Chicago Noir [Anthology]

Of course, in Chicago no one knew anything about La Mora. When Dago finally found himself covered by the honeyed lights of a real stage, there wasn'’t a soul in the audience who had a clue about his inspiration. In the long run, it was just as good that way—Dago was able to inhabit her, to fold and tuck and invent without worry. After a while, he came to believe he’d conjured her whole, except for the aching sadness left by the turbulence of love suddenly and unexpectedly lost. That was real, real for both of them, real and terrifying too.

The phone rang. Destiny didn'’t need to glance at the caller ID to know it was Zoe Pino. There was just enough of a yap to give her away.

“Destiny, babes,” the girl said into the answering machine, “I’m just calling to confirm our date tonight. You say the first show doesn'’t start until 1 a.m., right? I was thinking then we could meet a little earlier, for a late dinner or drinks or whatever, you know, and just talk. I really wanna get as much of the background on this as possible. Call or text me, okay? See you later, corazon.”

Destiny knew what Zoe wanted from her: a story about the good queen, the queen that against all odds found the liberty and success that was the inspiration for so many Marielitos. But in her few informal talks with Zoe, Destiny had already experienced a certain discomfort: Was Zoe trying to get her to say her dreams had all come true? They hadn'’t, but would admitting that be some sort of betrayal? Or would going along with the story of awe be what was treasonous? If she had been able to accomplish what she had, was she inadvertently passing judgment on those who’d had a hard time?

In fact, what Destiny feared was that Zoe might have a secret angle: that Dago Fors had come to town, learned the ropes at La Caverna, then forsaken his Latino brethren forever to become a huge hit uptown and around the world. After he’d crossed north of Fullerton Avenue, not once had Destiny ever set foot in a Mexican club, or anywhere near anything even vaguely Mexican, for that matter.

Initially, Dago had actually gone in search of La Caverna, although he didn'’t know that then. The day after Mariano’s visit to the elderly gay man’s, Dago got up, borrowed a coat from the hall closet, and walked out. But as soon as he opened the door, he was stung by the bite of Chicago’s autumn and he hugged the coat closer to him as he headed east on Barry Street to Broadway. He had no idea then he had aimed for the very heart of Chicago’s gay male world.

He’d vaguely imagined he could sleep in a park if he had to but that had been before he’d tested the temperatures, which were to him the equivalent of a Havana winter. The sky was gray; the streets were shiny from a predawn shower.

He turned south on Broadway, unaware of direction, and peeked in the large window of a diner right on the corner. It was well lit and clean and no sooner had he slid into a booth, a slender Mexican man with cobalt hair and a caterpillar mustache was deftly and deferentially wiping clean his table. Dago surveyed the room. It took him all of a second to realize the busboys were Latinos, square-shouldered youth who walked with a slight side-to-side sway, their heads tilted forward whether they were carrying trays or wet towels or simply disappearing between the two rubber-mat doors that slapped into the kitchen.

Dago waited patiently, then focused on the boy who’d cleaned his table. He was a little shorter than the others, a little boxier and compact, with more of a macho strut perhaps, although—Dago knew instantly—gay as a goose. Dago also knew that it was only a matter of throwing him a slightly bewildered smile, a vaguely helpless sigh, and the boy would find a reason to come back.

Quique Lopez proved a better connection than Dago could have ever guessed. He was, as Dago had hoped, Guatemalan, but with fake papers that said he was Mexican, fluent in Spanish but also perfectly capable of communicating in English. And he’d been in Chicago long enough so that, once Dago explained his plight, Quique knew immediately what to do.

“La Caverna, that’s where you need to go,” he said, “but all I can do is take you. The people I know there, I don’t even know their real names, you understand? There are American places, a couple around here, some downtown. One on the South Side, I think, but that’s a black thing. Maybe you could pass but

without English, I just don’t know.”

After his shift, Quique took Dago to the red line on Belmont, paid for his fare, and, various line changes and nearly an hour later, led him off a bus from 26th and Ashland to a nondescript building a few blocks away. There, in a studio apartment with six mattresses, they napped platonically, ate a modest meal of carnitas and rice, and watched TV until about 10 o’clock, when Quique again led him to the bus stop, this ride straight west, until they were deposited just steps from La Caverna, a club so notorious it didn'’t boast any kind of sign. Instead, it had a huge metal door with black lettering stenciled across it, unintelligible to Dago at the time, but warning customers not just about IDs but also about its ban on handguns.

There wasn'’t much of a crowd inside at that hour. A gaggle of queens who doubled as waitresses stared as Dago and Quique strolled in, waved through by the cross-eyed bouncer. Dago was amazed: There was a man dressed in black, replete with black boots, black bolo, and black cowboy hat at the bar. A stern looking middle-aged Mexican man served drinks. Quique led Dago to a corner table where a tiny elderly woman with reading glasses was going through a ledger. A glass of lemonade accompanied her.

The woman—Virginia was her name—didn'’t say much during the conversation. Dago was never sure if she ever believed that he was, in fact, one of Cuba’s most popular drag attractions, as he described himself. He talked nonstop for ten minutes. Then a man walked in, utterly dashing, maybe thirty years old, about 5‘9”, cinnamon-colored and princely, bearing a boyish grin. He wore denim pants with a huge buckle in the shape of what looked like Cuba if somebody had tried to take the hump out of it. Later, Dago would learn it was Sinaloa, a Mexican province notorious for its drug runners. The man whispered in Virginia’s ear. He looked at Dago only once, and only long enough to wink in his direction before disappearing again.

*

Dago had drinks on the house that night and watched the show, a parade of queens trying their best on Third World budgets to create First World fantasies. The next day at noon sharp, he was given a tour by Virginia of the storage closet that served as the queens’ dressing room (they shared the bathroom with the customers, male and female), and offered a look at the DJ’s collection to pick out his debut song. There was no La Mora. There was no Celeste Mendoza or Juana Bacallao, though plenty of Lola Beltran and Veronica Castro. Dago sent the resourceful Quique off with twenty dollars and a list of possibilities. He came back with Olga Guillot’s greatest hits in pristine condition.

That night, Dago was introduced to the overflow Saturday night crowd as La Mora, covered in a simple blue chiffon dress with black pumps, his naps under a towering black hive of a wig, his jewelry accidentally tasteful by virtue of its simplicity. After hours of rancheras and accordion-laced banda music, La Mora came out defiantly, her supple lips shaping the words to Guillot’s “La Mentira,” a slow-burning torch song that entrusts the lying lover to God’s judgement.

Dago faltered only once, and it was only for a split second: To her astonishment, there was Father Mariano, sitting expressionless next to the man with the Sinaloa buckle from the night before. By now Dago knew the man was Beto Chavez, Virginia’s straight, married, drug-dealing son, a rascal who flirted with every queen at La Caverna but had never been caught with his pants down except with natural born women. Quique didn'’t know anyone but he certainly knew everything. Beto Chavez winked again and lifted a can of Tecate in Dago’s direction.