“No problem. We’ll throw nails behind our steps when we leave,” Montserrat said.
He didn’t know what she meant by that, but Marisa clenched her hands together. She smiled as she stood, but the smile looked a little crooked, like she was trying too hard.
They shook hands. Tristán did indeed scribble his pager number on a piece of paper and then pocketed his tape recorder. He gave Marisa a big grin, for the hell of it, and she responded with an interested motion of the head. Tristán still had it. He suspected that, had he been alone conducting the interview, she might have revealed more. When it came to good cop, bad cop, Montserrat steered toward the “beat the suspect until they confess” end of the spectrum. He mentioned this as they waited for the elevator, observing the needle on the brass indicator.
“You mean to say you would have fucked the answers out of her,” Montserrat replied.
“No, but older ladies adore me.”
“You would have gotten distracted without me, and you would have chickened out. You would have fumbled it.”
“That’s a great opinion you have of me.”
The elevator doors opened, and they stepped in. Tristán jabbed the lobby button, and the elevator began its slow descent.
“When we went to the corner store to steal candy, it was me who did the actual stealing,” she said. “You never could.”
She could run faster if they stole, too. The limp didn’t matter. Montserrat was always two steps ahead of Tristán.
“Stealing and talking are two different things. I’m fine with talking. Hey, what was that about nails, by the way?”
“A spell. I don’t have nails. I wanted to see how she’d react.”
“And?”
“She’s nervous.”
“So am I. What do you want to do now?”
“Keep digging. There was something wrong with Marisa.”
“Wrong how?”
“I don’t know. Something…crooked,” Montserrat said.
They stepped out of the elevator and exited the building. Montserrat walked with her hands in her pockets and a determined, stiff strut. The conversation with Marisa had left him wishing for both a cigarette and a drink. He could have neither, not with Montserrat by his side. She’d give him another sermon on throat cancer. He ought to quit the tobacco, he knew that, but a fresh pack of Dunhills seemed awfully enticing.
“That lady said Ewers’s old friends are still up to their magic tricks. They could have murdered Abel,” he said, slipping a hand into his jacket pocket and putting on his sunglasses.
“Maybe. But she also clammed up right when I asked about Ewers’s death. And why would Ewers’s followers kill him?”
“Why would his girlfriend kill him?”
“He was cheating on Alma.”
“Could be he was screwing around on Clarimonde, too.”
“Could be. We better ask her, and ask José, too.”
“How do you plan to find them?”
The leafy oasis of Parque México, with its stone benches and its beautiful fountains, was tantalizingly near, and he thought it might be more pleasing to stroll through its paths than to walk through streets that could be dangerously tinged with spells. Who knew, after all, if Ewers’s runes would indeed be painted along the walls of an underpass? But Montserrat steered him in the opposite direction. They were headed toward the Patriotismo station.
“Abel said Clarimonde published Ewers’s book, and she kept it in print for a long time. Could be the publisher that printed it is still in business. As for José López, I’m thinking I could pay Nando Melgar a visit.”
“You told me Nando was a creep.”
“He is. But he tried to sell me a script of one of Abel’s films a few years ago. He said it had notes by Romeo Donderis in the margins, and he offered to have it authenticated by the man himself. I’ll talk to Nando tomorrow.”
“Listen, tomorrow I’m booked all day. I have this publicity thing for the new role. But if you postpone it, I’ll tag along.”
“I won’t be in any mortal danger.”
“So, I need you to ask questions properly, but you don’t need me?” he asked without bothering to conceal his irritation.
“I don’t need you, no.”
He frowned. She was his co-conspirator, his best and truest friend, but sometimes she annoyed the hell out of him.
Montserrat let out a laugh. She placed a hand on his arm, as if trying to soothe his feelings. “I can handle Nando. He tries to pinch my ass, I punch him in the nuts. He knows how it goes with me.”
“What if he’s a masochist who enjoys having his nuts squeezed?”
“You worry too much.”
“I do, not all about Nando, either,” Tristán said, warily eyeing the crosswalk signal. “This talk of runes has me scared.”
“You should never be afraid of magic. That’s what Ewers said in his book. Fear gives others power over you and clouds your mind. It makes the magic go sour. Which makes sense, if you think you’ve been hexed, you live looking for signs of danger.”
“I would think that is logical.”
“Not the way he saw it. You had to be fearless.”
“Why are you following this guy’s advice?” he asked, irked by the way she spoke. She sounded almost pleased.
“I’m trying to understand the logic he employed, the underlying mechanism. Like Abel said, Ewers wasn’t coming up with these ideas out of nowhere. He was mixing and matching. He wasn’t that original.”
“What is original? Every soap I was ever on was another soap with different names.”
“Precisely. So even if Ewers thought a little much about himself, he might have stumbled onto a few good tips.”
Tristán paused at a corner and looked down at Montserrat, taking off his sunglasses and staring into her eyes. “Be careful. I mean it, Momo,” he said, dropping his voice. “This shit is dangerous.”
She didn’t blink, tilting up her determined chin, and spoke with a polished brashness. “I was caught off guard at Abel’s apartment, but I won’t be caught again.”
“You’re a terror,” he muttered, and he meant it.
16
It was colder that morning, and Montserrat’s leg ached. She could do nothing about it except rub the limb and plug in the electric blanket. She dallied in bed, comforted by its warmth, and went through the notes she had gathered.
Her meeting with Nando wasn’t until two p.m., so she had time to craft a defensive charm. Ewers’s book was at first glance disorganized. But this was a mirage intended to either ward off dilettantes or enhance the book’s mystique. Anyway, Montserrat had grasped the method he used to explain his magic knowledge. He divided magic into a system of levels and elements, with corresponding runes. According to him, adepts could only grasp the barest glimpses of this magic, while hierophants were able to wield it.
Water was associated with death—Ewers made his case by citing both Lethe and the Styx—and therefore with the past. Necromancy, automatic writing, retrocognition were detailed in the chapter he called “The Permutation of Water.”
“The Whispers of the Earth” focused on the earth element, and therefore was associated with precious metals and with minerals. He also connected earth with plants and fungi, and thus, it was not difficult to discern why Ewers associated this element with potions and medicine—but also with hexes, as the same elements that could heal someone could also kill them. Ewers tied earth to visions of the future and clairvoyant powers, reasoning that all mirrors and crystals, which can be used for scrying, ultimately came from the depths of the earth. He even mentioned John Dee’s obsidian mirror, made from volcanic glass mined in Mexico, which he used to foretell events.