Spiral (12 page)

"Has Mr. Negrete been with you long?"

"Four years, almost five."

"What members of your family are living with you in Houston now?"

"Only the son you met. My wife and daughters are in and out from Mexico."

"And your oldest son?"

"He has his own business in Monterrey, and his own family. He comes occasionally."

Haydon thought a moment. "Mr. Gamboa, can you think of anything, any information, that might help us in this investigation? Are there any specific political groups, leftist groups, opposing factions, dissidents with known or suspected contacts in Houston, that might be even remotely involved in this?"

Gamboa shook his head slowly, even as Haydon was speaking. "No one," he said with a wan, apologetic smile. "In fact, I do my best not to think about that sort of thing at all. There is no profit in that kind of worrying. I let others do that for me."

Haydon nodded, then stood.

"You'll make arrangements to notify Mr. Sosa's family?"

"Of course. I will personally send someone to his wife. My peo-

pie will make all of the other arrangements regarding the body."

"Thank you," Haydon said. He was irritated with himself. He had the uncomfortable feeling that he had allowed himself to be manipulated in this interview, an interview
he
had conducted. "I'm sure I'll be talking with you again."

"Certainly." Gamboa stood also, and walked with Haydon to the library doors.

As they stepped out into the entrance hall, Efren Gamboa turned from the front windows, where he had been standing with his arms folded staring out to the soft light of the loggia. His face bore a seriousness uncharacteristic in a young man his age. He also seemed unaccustomed to the blunt bulge of the weapon beneath his suit coat.

Chapter 12

THEY
sat inside under a dim ceiling light as insects circled above them in a slow flittering dance, the only moving things in the room. A large square floor fan was wedged into one of the windows. It was turned on high, creating a breeze that dissipated to a slothful stirring of the old home's musty odors by the time it reached them across the spacious room. They could have gone outside on the long upstairs gallery, but instinctively they sought cover. Outside, a guard kept watch from among the relic weeds and the cypresses.

Bias Medrano had stopped lighting the cigarettes off one another and was now smoking them meditatively rather than emotionally. A weathered wooden table sat in front of him, covered with brown, grease-stained butcher's paper from which they had eaten the tamales and tacos bought at a neighborhood cafe. There was a bottle of wine, nearly empty, and three glasses.

Bias stared at Professor Daniel Ferretis's
guayabera.
It was made of polished cotton with fancy needlework on the front panels. There were also two perfectly round spots of orange grease on the front. He wondered if the professor knew. Rubio was smoking too, his cigarette resting neatly in the notch of his lower lip, as he absently pecked the wooden table with a key. Bias could not tell if there was a rhythm to the pecking, or if it was simply an idle noise to accompany the drone of the fan.Ferretis supressed a belch and poured a bit more wine into his little glass. His hair was receding—he could not have been past his late forties—and he had a decided paunch. He was soft-looking, a result of his occupation in front of a classroom and behind a desk. His features were small, and he set them off with a pair of Cazel eyeglasses, the heavily square, reddish-brown kind that were popular in Europe. He was clean-shaven, and high on each cheek a blotch of pink glowed as if he had just been slapped, a natural flush that grew even brighter when he was hot.

"So you think Ireno told Negrete's men
everything?"
Ferretis asked, irritated.

"Everything he could think of," Bias said. "And probably some lies, anything, everything. Negrete's techniques are not primitive, and after a while his victims will say anything, hoping he will stop. Then Negrete is faced with having to separate the truths from the lies."

"Then why did you go ahead with the ambush?"

"Precisely because I knew Negrete wouldn't be able to make that critical separation. Not really knowing if it was going to happen or not, he went ahead and let Gamboa out on the streets, but took the half-measure precaution of switching him to another car at the restaurant. He got lucky."

"But he knows about this place."

"He does now, but when he dumped Ireno's body out front he wasn't sure. He couldn't risk getting in trouble with the local police by raiding us, so he dumped the body and settled back to see what would happen."

Ferretis downed his wine and said, "So I'm at risk."

"Of course, and the others. Anyone, anything Ireno knew about."

"Son of a bitch," Ferretis snapped. He thought a moment, then said, "I'll tell them in Guadalajara about Teodoro. Or do you want to do it?"

Bias shook his head. "You do it."

"I'll tell them he died firing from his motorcycle, like a true soldier. I'll tell them you, personally, were with him. His father will be proud," Ferretis said.

"Yes, you tell them that, Professor. It was such a wonderful thing Teodoro did from his little Kawasaki."

Ferretis looked across the table. The tone of sarcasm in Medrano's voice was unmistakable. He had never met Medrano before, but his reputation among the
tecos
was remarkable. That was why he was here. In the matrix of that murky shadow world in which he moved and lived, he was renowned, but Ferretis hadn't expected to find a man so at odds with his profession. Especially this profession.

Bias felt the professor's eyes on him, but he didn't care.

"Do you remember the prayer of the Teco Brigade, professor?"

It was a rhetorical question; he didn't wait for an answer. "I remember every word of it, though I memorized it a long time ago. There is a phrase: “ .. sprinkle my blood jubilantly over the countryside of my homeland so that those who come after me will return to that place and say: He died for God, and for Mexico.' My God, that's wonderful stuff," he said caustically. "Don't you agree, professor? Teodoro Anica: Martyr of the Select Guard." He fixed his eyes on Ferretis, and the tone of his voice became almost casual. "It means nothing, you understand. Perhaps even less than nothing."

Ferretis returned the gaze. What was this? This son of Apolinar Medrano Mallen, this legendary
teco de choque,
seemed to be walking very near the edge.

"Do you want me to ask them to send someone else to take his place?" Ferretis asked, ignoring what Bias had just said.

Bias shook his head again. "It won't be necessary." He cut his eyes at Rubio, who wasn't looking at anyone, keeping his own counsel. Wise coyote. It was the way to survival. Then Bias looked at the professor, who was now pouring himself another glass of wine. He drank some of it. He had a lot to think about. Months of planning were in the balance, and the professor was feeling the tension of the scales.

The grinding whine of an industrial crane loading merchant vessels in the ship channel rode the heavy air through the windows with the moist, muddy smell of the bayou. As the crane moaned to a muffled stop, the odd ululation of an owl moved through the cypresses. Bias was almost embarrassed by the melodrama of the irony. A moment from an unsubtle film. How could real life be like this? If the other two men had noticed, he did not know it, for he avoided their eyes.

Perhaps the professor did not notice. He was an economist, a political historian. Subliminal life was not his concern. His concern was with the life he could touch and effect, preserving democratic systems of government, stopping the creeping cancer of communism that gnawed in the bowels of Latin America and threatened the heart of the United States. He was concerned with Jews and Jesuits and counterrevolution. And secrecy.

If Rubio heard the owl, he did not acknowledge its irony, either. But then he would not have recognized it as such. It might have been a symbol to him, a totem, a sign that spoke to the darker currents that streamed with the Indian blood in his veins. He would have heard it as the coyote hears it, as the voice of a hunter who sees and thrives in the absence of light, who covers his actions with night.

When the owl called a second time, Ferretis set his glass on the table.

"This time, Bias, there can be no mistake," he said. "No one expected it to be easy. Negrete is formidable. But we can risk only one other attempt. The shooting was a spectacular event by U.S. standards. They're not used to that kind of thing here."

"They'll think it was drug-related," Bias said. "And so will everyone who watched the evening news, or will read tomorrow's newspapers."

"You're probably right," Ferretis said. "But it won't take the police long to sort that out. If you miss him this time, and it makes the papers like this shooting, they're going to track it down. Negrete will lead them to you. He can do that without risking any adverse publicity for Gamboa. He's good enough to do it."

"He's already done that," Bias said.

Ferretis looked at Bias. "How are you going to do it?"

Bias disdained the question. The professor's desire for the details, for the vicarious pleasures of battle, was repellant to him. Like an armchair general, he liked to talk war, to imagine the smell of cordite, to imagine the rush of adrenaline, to imagine the acts of heroism, to imagine the encomiums of victory. The rearguard were despicable to Bias, not because they conducted war without risk, but because they had not the power of mind to imagine the truth: the smell of vomit and blood, the rush of panic and horror, the acts of cowardice, the despair of defeat. There were too many professors, too many generals. And far, far too many Teodoro Anicas eager to be blown to hell for high-sounding words and pompous ideals.

"It will be quick," Bias said. "And soon." He was fully aware, however, that the professor was only doing his job. Guadalajara was monitoring the squad's pulse. They did it everywhere. They called it "networking," but Bias often thought of it as a web. Every time he moved, the strands quivered and a message was telegraphed to Mexico. It was only tolerable because he knew the professor also had his burden of spies.
Las orejas
, the ears, were everywhere. It was the nature of the Brigade to be suspicious, to stay informed.

On the other hand, it was his nature to survive too, and he knew that the only true secret was that which existed solely within one's mind. If it took any other form it was endangered, and risked betrayal.

Ferretis started to say something else, but Bias cut him off.

"Let's look in the cases," he said.

He motioned to Rubio, who had been sitting quietly, wedging his key into a crack in the old table. As he had listened, he had worked it in deeper and deeper. Now he jerked it out and reached down for the first of two five-inch Samsonite briefcases sitting on the floor beside them. Bias cleared away the greasy paper and Rubio set the briefcase in the middle of the table. The professor produced a key of his own, unlocked the latches, and snapped them open. As Rubio unloaded the money, Bias began counting it. They were all $20 bills. They were secured in $1,000 straps, fifty bills in each strap. When he finished counting them, there were 250 straps on the table. A total of $250,000.

They returned the money to the briefcase, and Bias put it back on the floor as Rubio hoisted the second briefcase to the table. They followed the same process, counting and repacking another $250,000 in $20 bills.

"They each weigh a little over twenty-five pounds," Ferretis said, pouring another glass of wine. "I weighed them on my bathroom scales after I had to haul them across campus."

Bias didn't say anything. He wondered why the professor wanted to weigh them, since their weight had no bearing on the transfer. Did he have that much curiosity for the trivial?

"This will petrify them." Ferretis's eyes had found the middle distance of deep thought. "They'll all be wondering how far down the pecking order this justice is going to penetrate."

"When will they announce the reason for the assassination?" Bias asked. He was lighting another cigarette. His throat was raw and he could no longer enjoy the taste of them.

"As soon as it happens."

"It's going to cost us," Bias said. "Already we've lost Ireno and Teodoro. As soon as they make the announcement, the other targets are going to put on heavy security. As touchy as this one is, the losses in the other teams are going to be worse."

"They knew that," Ferretis said testily. He peered at Bias through his heavy frames. "Look at the squad members we've lost all over Central America, in San Salvador, Tegucigalpa, Guatemala City, all over Mexico. It's a war. You expect it. But it's got to be done, especially now with the Nicaraguans wearing East German socks, and licking Karl Marx postage stamps. A weak government is an invitation to defeat. There is no national security with a weak government. Gamboa and the others like him were incautious, and grasping. Their greedy self-interest has jeopardized Mexican economic stability. In their own way they've paved the road for communism. We'll make examples of them. Before de la Madrid's term expires. We have an eye on him too, and his ministers. From now on they'll all have to answer to us, and to justice."