beaches and Mazatlan. Sometimes he saw cliff divers when he got there and tourists parasailed behind speedboats among great rocks that looked like sailing ships on the high seas.
The beer was bright and refreshing and perfect. Heat waves rose from the concrete ponds of Parque Xtremo. The skaters were still at their avocation despite the heat. They lipped the ponds and turned in the air as if gravity was temporarily of no concern and then down again out of sight.
Esteban put his hand on Kelly’s shoulder and squeezed it.
“I wanted to make sure you were still here,” Esteban said. “Sometimes… sometimes I feel like this is all a dream. I don’t want to wake up,
They had Sunday lunch together at the house. Paloma served them while wearing her light dress that caught the sun. Today Esteban chose not to smoke afterward and the three of them sat talking in the front room within sight of their painting of Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe. Seeing it used to make Esteban uncomfortable, but he wasn’t bothered by it anymore. Not now. Now it meant he was home and not somewhere dark and filthy and terrible.
Two men raised voices to each other at another table. The benches and the tables themselves were fixed to the floor and the flatware was made of flimsy plastic, so they used the trays as weapons and then their feet and fists. A pair became a quartet and then a dozen. Food splattered and was trod underfoot. Imbalances left long unaddressed were suddenly and violently corrected. Esteban saw none of this.
“I knew you were the kind of man I could count on,” Esteban told Kelly in the Parque Xtremo. “I knew it from the first time, you know?”
They sat on the little couch in the front room. Paloma had
“I’m glad you’re getting married to my sister. I’m glad we’re brothers. I always wanted a brother like you.”
He wanted to hug Kelly, but that was too much emotion for two men. They bumped knuckles. Esteban had some of the lemonade. It tasted like beer.
“I think we should all go down to Mazatlan together,” Esteban said.
Around him the invalids were up and the guards waded among warring bodies with clubs and shouts. Esteban sat sightless and deaf even as a prisoner stabbed him through the neck with a sharp piece of steel. He toppled to the floor and didn’t see the blood pooling around him; only the house fading and Paloma coming from the kitchen to be with them and Kelly smiling in the sun until the sun went black.
PART FOUR
Justicia
ONE
THE CHURCH WAS CALLED IGLESIA del Anuncio, the Church of the Annunciation, and it was not the ugliest such building he had ever seen, though it was close. The neighborhood around it was crumbling into sun-scorched dust and so was the sanctuary inside and out. Frescoes were faded and even the great crucifix above the altar was chipping and flaking. When there was not money or manpower enough to tend to Christ, Sevilla mused, a church was ready to die.
He sat away from Ella Arellano though he saw her well enough. She wore black like the cluster of women around her. They assembled before the church at the appointed time. Sevilla didn’t approach them, but he knew Ella was aware of his presence.
The battered old confessional was near Sevilla and during the long service his eyes were drawn to it. He hadn’t been inside one since Liliana passed, and it was just as well. When he needed to confess, he confessed to her. If his sins were too much for Liliana, then no priest could hope to understand.
Out of habit he said the prayers and from memory he sang the hymns. When it was time for Communion he stayed in his pew, though he put two hundred pesos in the plate as an offering. Afterward he lit a candle for Esteban Salazar. The old church made him feel sad because it was unloved. Half the place was empty and the other half was growing irrevocably aged.
When the mass was all done, Sevilla trailed outside behind Ella and the women. Ella came to him in the narthex while the women greeted the priest in turn. She wore a veil like the others and seemed much older than Sevilla remembered her being. “Thank you,” she said.
“There’s no need to thank me,” replied Sevilla. “I wanted to see you.”
“Do you have a car?” Ella asked.
“Yes.”
“Meet us. We’ll go on foot.”
She gave Sevilla an address and he wrote it down. He didn’t know the street, but he knew he could find it.
“Who are they?” Sevilla asked of the women in black.
“They’re like you,” Ella said. She went back to them.
Sevilla left the church and went back to his car. He made two wrong turns finding the address, but he got there before Ella and the women in black. Sitting behind the wheel on the sleepy Sunday avenue he felt stupid and exposed, but there was no one watching him.
Eventually he saw them coming, a little processional for some cause or saint unspecified. When he left his car he saw them hesitate as a group, like a horse shied from sudden movement on the ground, but Ella calmed them. “Come inside,” she told Sevilla.
The house was small and poor like the others around it. There was barely enough room for all of them, but they moved as if they had long practice doing so. Only Sevilla was out of place. He was always excusing himself and moving here and there because he was forever in the wrong spot at the wrong time.
After some time there was food and drink and the women settled. Before they talked about the things poor women talked about: families and money and the news of the neighborhood that would make no difference to anyone from the outside. This was something Sevilla was not a part of, but now they looked to him as if his next words meant everything.
“You left your home,” said Sevilla to Ella.
“They’re watching.”
“Who?”
“The men with the black truck. The ones who took Paloma away.”
Sevilla was stung coldly. He fumbled for his notepad and it seemed a long time before he had it firmly in his hands. “You saw someone take her?”
“Yes.”
Ella told Sevilla the story, about the mothers of the missing, about Paloma and how the men in the black pick-up came. She showed Sevilla the last of her fading bruises. All the while the mothers listened in silence like stones bearing witness.
“Did they say names?” Sevilla asked. “Did they talk to each other?”
“No names.”
“Did you see a man, he’s called Ortiz.” Sevilla described him, but the mothers shook their heads no.
“Three men,” Ella said. “Big. Strong.”
“They are cowards,” said one of the mothers. “Who else but a coward can beat a woman?”
Sevilla pressed, “Have you ever seen this man I’m talking about? What about the license on the truck? Did any of you get it?”
