“I don’t know,” Elvis said. “It’s tied to some other woman who’s got the pictures El Mago wants.”
“And we’re supposed to babysit her.”
“El Mago’s orders.”
“Surveillance is a crock of shit,” the Antelope intoned glumly, and he rubbed his cheek, where his molar was aching.
Elvis couldn’t deny that. There was nothing fun about spending hours in a car, pissing into a Coca-Cola bottle and watching someone’s door. But there was nothing Elvis could do about that, and he shrugged.
“You grab the first shift, then let the Antelope take the next one,” Elvis said.
“Where you going?”
“I got something else to take care of.”
El Güero and the Antelope needed the car, so Elvis hailed a cab and asked the driver to drop him off a few blocks from the Café La Habana. It was located on Bucareli and Obregón, therefore assuring itself a steady stream of journalists from the nearby papers, all of them wannabe Hemingways with dubious pedigrees who, on payday, drank too many beers and stumbled home to sleep away their hangovers. There were also Spanish refugees nursing old wounds, wannabe novelists and poets, and plenty of pinkos lured by the specter of Che Guevara, who had once sat in a corner with Fidel Castro and planned a revolution.
As Elvis rounded the café, he noticed the agents watching the building. There were always people keeping tabs on that place due to the clientele. He supposed it was almost a game: every patron knew they were being watched, but the constant watching also ensured a certain safety net. Better to be watched here than to have an asshole putting on binoculars and trying to peep through your window. Maybe it was force of habit. Someone’s got to spy on someone.
Elvis had never been inside. It wasn’t his type of haunt, and El Mago made them keep a low profile. But there he was. It was a large café, the ceilings were high, the tables were small. Black-and-white pictures on the walls spoke of the charm of Old Habana, perfumed with the stench of cheap cigarettes and stale dreams. In a corner there were excited chirpings about Allende, who they said was transforming Chile, and in another corner someone spoke reverently about José Revueltas, who’d been jailed in Lecumberri a while back—he was a hero! But the mood was somber, and the sound of the dominoes slapped against the tables couldn’t hide the plain truth: lots of people were still spooked about the stuff that had gone down on June tenth.
Spooked or not, the place was packed. No matter what was happening outside, people needed a drink, and the reds drank as much as anyone else.
Elvis spotted the guy he was looking for pretty quickly, cigarette tucked behind his ear like El Mago had said, and a notebook on the table. Next to the notebook, a pack of Faritos, a glass ashtray, and a cup of coffee. Elvis had imagined that the man would be one of those fossils who wander around the universities all the time. Long in the tooth for a student and obviously enrolled for the sole purpose of beating activists. But the fellow didn’t really look like a fossil; he was baby-faced, with horn-rimmed glasses and attired in a nice but not too flashy plum-colored velvet jacket. As far as informants went, this one had, at the very least, a little taste, and Elvis felt immediately a bit shabby in his old leather jacket and his hair slicked back with too much Vaseline.
“You Justo?” Elvis asked.
The man had been scribbling in his notebook, but now he looked up at Elvis. “Yes. And you are?”
“Elvis. An associate of El Mago.”
“I know the guy. So what?”
“I also know El Gazpacho,” Elvis said, trying that line.
The young man frowned. “Why isn’t he with you, then?”
“He was shot. I dropped him off at the doctor’s place. Not sure where he is now.”
“Which doctor?”
“Guerrero,” he said, which was the name of the colonia where the doctor’s office was located, not the actual doctor, but Justo nodded slowly, as if he knew who he was talking about.
Elvis pulled out a chair and sat in front of Justo. He pointed at the pack of cigarettes. “Can I bum a cigarette off you?”
“Go ahead.”
Elvis grabbed a cig and lit it. Fuck, he was also hungry. He’d hardly had anything at all that day, running from one place to the other. On the table, a waiter had left a menu. But he didn’t intend to make this a dinner. Justo closed his notebook, resting both hands atop it.
“What’s up?”
“I need help.”
“Help isn’t free,” Justo said, sliding his notebook across the table.
Well. That was different than the usual handing of envelopes. Elvis took out several large bills and tucked them inside the notebook and slid it back across the table. Justo placed his hands atop the notebook again.
“El Mago says you’re familiar with this thing called Asterisk.”
