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  Praise for Martín Solares and The Black Minutes

  “Stunning. His characters simultaneously move toward resolution and the void, each success paradoxically dragging them down.”

  —Nation

  “Solares’s prose—alternately playful, poetic, and plainspoken—propels the pages.”

  —Booklist

  “Martín Solares uses the codes and formula of classic crime novels to create a universe where the reader is permanently on a fluctuating border between dream and reality, between fiction and the authentic violence of facts.”

  —Le Monde (France)

  “[Martín Solares’s] debut novel is risky business … One of the most ambitious crime novels that Mexico has had to offer since the great works of Paco Ignacio Taibo II.”

  —Titel Magazin (Germany)

  “This first novel by Solares will satisfy—to an immense degree, believe me—those who enjoy impossible missions and quixotic adventures.”

  —El País (Spain)

  “Solares displays an impressive string of situations, and constructs an action-packed plot that never declines … A true novelist.”

  —El Mundo (Spain)

  Also by Martín Solares

  The Black Minutes

  DON’T

  SEND

  FLOWERS

  MARTÍN SOLARES

  Translated by Heather Cleary

  Copyright © 2015 by Martín Solares

  English translation copyright © 2018 by Heather Cleary

  Cover design by Gretchen Mergenthaler

  Cover photograph © plainpicture/Demurez

  Cover Arts/Ellen & Udo Klinkel

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Scanning, uploading, and electronic distribution of this book or the facilitation of such without the permission of the publisher is prohibited. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated. Any member of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or anthology, should send inquiries to Grove Atlantic, 154 West 14th Street, New York, NY 10011 or [email protected].

  Martín Solares is represented by Schavelzon Graham Agencia Literaria, schavelzongraham.com.

  Originally published in Spanish under the title No manden flores in 2015

  by Literatura Random House, Barcelona and Ciudad de México.

  Published simultaneously in Canada

  Printed in the United States of America

  First Grove Atlantic hardcover edition: August 2018

  This book was set in 11.2-pt Perpetua by Alpha Design & Composition of Pittsfield, NH.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is available for this title.

  ISBN 978-0-8021-2815-7

  eISBN 978-0-8021-4620-5

  Black Cat

  an imprint of Grove Atlantic

  154 West 14th Street

  New York, NY 10011

  Distributed by Publishers Group West

  groveatlantic.com

  18 19 20 21 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Praise for Martín Solares and The Black Minutes

  Also by Martín Solares

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Part One: The Mysteries of La Eternidad

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Part Two: Chief Margarito and the Conversation in the Dark

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Epilogue

  The Last Word

  Back Cover

  PART ONE

  The Mysteries of La Eternidad

  1

  He told them there was someone who could find the girl: an ex-cop.

  He told them that if this individual was still alive after the trouble he’d had with his own team, he’d be just the man for the job. He’d survived assignments like this one—where a death wish was more of an asset than deductive skills—several times already. He told them that if this man was still alive, which wasn’t entirely unlikely, they might find him in one of the next states over, Veracruz or San Luis Potosí. Every so often an informant would claim to have seen him on the highway heading into La Eternidad. According to these reports, he said, the individual in question still drives a white car. He settles in at a certain restaurant down near the breakwater for a few hours, chats with the owners, sees to his business, and heads back the way he came. No one knows where he goes. Others say he’s always in and out of town and might be mixed up in smuggling, but I don’t think so, vouched consul Don Williams. He always kept on the right side of the law. You might even have hired him at some point, Mr. De León. In any event, if this guy does happen to still be alive, he’d be just the man for the job.

  Mr. De León asked what the individual’s name was and the consul replied,

  “Carlos Treviño.”

  “Don’t know him,” the magnate snapped. He prided himself on knowing each of his employees, and Treviño had never been on his payroll. “I don’t know him and the name doesn’t ring a bell. I won’t risk it. I can’t take the chance he’s working for them.”

  “Treviño would never work for a criminal,” the gringo insisted. “Not knowingly, at least. Unlike most people in this city.”

  He was interrupted by a loud crack.

  “What was that?” the consul asked, while Mr. De León’s bodyguards craned their necks like two dogs sniffing out danger. “It sounded like it came from nearby,” the consul insisted, but neither the woman nor the men at the table budged. The sound of gunshots—a single round or a hail of bullets—or a grenade blast in the distance as night fell had become a part of life around the port, no more unusual than the words extortion and kidnapping. Noticing the consul’s anxiety, Valentín Bustamante, a.k.a. the Bus, the head of Mr. De León’s security detail, stepped onto the terrace to have a look through the magnate’s telescope. A fat man with a skinny mustache, he moved his six-foot-three frame with an agility unimaginable for someone his size, as if gravity didn’t exist, and pointed the instrument at the next neighborhood over. Hunched over like that, his round face and childlike features accented by his ridiculous facial hair, he almost looked like someone who wouldn’t hurt a fly. Which was true, as long as that fly was under three feet tall and posed no threat to Mr. De León. Meanwhile, Rodolfo Moreno Valle—second in command of the magnate’s security detail and as serious as a heart attack with his bushy eyebrows, goatee, cowboy boots, and black leather jacket—walked over to cover his associate’s position next to the door and stood there wi
th his arms crossed.

  For a few seconds, the rustling of the palm trees was the only sound. A northern wind was blowing in, one of those that haunt the Gulf and can hang around for ten or twelve hours, knocking down trees and old houses. The gale reached out to stir up a handful of paper napkins next to the coffeepot with the tips of its fingers; for a moment, the napkins seemed to come to life, as if they were trying to transmit a message. The meeting was being held in Mr. De León’s mansion, one of the biggest in the luxe portside neighborhood next to a valley of slums on this side of the river. It was a three-story abode inspired by California’s Spanish colonial revivals, with huge picture windows and terraces adorned with wrought iron and carved stone, in a gated community complete with a small golf course, swimming pool, and a natural spring. All this, of course, could be seen only if you made it past the walled perimeter accented by flowering vines and bodyguards. The windows looked out over the lagoon—without question the most beautiful stretch of La Eternidad’s port—but no one was there to talk about beauty.

  “Why play dumb?” Mr. De León’s wife asked. She was a tall, prickly blonde used to getting her way: an overbearing woman who was still in shape at forty-five thanks in large part to her bad temper. “Go talk to the three bosses, offer them some cash, and put an end to this.”

  “That would put your daughter at enormous risk,” the consul objected. “If they don’t realize she’s disappeared, that’s one advantage we have. We need to find another way.”

  “Well, the two of you seem pretty relaxed,” she snapped. “I can’t even imagine what Cristina must be going through right now, kidnapped and terrorized by those animals.”

  The consul looked at his watch. It was true: thirty-six hours had passed since the girl disappeared, and every minute that went by made it seem less likely they’d find her alive.

  A truck’s brakes screeched on a nearby street. The consul looked Mr. De León squarely in the eye.

  “We don’t have time to waste. Instead of waiting for them to contact us, send a specialist in to find her. One who won’t raise suspicions. The detective I’m recommending is fearless and discreet. He could run an investigation and come up with a strategy for getting her back. He knows the area and has a team, or at least he did a few months ago. He’s brilliant, the type who can handle any situation. He could get himself out of a whale’s belly if he needed to.”

  A shadow fell across Mr. De León’s face.

  “And why should I hire this guy, when I have an army of bodyguards at my disposal?” he said, gesturing toward the most threatening member of his security detail, the man with the goatee. “Moreno’s an ace with this kind of mission; he was trained by the German military. Why would I hire someone I know nothing about?”

  The consul, aware that the businessman was a two-hundred-pound bundle of nerves, replied as diplomatically as possible: “I’m afraid your bodyguards wouldn’t be able to infiltrate their ranks without being detected, Rafael, especially not the ones you trust most. Whoever got close enough to kidnap your daughter must have been studying your security for months. As for La Eternidad’s police and military, I wouldn’t recommend calling them in on this. The police would sell their souls to the devil if he was the highest bidder, and the military depends on the politicians. And you know who they work for. This guy was the best detective the port had seen in years. He was the one who caught the Chainsaw Killer.”

  The businessman’s wife eyed him suspiciously.

  “The Chainsaw Killer? The one who murdered those girls?” They were talking about a maniac who kidnapped young women from different parts of the city and tortured them. “That doesn’t mean a thing,” she went on. “Everyone knows the guy they caught was just a scapegoat.”

  “Precisely,” said the consul. “The man officially accused of the crimes is innocent, but the detective I’ve been telling you about caught the real killer and ended up in hot water with his colleagues because of it.”

  Mr. De León looked up when he heard this, intrigued. The case had been big news around the Gulf of Mexico because of the criminal’s extraordinary cruelty, because of how hard it had been to find him, and, above all, because of the scandal that erupted when word got out they’d let the maniac walk while an innocent man rotted away in a jail cell.

  “That was a long time ago,” thundered the businessman. “If he’s as good as you say, why hasn’t anyone heard of him? Shouldn’t he be famous by now?”

  “A good detective doesn’t get famous,” said the consul.

  “Will you vouch for him?” the magnate asked.

  The consul cleared his throat.

  “Listen, I’m not saying he’s squeaky-clean. He’s probably taken a bribe or two, like everyone at police headquarters. But in the Chainsaw Killer case, he was the only ranking officer who actually tried to catch the criminal, even if his enemies say he was only in it for the reward. You know how things are here. But as long as he was on the force, he always collaborated with the consulate and with me directly, to the extent permitted by Mexican law, of course. He kept it on the straight and narrow. That’s why he only lasted four years on the job. Treviño’s one of the few honest people I’ve met in the Gulf.” Noticing the silence this last remark provoked across the table, he added, “An honest man who’d be worthy of a position in your family’s company.”

  Mr. De León and his wife nodded, as if appeased, and the consul made a note in some corner of his brain to show more respect in the future.

  The door to the terrace opened again and the fat man with the absurd mustache walked back into the room, wrapping up a conversation on his walkie-talkie with, “Affirmative.” He installed himself next to Mr. De León and didn’t say a word until the consul asked him, “What’s going on out there?”

  “There’s activity in Colonia Pescadores. La Cuarenta’s thugs. It’s the weekend, they must be off their asses. I also hear the boy hasn’t come to yet, but we’re keeping an eye on him.”

  He was talking about Cristina’s boyfriend, who was still in the hospital. Mr. De León turned crimson with rage.

  “I told you to leave him alone!”

  “It was my idea,” interrupted the consul. “I didn’t want to take any chances. We’re watching him as a precaution.”

  It wasn’t likely the boyfriend would ever speak again, but the consul desperately wanted to hear what he had to say since he was the only witness to what happened. Sitting there, a balding old man with a potbelly, dressed in a plaid shirt and construction boots, he didn’t look like much. But he’d been the consul to the United States there in La Eternidad for more than ten years and was one of the people who knew the most about crime in the region. To his friends, he was Don Williams; to Chief Margarito and company, he was Our Consul, if they were on good terms, and That Asshole Don Williams, if they felt he’d stuck his nose in above his pay grade in La Eternidad. There was no doubt in Mr. De León’s mind that if there was a security expert in La Eternidad, the gringo was it. The minute he heard they’d found Cristina’s car and that her boyfriend, Alberto Perkins, was in critical condition, he chose Williams to lead the investigation and negotiations.

  “If they’re going to keep an eye on him, make sure they’re discreet. Remember, his father’s an associate of mine,” Mr. De León said. “Damn it, Consul. Stop wasting time. It was Los Nuevos.”

  There was no evidence to support the magnate’s theory, but the possibility worried the consul just the same. If it did turn out to be Los Nuevos, it was only a matter of time before they’d find the girl’s body, probably with signs of torture. But no one was calling to demand a ransom, and there were no new leads to follow.

  “Duckie, go talk to Margarito,” begged Mrs. De León, calling Don Williams, a.k.a. Donald Duck, a.k.a. That Fucking Gringo, by a nickname only his closest friends used.

  Since they couldn’t keep the local police from getting involved in the case—they were the ones who’d found the car, after all—De León and Don Williams had met
with Chief Margarito at the magnate’s home the night before. It was a hostile encounter: they barely said a word to the port’s chief of police. They listened to what he had to say—“We’ll find the girl, don’t worry, sir”—and sent him off. The consul thought he was a prime suspect. Given the chief’s reputation, they couldn’t rule out that he was involved in the kidnapping or that he might get involved: he was the kind who would rescue the girl just so he could hide her again and demand three times the ransom—which is why the only information they gave him was a recent photo of Cristina.

  Unfortunately, it was pointless to turn to local politicians or the mayor for help: they were all the governor’s lapdogs, even though Mr. De León had bankrolled more than one of their campaigns and had friends and relatives among them. There were two rumors circulating about the governor of Tamaulipas. The negative version was that the Gov permitted this wave of violence because he was the one who had founded Los Nuevos, the most terrifying criminal organization working in the Gulf, a huge operation that specialized in terrorizing the locals by torturing and dismembering its rivals. According to the positive version, though, the governor wasn’t one of the criminals. He just turned a blind eye to their crimes in exchange for a generous monthly payout. When crime rose to truly outrageous levels in the state, a group of businessmen went to see the governor to complain about all the kidnappings, robberies, and extortion, and the cynical way Los Nuevos showed up each month to charge the Business Association an astronomical fee in exchange for so-called protection, just to let them work in peace. The whole time the businessmen were explaining the situation, even presenting photos of the men who were extorting them, the Gov never took his eyes off his BlackBerry; he typed away on it, all smiles, as if he were playing a game or sending jokes to someone. One of the businessmen eventually reached over to cover the screen with his hand and asked, “What are we supposed to do, Your Honor?” To which the governor replied, “Pay them, of course.”

  One of the businessmen who’d been at that meeting told the consul all this while drowning his sorrows in a bottle of whiskey. That’s how things were around there. The gringo was no stranger to Chihuahua or Durango, Nuevo León or Coahuila, Baja California or Sonora, and he’d come to the conclusion that—though the competition was tight—for three years and counting, Los Nuevos had been the bloodiest, most ruthless criminal organization in the Gulf: a state within the state run by psychopaths who acted with total impunity.