The Road to Quintana Roo (Part III)

Part I

Part II

I wish I could say that I went to a place drastically distinct from La Lata to put a decisive end to the day, but that would be a lie. There isn’t anywhere in La Velita that’s so distinct. Sometimes when they play stale American movies on television I fantasize about what it would be like to have a proper place to booze: leather and polished wood and bunny waitresses in little tuxes. A place where drinking made you feel good and powerful instead of just Gone. But El Camarón is what we’ve got.

Raul drools from one side of the mouth—a home invasion gone wrong—but his hands are faster than anyone’s laying drinks. Besides, I happened to catch the men that busted him and his house up and Raul was able to reconnect with those caballeros in an interrogation room. So, as usual, I had a tumbler of mescal and a beer lined up for me before I even bellied up to the bar. A few wrinkled ranchers nodded at me; a few younger men slapped down pesos and split. I didn’t care. I shot the mescal: fire. Chased it with a half a beer: ice.

Rosario’s smiles and shrugs dance behind my closed eyes. The damndest thing about the old man is that I don’t even know if he’s on the take. It almost doesn’t matter. At least I know he’d have a philosophical explanation if found to be what I’d call “corrupt.” If he were “corrupt” he’d be on the right side of it somehow. But then isn’t that the last word on what has become of my home? That corruption—moral as well as professional—is the rule. Someone as good as Rosario might have to compromise himself in order to stay safe. The carnival mirror of justice, left too long in the high desert.

I finish the bottle and don’t even have to point before Raul is pouring me another dose of mescal with one hand, capturing the drool with a bar towel in the other.

Sick ironies tossed about as casually and commonly as corpses. Another: the epidemic of missing girls used as justification for “cooperation” with the cartels. The logic goes that if the cartels are responsible, it’s likely an issue of prostitution, which would be a relief to many families who fear their daughters murdered. Or, maybe, the disappearances are punishment for a lack of “good will” on behalf of the people of the state. If the Relámpagos aren’t involved, then their “good will” will be imperative in finding out what kind of monsters are. Either way, for fat fucks like Maximilio, pocketing payouts and looking away from extortion and even murder, does not even have to present itself as self-interest; it can be public interest. And that’s what makes me sick—the slow, surreal evolution of demons like Emilio Herrera into folk heroes.

I find a fresh beer in front of me and drain half of it. In the back, a whore cackles, mimicking Raul’s lopsided gait as he moves past with a tray of empties. I think about disciplining the whore but discard the notion—half-cocked heroism won’t change anything about today fundamentally.

I have too much respect for Rosario to discuss the elephant in the room without a fully cooked strategy to set things right in La Velita. What the man’s cryptic philosophy really says is: Give me a solution—until then I will take the path of least resistance and keep myself, my men and the community safe as possible. And despite thousands of predawn hours, both in my old home with Angela and alone in the rancid apartment since she booted me out, thousands of fantasies I’ve auditioned, not a single one comes close to realistic. I know that Rosario intervened to keep me alive five years ago out of respect for me—the Relámpagos would have made me the next peeled-face corpse on the shoulder of Mex 2 as a matter of course—and probably taken Angela and my grandson to a horrible end just for kicks. Only Rosario had the stature to negotiate my salvation, to convince the bastards of the mere truth: that it had been a mistake. And to fashion my penance: exile my son and obey the cartel. So I will not go to Rosario and disturb the sorrow and shame that has settled over not only me but the idea of policing until I have a solution.

My mescal is full again; then it’s not. I briefly count beers, then give up and slug more. The room is getting to be a fishbowl, which I like. I exercise my right as police and slide my gaze slowly over the people, the nervous teens, the beaten down ranchers, the loud truckers and a few kids with high-carat crucifixes on chains as slim as their ties to the cartel—no real players. In the booth with the mean-spirited whore I suddenly notice Maria. Her blonde wig has swung over half her face and she is leaning into the other girl. She chuckles then watches her cigarette burn. She drags on it and sees me and a smile unsnaps on her like a bra.

“Como va, agente?” she asks, swaggering up and parking herself against my thigh. I get hard immediately and this angers me. I pull my leg back and drink.

“Just another day in paradise, cariño.” I haven’t seen her in three weeks and feel better for it. Her heat, her lips around that smoke and the booze are pushing the wrong way on me. I talk fast to forestall her moves.

“Being a cop—no, joder, fuck that, being me—in this country is a curse only conceivable by God. Or his nemesis. You would not understand this, Maria, because being a whore in this country is certainly not easy, but it’s a fit. I am a foreign agent in the body of my patria now. And I can’t live this way. Survival is a half-empty glass in Méjico.”

Maria switches her hips, her smoke to the other side of her lips. She glances back at her table, maybe regretting her trip across the floor.

“I have balances to set right, Maria. I am slowly coming into sight. Years of hiding my neck! I’m not a turtle; I’m a man and a cop. They exile my own son, who ends up in a gringo prison in el norte, mixed up in their poisonous business there, leave my grandson fatherless and destroy my home and marriage because I did my fucking duty and erased one of those cockroaches from the earth.”

Maria smiles like she’s tired, stabs out her smoke.

“You should be careful with that tongue, Agente. You’re better off putting it to other use when you are drunk. Trust me.”
She folds her arms and turns to go, but I hook her elbow and yank her to me.

“You are the first to hear the truth, Maria. Live up to it. I will decapitate the Relámpagos and I will find and free Javier and I will set this town right again no matter what the rest of Méjico does. You will see.”

Her big dark eyes have a tide in them, washing back and forth between thrill and fear. She can’t hold my gaze.

“And my tongue has plenty of vinegar left tonight, puta.”

Now she can. The room tilts. A hand flutters to my thigh and this time the smile uncurls rather than unsnapping on her. My cock rises. My phone rings.

“Federico it is Angela. Where are you?”

I whip away from Maria so fast that I nearly fall of the barstool. I tell my wife—my beautiful, graceful, God-fearing, dignified and wise wife—that I am finishing dinner, nowhere special, no plans. I do this in a deliberate voice to keep the slur off. But it doesn’t work.

“You are at a cantina and you are drunk, Federico. When I need you. Of course. But I swear to you by God if you come here tonight I will call Rosario and make a complaint. Be here early in the morning and try not to stink.”
The line goes dead and Maria places a palm on my back. Vomit announces itself in my chest, I shake her off and step through the hard, lurching angles and colors out of the cantina and into the future.