📖[PDF] Don't Send Flowers by Martin Solares | Perlego (2024)

PART ONE

The Mysteries of La Eternidad

1

He told them there was someone who could find the girl: an ex-cop.

He told them that if this individual was still alive after the trouble he’d had with his own team, he’d be just the man for the job. He’d survived assignments like this one—where a death wish was more of an asset than deductive skills—several times already. He told them that if this man was still alive, which wasn’t entirely unlikely, they might find him in one of the next states over, Veracruz or San Luis Potosí. Every so often an informant would claim to have seen him on the highway heading into La Eternidad. According to these reports, he said, the individual in question still drives a white car. He settles in at a certain restaurant down near the breakwater for a few hours, chats with the owners, sees to his business, and heads back the way he came. No one knows where he goes. Others say he’s always in and out of town and might be mixed up in smuggling, but I don’t think so, vouched consul Don Williams. He always kept on the right side of the law. You might even have hired him at some point, Mr. De León. In any event, if this guy does happen to still be alive, he’d be just the man for the job.

Mr. De León asked what the individual’s name was and the consul replied,

“Carlos Treviño.”

“Don’t know him,” the magnate snapped. He prided himself on knowing each of his employees, and Treviño had never been on his payroll. “I don’t know him and the name doesn’t ring a bell. I won’t risk it. I can’t take the chance he’s working for them.”

“Treviño would never work for a criminal,” the gringo insisted. “Not knowingly, at least. Unlike most people in this city.”

He was interrupted by a loud crack.

“What was that?” the consul asked, while Mr. De León’s bodyguards craned their necks like two dogs sniffing out danger. “It sounded like it came from nearby,” the consul insisted, but neither the woman nor the men at the table budged. The sound of gunshots—a single round or a hail of bullets—or a grenade blast in the distance as night fell had become a part of life around the port, no more unusual than the words extortion and kidnapping. Noticing the consul’s anxiety, Valentín Bustamante, a.k.a. the Bus, the head of Mr. De León’s security detail, stepped onto the terrace to have a look through the magnate’s telescope. A fat man with a skinny mustache, he moved his six-foot-three frame with an agility unimaginable for someone his size, as if gravity didn’t exist, and pointed the instrument at the next neighborhood over. Hunched over like that, his round face and childlike features accented by his ridiculous facial hair, he almost looked like someone who wouldn’t hurt a fly. Which was true, as long as that fly was under three feet tall and posed no threat to Mr. De León. Meanwhile, Rodolfo Moreno Valle—second in command of the magnate’s security detail and as serious as a heart attack with his bushy eyebrows, goatee, cowboy boots, and black leather jacket—walked over to cover his associate’s position next to the door and stood there with his arms crossed.

For a few seconds, the rustling of the palm trees was the only sound. A northern wind was blowing in, one of those that haunt the Gulf and can hang around for ten or twelve hours, knocking down trees and old houses. The gale reached out to stir up a handful of paper napkins next to the coffeepot with the tips of its fingers; for a moment, the napkins seemed to come to life, as if they were trying to transmit a message. The meeting was being held in Mr. De León’s mansion, one of the biggest in the luxe portside neighborhood next to a valley of slums on this side of the river. It was a three-story abode inspired by California’s Spanish colonial revivals, with huge picture windows and terraces adorned with wrought iron and carved stone, in a gated community complete with a small golf course, swimming pool, and a natural spring. All this, of course, could be seen only if you made it past the walled perimeter accented by flowering vines and bodyguards. The windows looked out over the lagoon—without question the most beautiful stretch of La Eternidad’s port—but no one was there to talk about beauty.

“Why play dumb?” Mr. De León’s wife asked. She was a tall, prickly blonde used to getting her way: an overbearing woman who was still in shape at forty-five thanks in large part to her bad temper. “Go talk to the three bosses, offer them some cash, and put an end to this.”

“That would put your daughter at enormous risk,” the consul objected. “If they don’t realize she’s disappeared, that’s one advantage we have. We need to find another way.”

“Well, the two of you seem pretty relaxed,” she snapped. “I can’t even imagine what Cristina must be going through right now, kidnapped and terrorized by those animals.”

The consul looked at his watch. It was true: thirty-six hours had passed since the girl disappeared, and every minute that went by made it seem less likely they’d find her alive.

A truck’s brakes screeched on a nearby street. The consul looked Mr. De León squarely in the eye.

“We don’t have time to waste. Instead of waiting for them to contact us, send a specialist in to find her. One who won’t raise suspicions. The detective I’m recommending is fearless and discreet. He could run an investigation and come up with a strategy for getting her back. He knows the area and has a team, or at least he did a few months ago. He’s brilliant, the type who can handle any situation. He could get himself out of a whale’s belly if he needed to.”

A shadow fell across Mr. De León’s face.

“And why should I hire this guy, when I have an army of bodyguards at my disposal?” he said, gesturing toward the most threatening member of his security detail, the man with the goatee. “Moreno’s an ace with this kind of mission; he was trained by the German military. Why would I hire someone I know nothing about?”

The consul, aware that the businessman was a two-hundredpound bundle of nerves, replied as diplomatically as possible: “I’m afraid your bodyguards wouldn’t be able to infiltrate their ranks without being detected, Rafael, especially not the ones you trust most. Whoever got close enough to kidnap your daughter must have been studying your security for months. As for La Eternidad’s police and military, I wouldn’t recommend calling them in on this. The police would sell their souls to the devil if he was the highest bidder, and the military depends on the politicians. And you know who they work for. This guy was the best detective the port had seen in years. He was the one who caught the Chainsaw Killer.”

The businessman’s wife eyed him suspiciously.

“The Chainsaw Killer? The one who murdered those girls?” They were talking about a maniac who kidnapped young women from different parts of the city and tortured them. “That doesn’t mean a thing,” she went on. “Everyone knows the guy they caught was just a scapegoat.”

“Precisely,” said the consul. “The man officially accused of the crimes is innocent, but the detective I’ve been telling you about caught the real killer and ended up in hot water with his colleagues because of it.”

Mr. De León looked up when he heard this, intrigued. The case had been big news around the Gulf of Mexico because of the criminal’s extraordinary cruelty, because of how hard it had been to find him, and, above all, because of the scandal that erupted when word got out they’d let the maniac walk while an innocent man rotted away in a jail cell.

“That was a long time ago,” thundered the businessman. “If he’s as good as you say, why hasn’t anyone heard of him? Shouldn’t he be famous by now?”

“A good detective doesn’t get famous,” said the consul.

“Will you vouch for him?” the magnate asked.

The consul cleared his throat.

“Listen, I’m not saying he’s squeaky-clean. He’s probably taken a bribe or two, like everyone at police headquarters. But in the Chainsaw Killer case, he was the only ranking officer who actually tried to catch the criminal, even if his enemies say he was only in it for the reward. You know how things are here. But as long as he was on the force, he always collaborated with the consulate and with me directly, to the extent permitted by Mexican law, of course. He kept it on the straight and narrow. That’s why he only lasted four years on the job. Treviño’s one of the few honest people I’ve met in the Gulf.” Noticing the silence this last remark provoked across the table, he added, “An honest man who’d be worthy of a position in your family’s company.”

Mr. De León and his wife nodded, as if appeased, and the consul made a note in some corner of his brain to show more respect in the future.

The door to the terrace opened again and the fat man with the absurd mustache walked back into the room, wrapping up a conversation on his walkie-talkie with, “Affirmative.” He installed himself next to Mr. De León and didn’t say a word until the consul asked him, “What’s going on out there?”

“There’s activity in Colonia Pescadores. La Cuarenta’s thugs. It’s the weekend, they must be off their asses. I also hear the boy hasn’t come to yet, but we’re keeping an eye on him.”

He was talking about Cristina’s boyfriend, who was still in the hospital. Mr. De León turned crimson with rage.

“I told you to leave him alone!”

“It was my idea,” interrupted the consul. “I didn’t want to take any chances. We’re watching him as a precaution.”

It wasn’t likely the boyfriend would ever speak again, but the consul desperately wanted to hear what he had to say since he was the only witness to what happened. Sitting there, a balding old man with a potbelly, dressed in a plaid shirt and construction boots, he didn’t look like much. But he’d been the consul to the United States there in La Eternidad for more than ten years and was one of the people who knew the most about crime in the region. To his friends, he was Don Williams; to Chief Margarito and company, he was Our Consul, if they were on good terms, and That Asshole Don Williams, if they felt he’d stuck his nose in above his pay grade in La Eternidad. There was no doubt in Mr. De León’s mind that if there was a security expert in La Eternidad, the gringo was it. The minute he heard they’d found Cristina’s car and that her boyfriend, Alberto Perkins, was in critical condition, he chose Williams to lead the investigation ...