Mexico way, p.26
Mexico Way, page 26
He said, "Thank you for coming," as if he had issued the invitation.
He declined the champagne and poured himself a long scotch. Then he sat down on a sofa facing Shelley. The firelight left half his face in shadow.
"How were the Mexicans?" she asked, after a dragging pause.
"Shit, I got Mexicans coming out of my ears. How can I run this damn country when all I get is Mexico? I come out of a summit meeting, and all the press want to ask is what are we doing about Mexico. I announce a plan that will save our Social Security system, and the same goddamn reporters want to know how we're gonna pay for these wetbacks."
She let him talk, a monologue fueled by another jolt of whiskey, a stiffer one.
He complained about Paz Gallardo, who seemed to be asking the United States to finance a Marshall Plan for Mexico, as if he had never heard of the U.S. deficit.
After a while, he said, "I wish we could just sit a while and relax, Shelley. Like the old days."
"So do I." She rearranged herself on the sofa. For the first time, he let his eyes drop below her neck, then looked quickly away.
"There's something I have to talk to you about."
"I'm here, Harry."
''Raúl is really on my case. I feel throttled. When Raúl first came to me with this . . . this Safari Project, I told him he was out of his mind. But I said I'd cover for him, up to a point, because we go back a long way. Now I'm very much afraid the shit's gonna hit the fan, and I don't plan to be anywhere close if it does."
"He won't be happy to hear that."
"It's not my job to keep Raúl Carvajal happy. He's got you, hasn't he?" The President looked wistful for a moment.
"He doesn't own me, Harry. Right now, there's nowhere I'd rather be than right here with you."
The President didn't know how to respond. He made himself another drink. Butler held his liquor well, and Shelley had only rarely seen him turn violent, or mopey, after too much whiskey. She had heard, however, that recently his mood swings had become sudden and unpredictable.
Tonight his tiredness seemed to be edged with anger. "You understand what Raúl is trying to do, don't you?" He was on his feet, glass in hand, pacing in front of the fire. "He wants to break up a whole goddamn country 1 and set up his own fucking state!"
"It's been done before."
"Yeah. And what did the world get? Bangladesh! Or how about Azerbaijan? Or Biafra? That was a great one."
"Mexico is collapsing under its own rotten weight. It's a seismic event. Raúl didn't invent the problem." Shelley paused to congratulate herself. She had learned well.
They had debated like this in the old days, in Washington, when Senator Butler had relied on her—more than all his staffers—as a faithful sounding board. The familiarity of the moment, and perhaps the stream of Chivas Regal, made him relax. Soon he was sitting next to her on the sofa, unselfconsciously touching her hand as he talked. She massaged his neck, as she used to do.
"God, I'm so tired," he groaned. "If only . . ."
"You want to take a shower?"
It had been one of his favorite things: to hold her close to him under the hard spray, their bodies slippery with soap, the rest of the world obscured by steam. The promise of sex was not always fulfilled. It was the intimacy that he needed. Shelley suspected that this kind of intimacy, skin to skin, was something the President never found with Ann Travis Butler.
The President tensed, shifting his body away from Shelley.
"Nobody's going to see us," she said. "Nothing's going to happen unless you make it."
"Oh, Lord, I wish . . ."
Shelley got up. She announced that she needed a hot shower, because she'd been using some muscles she'd forgotten about out on the Buttermilk ski slopes. He could join her if he liked, and that was the full extent of the invitation.
She had been running the shower for at least five minutes before he came into the bathroom. He was as coy, to begin with, as a young boy. When he stepped into the stall he even covered himself with his hands. Shelley gradually worked the shyness out of him. She gave him the soap, and guided his hand, then tussled him for it, touching every part of his body. She drew his face down to her lips, to the valley between her breasts. When he became aroused, he still said, "I'm sorry."
He said it again on the goose-down duvet, when he rolled away from her, leaving both of them unsatisfied. "I must be overtired. Too many drinks. Too many bureaucrats."
She smoothed his hurt away. She cradled him, rocked him, crooned a wordless lullaby over him. She gave the President what he needed, wondering all the while who was watching.
5
After lovemaking, the President seemed more rejuvenated than tired.
“Why don't you come back to Washington?" he asked Shelley. "I can find you a job someplace. How about State Department protocol? I'll talk to Jim."
"I don't think the First Lady would go for it, Harry. And I seem to remember you telling me once we couldn't trust ourselves if we lived in the same town."
"That's water under the bridge. I want you where we can be together. Just to talk would be fine. And I want you away from Raúl. He's bad for both of us."
"Isn't he supposed to be your oldest friend?"
"I don't know who he is. He's been pushing me too hard. We were close once, but I'm not a college senior on an allowance anymore. I'm the President of the greatest country on earth. And I'm going to do the right thing, whether it's what Raúl wants or not."
"I'm never sure I know what you mean when you say that, Harry."
"I talked to Paz. He seems to be on the level. He gave me his solemn word he won't enter into any deals with the Japanese that will harm American interests. And he promised to clean out the snakepit in Mexico City."
"And you believe him?"
"I do."
"Sounds pretty thin to me."
"Look, when a frog's in a pan of water, he can boil or he can jump. Paz is gonna jump. And he's jumping the right way. You know this guy Miliano Rojas? The liberals in Congress think he's the best thing since sliced bread. Well, Paz told me he's going to sit down with Miliano and cut a deal. Some kind of national coalition. I think he's
sincere. I told him we'd back him all the way, if he delivers."
Butler suddenly seemed to remember where he was and to whom he was speaking. Then he realized the extent of his indiscretion: "I wouldn't want you talking about this to Raúl."
"He doesn't own me, Harry."
The next day Shelley recounted her pillow talk, word for word, to Raúl. She was surprised that she got less pleasure from the betrayal than from Raúl's anger, which was extreme.
Shelley did not bring Raúl the film from the video camera which had been concealed in the bedside lamp in the room in Aspen. That was flown down on a private plane, hand-delivered by one of Raúl's employees.
Raúl understood perfectly that the Safari Project had reached another crossroads. Urgent measures were required to abort a possible deal between the Mexican government and Miliano—and to raise the pressure on Harry Butler a notch or two higher.
The instruments were at hand. Sanchez was in position, stationed at Miliano's elbow. And there was the videotape of President Butler having sex, very limply, with a woman who was not his wife.
The Mexican dispatched an envoy to Sanchez, with a coded message whose content was extremely simple. If Miliano entered into any deals with the government, he was to be terminated.
TWENTY-ONE
□ □ □
1
Miliano came to the city of Dolores Hidalgo. He came to the high, sun-baked terrace in front of the famous church where Father Hidalgo had raised his cry for Mexican independence. He looked out over a sea of faces, filling the shady alameda below, jamming the windows of the posada. Faces full of hope. The people wanted to touch him, as if he were a miracle worker, or a holy relic from the deserted church behind him. His bodyguards held them back.
More than a hundred armed men traveled with him now. They were all volunteers, tough men from the ranches and ejidos of Chihuahua and Durango. Sun-bronzed faces, black mustaches, here and there a bright bandanna. They knew how to use their weapons. The new man, Rico Sanchez, had worked them hour after hour, shooting at cans and bottles. With his army training, he had licked some of the wildness out of the steer-ropers and charros who rode shotgun on Miliano's odd convoy of asthmatic buses, farm trucks and pickups, and Volkswagen beetles. Rico, because of his U.S. background, was also living proof that Miliano's cause had spread even beyond the border. Miliano was glad to have him.
The gringo reporter was squatting on the stone head of a feathered serpent, installed in front of the church by a government embarrassed by the Christian symbolism of
the most important shrine of Mexican independence. The gringo was taking photographs. He lined up four or five of the most colorful members of Miliano's escort in one frame. The cocky, swaggering fellow nearest the camera could have been Pancho Villa's brother.
Villa had had his John Reed. Miliano had Joe Cicero.
Miliano had been followed around by flocks of U.S. reporters in the early days of his movement. Then they had dropped away. Mexico had become last week's story. The press corps had gladly fled from turista, back-country roads and unspeakable doss houses to trouble spots with five-star hotels.
Joe Cicero had stayed on. He had decided that he liked Miliano, and the feeling must have been mutual, because Joe Cicero was the only foreign pressman who had been included in this surprise jaunt through the old Spanish towns of the Bajío. Something was definitely up. Joe could smell it. Miliano's itinerary was being kept very tight; the newsman felt sure this wasn't just because of fears of another assassination attempt.
Cicero had tried to pump Rico Sanchez. "Can you tell me where we're heading?"
"Ni modo. No way."
When Joe had persisted, Sanchez's lips disappeared. "Mind your own fucking business."
Joe Cicero didn't care for the bullethead chicano with the dayround shades. Sanchez reminded him of shadow warriors he had brushed up against in Honduras, at one of the contra camps. And in Vietnam back in the heyday of the Phoenix program. And in shady bars from Kinshasa to Rosslyn, Virginia. Rico Sanchez had Agency written over him in Day-Glo colors, Joe thought. He wondered how on earth the CIA had managed to con Miliano into putting an obvious spook on his team.
He had even asked Miliano, in a quiet moment on the campaign bus on the road from Quéretaro, "Don't you think there's something funny about Rico Sanchez?" "I know what you're saying." Miliano looked at him
warily. "Don't worry about it. Sanchez is a professional. Such men resemble each other. But Rico is playing on my team."
"I'm glad to hear it. Will you tell me what's on the rest of the tour?"
"Who knows? Maybe Mexico City. Be patient, Joe. I j won't disappoint you. When we reach Guanajuato, you will see. You'll get your story, all across page one. When ] the time is ripe."
This had not relieved Joe's confusion. But the happy word exclusive began to dance in his head. So long as no other U.S. reporters showed up. Cicero was suddenly thankful for the treacherous mountain roads, and the fact that the nearest commercial airport was at León, a good two hours' drive away.
The crowd in Dolores Hidalgo was especially enthusiastic.
"Miliano! Miliano!" they shouted.
"Miliano—al poder!"
Miliano raised his hand, and the clamor of the crowd fell away. He spoke to their wounds, to their fears. He told them of the crooks in Mexico City who were selling off their birthright to foreign corporations. He talked of starving in the ruins of their homes while the government stole the food and money the outside world had rushed to their relief.
Miliano's voice shook with emotion, but his voice was thinner than usual. He seemed deathly tired, almost somber.
He spoke of looming catastrophe, of the shadow of a civil war that would set father against son, brother against brother. Of a Mexico in flames.
The hotheads in the audience misinterpreted his language.
They called for the war he was begging them to avoid.
They called for blood.
"Muerto al PRI! Death to the PRI! Death to the assassins! Death to the robbers who steal bread from the mouths of our children!"
2
In the late sun, Miliano's cavalcade wound down Route 110, into the shadowed valley of Guanajuato, the city of the buried river. As was his wont, Miliano made camp in a colonia of the poor, upon a hillside overlooking the spires and narrow, crooked streets of the Spanish colonial town.
Joe Cicero went downtown in search of a drink, a shower, and a bed without bugs. He found all three at the Posada Santa Fe, the old hotel on the Jardrn Union that had once been home to the Prussian consul. He relaxed at the sidewalk cafe, sipping beer and watching the strikingly pretty doe-eyed Spanish girls making their ritual paseo around the tiny triangular plaza, while ten-year-old mariachis plied the table.
He was outside again in the morning, getting a shoe shine, when he saw Rico Sanchez come out of the hotel. Sanchez made a sharp right, and walked briskly down toward the Four Frogs restaurant, moving, Cicero thought, as if he had a date.
Tipping the shoe-shine man, the reporter took off after Sanchez, one shoe mirror-bright, the other still scuffed.
There were cars parked at the curb, and roving taxis, but Sanchez took neither. He marched down the narrow street. Cutting and ducking, Cicero shadowed his mark up the steep street that led past the former Jesuit college and the university. The cobbled road narrowed so sharply that the sidewalk vanished and Joe had to flatten himself against a wall to avoid the car that came barreling through behind him. He thought he had lost Sanchez, but when he rounded the bend, he spotted him passing an old house that proved to be the birthplace of Diego Rivera.
Now the path was downhill. The reporter held back, nervous of being spotted. He saw Sanchez hurry down into bustling Calle Hidalgo, stopping in front of a restaurant that advertised comida económica. Its name belonged in one of those South American works of magical realism that Joe Cicero found unreadable: La Gallina Aristotelica.
In front of the Aristotelian Hen, Sanchez boarded a taxi.
Cicero looked about frantically for another taxi, but there were none in sight. He trailed along Hidalgo after the cab, wondering what Sanchez was up to. A break came when the taxi was stalled in traffic and Joe spotted another one idling in front of the grand facade of the Mercado Hidalgo.
"Siga, no más," Cicero instructed the driver.
They rattled up a sharp ascent.
"What is this street?"
"Calzada del Panteón." The driver swiveled around to expose an imperfect set of teeth, stained tobacco-brown. "Where five go up and four go down."
"Excuse me?"
The driver laughed. "Four on their legs. One on their backs. In a coffin."
This response left Cicero totally mystified. And distinctly uneasy.
"You go to see las momias, no? This road only goes to the mummies."
His meaning only became clear to Cicero half a mile on, beyond a few meager hill farms where goats foraged among the rocks and chickens straggled across the road.
The end of the road was a parking lot in front of a building tunneled into the hillside. There were a few touristy gift shops off to one side. All but one were shuttered.
"Está temprano." the driver observed. "It's early."
There were only two other cars in the lot: the taxi Sanchez had arrived in, and a black Ford LTD. The initials DF were on the plates. Distrito Federal. Mexico City. A thickset man in a suit stood by the LTD, puffing on a cigarette and giving Cicero the once-over.
Joe Cicero draped his camera strap around his neck. Thank God for the camera. A gringo with a camera had natural cover.
The sign over the main building read Museo de Momias. Museum of the Mummies.
Cicero told his driver to wait and strolled over to the entrance. A heavyset Mexican in a dark suit who looked like the twin of the hood in the parking lot emerged from behind the turnstiles and told Cicero in Spanish that the museum was closed.
Playing the tourist, Cicero pretended not to understand.
He started pushing through the stile, flourishing a five-dollar bill.
A powerful hand closed, viselike, over his forearm.
The Mexican banged his other fist against a wall sign with the heading, "Horario." Opening time was 10 a.m. Cicero glanced at his watch. It was barely 9:20.
"Okay?" said the man.
"Okay," Cicero agreed.
Fausto García enjoyed the mummies of Guanajuato. The museum—a considerable domestic tourist attraction in a country that revels in the rituals of death—was attached to the municipal cemetery. The singular dryness of the air in these mountains, assisted by the vapors of the earth, had the effect of mummifying the corpses laid to rest in the graveyard, without the aid of naphtha or other embalmers' solutions. The cemetery was grossly overcrowded, and the poor could not afford the price of a permanent grave. When it became necessary to create room for new burials, older corpses were exhumed. The grislier specimens were placed here, in the Museo de Momias, to feed the inexhaustible public appetite for the macabre.
"As a people," Fausto remarked, "we are better prepared to face death than to cope with life. That is the problem of Mexico."
He strolled the narrow rooms, hands clasped behind his back, with Rico Sanchez in tow, pointing out favorite exhibits.
The mummies stood erect, their skin creased and yellowed like parchment, their hands folded across their rib cages, as their relative—or the undertakers—had arranged them. Their jaws hung open, the triumph of bone over rotted flesh. The cause of death, in many cases, was startlingly obvious. Here was a woman killed by cancer of the stomach. The tumor swelled out of her shrunken body like a monstrous gourd. Here was a man with a gaping hole in his chest, hacked out by a knife. Here a Chinaman, with the mark of the strangler's garotte around his throat.
