Yolanda assumed his melancholic mood had something to do with her, and when Tristán assured her that was not the case, she asked what was bothering him so much. Afraid of confessing he was, perhaps, going insane, he’d been evasive and grown more and more irritated. Yolanda lost her temper, they bickered, and in the end Tristán sat at the bus terminal, chain-smoking and waiting to buy a ticket home.
It had been a disaster, the last nail in the coffin of his relationship with Yolanda, and he did not need Montserrat giving him a sermon about it.
“Yeah, I was fucking someone, if you must know,” he said, his tone cool, but with a bite. “I’m allowed to fuck, unless they’ve established a new morality police I haven’t heard about. Screw you, Montserrat. If you can’t get any it doesn’t mean I’ll go without it.”
He didn’t mean to say all of that. The words came tumbling out because of the stress of the last couple of days when he’d been in the panicked position of discovering one of his friends was dead and the other was being held for questioning. Not to mention his catastrophic fight with Yolanda. It was like getting punched three times in the face.
“I don’t care if you fuck a man, a woman, or sign up for a threesome with a set of twins, what I care about is the fact I kept trying to get in touch with you and you simply weren’t there. I needed you to keep an eye on Abel. You are an unreliable—”
“Do you know how much money it cost me to get you out of the slammer? How many favors I pulled?”
There was a chill to the air, and the businesses were starting to pull down their rolling steel shutters. Montserrat stopped in front of a haberdashery and stared at him.
“Well, do you?”
Montserrat did not reply. She started walking again, and he followed her, his voice rising with each step. “You’re wearing an Iron Maiden t-shirt with the word ‘Killers’ printed on it and you found Abel’s corpse.”
“So?”
“It’s dumb, my eyes, my love. You might as well have held up a sign that said ‘murder suspect right this way.’？”
Montserrat hated it when Tristán slipped into using endearments during arguments. It had been common in his household growing up, but there was nothing that could fuel her rage more than his passive-aggressive dropping of a sweet word. Especially “my love.”
She shoved him, and he collided with the shuttered front of a shop, his back making a loud thud when it hit the steel.
“Excuse me for panicking. Next time I stumble onto a dead man I’ll wear a suit!”
Montserrat’s hands were pressed against his chest, and she glared up at him before attempting to slide away, but he caught her wrist and held her in place.
“Don’t you remember what happened with that Molinet kid a few months back? They found the maid dead in his house, and they said he’d done it because he was a Satanist. And the proof of his Satanism was that he had a Stephen King collection, a copy of Süskind’s Perfume, and a few heavy metal records in his room.
“Cops always try to pin it on an easy target. I should know,” he added, recalling the fuss after Karina passed away. “Orgy in Cuernavaca ends in deadly crash,” that’s what the newspapers said, and he had never been able to shake off that aura of crime and debauchery from himself.
Montserrat gave him the tiniest nod, looking away from his face. “I was scared, okay? That’s why I’m pissed off. I needed you that night.”
“I know,” he muttered.
The tension between them was dissipating. He hated it when they quarreled. It left him a mess. He never knew how to properly apologize.
“Why were you in Abel’s apartment?” he asked.
“Abel said he was going to die. He had a premonition. Everything seemed fine and then he called me in a panic.”
“Did you tell the police this?”
“No. I may be dumb, but I’m not that stupid.”
He sighed and let go of Montserrat’s hand. The haberdashery closed its shutters with a loud clang at the same moment the lamps went on.
“Tell me what happened.”
She did, starting with their meeting at the Zona Rosa, then ending by recounting her conversation with the cops and the questions they had peppered her with. Tristán reached into his pocket and took out a cigarette, toying with it before pressing the tip against the lighter’s flame and giving her a weary look.
“There’s something else, isn’t there?”
“When I was in Abel’s room there was a silence.”
“You mean a noise?”
“No, a silence. Or rather, it was a presence that seemed to muffle the room. It was unnatural; I have never experienced anything like it. I don’t think Abel lied when he said there are such a thing as curses and spells. We need to get back into Abel’s apartment. I can pick the lock, it won’t be a problem.”
“It would be a big problem if someone saw us doing that.”
That, plus the fact that they would be breaking into the place where someone had recently died. It felt to Tristán almost like desecrating a tomb.
“We’ll go late tonight.”
“His death is not our fault.”
“No, but we need to know who was behind it. Can’t you feel it? This is not over.”
Insects began to fly around the lampposts, attracted by the lamps’ glow. He opened his mouth, letting smoke curl up to the heavens, and narrowed his eyes.
“You don’t know that,” he said and started walking.
“Did Abel’s death make the news today? I checked the headlines, but there was nothing. Did it get any play on the radio or TV?”
“No.”
“Don’t you think that’s strange? It’s the kind of story that should be in the tabloids.”
“Maybe it’ll make tomorrow’s edition.”
“I spent forty-eight hours being bullied by cops. They would have tipped off the reporters if there was anything juicy cooking. If they didn’t, it’s because someone didn’t want his death to be a big deal. Reporters writing nota roja don’t suddenly grow shy.”
“You’re getting into conspiracy theory territory. Maybe the stories Cornelia peddles at Enigma are rubbing off on you.”
“Someone murdered Abel, and it was connected to the film he shot decades ago. That’s no conspiracy theory.”
The businesses on the street they were walking down had grown sparser, and now they were going past houses and the occasional apartment building. The windows of an apartment turned red when someone switched on a string of Christmas lights.
“If someone did, then we should leave it alone.”
“I don’t think we can.”
“Why not?”
“Because of that silence I heard in the room. Because something has gone terribly wrong. I don’t think the worst we’re going to encounter are apparitions of dead girlfriends and invisible presences.”
The stretch of sidewalk where they stood was bathed crimson by the Christmas lights. Tristán eyed Montserrat wearily.
“We don’t know that. Let’s get you back home. You can shower, change your clothes, and it’ll be fine in the morning.”