Silver Bullets

MacLehose Press

An imprint of Quercus

New York • London

Copyright © Élmer Mendoza, 2008

English translation copyright © 2015 by Mark Fried

First published in the Spanish language as
Balas de Plata
by Tusquets Editores, Barcelona, in 2008

First published in the United States by Quercus in 2015

Cover design and illustration by Walker Cahall

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by reviewers, who may quote brief passages in a review. Scanning, uploading, and electronic distribution of this book or the facilitation of the same without the permission of the publisher is prohibited.

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[email protected]
.

e-ISBN 978-1-68144-612-7

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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, institutions, places, and events are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons—living or dead—events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

www.quercus.com

For Leonor

This novel takes place in a prosperous and sweltering Mexican city of just under a million people, half an hour's drive from the Pacific and 560 miles south of the US border. Culiacán, the Sinaloa state capital, lies far off the tourist track, surrounded by desert and lush irrigated fields. Its elite still thrives on commercial agriculture, but in recent decades the trafficking of marijuana, cocaine, and heroin has far outdistanced the sale of cucumbers and chili peppers. By 2006, when the story takes place, Culiacán had become one of the country's more violent cities, its political and economic landscape transformed by the huge fortunes made and lost under hails of bullets.

Waiting room. You can tell how modern a city is, the detective thought, by the weapons you hear going off in its streets, surprised by his own unexpected conclusion, what did he know about modernism, or postmodernism for that matter, or intangible cultural heritage? Nothing. I'm just a little deer that lives in the woods. Seeing the therapist always made him nervous, so he killed time thinking about everything except the one thing he should be trying to figure out. How do they kill people in Paris, Berlin, Fiji? A door, sloppily painted ocher-yellow, swung open and a young woman emerged, her hair a mess and her face a mask of powdered eggshell. Without a glance his way, she headed straight for the stairs.

In he went. The office stank of tobacco, so much so that it made you want to quit. After checking his little notebook, the therapist went right to the nub: I'm floored by the way you suppressed your instinct for self-preservation, how is it possible you didn't even kick and scream? Well, could you have said no? Not me; I was a child, I couldn't run away or yell, I just couldn't; do you really believe a nine-year-old snot nose is capable of defending himself when he's scared stiff? Not me; I lost my courage, I
was paralyzed, I was a puppet; you can insist all you like, but I can't cope with having been abused; it goes around and around in my head and no, I am not going to just accept it as if I'd been given a pat on the back.

It was the breaking point, and for nearly two years he kept running up against it, even though he prattled on about the smells, the sounds, the half-light. I hate Pedro Infante's music. That you hadn't told me, Dr. Parra lit another cigarette, did he like it? He didn't listen to anything else and he went to his movies too; he talked about them like they were the last beer left in the stadium; a couple of times, before it happened, he took me to the movies; I had a good time, now that memory hurts. Did he buy you popcorn? No, or in any case I forget, do I have to remember that too? Is it part of the degenerative contract you told me about that other time? Not necessarily, popcorn forms part of our permanent memory, it's usually innocuous; however, in this case, given its origins, it could be an active element in your bag of poison, that toxic space where we keep all the things that alienate us as individuals from our personal history.

The detective rested his eyes on the bookcase to his right. Do you remember why I became a policeman? More or less. Well, every day I'm less sure. Then refresh my memory. When I was a little kid I wanted to be a priest, he made a long pause, Parra wrote in his notebook, Enrique wanted to be a fireman, a pilot, a frogman, all those things boys like; not me, my dream was to be a missionary in Africa or something like that, pause, and look where I ended up. You're not doing so badly. Not so well either and I don't believe, as you say, that I joined the police to protect the weak and help justice triumph; I wanted to make easy money and get out of here as fast as I could. Yet you stayed. People get used to anything. And you made enemies of the people
who could have made you rich quick. So what do you want, life's a lottery.

Office downtown. Parra in his worn-out easy chair, Edgar Mendieta in the straight-backed one he preferred to the mysterious nudity of the couch. It was a gloomy place that smelled of cheap detergent. On one of his visits he mentioned as much, but it made no difference to the doctor, who just commented that this was the cheerless part of a dissolute city. Parra looked at his watch. Edgar, you have to leave all that behind, you aren't seriously damaged and the years have brought you a lot of good, grab hold of those things; I know you think happiness is a sign of stupidity, but even if you don't believe it, letting this go is one of the very few things you can still do to find some relief; and stop drinking, when you mix that with the tranquillizers the least that'll happen is you'll fall asleep in your soup; you're a success, enjoy it, and pick up your love life, you know how that puts a smile on your face, do you remember when you were going with that girl? Do something, I want to see that sparkle in your eyes, that feeling that the world is your oyster; come on, look at your future another way and, oh, time's up. Parra wore a beard, and he looked dirty and tired. You've never talked so much, Doctor. It's because I see that you're better, a little on edge, but on balance pretty well. And because you need to get home early. Well, sure, what do you want, as a family man I try to be there for the ten o'clock news; let's leave the next appointment open, maybe you won't need it. I wish.

He went out. Distracted, he gazed up at the cloudy sky. A Lobo pickup and two black Hummers roared by, pushing the other drivers aside. Their stereos were blasting out corridos and from one of them an arm tossed a beer bottle that shattered at the detective's feet. The great achievement of powerful countries is order, he muttered. Here we're worth shit. He got into his
Jetta, the radio came on. “It's time for the second edition of
Eyes on the Night
,” an announcer said, “the top radio show in town.” He switched it off, nosed out into the traffic on Obregón Avenue, heavy for the hour, and drove home in silence.

He ate no supper so he would not have nightmares.

It was drizzling. Was she afraid? No. Did this March rain mean anything? I do not think so. It might have brought that Brazilian song to mind or some faraway, uncaring city, but she was not up to it. Paola Rodríguez went through the gate and walked slowly toward the house: white, one story, wooden door. When she had parked across the street, she had failed to notice the SUV with tinted windows a few yards in front of her whose rain-soaked windshield hid the driver completely. Indecisive? Not a chance. Though she felt the scars of certain kisses, she moved with a determination that matched her beauty. She was glad she was getting wet, especially now that she only had Edvard Munch in her head (
The Scream
) and Frida Kahlo (
The Two Fridas
). Diego was a bastard, forget him. Her mind was throbbing, and she had no interest in reining it in, her red hair was mussed from the humidity and the hour. Flowers in the garden: a few roses, fewer calendulas, a bougainvillea, all barely visible in the inky darkness. A yellowish sedan in the open garage reflected the light of a bare bulb hanging from the wall. She opened the blue door with her key. American-style house with two toilets, the neighborhood was middle class. In the street somebody's pickup headed
off slowly, another neighbor started his. The squeak of the door closing should have reminded her of something, but it did not. From her bag she pulled out a black semiautomatic. It was about six in the morning, and soon Bruno Canizales would get up to run, that despicable turncoat, that “I couldn't care less, I don't give a fuck about anything, sweet fuck all, less than sweet fuck all, whatever.” Whew, she breathed out. She wanted him to hear her, to see her come in, to get all startled, she wanted his eyes to grow wide when he saw her Beretta dark and threatening: Paola, my love, my queen, put that down, you look terrific, but better put that away, it's so early and. . . . You swine, you know perfectly well what I'm here for. She had warned him: If you leave me I'll kill you. It especially hurt that he had dumped her for that sinister dancing guy, damn the day that she introduced them. Here, meet a great friend of mine and the best dancer in the world, a true artist. Pao, don't exaggerate, please, look at how I'm blushing. All those girls frolicking around you never mattered, they're women and I understand them, even that she-devil we ran into once. He's different, and that hurts. She did not notice the living room or the kitchen, both impeccably clean. She ignored the potted plants she had brought him and the paintings that on several occasions were the subject of animated discussions.

You said you're one of those who will never marry, and me pretending to be very modern, I answered: Me too, we smiled, and then it all happened.

She paused to chamber a round, then continued down the hall. Skylight. The open door of the study did not attract her attention. Nor the closed door of the guest room. At the back, the bedroom of Attorney Bruno Canizales, the love of her life, the only man a decent woman has the right to kill without remorse. She approached the door with its blessed Easter palm leaf. Silence. She opened it carefully. Your time is up, asshole. Darkness.
Aggressive fragrance. She felt suddenly apprehensive, she did not like the posture of the body on the untidy bed, on top of the sheets, crosswise. You damn liar, are you sleeping off a night of wild sex? Training the pistol on him, she went up to the lamp but did not switch it on. No need. She could see Bruno was dead.

She sat on the floor with the pistol between her legs and began to cry. I would have married you just so we could be together; angelface, I would have promised to love you and respect you until death do us part, in sickness and in health, in . . . and in adversity. I decided not to be a dummy and listen to me now. God, you can fake anything in the world except love. Beside her, his shoes. She scratched her itchy left hand with the barrel of the Beretta. Money must be coming my way, she murmured, then she put on the safety, dropped the weapon into her bag, and stood up. She contemplated the cadaver in street clothes lying on top of the unmade sheets, the pale clean-shaven face. On the chest of drawers she saw a book of hers and a card: “Pick up Dr. Ripalda, 7:15. Aeroméxico.” Paola Rodríguez looked at her watch: 6:08. Bruno dear, someone hated you more than I did. She left without giving a thought to the body.

Beautiful: impossible to describe her.

It was drizzling.