Free Death in Veracruz by Hector Camín Page B

getting up, he had also taken with him the vase with the honeysuckle.
    I ate some of the eggs in chile sauce and drank some of the
atole
before Pizarro’s aide approached and told me to follow him. I entered the room with the wicker chairs and the desk. The desk was huge, fit for a pharaoh, though it consisted solely of one broad plank. It was thick and unvarnished but very well polished. Its legs were similarly thick. There were no papers, no drawers, no decoration except a wedge of opaque glass nameplate. Against its red background was lettering the color of aluminum. In lieu of a name it read:
Don’t criticize. Work.
    Pizarro was seated behind the desk reading newspapers when I entered. He’d put on a white guayabera. Next to him was a man I hadn’t seen before. The man had a clipboard with a ballpoint dangling off it, and whenever Pizarro finished with a newspaper the man set it on a small table against the wall.
    â€œThis is from the governor. Someone needs to talk to his pal,” Pizarro said, pointing to a story with a red check mark next to it. All the papers were checkmarked in red or blue. “You can handle the guy from
Diario de Xalapa.
Don’t let him stay too long. Don’t let him think we’re being defensive. Come in,” he said to me before turning back to his aide. “This is a reporter from Coscomatepec. He’s based in Mexico City. This is my friend and secretary Genaro Roibal.”
    The man named Roibal extended his hand without saying a word. He looked about forty. He was white and impeccably shaved with a quasi-military haircut. Though no taller than Pizarro, his muscular physique attested to a serious commitment to the martial arts.
    â€œHe’ll be with us,” Pizarro explained, “the same as you, the same as everybody else. Let him see and hear everything.So if he’s willing to understand, he can.”
    â€œWhatever you say, Lacho,” Roibal said as he recovered the last newspaper from the desk. Then, in movements that brooked no nonsense, he gestured for me to sit in the wicker chair beside the desk to the right of Lacho Pizarro. An armed man stood at my side, and there were two more in the doorway to the diningroom. There were no windows, just the intense glare of two neon tubes in the middle of the ceiling. On the white wall behind Pizarro was a heavily retouched portrait of Lázaro Cárdenas with the presidential sash across his chest. He looked very young, his eyes sweetly melancholy as if lost in post-coital contemplation. Beside him was another portrait which, though also large, was considerably smaller and whose subject was José López Portillo, then President of the Republic. To the sides, above and below these two objects of devotion, were far smaller portraits depicting the presidential succession from Ávila Camacho to Echeverría. A purple rag covered the face of Miguel Alemán from the nose down, endowing the former president with a comical resemblance to a bank robber in a western movie.
    â€œWhat have we got?” Pizarro said.
    â€œEl Negro
Acosta is back. He came very early,” Roibal replied.
    â€œMoney?”
    â€œNo,” said Roibal. “The usual.”
    â€œSend him in,” Pizarro said. He pulled a rubber band from the pocket of his guayabera and began fidgeting with it.
    El Negro
Acosta came in, a huge, dark-skinned Veracruzan with African features and curled eyelashes. He hadn’t shaved in days, and his eyes were bloodshot. He wiped the sweat-and possibly some tears-from his face with a handkerchief that darted in and out of sight between his hands.
    He stood before the desk (enormous back, enormous gut, enormous buttocks) trembling like a child. The handkerchief shuttled from one side of his face to the other as he gasped for breath. Finally, he collapsed sobbing into the chair in front of Pizarro.
    â€œWhat’s the trouble,
Negro?”
Pizarro said.
    â€œYou already