“And what are you supposed to get involved with, padrecito?” Elvis asked. He didn’t raise his voice. Nothing good would come of that, except a screaming match, which he was trying to avoid. No, he kept his voice steady and low. “You’re a commie troublemaker. And all commies want to get into some very bad shit, don’t they? So tell me: why don’t you think she’s with Jackie, huh?”
Villareal glared at Elvis, but he moderated his tone. “I left to run a few errands, and when I came back Leonora was gone. Then Jackie calls and asks if Leonora’s around. I thought she was with her.”
“She’s not at her apartment, so who could she be with?”
He shrugged. “She had a boyfriend. Emilio Lomelí. And she has a sister. I really don’t know.”
“Did she leave anything with you?”
“No. If she had, I would tell you.”
“I’m not sure I believe that.”
“I don’t care what you believe.”
Elvis stepped forward and slowly extended his arm and the razor, inching it close to the man’s face. The priest began trembling. He was indeed young. Boyish, even. Elvis could have been the priest and the priest could have been Elvis. But Elvis had come from Tepito and the priest had come from Monterrey, and they had followed entirely different trajectories.
Luck, that’s what it was. Good and bad luck. El Gazpacho had carried a rabbit’s foot for luck and see where it got him. El Mago was right: you made your own luck.
“You better care I believe you,” Elvis said.
The priest didn’t reply. He was staring at Elvis, terrified.
“You sure you don’t have the camera? The pictures?”
There were tears in the priest’s eyes. His incipient bravado was melting. “No, no,” he mumbled. “No, I don’t.”
“Absolutely sure?” Elvis whispered, and the razor was now so close to the man’s eye he could have sliced it clean off with a bit of pressure. Carved it out and left a bloody hole behind.
“I’m sure,” the priest whispered back. “I swear on the Virgin of Guadalupe.”
Elvis lowered the razor and nodded. “I believe you, and because I believe you we are going to break your teeth. But if you put up a fight or if you yell for help, we are going to kill you.” He glanced at the Antelope. “Help keep him quiet. Güero, pummel him.”
El Mago always said you had to watch when a man was being killed. Cowards looked away. But since this wasn’t a murder, Elvis let his gaze wander toward the mirror in the bathroom, staring at his reflection while El Güero’s fists connected with the priest’s flesh. Despite Elvis’s warning, he was sure the young man would have screamed, but the Antelope had pressed the pillow against his face.
It was quick work, at any rate, and Elvis was grateful for that. He had never taken any pleasure in torture. Grabbing a telephone directory, slamming it against a man’s back, it held no appeal. Nor did any of the other tricks of the trade he’d learned about: electric shocks to the feet, wrapping someone’s head in a plastic bag. This at least was relatively clean. Fists, blood.
Elvis stared into the mirror, saw his black hair parted to the side. Sometimes he looked like a darker Elvis Presley, skin tanned, and sometimes he didn’t look like the musician at all. Right now, he thought for a moment he looked like El Mago. Something about the tilt of the mouth. And his eyes were all black, even if no human eye can really be black.
Elvis walked into the bathroom and opened the cabinet above the sink. He found the gauze and the rubbing alcohol and returned to the bedroom. El Güero and the Antelope had finished and were wiping their hands clean. The priest was on the bed, bleeding copiously. The pillow had been discarded at some point and tossed outside the room. On the bedspread Elvis spotted two teeth. The priest moaned and turned around, hiding his mangled face, and the teeth fell to the floor.
Elvis tossed the bottle of rubbing alcohol and the gauze onto the bed. “You don’t tell anyone we were here.”
On the way back to the apartment El Güero said they should stop for tacos de carnitas. Elvis ignored him. The stench of fresh blood clung to El Güero’s clothes, infecting the car, even though the men had quickly tidied themselves up before stepping out of the apartment. Elvis didn’t want to go sit in a food joint, holding a greasy plastic plate in one hand and a beer in another.
He fiddled with the radio, looking for a melody. And there it was, Los Apson singing a cover of “Satisfaction.” Yes, baby. Let’s rock, ’cause the fucking car smelled of pain.
9
SHE HAD FANTASIZED, when she moved into her own apartment, about what it would be like when she was able to organize parties and invite her friends over. She pictured cocktails, good music, charming conversation, beautiful people in attendance. But Maite seldom had anyone over. When her mother visited, she made sure to point out any new item Maite had purchased and complain it was a needless expense. Why should she buy new curtains? What was wrong with the old table? As a result, Maite tried to invite her mother to her apartment as little as possible.
As for gentlemen callers—Maite liked to refer to men as such; it sounded more dignified—she hadn’t slept with anyone in ages. The last man in her apartment had been a disdainful clerk she’d brought over a couple of times and who commented on the size of her record collection, stating it seemed to him ridiculous to have so many books and records when you could simply turn on the TV. Maite had a large collection of imported records in English rather than the Spanish-language covers everyone bought at a cheaper price, but just like her mother the man couldn’t understand why she’d throw away her money on them. They were different, Maite tried to tell him. And he said, what’s the difference if you don’t speak English? What does it matter who’s singing? She said there’s a difference between Badfinger singing or Los Belmonts. And the album art, she said. And the texture. And the liner notes, waiting to be deciphered one day. Besides, Los Dug Dug’s sang in English even if they were from the north of Mexico. You couldn’t just buy a Spanish cover of them, even though they had started out as cover artists, like everyone else.
The man had no idea what she was talking about. She said she was a collector, and collecting was like hunting, a sport. The man thought she was mad. A song was a song. You didn’t need all three versions of it.
That’s why Maite was ready with her purse under her arm at six p.m. When Rubén knocked, she opened the door and without any hesitation locked it behind herself and started walking down the stairs. She wasn’t inviting him in for coffee so he could judge her curtains or her records. This also ensured the super wouldn’t gossip about Maite. He looked too much like a hippie to be decent company.