Authors: Roberto Bolaño
Tags: #Fiction, #Literary Collections, #Mystery & Detective, #Mexico, #Caribbean & Latin American, #Cold Cases (Criminal Investigation), #Crime, #Literary, #Young Women, #Missing Persons, #General, #Women
On October 10, the same day
Leticia Borrego Garcia's body was found near the Pemex soccer fields, the body
of Lucia Dominguez Roa was found in Colonia
Persefone. The first police report stated that Lucia worked as a prostitute and
was a drug addict and that the cause of death had probably been an overdose.
The next morning, however, a distinctly different statement was issued. It said
that Lucia Dominguez Roa had worked as a waitress at a bar in Colonia
a .44, probably from a revolver. There were no witnesses to the killing and the
possibility that the killer might have shot from inside a moving vehicle hadn't
been ruled out. Nor had the possibility that the bullet was intended for
someone else. Lucia Dominguez Roa was thirty-three and separated, and she lived
alone in a room in Colonia
No one knew what she was doing in Colonia
according to the police, that she'd been taking a walk and had come upon death
purely by chance.
The Mercedes entered Colonia
Tlalpan, circled around several times, and finally turned down a cobblestone
street of moonlit houses behind high walls, houses that appeared to be
uninhabited or in ruins. During the ride, Azucena Esquivel Plata sat in
silence, smoking swathed in her plaid blanket, and Sergio stared out the
window. The congresswoman's house was big and low, with courtyards where in the
old days there had been carriages and stables and watering troughs carved
directly into the stone. He followed her to a big room where a Tamayo and an
Orozco hung. The Tamayo was red and green, the Orozco black and gray. The stark
white walls of the room somehow called up visions of a private clinic or death.
The congresswoman asked him what he would like to drink. Sergio said coffee.
Coffee and a tequila, said the congresswoman without raising her voice, as if
she were simply commenting on what each would like at that early hour. Sergio
looked behind him, in case there was a maid, but he didn't see anyone. After a
few minutes, however, a middle-aged woman of more or less the same generation
as the congresswoman but much more worn by work and the years, appeared with
tequila and a steaming cup of coffee. The coffee was wonderful and Sergio told
his hostess so. Azucena Esquivel Plata laughed (actually, she just bared her
teeth and let out a sound bearing some resemblance to laughter, a sound like
the croak of a night bird) and said he wouldn't know what good was until he
tried her tequila. But let's get down to business, she said without taking off
her enormous dark glasses. Have you heard of Kelly Rivera Parker? No, said
Sergio. I was afraid of that, said the congresswoman. Have you heard of me? Of
course, said Sergio. But not of Kelly? No, said Sergio. That's this fucking
country for you, said Azucena, and for a few minutes she was silent, gazing at
her glass of tequila, shot through by the light of a table lamp, or staring at
the floor or with her eyes closed, because she could do all of that, and more,
under cover of her glasses. I met Kelly when we were girls, the congress-woman
said, as if in a dream. At first I didn't like her, she was too prissy, or so I
thought at the time. Her father was an architect and he worked for the city's
nouveaux riches. Her mother was a gringa and her father had met her when he was
at Harvard or Yale, one of the two. Of course, it wasn't his own parents,
Kelly's grandparents, who paid his way. He went on a government scholarship. I
suppose he must have been a good student, mustn't he? No doubt, said Sergio,
seeing that silence seemed about to descend once again on the congresswoman. He
was a fine student of architecture, yes, but a miserable architect. Do you know
La Casa Elizondo? No, said Sergio. It's in Coyoacan, said the congress-woman.
It's a hideous house. Kelly's father built it. I've never heard of it, said
Sergio. A film producer lives there now, a hopeless drunk, a has-been who
doesn't make movies anymore. Sergio shrugged his shoulders. One of these days
he'll turn up dead and his nephews will sell La Casa Elizondo to a developer
and they'll put up an apartment block. In fact, fewer and fewer traces are left
of Rivera's passage through this world. Isn't reality an insatiable
AIDS-riddled whore? Sergio nodded and said of course, she was right. Rivera,
Rivera, said the congresswoman. After a moment of silence, she said: her mother
was a lovely woman, beautiful is the word, very beautiful. Mrs. Parker, a
beautiful and modern woman who, incidentally, her husband treated like a queen.
As well he should have, because when men saw her they lost their heads and if
she had wanted to leave the architect, she wouldn't have lacked for willing
partners. But the truth is she never left him, although when I was little it
was said that a general and a politician were wooing her and she wasn't averse
to their attentions. But she must have loved Rivera because she never left him.
They had only the one child, Kelly, whose real name was Luz Maria, like her
grandmother. Mrs. Parker got pregnant many times, but she had trouble with her
pregnancies. I suppose there was something wrong with her womb. Maybe it
couldn't stand any more Mexican children and the babies were aborted naturally.
It could be. Stranger things have happened. Anyway, Kelly was an only child,
and that misfortune or stroke of luck left its stamp on her. On the one hand,
she was or seemed to be a prissy girl, the typical pampered daughter of an
arriviste, and on the other hand, from the time she was little she was
strong-willed, determined, I would even say an original. Anyway, I didn't get
along with her at first, but later, as I got to know her, when she invited me
to her house and I invited her to mine, I grew to like her more and more, until
we became inseparable. These things tend to leave a lasting imprint, said the
congresswoman, as if she were spitting in the face of a man or a ghost. I can
imagine, said Sergio. Won't you have more coffee?
On the very day he arrived in
Santa Teresa, Kessler left the hotel on his own. First he went down to the
lobby. He talked for a while to the receptionist, asked her about the hotel
computer and Internet connection, then he went to the bar, where he ordered a
whiskey, which he left half finished to get up and go to the bathroom. When he
came out he seemed to have washed his face, and he headed to the restaurant,
not glancing at anyone at the bar tables or in the lounge. He ordered a Caesar
salad and whole wheat bread and butter and a beer. As he was waiting for his
food he got up and made a phone call from the phone at the entrance to the
restaurant. Then he sat down again and took an English-Spanish dictionary out
of his jacket pocket and looked up some words. Then a waiter set his salad on
the table and Kessler drank a few swallows of Mexican beer and spread butter on
a piece of bread. He got up again and headed to the bathroom. But he didn't
actually go in. Instead he gave a dollar to the attendant and exchanged a few
words in English with him, then he turned down a side corridor and opened a
door and crossed another corridor. At last he came to the hotel kitchens, above
which floated a cloud that smelled like hot salsa and
carne en adobo,
and Kessler asked one of the kitchen boys for the
exit. The boy showed him to a door. Kessler gave him a dollar and left by the
back way. On the corner a taxi was waiting for him and he got in. Let's take a
ride around the slums, he told the driver in English. The driver said okay and
they set off. The tour lasted approximately two hours. They circled the center
of the city, driving through Colonia Madero-Norte and Colonia
where you could make out El Adobe, which was on American soil. Then they went
back to Madero-Norte and cruised the streets of Colonia Madero and Colonia
Reforma. This isn't what I want, said Kessler. What do you want, boss? asked
the driver. Shantytowns, the area around the maquiladoras, the illegal dumps.
The driver headed back across Colonia Centra and set off in the direction of
Colonia Felix Gomez, where he turned onto Avenida Carranza and drove through
Colonia
Colonia Carranza, and Colonia Morelos. At the end of the street there was a
kind of plaza or big open space, of an intense yellow, with an accumulation of
trucks and buses and stalls at which people sold and bought everything from
vegetables and chickens to cheap jewelry. Kessler told the driver to stop, he
wanted to look around. The driver said better not, boss, a gringo's life isn't
worth much here. Do you think I was born yesterday? asked Kessler. The driver
didn't understand the expression and insisted he stay in the car. Stop here,
damn it, said Kessler. The driver braked and asked him to pay up. Are you
planning to leave? asked Kessler. No, said the driver, I'll wait for you, but
there's no guarantee you'll come back with money in your pocket. Kessler
laughed. How much do you want? Twenty dollars will do, said the driver. Kessler
gave him a twenty-dollar bill and got out of the taxi. For a while, with his
hands in his pockets and his
tie undone, he wandered around the makeshift market. He asked a little old
woman who was selling pineapple with chile powder which way the buses went,
since they all headed in the same direction. They end up in Santa Teresa, said
the old woman. And what's over there? he asked in Spanish, pointing in the opposite
direction. That would be the park, said the old woman. Out of politeness, he
bought a piece of pineapple with chile, which he dropped on the ground as soon
as he was out of sight. You see, nothing happened to me, he told the driver
when he got back to the car. By some miracle, said the driver, smiling in the
rearview mirror. Let's go to the park, said Kessler. At the edge of the dirt
plaza, the road split, each branch in turn splitting in two. The six roads were
paved and met at Arsenio Farrell industrial park. The factory buildings were
tall and each plant was surrounded by a wire fence and the light of the big
streetlights bathed everything in a vague aura of haste, of momentousness,
which was false, since it was just another workday. Kessler got out of the taxi
again and breathed the air of the maquila, the industrial air of northern
Buses arrived with workers and other buses left. Damp, fetid air, smelling of
scorched oil, struck him in the face. He thought he heard laughter and
accordion music on the wind. North of the industrial park stretched a sea of
scrap roofs. South, past the distant shacks, he spotted an island of light and
knew right away that it was another industrial park. He asked the driver what
it was called. The driver got out and looked for a while in the direction
Kessler had pointed. That must be General Sepulveda industrial park, he said.
Dusk began to fall. It had been a while since Kessler saw such a beautiful
sunset. The colors swirled in the evening sky and he was reminded of a sunset
he had seen many years ago in
It wasn't exactly the same, but the colors were identical. He was there, he
remembered, on the highway, with the sheriff and another FBI man, and the car
stopped for a moment, maybe because one of the three had to get out to pee, and
then he saw it. Bright colors in the west, giant butterflies dancing as night
crept like a cripple toward the east. Let's go, boss, said the driver, let's
not push our luck.
So what proof do you have,
Klaus, that the Uribes are the serial killers? asked the reporter from
El Independiente de
You hear everything in prison,
said Haas. Some reporters nodded in agreement. The reporter from
impossible. It's just a legend, Klaus, a legend invented by inmates, a false
substitute for freedom. In prison you hear the little that gets past the prison
walls and that's it. Haas gave her an angry look. I meant, he said, that in
prison you know everything that happens outside the law. Not true, Klaus, said
the reporter. It is true, said Haas. No, it isn't, said the reporter. It's an
urban legend, a movie invention. The lawyer ground her teeth. Chuy Pimentel
took her picture: black hair, dyed, covering her face, her nose slightly
aquiline in profile, her eyes lined with pencil. If it had been up to her,
everyone around her, the shadowy figures on the edges of the photograph, would
have disappeared instantly, and so would the room, the prison, jailers and
jailed, the hundred-year-old walls of the Santa Teresa penitentiary, and all
that was left would be a crater, and in the crater there would be only silence
and the vague presence of the lawyer and Haas, chained in the depths.
On October 14, by the side of a
dirt road leading from Colonia Estrella to the ranches on the outskirts of
Santa Teresa, the body of another dead woman was found. She was dressed in a
long-sleeved dark blue T-shirt, a pink jacket with black and white vertical
stripes, Levi's, a wide belt with a velvet-covered buckle, calf-length
spike-heeled boots, white socks, black panties, and a white bra. Death,
according to the forensic report, was due to asphyxiation caused by
strangulation. There was still a three-foot-long electrical cord around her
neck, doubled and knotted in the middle, that had likely been used to strangle
her. External signs of violence were also visible around her neck, as if before
using the cable someone had tried to strangle her with his hands, and there was
excoriation of the left arm and right leg, and bruises to the gluteal region,
as if she had been kicked. According to the forensic report, she had been
dead-for three or four days. Her age was calculated to be between twenty-five
and thirty. Later she was identified as Rosa Gutierrez Centeno, thirty-eight, a
former maquila worker, and, at the time of her death, a waitress at a coffee
shop in the center of Santa Teresa. She had disappeared four days previously.
She was identified by her daughter, seventeen, same name, with whom she had
lived in Colonia Alamos. The young Rosa Gutierrez Centeno viewed her mother's
corpse in one of the rooms at the morgue and said it was her. Lest any doubt
remain, she also stated that the pink jacket with black and white vertical
stripes was hers, it belonged to her, and she and her mother had shared it, as
they shared so many things.