the deep glimmer in her eyes.

  Taken as a whole, her face seemed better suited to a soft-porn perfume ad than to a friendly conversation.

  “Do you recognize me?” she asked, crossing her legs and glancing around the office. She set a black handbag on Héctor’s desk.

  “I don’t watch the soaps,” answered Héctor, who was having a hard time taking his eyes off the pair of nipples staring at him through his visitor’s blouse.

  “My name is Marisa Ferrer…And I want you to keep my daughter from committing suicide…Are you going to just stand there gawking or have you seen enough now?”

  “Dressing like that, you must get used to it.”

  She smiled while Héctor toyed with the coins spread out over the desk.

  “I had no idea detectives could be so…”

  “Yeah, well, me neither…What’s the girl’s name?”

  “Elena. But don’t let yourself be fooled, she’s not a child.”

  “How old is she?”

  “Seventeen.”

  She slid a photograph across the desk.

  “What about her father?”

  “He owns a hotel chain in Guadalajara. The Príncipe chain. They haven’t seen each other in seven years, not since we were divorced.”

  “Does she live with you?”

  “Sometimes…Sometimes she lives with her grandmother.”

  “So what’s the story?”

  “About two weeks ago she fell from the balcony of her room into the garden. She broke her arm and cut herself on the face. I thought it was an accident. She’s very reckless… But then I found this…”

  She pulled a stack of photocopies from her handbag and gave them to Héctor. But before he could look them over, she took out another batch of papers. “Then came the second accident,” she said, holding out a bundle of newspaper clippings held together with a rubber band. Héctor got the feeling she needed her whole life to be documented in print, corroborated by photographs. Was it just her movie star’s obsession, he wondered, a habit garnered somewhere on the long and bitter road to the top?

  She produced another photograph, a studio close-up this time, of the girl’s face, and then a snapshot, showing her with a big grin and her arm in a cast.

  “I don’t want her to die,” she said.

  “Neither do I,” answered Héctor, studying the photograph of the smiling girl.

  “Will you have dinner with us in my house tomorrow, Señor Belascoarán? That way you can get to know Elena.” She took an American cigarette from her purse, placed it between her lips, and waited for a chivalrous hand to appear from somewhere and offer her a light.

  A ray of bright sunshine slanted across her black blouse.

  “Will you take the job, Señor Belascoarán?”

  The detective found a book of matches and pushed it gently toward her across the desktop, as if it were a toy train maneuvering its way around the coins scattered in its path.

  What made her think she could trust him? He wasn’t a priest or a psychologist; there wasn’t anything fatherly about him. If he understood suicide, it was more through affinity than any objective understanding. He made up his mind, and posted the picture of the smiling girl beside the penetrating eyes of don Emiliano.

  “In all your things there did you happen to bring your own scrapbook, anything like that?” he asked, already knowing the answer.

  She pulled a bulging, leather-bound album from her fathomless handbag.

  “Do you think it might help?”

  “I couldn’t say. But if you’re going to give me a bunch of papers to look at, I’d rather have it be a lot than a little. Just personal preference, that’s all.…What’s for dinner?”

  The woman smiled. She got up and turned to leave.

  “It’s a surprise,” she said.

  As she opened the door, the bluish light from the hallway filtered into the room and she paused, as if captured in a freeze-frame photo.

  “About the money…”

  Héctor waved his hand as if to say, don’t worry about it, and when the door had closed behind her he turned to face the mountain of papers she’d left for him on his desk. Papers are so much easier to deal with than people, he thought.

  Crossing to the wall, he opened up the secret compartment where they kept their valuables: Gilberto’s billing receipts, Carlos’s hammer, their communal stash of soda pop. He took out a Pepsi-Cola and opened it with his Swiss Army knife.

  As he swigged the syrupy liquid, he thought about inflation and what had happened to the price of soda pop. Son of a bitch, he thought. It wasn’t so long ago that a Pepsi only cost forty-five cents.

  It was part of what it meant to him to be Mexican, sharing in the general bitching over the rise in prices, the cost of tortillas, increases in bus fares, pulling his hair out over the TV news, cursing the police and government corruption. Cursing the whole sad state of affairs, the great national garbage dump that Mexico had become. For Héctor it was a matter of solidarity, of brotherhood, the shared complaints, the shared disgust, the shared pride. Earning the right to call himself un mexicano, guarding himself against the curse of starlets like Marisa Ferrer. It kept him in touch with his people.

  He paused to give the finger to whoever was responsible for the rising price of soda pop, and returned to his desk with its piles of coins and papers.

  The smiling teenager and don Emiliano watched him from their respective photographs. In solidarity with Héctor over the price of soft drinks and his giving the finger to the government? Or simply as witnesses to the complicated mess he was stepping into?

  Just then the telephone rang.

  “Belascoarán Shayne speaking.”

  “Please wait while I connect you with Señor Duelas.”

  After a brief silence another voice came on the line.

  “Hello. Señor Shayne?”

  “Belascoarán Shayne,” Héctor corrected.

  “Pardon me, Señor Belascoarán Shayne,” said the voice, “but one quite naturally tries to avoid your unpronounceable Basque surname.”

  A vile, honeyed, presumptuous voice.

  “If you think that’s tough, you should try Belaustiguigoitia, Aurrecoechea, or even Errandoneogoicoechea.” Those were the best pseudo-Basque names that came instantly to Héctor’s mind.

  “Hee hee hee,” giggled the voice.

  “So what can I do for you?”

  “Yes…I’m calling on behalf of the Santa Clara Industrial Council, here in Mexico State. In my capacity as attorney I represent the council in legal matters. We would like to contract your services. Are you available?”

  “That all depends, Señor Dueñas.”

  “Duelas.”

  “Oh, excuse me. Duelas.”

  “What are your conditions, Señor Belascoarán?”

  “Like I say, it all depends on what you want me to do.”

  “On behalf of the council I can send you a report detailing the matter at hand and what we would expect from you. I can arrange to have it to you by early afternoon. As far as money is concerned, we’re prepared to offer you a fifteen-day advance, at a rate of one thousand pesos per day. And we’re willing to pay you quite generously should you be able to arrange a satisfactory end to our little problem. What do you say, Señor Belascoarán?”

  Héctor considered the offer for a few seconds. At that point he was interested just to find out what the whole thing was about.

  “I’ll tell you what, first send me your report, then give me a call at this time tomorrow, and I’ll let you know what I think. Okay?”

  “Agreed. It’s been a pleasure talking with you…”

  “Just a second…” he said, turning to glance for permission at the phot
ographs on the wall behind him. “Does this report have any pictures in it?”

  “You mean pictures of the body?”

  Ah! So there was a body!

  “I’d like to have some kind of graphics included in the information you send me.”

  “Certainly, Señor Belascoarán.”

  “All right, then,” said Héctor, and he hung up the phone.

  What was he getting himself into? What did he think he was doing taking on three jobs at once? The sweet flame of a temporary insanity tickled his brain, and he smiled, thinking of the old maxim of his pirate father: “The more complicated the better; the more impossible, the more beautiful.”

  He felt the urge to act, to jump off the edge of the precipice.

  Girl with your arm in a cast, mi general Emiliano Zapata, the unknown corpse: Héctor Belascoarán Shayne, at your service.

  He stashed the old coins in the hidden compartment in the wall, grabbed his jacket, and was about to head for the door. But he stepped over to the phone and dialed the number of the School of Historical Research at the university.

  “Dr. Ana Carillo, please…Ana? Could you do me a favor? I need some detailed information on the death of Emiliano Zapata, a couple of books on Sandinismo, with pictures, if possible, and something on Rubén Jaramillo. Any chance I can get it by tonight?”

  While he waited for the answer, he picked up the note from his office mates and scribbled his reply:

  O.K. To post pinup previously censured. Gun w. Safety. Don’t touch new photo gallery. I suggest we send a letter to congress protesting the high price of soda pop.

  —h.b.s.

  Chapter Two

  …I confess that it’s easier

  for me to explain the things I

  reject than the things I want.

  —D. Cohn-Bendit

  They sat together like a trio of chastised children in the immense office with its heavy leather furniture, diplomas on the walls, thick carpet, and useless side tables full of equally useless Oriental knickknacks. Héctor looked around unsuccessfully for an ashtray, settling in the end for the bamboo baskets on a small porcelain figure.