Mexico City
The Dessault Falcon settled down through the clouds and floated into the light field of Mexico City’s dusk. From this distance, the ancient city’s lights were a dull coppery glow, a hue that added to the mystery of the six-hundred-year-old metropolis.
Bern sat forward in the cabin, ignored by two men who had entered at the last moment, walked past him without acknowledging him, and sat together at the back of the small aircraft. As the Falcon banked and descended toward Toluca, forty-two miles west of Mexico City-private and charter jets were not allowed at Benito Juarez International-the grid of Mexico City’s avenues and boulevards emerged out of the light shimmer as the city became three-dimensional.
The Falcon whispered onto the tarmac at Toluca and came to rest at the dark end of a runway far from the terminals. Bern glanced back at the two men, who were now silent and staring straight at him without expression. He left the aircraft and descended the steps to a waiting Mercedes, where a door was being held open for him by a young Mexican man with a snappy suit and a ready smile.
“Mr. Bern?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Welcome to Mexico.”
The young man sat on the passenger side as the driver maneuvered into the traffic, heading to Mexico City. There was no conversation during the hour’s drive, but occasionally the young man spoke softly into a cell phone when it blinked at him, or when he placed a call by punching a single number.
Once they were in Mexico City, Bern gazed out his window at the famous city of contrasts. The summer-evening rains had left the streets washed and glistening, but the grime remained in the shadows, and this was a city of shadows. Beauty was a queen here, but a dying queen. This city of the twenty-first century owed much of its undeniable charm to the nearly seven hundred years of its past. The allurements and the enchantments remained, but they were dressed in melancholy.
Condesa was the gentrified neighborhood of Mexico’s elite when it flourished during the l920s and l930s. It was rich in fine examples of Art Deco architecture. During the latter half of the twentieth century, it had fallen on hard times, but it was now something of a cause celebre with young artists, writers, and foreigners who had moved into the area and had begun a serious movement to save the exquisite architecture. Now the neighborhood was booming with sidewalk cafes and hip new restaurants springing up everywhere.
The heart of Condesa was the lush and beautiful Parque Mexico, which had been built on the site of a nineteenth-century racetrack. The park was oval and was surrounded by two concentric oval avenues, the innermost of which was Avenida Mexico, into which the Mercedes now turned. The car cruised slowly under the jacarandas that were planted on the outermost ring of the park and formed a canopy over the encircling sidewalk and street.
After they had gone nearly half the distance of the park’s length, the driver pulled to the curb on the park side of the street. He cut the motor.
The young man who had held the door open for him now turned and put his arm on the back of his seat and looked over it at Bern.
“He lived right here”-he jerked his head toward the building across the narrow street-“the one with the leaded-glass doors.”
Bern looked out the car window at the building’s entryway, where a slightly amber light came through the frosted-glass panels, throwing the Deco design of the leading into clean relief. The building was narrow, three stories, its Deco facade different from its neighbors on either side.
“Second and third floors. There’s no one there now,” the young man said, speaking softly. He reached over the seat and handed Bern a ring with two keys on it. “Hang on to them. They are a special kind, and it’ll be hell to replace them if you lose them. The fat one is for the outside door. The other is for the front door of the apartment.”
“So I go in there. Then what?”
“Someone will contact you. Don’t answer the door. Not yet. People will see the lights and think that he’s returned.”
“They’ll wonder why I’m not answering.”
He shrugged. “Let them wonder.”
“That’s it?”
“This is all we’re supposed to do, bring you here, give you the key, tell you not to answer the door, tell you someone will contact you.”
Bern nodded. “Okay. Thanks.”
He opened the back door of the car and got out. Avenida Mexico was little more than a narrow lane. He crossed it in a few steps, and when his feet hit the sidewalk on the other side, he heard the Mercedes start up. He didn’t look back as he heard it pull into the street and drive away.
An awning made of wrought iron and inset with square glass blocks hung over the front doors, the frames of which were made of a deep amber wood. Bern put the key in the lock and went into a small entry with a tessellated floor of black-and-white tiles. There was another frosted-glass door in front of him, and to his left the stone stairs ascended sharply in a turn to the second floor.
He started up the stairs, his shoes scraping softly on the stones. For some reason, he counted them, but when he reached the top, he didn’t even remember how many there had been. The landing was small, illuminated by the soft glow from a globed light over the door. A window looked out on Parque Mexico. There was a portrait, a pencil drawing, on the wall next to the doorbell. It depicted a young man whose hairstyle and clothes seemed to place him in the 1930s. No signature.
Bern put the second key in the door, unlocked it, and pushed the door open. He stood there a moment, looking into the darkness. The anxiety he felt had nothing to do with fear. It was the anticipation of walking into a paradox, the life and world of a stranger he knew intimately. Already he could smell the rooms in the darkness in front of him, and they reminded him of the apartments in Paris that he had lived in, the odors of old wood and paints and canvas and cigarettes. .. and, yes, of the faint presence of women.
He fumbled along the wall and found the light switch. He was in a small entry hall, which had glass panels above the wood wainscoting. There was mail scattered all over the floor. But not enough to be six weeks’ worth. Someone had been picking it up every few days, he guessed.
He closed the door behind him, stepped over the mail, and went into the front room. Comfortable furniture, the walls covered with framed pictures-drawings, oil paintings, pastels, along with some black-and-white photographs. He went straight to the artworks. They seemed to be of every age and era, but a few contemporary ones bore the signature of Jude Teller. Eagerly, he looked closely at these. Jude had been good, as Mondragon had said. His classical training was indeed evident in the portraits, and even in the few nudes. His eye was fresh, and his style was sure and confident.
Art magazines were scattered about the room, and a few small sculptures stood here and there. One bust. Bern went over to it. Bronze. This, too, bore Jude’s signature, a woman’s head, as well as her neck and the tops of her breasts. As he bent down and studied the work closely, he was surprised by the admiration, and maybe even a twinge of envy, that he felt. Jude had been very good indeed, and Bern doubted if he could have accomplished the quality of animation that this bust exhibited. Jesus.
He turned away and scanned the rest of the room. Every wall bore some kind of artwork. The room was also divided by wainscoting with glass above. On one side, a stairwell ascended, turning to the right. A short, wide corridor led past a dining room, a bathroom across the hall, and then to a large kitchen that looked out over an inner courtyard on the ground floor.
Bern returned to the front room and went up the stairs, turning on lights as he went. The stairs opened into a spacious third-floor studio scattered about with the paraphernalia of an artist’s craft and smelling of wood and resins and oil paints. A row of windows looked out over the treetops of Parque Mexico.
There was a bedroom off the far side of the studio; it was a long one, with windows on the street end that had the same view of the park as the windows in the studio. The other end of the room opened onto a rooftop terrace. This was Jude’s bedroom. His clothes were in the closets. Bern checked the sizes in the suits and the shirts. Same as his. The styles and colors would suit his own tastes exactly, and they could easily have been found in his own closet.
He went to the bathroom and stood at the sink. Jude’s razor was there on the marble countertop in a green glass bowl, just the right shape for it. There was a tall, cylindrical black-and-gold tin of talcum powder. An amber bottle of cologne. Bern picked it up and swept it under his nose. It was the saddest fragrance he could imagine.
The place was instantly saturated with familiarity, as if he were in his own home after his own death, longing to be alive again, and sad beyond expression to have left so much behind.
Suddenly, he thought he heard the door downstairs. Startled, he held his breath and touched the sink to ground himself, to steady a slight dizziness.
“Jude?” A woman’s voice. “Hey,” she called, “when did you get in?”
He heard the door close and her footsteps crossing the wooden floors of the rooms. She started up the stairs.