note so I could get some coins.
I found a pay phone and called Marchese’s cell, arranged a meeting at a bar near the central square. When I walked in, he was already sitting at the bar, a leather document folder on the bar in front of him. He was smoking, infiltrating the smell of smoke into a set of fresh clothes he'd changed into since the funeral: a dark red shirt open at the collar and loose-fitting black pants, ideal for a fit man with a barrel chest and broad shoulders. A day’s growth shadowed his face, the scruffiness contrasting with his carefully gelled hair. More at ease in a bar in Tuxtla than a funeral full of police, Marchese might be a more unusual cop than I had originally thought.
With table space for 30 and standing room for 50 at most, the bar was running well below capacity. Marchese was slightly over-dressed—most of the other people in the place wore jeans and drank the full selection of available beer (XX or Corona). A television up in one corner of the room played a loud futbol game to the handful of men in the bar – all fans, apparently, including the bartender who didn’t look away from the screen until I walked up to him and ordered. I watched him watch the game while popping off the bottle cap, passing me the beer, and taking my money without a glance at the money, the beer, me, or anything but the screen.
I felt right away why Marchese liked the place: for some reason I couldn’t figure out, both of us were being treated as anonymously as everyone else, and not like the obvious Americans we were.
We moved from the bar to a booth.
“Good to meet you again,” Marchese said.
“I figured I’d call since I had a moment. I’m glad you were able to meet me. You still heading back soon?”
“Tomorrow, actually,” he said. “Any progress yet on your case?”
“Nope. But you’ve been here a while, Joe. Is there anything I should watch for?”
He leaned back in the booth. “Actually, there's something you should see.”
He unzipped his document folder and laid a series of 4 x 6 color photographs, grainy because they had been printed from digital, on the table, the way we sometimes did in interrogations. The first showed a slight, curly-haired white man in his forties, at some kind of political rally in Paris. “Guy's name is Francois Tourelle. This is a rally outside the US Embassy in France, protesting about our Central American operations. He was involved with socialists and communists in France, but spent most of his time in Central America since the 1980s, and moved here to Chiapas 10 years ago. He has been working as a journalist, covering the Zapatistas, since the rebellion started. Everyone knows him as basically a civilian member of the rebellion and someone who passes information and aid to and from the rebels.”
The next photo, taken from a second-floor window looking down, showed Tourelle sitting for coffee on a patio, paved with grey cobblestone. In the third photo, an athletic, younger Mexican with the build of a plainclothes police approached, and in the fourth, they were sitting at the table together. “This was in San Cristobal de Las Casas last year. One of them is Tourelle. Do you recognize the other?”
I leaned in to the clearest photo, the one where he was approaching Tourelle from behind. In the dark bar, with a grainy photo, I really couldn't tell.
“It's your friend, Brown. It's the Lieutenant Sergio Chavez, Seguridad Publica.”
It's your friend, Brown . I remembered the same phrase, spoken to me by the brass about Shawn, warning me that there could be consequences for his political activities.
I asked: “You think Chavez is a Zapatista who has infiltrated the police?”
Marchese shrugged, started to pick the photos back up and put them into his folder. “I don't know. What I do know is that this war is a lot more complicated than it looks, and outsiders like us had better remember that not everyone who looks like they're on our
I found a pay phone and called Marchese’s cell, arranged a meeting at a bar near the central square. When I walked in, he was already sitting at the bar, a leather document folder on the bar in front of him. He was smoking, infiltrating the smell of smoke into a set of fresh clothes he'd changed into since the funeral: a dark red shirt open at the collar and loose-fitting black pants, ideal for a fit man with a barrel chest and broad shoulders. A day’s growth shadowed his face, the scruffiness contrasting with his carefully gelled hair. More at ease in a bar in Tuxtla than a funeral full of police, Marchese might be a more unusual cop than I had originally thought.
With table space for 30 and standing room for 50 at most, the bar was running well below capacity. Marchese was slightly over-dressed—most of the other people in the place wore jeans and drank the full selection of available beer (XX or Corona). A television up in one corner of the room played a loud futbol game to the handful of men in the bar – all fans, apparently, including the bartender who didn’t look away from the screen until I walked up to him and ordered. I watched him watch the game while popping off the bottle cap, passing me the beer, and taking my money without a glance at the money, the beer, me, or anything but the screen.
I felt right away why Marchese liked the place: for some reason I couldn’t figure out, both of us were being treated as anonymously as everyone else, and not like the obvious Americans we were.
We moved from the bar to a booth.
“Good to meet you again,” Marchese said.
“I figured I’d call since I had a moment. I’m glad you were able to meet me. You still heading back soon?”
“Tomorrow, actually,” he said. “Any progress yet on your case?”
“Nope. But you’ve been here a while, Joe. Is there anything I should watch for?”
He leaned back in the booth. “Actually, there's something you should see.”
He unzipped his document folder and laid a series of 4 x 6 color photographs, grainy because they had been printed from digital, on the table, the way we sometimes did in interrogations. The first showed a slight, curly-haired white man in his forties, at some kind of political rally in Paris. “Guy's name is Francois Tourelle. This is a rally outside the US Embassy in France, protesting about our Central American operations. He was involved with socialists and communists in France, but spent most of his time in Central America since the 1980s, and moved here to Chiapas 10 years ago. He has been working as a journalist, covering the Zapatistas, since the rebellion started. Everyone knows him as basically a civilian member of the rebellion and someone who passes information and aid to and from the rebels.”
The next photo, taken from a second-floor window looking down, showed Tourelle sitting for coffee on a patio, paved with grey cobblestone. In the third photo, an athletic, younger Mexican with the build of a plainclothes police approached, and in the fourth, they were sitting at the table together. “This was in San Cristobal de Las Casas last year. One of them is Tourelle. Do you recognize the other?”
I leaned in to the clearest photo, the one where he was approaching Tourelle from behind. In the dark bar, with a grainy photo, I really couldn't tell.
“It's your friend, Brown. It's the Lieutenant Sergio Chavez, Seguridad Publica.”
It's your friend, Brown . I remembered the same phrase, spoken to me by the brass about Shawn, warning me that there could be consequences for his political activities.
I asked: “You think Chavez is a Zapatista who has infiltrated the police?”
Marchese shrugged, started to pick the photos back up and put them into his folder. “I don't know. What I do know is that this war is a lot more complicated than it looks, and outsiders like us had better remember that not everyone who looks like they're on our
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