A rat. A fucking squealer. A rat’s a rat no matter if you’ve read a thesaurus and can call it something fancy. But if he wanted to call himself Goldilocks, it didn’t matter to Elvis.
“You’re with DFS, then?”
“No, nothing like that! They nabbed us one time distributing leaflets, and Anaya said if I didn’t cooperate with him, didn’t help him, he was going to make sure I was tortured for weeks. So I do, I cooperate. He asks me questions from time to time, and I answer them.”
It wasn’t unheard of. Ears were a dime a dozen. Justo had been sniffing around Asterisk for the DGIPS, and this bozo had been talking to Anaya, and there was some Russian fucker too, and for all Elvis knew the CIA and Santa Claus also had spies in that little commie nest. Overkill and lack of coordination. That was the problem. The DFS hated the DGIPS, thinking they were hicks, and the DGIPS thought DFS agents were stuffy pricks.
“Anaya asked you about Leonora. What did you tell him?”
“Can I…can I have a cigarette?”
Jesus! Bumming his cigarettes! But if it helped get this dipshit explaining, Elvis would give him a whole pack. He took out one and lit it for the man. El Güero was whistling “La Cucaracha” and had gone into the bathroom.
Fucker, Elvis thought. He couldn’t stop giving him grief for one damn day.
Sócrates took a puff, then licked his lips. “I drove Leonora to Cuernavaca last weekend. She went to meet a journalist.”
“A friend of yours?”
“No. A friend of Emilio, her ex.”
“Did she have the pictures with her?”
“No.” Sócrates reached for a dirty glass sitting on a table by the bed and let the ash from his cigarette fall into it. “She didn’t know if she could trust the journalist. I drove her because I wanted to know if she’d tell me more about the photos, if maybe she’d show me where she kept them. On the way back, I asked her a few times, but she clammed up and asked me to drop her off at Casimiro Villareal’s house. She thought she’d be safe with him.”
“Not with Emilio? Or with Jackie?”
“No. I guess they weren’t the first people she thought about, and maybe she wanted to confess something to him. Religious stuff, you know? I tried to convince her she was better off staying with me, but I couldn’t.”
“Stay with you. So you could hand her over to Anaya?”
“She would have been safer. If Anaya knew where he could find her, he wouldn’t have made such a fuss about this.”
“You’re such a good friend.”
“Fuck you,” Sócrates said, his teeth almost clamping on the cigarette for a second before he took a puff. “I was hoping I could get her to hand over the photos to me, and I’d hand them to Anaya. I thought that was the best thing to do. That’s why I took her to Casimiro’s house and not Anaya. Icouldhave turned her over to Anaya. But then she vanished.”
“Abracadabra, like a magician.”
“No one’s heard from her.”
“And you didn’t help her perform this magic act?”
Sócrates dropped the cigarette into the glass. “No. She has money. It’s not like she couldn’t have used it to go hide somewhere. And I’ve looked for her in all her old haunts. Nothing.”
El Güero walked back into the room. “Can’t find anything resembling a camera or pictures. Should we call it a morning?”
“I’m expecting someone in less than an hour,” Sócrates said.
“But we’re just beginning to know each other,” Elvis said.
“It’s Anaya.”
“You lying to me? Because remember: knives cut balls.”
“It’s true!”
“Well, you’re lying about something,” Elvis said. He had no idea about that, but he decided to throw it out there. See what he got. It seemed to work, because suddenly Sócrates was rubbing his forehead and looking down. But he didn’t speak. He pressed his lips together.
