“Damn, mana! This is a glass shard! Damn, these are hard to get out.”
“A glass shard? How? Are you sure it isn’t wood? Look, it’s kind of dark.”
“No, mana, here’s a piece. Look at it through the magnifying glass.”
Indeed, it was a glass shard, and it very probably came from the scene of the crime. Lupita’s mind raced back to the attack, and she remembered that when she knelt to help Larreaga, she picked up the cell phone he had dropped and put it in her pocket to ensure no one would steal it. There was always that one asshole who would try to take advantage of the situation. The screen was completely shattered, and that was surely where the shard had come from.
Pain brought her back to the present. The procedure her finger was undergoing was extremely painful. Nevertheless, Lupita found a certain comfort in it. You could say pain was her thing and Celia was a part of that. They had grown up together, and Celia had been a witness to everything Lupita had suffered, so the combination of Celia, pain, and blood was one of the constants in her life. It was a package deal. Celia also brought another component to the table: gossip, rumors, the voice of the neighborhood. Lupita knew from experience that it was best to satiate Celia’s thirst for information or she would lose a finger. So she finally gave Celia her account of the previous day, not without being constantly interrupted by her friend’s impertinent questions.
“Tell me everything! Was it horrible, mana?”
“Yeah, you can’t imagine the face he made. He looked at me like begging for help and . . .”
“Was that when you pissed yourself?”
“I think so, I don’t remember . . . I . . .”
“But tell me, how did they kill him? Who slashed his throat?”
“Well, I don’t know . . .”
“C’mon, mana, don’t give me that! Weren’t you standing a few feet from him?”
“Yeah, but I swear, it’s all so weird. No one even came near him. The only one who was remotely close to him was his driver.”
“The new one? The one you have a crush on?”
Lupita nodded.
“Well, isn’t he the killer?”
“No way!”
If only Lupita hadn’t been on duty! Even better: if only she had never been born! Or at least died years before. Before she became a mother. Before she became an alcoholic. Before she killed her son. Before she had been in prison. Before bearing witness to electoral fraud. Before witnessing so many fucking murders. Before her country was taken over by the drug cartels. Before Celia massacred her hand trying to extract a goddamned glass shard.
“I’m sorry, mana, am I hurting you?”
“Yes. Can’t you get it out without cutting me up?”
“It’s really deep and won’t come out. Look, it breaks when I try to pull it out.”
Every time Celia managed to latch on to the tip of the glass, it broke off and the rest of the shard dug deeper.
“But tell me, is it true that it might have been the chupacabra?”
“Jesus, Celia!”
Lupita was done with talking. More accurately she was done with trying to talk, because Celia hadn’t let her finish a single sentence. On top of that she felt like she neither knew nor understood anything, except that her life had changed. The feeling of having no control over the world and the situations surrounding her was perplexing. The only thing she could perceive was that everything she planned, everything she struggled for, was doomed to failure. She couldn’t help but compare that look on the delegado’s face to the look on her son’s face when she killed him. She wept.
She cried not only for her dead son, for herself, and for the delegado, but for all that could have been, everything that never grew, all that never was. She cried for all the corn that would never grow because farmers got paid more for their crops if they planted opium poppies. She cried with rage over the approval of an energetic reform that opened the doors for foreign investors to take over Mexican oil. Lupita took the approval of that reform as a personal affront. She had been born on December 12, the day of the Virgin of Guadalupe, whom she was named after. The Mexican Congress had approved the reform that same day. Lupita considered the entire ordeal treason to the nation, to the Virgin, and to herself because from that day on her birthday would be stained by that humiliating act. Lupita also cried for a Mexico that was in the hands of traitors, drug cartels, and murderers who killed people like her, and people like the delegado.
She also cried for the fate of an entire delegación, now in nefarious hands. It would surely be overrun by one of the groups that represented the most corrupt and petty interests of a political party that called itself leftist but had dealings with the most extreme right wing. The delegado’s death meant the death of new possibilities. Lupita cried and cried for him and his large eyes and clean gaze.
Lupita had followed the delegado since his first campaign. He had been a decent man who had really tried to change things but wasn’t allowed. He wasn’t corrupt. From the beginning of his administration he faced off against the mafias that ran Delegación Iztapalapa: neighborhood leaders, congressmen, religious leaders—those who only worked for their own personal benefit and didn’t give a rat’s ass about Mexico. The worst among them were the ones who betrayed their own people. Like the ones who stole the eyeglasses the government handed out for free and then resold them to the poor. Or the ones who bought votes to ensure the triumph of a candidate who would look after their private business without caring what happened to the rest of the neighborhood. The ones who didn’t let their own people live decent lives. Those who took control by force, threatened others, and killed any possibility of change. Lupita knew them. She had seen them in action, she had heard them at their political meetings, and she had seen them betray even their own mothers in order to get ahead.
She thought nothing more could surprise her, and yet here she was, completely surprised. She thought nothing new could scare her, yet she was terrified. She thought nothing else could humiliate her, and she felt like shit. She thought nothing else could hurt her, yet she ached deep inside. She thought this March would be over without claiming another victim, yet the heartless month had dealt another deadly blow. Every big tragedy in Lupita’s life had happened in the month of March: she had brutally lost her virginity, her mother, her son, her innocence, even Selena, her favorite singer. Huge losses.
“We all think it was Ostión,” said Celia, yanking Lupita back into the present. “Remember he got in a fight with the delegado the day before yesterday?”
“What? Who told you that?”
“I heard it from the delegado’s wife. Selene Larreaga called me soon after her husband’s murder. She wanted to get her nails done.”
“She called you to make a manicure appointment after she learned of her husband’s death?”
“Yes, mana, and to be honest with you, I understand her. She had a broken nail! She couldn’t go on the news like that! But she was also really sad and nervous, trust me! She told me we had plenty of time for her manicure because it was gonna take a while for the cops to clear the crime scene, move the body, and perform an autopsy.”
LUPITA LIKED TO BE A BITCH
Not always, only when she was drunk. And not to everyone, only to those who belittled her. It hurt so much to be cast aside and ignored that at the slightest provocation she lashed back automatically. She was capable of uttering every insult that came to mind at an unheard of speed just to feel superior to her attackers. In the end, what she sought from them was a look of respect instead of a look of contempt, which to this day had not happened once. To the contrary, she got sloppier and sloppier during her fits of rage and people would do anything to avoid her when she had been drinking, fearsome of her viper tongue.
Lupita was currently making a great effort to suppress her anger. She was biting her lips as she waited in the hall of the delegación offices to elaborate on her statement. Captain Martinez, the officer in charge of the investigation, had called her in
to corroborate some of her stated facts. As she waited, she couldn’t help but to mentally criticize and insult everyone that averted their gaze or greeted her with a mocking smirk.
Lupita was very upset. Really angry. Pissed off. She sensed the atmosphere of hostility, and she could feel herself slipping into her mean-drunk mode. Before heading to the government offices she had downed a fifth of tequila. That was the only way she could show her face after yesterday’s events. She couldn’t handle this kind of pressure sober.
Lupita wasn’t the only one on the brink of a rage attack. The general mood was tense. No one had the slightest clue how the delegado had been killed. Everybody showed signs of fatigue. No one had slept the previous night. Lupita had at least had time to go home and shower, unlike the others. She understood their irritation, but nothing excused the looks of disgust directed toward her. Especially Chief Arévalo, who walked past her without even acknowledging her presence when, just two days before, he had his way with her in a bathroom at the police station. Lupita let him do what he wanted in exchange for a favor. Her work schedule was a twenty-four-hour shift followed by twenty-four hours off. But since she wanted to be part of the traffic detail at the grand opening for an adult education center where the delegado would make a speech, she allowed the abuse. Why? Simply put, she’d wanted a chance to get close to Inocencio Corona, whom she had fallen for the first instant she had laid eyes on him. She urgently wanted to strike up a friendship with him, and what better opportunity than to spend some time with him while the delegado inaugurated the school. That old pig Arévalo had changed her shift in exchange for groping her in the bathroom, and was now not only ignoring her but also looking down at her with disdain. Who did that asshole think he was? He was walking to and fro with an air of importance, pretending he had things under control when in reality everything was a mess.
The government offices at Delegación Iztapalapa swarmed with people coming in and out, going up and down, arguing, demanding attention. The delegado’s death could not have come at a worse time. Iztapalapa was only days away from the Easter celebrations, and the local reenactment of the Passion of the Christ was quite an event. The tradition began in 1843 and with the passing of time had become the world’s biggest mass theater, thanks to the participation of over five hundred local performers. Throughout the year men, women, and children prepared intensely for the festivity. On Good Friday everyone took to the streets and, dressed as Nazarenes, they escorted the actor portraying Christ along a lengthy tour that came to an end at the foot of Star Hill, site of the crucifixion. The pre-Hispanic remains at Star Hill form part of an architectural complex. At the top stands a pyramid where the New Fire was lit every fifty-two years.
THE LIGHTING OF THE NEW FIRE
The ancient people of Tenochtitlán believed that once every fifty-two years a cosmic cycle ended and gave way to a new one. The sun was the main protagonist. On these special nights they believed that when the sun set it would never rise again. So they enacted a ceremony that—according to the historians of the conquest—coincided with the night the Pleiades star cluster reached the highest point in the sky. When night fell, priests adorned with their gods’ insignias would march to the top of Huizache Hill, currently known as Star Hill. All fires in the city were put out and families would clean out their houses and destroy all common household items. A fire was started at the top of the hill and the priests lit torches that were handed over to the fastest runner so they could spread the New Fire. The indigenous peoples believed that the hill and the sun in unison were the representation of God. When Friar Bernardino de Sahagún learned of this ritual, he integrated the symbolism in the leaflets he used to convert natives to Catholicism.
Everyone from big-shot TV producers to street vendors was gathered at the Delegación Iztapalapa offices. They were all worried that the murder would cause the Passion procession to be canceled. There were many interests at stake: the television networks complained that crime-scene investigators interfered with the placement of their cameras, street vendors refused to remove their booths from Cuihtláhuac Park, and government authorities were trying to convince them that they had to clear a path for the procession. They argued that before his untimely death the delegado had authorized them to set up their booths in the park. And just like the street vendors, many others claimed to have secured verbal agreements with the delegado, which they worried would not be followed through. Licenciado Buenrostro, the legal and government affairs director of the delegación, was the man in charge of meeting with—and defusing—the dissatisfied citizens. Buenrostro’s face was set in a permanent scowl, and he had quite a reputation for shutting down businesses and then collecting bribes to let them operate again.
One of the principal complainers was Mami, the leader of the street vendors, who loudly demanded that her booths be allowed to remain at the park. Mami had her differences with the delegado since it was common knowledge that some of the vendors she represented sold cheap Chinese knockoffs as well as drugs. Lupita knew most of these vendors by name because in her years as an addict she had copped from them.
Mami gave Lupita the chills. She was a heartless woman known to put out hits on people who opposed her plans. She extorted left and right. Her power was such that the delegación always consulted her on the handling of budgets for social programs. She would even give orders to policemen, treating them like her personal servants. Once, Mami tried to make Lupita run an errand for her, and Lupita had refused. Mami had been livid, but no violent consequences had befallen Lupita. She had come to the conclusion that she was insignificant to Mami.
Whispers and rumors abounded in the hallways of the delegación offices. The delegado’s strange death gave free rein to wild speculation. Some said the delegado had argued with Mami over the removal of a group of street vendors. Some said Congressman Francisco Torreja—known as Ostión because he was slimy and slippery like an oyster—had sent death threats to the delegado because the latter had planned to file a corruption case against the former. Ostión was definitely the most corrupt congressman Lupita had ever met. The son of a bitch threatened his female constituents, bought favors, protected drug dealers, and was now a constant presence at the delegado’s former office, trying to take advantage of the mass confusion.
Another sketchy character that was subject to suspicion was Licenciado Hilario Gomez, the delegado’s chief advisor. Everyone was talking about the public screaming match they’d gotten into the day before. Hilario had been late to an event where the delegado had to give an annual status report. One of the secretaries told Lupita that what had angered the delegado most was the fact that Hilario refused to give a reason as to why he was late or where he had been. He had not even sent the PowerPoint presentation deck beforehand, so the delegado had been forced to improvise.
Lupita thought Hilario was a wily, two-faced, corrupt liar. She had never liked him in the slightest. He was one of those people who never looked you in the eye. She had never seen him laugh. He was a clammy-handed, four-eyed, bald, fat-ass yes-man who distilled envy and profound ambition. He said he was a leftist but that was a lie. Money was the only thing he cared about. He was a lonely man, never known to have a girlfriend, wife, partner, or even a pet. He was usually tangled up in strategies and planning that proved counterproductive to the delegado’s agenda. Lupita never understood why the delegado kept him around. Maybe because of a political arrangement? It didn’t matter. She couldn’t stand the fucker.
Just as someone was elaborating on the motives he may have had to kill the delegado, Hilario entered the building. A dead silence fell upon the hallway. Everyone was quiet, with the exception of Lupita. And everybody’s jaws dropped when she loudly and disrespectfully asked, “Why don’t you tell all these people who are bad-mouthing you that you were late for the delegado’s report because you were getting your back waxed?”
That was true, actually. Hilario’s cause for tardiness was a cosmetic hair removal appointment. How did Lupita kno
w this? Because Celia had told her in confidence. She had personally handled the waxing procedure and even confided that she had singed his skin a bit because he was in a hurry and asked her to apply the wax when it was still too hot. He mentioned being late for an important event.
“If he was in such a hurry to be at work, why the fuck was he getting his back waxed?” Lupita had asked Celia.
“I think it’s because he’s going to the beach with a lady friend over the weekend and that was the only free time he could find to get rid of his back hair.”
“Yuck. Who would want to sleep with that guy?”
“Don’t take this the wrong way, mana, but some say that it is the delegado’s wife . . .”
“Stop Celia! Shut up, I just threw up in my mouth a little.”
Everyone in the hallway held their breath.
“Why don’t you also tell everyone that you would be incapable of killing your friend and boss over work issues. But you totally would do it just to sleep with his wife.”
At that very moment, as if by divine intervention, Lupita was called into the captain’s office. Hilario stood in shock, having missed his chance to pounce on her.
“Good morning, Captain.”
“Take a seat please.”
The captain’s office was tight and his desk was small, so Lupita’s face was quite close to his when she sat down and mumbled a thank-you.
“I didn’t know you could show up for duty with alcohol on your breath. Do you always come to work like this?”
“No, not always. Why?”
“As far as I know you can’t drink while on duty.”
“You’re right. But don’t worry, I’m not on duty today,” Lupita said arrogantly. “How can I be of service? I already gave a thorough statement yesterday.”