“Elvis. An associate of El Mago.”
“I know the guy. So what?”
“I also know El Gazpacho,” Elvis said, trying that line.
The young man frowned. “Why isn’t he with you, then?”
“He was shot. I dropped him off at the doctor’s place. Not sure where he is now.”
“Which doctor?”
“Guerrero,” he said, which was the name of the colonia where the doctor’s office was located, not the actual doctor, but Justo nodded slowly, as if he knew who he was talking about.
Elvis pulled out a chair and sat in front of Justo. He pointed at the pack of cigarettes. “Can I bum a cigarette off you?”
“Go ahead.”
Elvis grabbed a cig and lit it. Fuck, he was also hungry. He’d hardly had anything at all that day, running from one place to the other. On the table, a waiter had left a menu. But he didn’t intend to make this a dinner. Justo closed his notebook, resting both hands atop it.
“What’s up?”
“I need help.”
“Help isn’t free,” Justo said, sliding his notebook across the table.
Well. That was different than the usual handing of envelopes. Elvis took out several large bills and tucked them inside the notebook and slid it back across the table. Justo placed his hands atop the notebook again.
“El Mago says you’re familiar with this thing called Asterisk.”
“I know the people there. You need info?”
“I need in. Where are they at?”
“You want to go there? No, man. It wouldn’t do. The people running that have gone paranoid.”
“Jacqueline,” Elvis said. “She’s the one who runs that place.”
“That’s right.”
“They’re supposed to be artists, no?”
“Sure. Painters and photographers and things like that. Jacqueline has always been into politics so naturally it’s always had a political bent. Leaflets, reciting poems. Just this little nothing of a group, but I think they’re trying to get in bed with the Russians now.”
“What, you mean Russian agents?”
“Yeah, man. KGB. Didn’t you hear? Three months ago a bunch of Russian diplomats were ordered to leave the country. They were spying and trying to support MAR. Of course, we couldn’t kick everyone out. Jacqueline says she knows one of the agents who managed to stay behind. She’s tired of painting pictures. She wants to join the armed struggle.”
“Wannabe guerilla groups.”
“They’re crawling out of the rocks these days,” Justo muttered and shook his head. “What are you doing here worried about Asterisk, anyway? I’d thought all of you Hawks would be running for cover. El Mago is toast.”
“What you talking about?”
“Anaya’s out for him.”
“Am I supposed to know who that is?”
Justo scoffed and shook his head in disbelief. “Anaya. Secret police, man.”
Ah. One of those dudes. The Hawks were a thing apart, not secret police, not regular police, and in the case of El Mago’s boys, they were that: El Mago’s boys. Despite maintaining his distance from the secret police, Elvis had a clear impression of them. They were abusive pigs who walked around as if they had dicks as big as King Kong. El Mago didn’t like them. Elvis concurred.
“What about him?”
“He’s had a long beef with El Mago, but El Mago’s got a magic shield. Everything slides off him. People can’t touch that dude. Except now they say he’s fucked up and Anaya is going to bury him.”
“Who says? Bury him how?”
Justo held both hands up in the air and chuckled. “Look, that I don’t know. I talk to people and people talk to me. But Anaya is one fucking asshole, and it’s not as if bastards like Anaya ever loved the Hawks.”
Elvis grabbed the glass ashtray and pulled it closer to him, tapping his cigarette against its edge.
“What’s the deal with you? If you’re talking to secret dicks then you’re not with El Mago.”
“Didn’t say I was. If you want to get technical, I’m DGIPS.” Justo chuckled and took another sip of his coffee. “I know what you’re gonna say: you look like a kid, but that’s the trick, isn’t it? Well, if you want to get any traction around these activists and shit.”
DGIPS. Swell. A pencil pusher. Intelligence service. The DGIPS was always at odds with the DFS. It was an old rivalry. Each side thought the other was redundant. The DFS called the DGIPS pansies. The DGIPS said the agents of the DFS couldn’t even fucking read, much less speak Russian or English.
The Hawks were too low for either side to bother with, just a group of hired punks.
“You should apply.”
“Apply what?”
“Apply to join the DGIPS. What else? There’s no future for the Hawks. Even if Anaya doesn’t bury El Mago, it’s all toast, and you’ve got the right look for this line of work,” Justo said. “We can always use young blood.”
Young blood, yeah. That’s what everyone was after. Men who could pass as students, as protesters. If you had something a little bit extra you could get to the top of the heap. Like El Gazpacho, with his Spanish accent, that little seseo. Everyone thought all Spaniards in Mexico were commies, and that meant El Gazpacho had a nice cover.
What Elvis had was a decent face for the job. El Mago had once told him that everyone looks like a character in a play or a book, that we are all someone’s doppelgänger. Elvis didn’t know what doppelgänger meant, but El Mago had explained it meant a double. Elvis then asked El Mago who he looked like. He was hoping he’d say Elvis Presley, because Elvis had a twin who died at birth, but El Mago had said Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Elvis didn’t think he could be prince of anything, except maybe of paupers, but El Mago had smiled and said, “The Devil hath power to assume a pleasing shape. You look like a kid who dances to Presley’s records and watches foreign films.”
And when Elvis had told him, confused, that this was what he did, El Mago had chuckled and told him, “Exactly. That’s the trick.”
A prince was no king, and Presley was the King, but it had all sounded pretty good to Elvis, and from then on he understood he had the right look and this was like currency. With his face and his training, his stock had to rise.
Unless something really bad happened. Unless El Mago was about to get fucked, which meant they were all going to get it.