His dark face was inexpressive, his mouth almost always motionless, even when he spoke. Only his big, green, almond-shaped eyes had any life in them. When he was a kid, in Yurécuaro, they called him The Cat, and a woman in Tampico called him My Tame Tiger. Fucking tame tiger! His eyes might suggest nicknames, but the rest of his face, especially his slight sneer, didn’t make people feel like using any.
The doorman downstairs greeted him with a military salute:
“Good evening, Captain.”
That chump calls me Captain because I wear a trench coat, a Stetson, and ankle boots. If I carried a briefcase, he’d call me professor. Fucking professor! Fucking goddamned captain!
Night began to spread dirty grays over the streets of Luis Moya, and the traffic, as usual at that time of day, was unbearable. He decided to walk. The colonel had told him to be there at seven. He had time. He walked to Avenida Juárez, then turned left, toward El Caballito. He could go slow. He had time. His whole fucking life he’d had time. Killing isn’t a job that takes a lot of time, especially now that we’re doing it legally, for the government, by the book. During the Revolution, things were different, but I was just a kid then, an orderly to General Marchena, one of so many second-rate generals. A lawyer in Saltillo said he was small-fry, but that lawyer is dead. I don’t like jokes like that. I don’t mind a smutty story, but not jokes, you have to show respect, respect for Filiberto García, and respect for his generals. Fucking jokes!
People who knew him knew he didn’t like jokes. His women learned fast. Only the professor, when he was drunk, dared to crack jokes around him. But that fucking professor, he doesn’t give a rat’s ass about dying. When they dropped the atom bomb on Japan, he turned to me with a straight face, and right there in front of everybody, he asked me, “As a fellow professional, what do you think of President Truman?” Almost nobody in the cantina laughed. When I’m there, nobody ever laughs, and when I play dominoes, just about all you hear is the sound of the tiles on the marble tabletop. That’s how men should play dominoes, that’s how men should do everything. And that’s why I like the Chinamen on Dolores Street. They play their poker and don’t waste time talking or telling jokes. Pedro Li and Juan Po probably don’t even know who I am. For them, I’m just most honorable Mr. García. Fucking Chinamen! Sometimes it seems like they don’t have a clue, but then it turns out they know everything. There I am pretending to be a big shot, and all the time they’re seeing what a chump I am, but they always, always, play it cool. Damn right I know all about their wheelings and dealings, their gambling and their opium. But I keep my mouth shut. If Chinamen want to smoke opium, let them smoke opium. And if kids want marijuana, it’s none of my business. That’s what I told the colonel when he sent me to Tijuana to find some guys who were moving marijuana across the border. Some were Mexicans and some were gringos and two of them ended up dead. But others keep moving marijuana across the border, and gringos keep smoking it, no matter what laws they’ve got. And the police on the other side make a big deal about respecting the law. All I can say is, the law is for suckers. Maybe all gringos are suckers. Because the law doesn’t get you anywhere. Take the professor, he’s a lawyer, and all he does is hang around the cantina mooching drinks. “If you get in trouble, he’ll get you out.” But I don’t get in trouble. I did once, but I learned my lesson: if you want to go around killing people, you’ve got to have orders. Just that once I stepped out of line. I had good reason to kill her, but I didn’t have orders. And I had to go all the way to the top and promise all kinds of things to get them to let me off. But I learned my lesson. That was during General Obregón’s time, and I was twenty years old. Now I’m sixty and I’ve put away a small stash, not a lot, but enough to pay for my vices. Fucking experience. And — fucking laws! Now everything’s got to be done legally. Lawyers everywhere you look. And I don’t matter anymore. Beat it, old man. What university did you go to? When did you graduate? No, sorry, you need a degree for that. Before, you just needed balls, and now you need a degree. And you need to be in good with the gang in charge, and to be full of a whole load of shit. Otherwise all your experience isn’t worth a hill of beans. We are the ones building Mexico — to hell with you old timers. You can’t do what we do. All you’re good for is producing dead bodies, or rather stiffs — second-rate dead bodies. And in the meantime, Mexico keeps making progress. It’s moving forward. The battle you fought is over. Bullets don’t solve anything. The Revolution was fought with bullets — fucking Revolution. We are Mexico’s future, and you’re just holding us back. Move aside, out of sight, till we need you again. Till we need somebody else dead, because that’s all you know how to do. Because we’re the ones building Mexico, from our bars and our cocktail lounges, not your old-time cantinas. You can’t come in here with your.45 and your trench coat and your Stetson. Much less with those rubber soles. That’ll do in your cantina, for you boys who fought the old fight, you boys who won the Revolution and lost the old fight. Fucking Revolution! And then they come along with their smiles and their moustaches. “Are you an existentialist?” “Do you like figurative art?” “You’re one of those people who like those Casa Galas calendar paintings.” What the fuck is wrong with Casa Galas calendars? Well, it’s just that Mexico can’t be built like that: we’ll call you when we need another stiff. Son-of-a-bitch kids got the jump on us. The colonel isn’t even forty years old and he’s high up already. A colonel and a lawyer. Fucking colonel! I’m better off with the Chinamen. They respect old people, and old people run things there. Fucking Chinamen and fucking old people!
The colonel wore English cashmere. He wore English shoes and tailored shirts. He attended international police conferences and read a lot of books in his field. He liked to implement new systems. People said he was such a tightwad he wouldn’t even give you the time of day. His fingers were long and delicate, like an artist’s.
“Come in, García.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Sit down, please.”
The colonel lit a Chesterfield. He never offered one, and he sucked in as much smoke as his lungs could hold, not wanting to waste anything.