Free The Uncomfortable Dead by Paco Ignacio Taibo II, Subcomandante Marcos Page B

head.”
    A cold draft flowed between them. Héctor stared at the silhouette of the palace where Alvarado had spent the last days of his life. The building sprawled out in all directions, heavy and somber.
    “Why’d they kill him?”
    “Go figure. Those days, they shot first and asked questions later. Maybe they thought he was in contact with, or was the lynchpin of, one of the armed resistance groups that sprang up after ’68 … or that he ran a group that was dormant but would get back into the action as soon as he got out … That might have been it. Or maybe some kind of personal vendetta by the prison authorities, because he was one of the organizers of the hunger strike in ’69.”
    “Did you know him?”
    “I saw him a couple of times, from far away.”
    “Did he have children?”
    “When I used to visit my father, Alvarado used to get visits from this very big older woman and, yeah, she had a kid with her, a bit younger than me. If I’m forty-two now, the kid would be about thirty-eight, or something like that. But I don’t know if it was his son, I don’t remember seeing a young woman with the child. Maybe it was a nephew, or a younger brother. I do remember the kid because during the visit he would be hanging around the fountains in the inner courtyard fooling around with a yo-yo.”
    “During the investigations you guys have been doing, have you found out who killed him? Do any of the documents you’ve been reading mention his death in any way, or those responsible?”
    “Let me check around and ask some of the other bookworms digging into those records. If anything turns up, I’ll call you.”
    They embraced and Fritz repeated his suicidal ballet across the avenue. Suddenly, he stopped and turned around amidst the wildly honking cars.
    “Why don’t you look up the Chinaman? That was his cell mate.”
    “What Chinaman is that?”
    “Fuang Chu, the only Chinese member of the movement of ’68. It was just him and the Mao Tse-tung posters. I think he’s living in Guadalajara now.”
    Héctor Belascoarán Shayne had his office on Donato Guerra, near the corner of Bucareli, in the heart of hearts of Mexico City. And as it turns out, this was a heart, like in Juan Luis Guerra’s song, unaware of what it was, amassing little glory and making lots of noise. Mornings, the corners were overrun with newspaper distributors, making their bundles and their noises. Then the afternoons were taken over by the record shops and lunch counters.
    The elevator was out of order, so he limped up the three flights. This made his limp worse and the pain stuck to the bone.
    Bones hurt?
    Only when it’s cold, he answered himself.
    He ran into Carlos Vargas at the door.
    “You’ve got your progressive official in there, boss.”
    But it was Tobías the dog that welcomed him first. He was limping, of course, his leg still in the splint, but it was probably on account of the cold as much as the broken bone. He took one look at Héctor, reared up, and hit him with a foot of slobbery tongue that left the detective and his new cigarette drenched. Héctor tossed the wet cigarette to the dog, who swallowed it, and would have smiled if he could.
    “He likes them. He hates it when I smoke, but he likes to smoke himself, or at least to eat them,” Monteverde said.
    Now that he thought about it, both of them, dog and master (you figure which was which), had faces like Droopy.
    Héctor pointed to a black leather couch for the other Héctor to sit on, moved over to the safe, which was always open, and pulled out two Cokes and an automatic, which he placed on the table. He gestured to Monteverde to help himself to the cigarettes.
    “I’ve got two new messages on the machine,” Monteverde said, lighting up a counterfeit Ronson that was a bit too golden and had probably been bought from a street vendor.
    Héctor flipped the caps off the two Cokes using the sights of his automatic and handed one to his mysterious informant. He