Certain Dark Things(76)

“Hey, Aguirre, I’ve got a guy who says he saw something in connection to your case.”

“Tell Luna about it. He’s the lead on it,” Ana muttered.

“Like I wouldn’t have tried that. Luna’s not here.”

He was probably banging his mistress in a cheap motel that charged by the hour.

“Will you talk to the damn guy?”

“Yeah, sure. Send him over,” Ana said.

She pulled out the voice recorder and her notepad. A man in a striped shirt sat down across the desk from her, looking nervous.

“I’m Detective Aguirre. They tell me you want to speak with me?” she said, and did not even bother sounding like she was interested. She should have had the damn coffee and a bit of food.

“It was a terrible stench, just awful. Like rotting meat,” he blurted. “It was that psychopath vampire from the papers.”

She could smell the booze even from across the desk. Ana looked into the old guy’s face and hoped this wasn’t an alcoholic who’d had a vivid hallucination. The crazies came out in force anytime a big crime took place.

“Sir. Let’s slow down. You say you saw a vampire?”

“They were riding in my car.”

“Okay. How did they get into your car?”

“How do you think they got in?” the man spluttered. “I drive a taxi. They just got in. I had no idea until she grabbed me by the neck and threatened me and she smelled bad, terrible, like meat that’s gone bad. There was a boy, too. And a damn dog.”

Ana held her pen up, pausing. “A dog?”

“Yes, a big dog. They made me drive them around.”

She leaned forward. “Do you remember where you took them?”

“To the Roma.”

“Where in the Roma?”

“I don’t know. A house.” He shook his head. “I was too spooked to pay attention to it. But my friend, he told me today that you guys give rewards for this kind of stuff. How much are you giving?”

“Sir, does your taxi have a geolocator? Taxi companies use it nowadays to track where the vehicles are.”

“No. What do you think I’m rich to be having this fancy geolocator shit?”

Could be he was driving an illegal taxi or didn’t care for it. “I don’t think anything. You think hard. Can you remember anything about the street you dropped them off at?” Ana asked.

“It was in the Roma. It’s what I know.”

The Roma. It had been a big vampire quarter, once upon a time. They’d all left. Except she remembered hearing a rumor from Archibaldo Ramos, who’d been in hot water—well, more than usual—a couple of years before when they busted him trying to run a prostitution ring near Coyoacán. Cops weren’t very nice when people weren’t paying their bribes, and Ramos thought he could just pull the wool over everyone’s eyes and not have to pay anyone off. Ramos, whom she’d met several times before, was aware she had an interest in vampires and tried to gain brownie points by regaling her with vampire stories. He’d mentioned the vampires of the Roma and hinted one remained there. At the time she thought he was just bullshitting her. She wasn’t so sure anymore.

“All right, that’s good. I’ll file your statement,” Ana said.

“What about my money?”

“There’s no reward money.”

“That’s bullshit, lady! Plain bullshit!”

Several officers turned their heads to look at them. Ana could have the guy arrested, but it would mess up her plan. She reached into her wallet and found a bill. “Here’s a hundred and get out,” she said.

The guy took the bill and crumpled it, but he didn’t say anything else and walked out. Ana logged in to one of the databases and scanned it for info. She then grabbed a few papers and went over to the officer who had sent the taxi driver over to her.

“I’m heading out again. If Castillo asks I was sick, all right?”

The officer, who was busy browsing ties on the Internet—she could see the site on the monitor behind him—sneered at Ana. “Suddenly got your period, Aguirre?”

“I think you’re the one who’s PMSing, *,” she said.

She was sure that was going to go in her file, under “lack of team spirit and cooperative skill building,” but she didn’t give one fine f*ck.





CHAPTER

31

At night, Plaza Garibaldi was overrun with mariachi bands and drunkards. Adventurous tourists walked around, trying to ignore the indigents gathering at the fringes of the plaza. It was a seedy place and no amount of rehabilitation could possibly bring the area under the blanket of respectability, though the city planners had given it a halfhearted attempt, stringing numerous green and red LED lights on buildings in a futile attempt at festivity.

There were a lot of bars near the plaza. The Tenampa stood out due to its yellow fa?ade and its history: it harked back to the ’20s and the story went that the painter Frida Kahlo used to hang out there. It was, like anything else in the area, a little tacky. The Tenampa was also crowded, though Domingo imagined it had been crowded for decades. Three mariachi groups and a jarocho band played in the joint, while roaming mariachis walked around the tables, looking for customers willing to pay for a song.