Read The Demands of the Dead for Free Online Page B

report, I am sure we will make it available to you as well.”
    Hamilton paused and looked at me for a long moment. She nodded quietly, almost to herself. She exchanged a glance with Kenney. Then she smiled again and said: “Excellent, Mr. Brown. So, perhaps we can give you a bit of background about the political situation here. We believe we are heading towards a very significant election...”
    The rest of the meeting took place in polite briefing mode. Maybe they had been hoping that I would volunteer to cooperate with them, perhaps in exchange for resources? But I couldn't do that, couldn't give up our independence within thirty minutes of landing in the country. So maybe they just wanted to make sure they pulled me in, maybe plant a bug on me somewhere (I would have to re-check my luggage), get a sense of what kind of person they might have to be cleaning up after? I was carefully watched as Kenney and Marchese escorted me back through the embassy compound, and not just by them. Even after they drove me back along Paseo de la Reforma to the airport, I couldn't shake the feeling, one that would only get worse in Chiapas.
     
    I caught the connecting flight. Hoffman had arranged for someone to meet me at the airport in Tuxtla. I was looking for a man in uniform, a lieutenant in Seguridad Publica . Hoffman had assured me the lieutenant would take me around and introduce me to the police contacts I needed. I had his name and he, no doubt, had mine. I figured he’d know me on sight. I was pretty inconspicuous in Manhattan, not too bad even in Mexico City, but here I stuck out. My reasons for being in Tuxtla could be guessed by anybody keeping their eye on passengers coming out of the gate. Whatever trouble I might have recognizing him, Teniente Sergio Chavez would, no doubt, pick me out easily enough.
     
    Chavez hadn’t gone to great lengths to disguise himself either. He wore the blue-black combat outfit of the Seguridad Publica, including a Glock-17 as a sidearm and every outward indication that he knew what to do with it. Only slightly shorter than me, and perhaps five years older, lean but powerful, like a soccer player or a runner, clean and severe-looking. He was moving as soon as I was out of the gate and intercepted me immediately.
    “Brown?” he asked.
    “Usted debe ser el teniente Chavez. Mucho gusto.”
    He didn’t smile as he shook my hand. Hard.
    “I know English, Mr. Brown,” he replied. In English.
    I said nothing. We had a moment of silence in the hall of Tuxtla’s small airport, me standing there with my bags while people coming off the same plane were forced to walk around us.
    “What would you prefer to do first, Mr. Brown? See the bodies here in the city or go to straight to the countryside, to the Hatuey base, to the crime scene?”
    It didn’t really matter. The bodies were still in the morgue but the funeral was planned for the next day.
    I did not have much doubt about Seguridad Publica's ability to investigate the crime scene or the bodies, and Hoffman didn't either. Our doubts were whether they would tell the truth about what they had found. I needed to see both for myself, so that I could compare notes with what they wrote.
    “Bodies,” I said, switching back to English too—he’d made his point—“let’s stay for the funerals. We’ll go to the base tomorrow.”
    “Of course,” he repeated in English, his face a mask.
     
    We went to see the bodies.
    I wasn’t one of those Americans who never left the US. I had seen a bit of the world, but I had never worked outside of New York. So when I thought of the morgue I thought of the antiseptic halls and fluorescent lights that I knew from my years in NYPD Homicide. Tuxtla was a different. There were still fluorescent lights and the bodies were still in freezers. But the halls were narrower, the place was less sheltered from the elements, and it was less euphemistic - more obvious what the place was really for.
    On the other hand, it