The World of Logan Terret
"Terret cleverly riffs on hardboiled fiction tropes, piling on red herrings and suspects to deliriously entertaining effect." —Publishers Weekly
"An engaging mix of humor, mystery, history, and geologic curiosities." — Kirkus Reviews
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Excerpt: The First Appearance of the Soldadera
“No matter,” she says, handing me the leather portfolio. “This was written by my great-grandmother. The original is in her handwriting, and there is also an English translation. It is my own translation, so you may be sure it is a good one, but if you have doubts, consult the original. You may return this to Bruno tomorrow morning.”
She says good night, and I retire to the casita. I strip and turn on the lamp at the head of the bed, which gives ample light. I open the portfolio and start reading.
How I Did Justice to the Murderers of Sr. Emilio I. Rayón
One afternoon in early 1916, a Monday and a wash day at the Rayón house, I was ironing three of Sr. Rayón’s shirts. A woman from the mine did the laundry, but I insisted on ironing his shirts myself because they were costly, and a careless laundress had once ruined some of them. I was glad to iron his shirts. Sr. Rayón was a kind man who believed, as Villa did, that it was the job of the rich to relieve the poor of their misery.
We were expecting him to arrive before sunset that day, along with three hacendados who we interested in the mine’s operations. I was in the courtyard, where we had a small portable firebox to heat the irons. Marco the stableman came to me and said a boy had important news for me.
The boy was no more than twelve or thirteen, but a robust lad with a repeating rifle. He told me he had been out hunting deer and saw four men on fine horses coming, he thought, from Sáric. One was Sr. Rayón. When they were four leagues south of us, the biggest man grabbed the reins of Rayón’s horse, a second man shot him three times with a revolver, and a third man shot him three times as well. Rayón drew his pistol but fell forward in the saddle before he could fire it. The boy ran most of the way here to give me the news. Neither Marco nor anyone else heard the boy tell me this, and I told him to tell no one. His father was one of the miners. I told him to go to his father’s cottage and stay there.
My grief was very great, but I could contain it. I had lost many friends since the revolution began in 1910. I resolved to pretend that I had not heard of the crime these men had done and to deal with them later as they had dealt with Sr. Rayón. There was no law here at that time. If I called on the miners to work justice, they might suffer reprisals later. If I did it myself, only I would suffer if my deed was discovered.
I went back to ironing as if nothing had happened. Two hours later, the men arrived. I recognized them as Don Agustín, Don Aurelio, and Don Porfirio. They were all rich men, but cunning and greedy. They had poor Sr. Rayón’s body tied over the saddle. They said they were attacked by Villistas on the way from Sáric and repulsed them, but not before the villains had shot Sr. Rayón six times. The entire household turned out and wept.
Marco and Carlito the porter took the body and laid it on a long table in the central hallway. I could see he had indeed been shot six times, just as the boy had told me. We lighted lamps around the body and Carlito and a maid stood watch over it. The scene horrified me. In the gloomy hallway with its dark walls, his body on the heavy table, surrounded by lamps, looked like a pagan sacrifice or a mummy in an Egyptian tomb. I hurried to my bedroom, where there was a prie-dieu with a large crucifix. I brought the crucifix back and set it at Sr. Rayón’s head.
I showed the men into the drawing room and asked Carlito to bring them refreshments while I enquired on the progress of the dinner. In truth, I needed time to plan.
But first I needed to confirm the boy’s story. This was easily done. A storeroom shares one wall with the drawing room, and on that wall, the wood paneling of the drawing room covers an old doorway. So instead of the thick adobe wall, there is only thin paneling, and a very small gap, low on the wall, created when the wood shrank as it dried in this desert, through which one can see and hear. I found this when I was a little girl helping my mother clean the house. I entered the storeroom and watched and listened. I could not believe how freely and callously they spoke of their crime. Their purpose, as I assumed, was to gain control of the mine after Sr. Rayón’s death. They spoke as if it was already theirs. But that was not to happen.
The biggest and most dangerous of the three men was Don Aurelio. Though big, he had the sugar [diabetes] and was not very strong. He was a lustful man and abused the wives and daughters of his tenants. He also drank too much. Don Agustín was an old miser and envied anyone younger than he. Don Porfirio was young, and in other times might have been a good man, but bad companions had twisted his weak will. I make no excuse for him; I say only that men of weak will can easily be bent to good or evil by their companions and by the times in which they live. Such men therefore cannot be trusted, however good they may seem at any one time.
I took a decanter of spiced brandy from the sideboard in the dining room. In a windowless, locked room in the servant’s wing, we kept a supply of medicines. Only I had the key. One of these medicines was a strong tincture of opium. I added a large dose of this to the brandy, then took the decanter and two glasses to my bedroom, placing them on a table near the bed.
I changed clothes, choosing a blouse that flattered my bosom and a skirt that did the same for my rump. I put on my best shoes. But more than that, I let my hair down. My hair did something to men. This is not true for all women, but my hair was long and a shining black, and it drove men mad with desire.
I returned to the drawing room and told them dinner would be served in the hour of ten. It was customary to dine at that hour in the Rayón house. The three men were playing cards. Don Agustín and Don Porfirio were intent on the game and scarcely noticed me. Don Aurelio looked at me with naked lust. I returned his look with a knowing smile and walked slowly to the doorway. He threw down his hand and came to me.
“If you would do what you are thinking, follow me,” I said. He followed me through the central hall, scarcely noticing the body of the man he had helped to murder, then into the servants’ wing and into my bedroom. I locked the door, and he grinned. I had him sit down in a comfortable chair and removed his boots. I could see he was not yet aroused. His lust was undiminished, but the sugar illness hampered his performance, as it does in many men.
As I expected, he saw the decanter and asked for a drink. I poured him a large glass and took it to him, taking a sip myself to allay any suspicions, though he had none. Opium is bitter, but the spices in the brandy overwhelmed that. I told him the spices would increase his ardor, and he drained the glass in a few gulps.
I massaged his feet and engaged in flattery and light foreplay. Soon the drug had its effect. He fell into a deep sleep while sitting in the chair.
Before I could proceed with the rest of my plan, Don Agustín and Don Porfirio knocked at the door. “Aurelio,” Don Agustín said, “we have waited long enough. You cannot leave the game when you have won so much from us.”
Don Aurelio could not speak, of course, but I could. I began to make the sounds of passion. The two men laughed. “Join us when you have made an end, Aurelio,” Don Agustín said.
I waited a short time, then left my bedroom by its side entrance and went to the stable. Marco was there, cleaning a stall. I told him to go to the mine comedor for dinner, telling the cook it was my orders. That was about a half league west of the Rayón house, a thirty-minute walk away. I charged him to tell no one that Sr. Rayón was dead. He understood I wanted to keep people away at such a time and announce the news tomorrow. He left.
I tossed my hair, making it convincingly disheveled, and gave my blouse and skirt a look of hasty dressing. Then I went to Sr. Rayón’s bedroom and took a revolver and a handful of cartridges from his washstand. The revolver was loaded and of the same make, model, and caliber as the guns of Don Agustín and Don Porfirio, which I had noted when they arrived. At that time, I could identify the make, model, and caliber of dozens of guns, even at a distance. I put the revolver in the waistband of my skirt, under my blouse. Then I went to the drawing room.
“Pardon my intrusion, Dones,” I said, “Don Aurelio will rejoin you soon. But the stableman says that Don Porfirio’s black mare is lame.”
“Lame? Not unless the fool has made her so,” Don Porfirio said.
Don Agustín sighed. “These things happen, Porfirio. Let us go and see.”
I had taken a lantern from the stable when Marco left, and I guided the two men there. All the way, they upbraided the absent Marco, whom they had never even met, saying that only a caballero truly knew how to care for a horse. This vicious talk made what I had to do next all the easier for me.
We entered the stable, and they walked to the stall where the mare was standing. I drew my revolver. They looked at the mare, saw no sign of lameness, then turned to me in anger. I shot each man three times. They were not strong men and fell where they stood. I have seen men fight on, briefly, after being shot in the heart. Not these two.
I put their revolvers in their hands to make it appear they had shot each other. Had they reloaded after shooting Sr. Rayón? I checked and they had, so I switched empty shells from my gun for the live ones in theirs, three empties in each gun. Nowadays, of course, such a fraud could be detected by science, but not then.
My precautions were unnecessary. Nobody came from the house or anywhere else. Marco had gone to the mine’s mess hall. Carlito and the maid would not leave Sr. Rayón’s body unattended, because of superstition, and the cook was attending to dinner. Also, they probably thought the shots came from somewhere outside the walls, perhaps from Marco shooting at coyotes or other pests, as he sometimes did.
I waited in the stable a long hour, until it was nearly ten. I could see that I would need Marco’s help. He returned and found me. I told him I did not know what had happened, but the men had been arguing about something and must have shot each other. Marco said we must tell no one. The killing of two such prominent Carrancistas was sure to be blamed on us, given the known political sympathies of Sr. Rayón and his servants and miners. This was exactly the argument I had intended to make to him. Then he asked me about Don Aurelio. I told him Don Aurelio had wanted to ravish me, but I had given him opium in brandy, and he was in a deep sleep.
Marco wanted to dump all their bodies into a ventilation shaft that served a part of the mine long ago collapsed, but I said a shaft or well was the first place anyone would look if murder was suspected. I said we should take the bodies to an abandoned Indian settlement two leagues away and let the coyotes and vultures do the rest. This was far enough away that any connection to the mine would be unconvincing. The bones would be scattered and mistaken for those of bandits or their victims or for soldiers fallen in some unknown engagement.
Marco was a strong man. I kept watch while he carried Don Aurelio from my bedroom out through the back door of the servant’s wing, by the privy, and into the stable. Don Aurelio was so heavy he was a load even for Marco. Marco remained in the stable, locking the doors from the inside.
I told the cook that the visitors had left, saying they would travel back to Sáric by night to avoid bandits and Villistas and pick up some food at the mine comedor on their way. She knew the cook there always kept some of his excellent gorditas on hand for travelers and late visitors, so this was believable. Gorditas are peasant food, but Sr. Rayón said these would be welcome at the French Embassy in Mexico City.
An hour after midnight, Marco loaded the bodies onto the three horses the murderers had ridden, and we set out for the old pueblito. It was very cold, and the horses’ breath made clouds that floated off into the desert, glowing in the moonlight as they went weaving between the chollas, which also glowed in the moonlight with their silky spines. I remember that for some reason. Also that it was very still, as if peace had come now that justice was being served.
We dumped the bodies at the old pueblito. I was surprised but not saddened that Don Aurelio had died on the way from too much opium. It saved me the trouble of shooting him. Marco cut off their clothes and threw them in a deep crevice. He had already taken their guns, boots, money, and other valuables. I never asked what he did with them. I knew he was a salteador when I hired him, but in those days, a salteador was what I needed, and he was always honest and loyal to me.
Marco took off the horses’ tack, which he hid in a dry place among the rocks. I think he retrieved it later, kept the best, and sold the rest. But what to do with the horses? We knew they would likely follow us home, and their presence anywhere around the house or the mine would arouse suspicion. I could not bring myself to shoot them, and neither could Marco. Then he said, “If you order me in the name of Sr. Rayón, I will do it.” But I could not do that and tried to think of another way.
Then we heard a sound like a cavalry troop approaching, galloping up the dry riverbed below us. We quickly took cover behind a high wall in the ruins, but we knew our position would be hopeless if they saw the bodies of the murderers.
But when the horses came into view, we saw they were riderless. It was a herd of wild horses. Marco jumped up, intending to drive the murderers’ horses into the herd. But they needed no such encouragement. They were already running to join it.
On our way home, we could hear the coyotes yipping and howling in glee at the banquet we had brought them.
The next day, in the late afternoon, I climbed partway up the mountain above the mine and looked toward the old pueblito with Sr. Rayón’s Swiss binoculars. I could see many vultures coming and going.
Nothing ever came of all this. In those days, it was common for men to disappear, and if anyone in the house or the mine suspected anything, they kept quiet. We gave Sr. Rayón a grand funeral, and the miners made him a monument near the chapel we used when a priest visited us, which alas was rarely. Years later, I had a large bronze plaque installed on the monument. It is still there. I burned the table on which we laid his body and had a new one made. It stands in the hallway today, with the crucifix.
And that is the story of how I, Magdalena Fierro, did justice to the murderers of Sr. Emilio I. Rayón, one of the few men I have ever truly loved.
I have made a full confession of these sins and my many others and have done the long penances prescribed for me. Now, as I approach my ninetieth year, I write this for my great-granddaughter. Esmeralda, I seal it and instruct it and other stories be given to you on your twenty-third birthday, which I know I will not live to see. I ask that you honor the memory of Sr. Rayón.
I return the documents to the portfolio, turn out the light, and immediately fall asleep. Around midnight, I wake for a drink of water. Sordo and Rica are absent. Sordo doesn’t matter, but I’m worried about Rica getting himself in trouble with Lola. Not enough to lose sleep over, though.
I go back to sleep. I wake slowly, around 02:00, sensing someone is in the room. I’m lying on my back. I don’t move and keep breathing slowly and rhythmically as if I’m sleeping. I don’t hear anything and don’t feel threatened. After a few minutes, I open my eyes very slightly. Someone is standing to my right, but in the bedroom with its single small window, it is too dark to see anything but a vaguely human shape. There is no motion. Five, ten, fifteen minutes later—I don’t know exactly how long—whoever it is moves slowly through the open doorway into the kitchen. There is only starlight through the kitchen windows, but that’s enough for me to see the outline of a tall woman in a long skirt or nightgown. She moves silently toward the exterior door, which isn’t visible from my bed. I assume she leaves, though I don’t hear the door open or close. I wait another ten minutes or so, then get up. There is nobody in the kitchen, and the exterior door is closed and locked. I go back to bed.
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