Free Mexico City Noir by Paco Ignacio Taibo II Page A

first one, with the same haste and a pistol in his hand. There was a scream but she does not remember, doesn’t remember the words, knows that there were words but she can’t differentiate between a scream and an insult; if someone says tree , she thinks mud ; if they say scissors , she relates it to a day of rest, so she’d rather close the window and wait for the rain to end and for her husband to come home and for the loneliness to settle and the cat—that animal called silence or therapy —to stop meowing so maybe she can hear herself better, to see if she can recall a better memory …
    The barrel of a gun is not just a simple hole, it moves in an undulating way; perhaps the guy who’s holding the weapon is trembling. Just the same, it could be something other than a pistol, perhaps a knife of some sort, but if it’s a knife then it ought to be shinier; maybe a knife is easier to avoid. I cling to this possibility, that at least the sharp edge doesn’t have the speed of a bullet. Or does it? Has anybody ever measured the speed of a blade? In any case, what’s more dangerous, a blade or a bullet? Obviously, it all depends on the placement of the wound. If the knife damages the femoral vein … Do blades shine? I look for the sparkle in the dark but there’s nothing there, then everything is a penumbra, and there is no knife, only a gun.
    Bang!
    Here it comes.
    I feel it. My body bends and shakes from the impact. Instantly, I feel the fervor of blood running under my shirt. I am an open vein, a dark channel, a tunnel.
    And then Jean Valjean arrives in my tunnel carrying Mario. And the Count of Montecristo smiles at me as stoically as a rock.
    And a cascade of blood slips through my hands.
    And I’m here staring at the emptiness of this enormous city.
    With its towers and streets.
    And those little lights.
    And I do not fall.
    I hold on to the eaves because I have an ace up my sleeve: the blonde’s panties in my coat pocket. My great fetish, a souvenir from a glorious night in bed. I also have the words to tell this guy he can go fuck his bitch of a mother, because motherfuckers like me don’t die every day, and then there’s a pause that lets me hear the suusssss of another bullet grazing my chest.
    And soon …
    My life has been both great and fucked.
    Bountiful and idiotic.
    Wonderful and absurd.
    Why not let it be the same way at the end?
    Four or five stories.
    A beautiful fall.
    This fool will not see fear in my face.
    He won’t see anything.
    I am great.
    Is there anything more beautiful than flying toward death?
    That’s what I do.

    JUDAS BURNING
    BY E UGENIO A GUIRRE
    Calle Tacuba
    H oly Week 1954 was especially bloody. Thursday morning, agents from the judicial police discovered the mutilated bodies of four women in debris left at a construction site near Peñón de los Baños. There were bite marks on their breasts and genitals, which had been carved up with exceptional viciousness. The presumed killer, later identified as Goyo Cárdenas, had not only raped and profaned their corpses, he had used a handsaw to chop off their heads and dismember the arms and legs.
    The evening headline, which appeared in the Universal Gráfico ’s crime bulletin, was accompanied by horrific photos which provoked terror among working-class women in the areas surrounding Mexico City, especially the prostitutes who trafficked around Dolores alley and Dos de Abril Street, who tried to intimidate the authorities with obscene threats: “Either they double the number of security guards on these sinful streets or we’ll go on strike and our clients will have no choice but to fuck their wives.”
    “Things are getting tense,” said my father, Don Domitilo Chimal, with dismay, as soon as he finished reading us the unfortunate news. He threw the newspaper on the kitchen table where we were gathered for an evening meal.
    My siblings and I didn’t fully understand what he was getting at, nor the full meaning of his words.