The man stood up. So did García.
“I understand, Mr. del Valle.”
“You know my name?”
“I do.”
“I told you, Colonel, it was silly to try to hide my identity from Mr. García. Now, all I can do is ask you to forget it.”
García asked:
“Do the gringo and the Russian know who I am?”
“Of course.”
Del Valle turned to leave. The colonel rushed ahead to open the door for him.
“Good night, Mr. del Valle.”
“I would rather you continue to avoid mentioning my name, Colonel. Good night.”
The man left with his friendly smile and his cold eyes. The colonel closed the door and turned to García:
“You shouldn’t have told him you knew who he was.”
García shrugged his shoulders.
“He wanted to hide his identity. He holds a position of great responsibility. .”
“So, he should have given his orders over the phone, or through you, Colonel.”
“He wanted to meet you in person.”
“We’ve now had the pleasure. Anything else?”
“Did you understand your instructions?”
“I did. Good night, Colonel. Just one thing. .”
“Yes?”
“Why so much cloak and dagger about meeting the gringo and the Russian? I could just go to their hotels, or wherever they are.”
“Those are your orders.”
“Good night, Colonel.
II
Mexico, somewhat coyly, calls Dolores Street Chinatown, a Chinatown made up of one street lined with old houses and a scrawny alleyway trembling with mysteries. There are a few shops that smell of Canton or Fukien, and a few restaurants. But there is none of the color, the lights and the flags, the lanterns and the ambiance you find in other Chinatowns, like in San Francisco or Manila. Rather than Chinatown, it looks like a run-down street where a few Chinese have dropped anchor, orphans of imperial dragons, thousand-year-old recipes, and mysteries.
Filiberto García stopped at the corner of Dolores and Artículo 123. In the fourth house, belonging to a Chinaman named Pedro Yuan, they’ll be playing poker, a forever silent and ghastly game of poker. In the upstairs rooms, several old Chinamen will be smoking opium. Chen Fong manages that business, God only knew for whom, but it couldn’t net much because the smokers are older and poorer by the day. For all I know he keeps them on for charity, like nuns who take in old people and cripples. Once, when I was sent after some opium traffickers in Sinaloa, I pocketed three tins and gave them to Fong. Ever since, we’ve been buddies. Fucking Chinamen! They’ve won enough off me playing poker to keep the whole lot of them dreaming. And anyway, why the hell do I want Chinese friends? So the colonel can give me assignments like this one and let me know that he’s been keeping tabs on me, knows that I know them and cover up their opium dens. Fucking colonel! For all I know he knows about those tins, too. And then there’s del Valle. He didn’t want me to recognize him even though his mug shows up every other day in the newspaper. He must think a gunslinger doesn’t read newspapers. I’d bet everybody and his brother in Mexico knows he’s one of the many who have their hearts set on being president. Maybe they also wanted me to play the chump and act like I don’t even know who our president is, or who the gringos’ president is. Them and their fucking mysteries! Then they feed me that line about Outer Mongolia and Hong Kong and the Russians. For all I know, that Fong with his face of a chump is the agent of Mao Tse Tung. You never know with Chinamen. The professor says they’re my real buddies and maybe that’s true. They’re alright. When I came down with malaria, they visited me and brought me fruit and Chinese medicine. And my own people, they never even knew, and they never stopped by. My buddies the Chinamen. Fucking buddies! Fucking Chinamen! And that half-Chinese gal, the one who works in Liu’s shop, she’s a pretty one, and sometimes she even leads me on. “Can I write you a letter, my lovely?” “Only if you write it in Chinese.” For all I know she’s Liu’s daughter, but these Chinamen don’t give a damn anyway. They’re like the gringos. That gringo sheriff in Salinas, when there was that trouble with those wetbacks. He was looking right at me when I made a move on his woman and all he did was laugh and order another round of drinks. Fucking gringos!
An old Chinaman stopped in front of him:
“Good evening, Mr. García.”
“Good evening, Santiago.”
“You not come today?”
“Later.”
“You look at shop of Mr. Liu, right?”
The Chinaman’s laugh was weak, thick.
“Little Marta very pretty, very pretty.”
“You got a dirty mind, Santiago.”
Santiago walked away, laughing his head off. Fucking Chinamen. They’re always laughing their heads off. And they walk like they’re not even walking, like they’re just floating on air. And they just go floating along from one place to another, from Outer Mongolia to Dolores Street.
He lit a cigarette and walked over to Liu’s shop. Marta was closing up and Liu was hanging the wooden shutters over the shop windows.
“Come in, Mr. García, come in.”
He entered the shop. Marta smiled at him shyly.
“Would you like a lychee, Mr. Filiberto?”
“Yesterday, you called me just plain Filiberto, my lovely.”
“But that was disrespectful.”
García’s eyes shone in the half-light of the shop.
“Would you like to have dinner with me, Marta?”
“I can’t.”
“We can go right here, across the street. And you can tell me what I should order because I don’t know anything about Chinese food.”
“Mr. Liu eats there every night. He knows more about food than I do. . Filiberto.”
García smiled. His smile was cold, as if he wasn’t used to smiling, as if he hadn’t had enough practice.
“How old are you, Marta?”
“Twenty.”
“Have you got a sweetheart?”
“No.”
“You live alone?”
“In a room, upstairs. Mr. Liu lets me live there.”
“You haven’t got any family?”
“No.”
Marta looked nervous, like she wanted to end the conversation.
“You don’t want to have dinner with me?”
“I’m sorry.”
“You don’t want to be seen with an old man, that’s it, isn’t it?”
“You’re not old, Filiberto. But it’s very late, it’s almost nine.”
“We can go to the movies.”
“Another time. . Filiberto.”
“The way I see it, Marta, you must have a sweetheart.”
“Oh, no, Mr. Filiberto. Who would even look at the likes of me?”
“I would, my lovely, ’cause when I see a beautiful woman —”
“Don’t say things like that, you make me blush.”
A man entered the shop and Marta went over to attend to him. The guy looks like a foreigner but not a gringo. He’s too short for a gringo. He looks European, tending toward Polish. I saw him earlier, when I was standing outside, playing the chump there at the door to the cantina. Must be tailing me. They’re already snooping around. Must be the guys from Outer Mongolia. Fucking Outer Mongolia! Crafty bastards. Hey, I got a buddy from Outer Mongolia. Your mother’s from Outer Mongolia. I better get a fix on this shrimp before he starts showing up everywhere, like that lost soul from Sayula in the song, the soul who never finds peace. Fucking souls! Marta is hot, that’s for sure, but I’ll be damned if I’ll ever get to do it with her. I’ve never done it with a Chinese gal. And she’s just a kid. Maybe if I arrange things through one of the Chinamen, then I can do it with her. Like with that Carolina number, the one who was acting all highfalutin, over there on Doctor Vértiz Street. She wouldn’t even let me borrow a smile. Till I arranged things with the owner of the shop and two days later she was mine. They even brought her to my house. All for two hundred pesos and a few favors I could wrangle out of the police. Fucking Carolina! I think it was part of their business plan — snaring chumps like me. For all I know Marta is a business plan for these Chinamen, and they’ll let me take her home so I’ll keep pretending not to know anything about the opium. She’s worth at least two hundred pesos, and I’ve never done it with a Chinese gal. And that Pole, what’s he talking to her about for so long?