Motor Oil on Asphalt

The rain along Tlalpan reeked of burnt gasoline and sludge.

Ruiz's '78 Dodge Dart crawled down the middle lane, its wipers squealing against scored safety glass. Each time the dry rubber swept water aside, it left a milky smudge that blurred the blinking amber traffic lights. Neither the speedometer nor the gas gauge worked on the stripped metal dash, but an oil pressure needle shuddered in sync with the uneven pulse of the spark plugs.

Neither man spoke.

The silence inside the cabin smelled of sodden mackintosh, chewed tobacco filters, and the rotting upholstery foam of the bench seats that shed yellow dust with every pothole in the roadway. Castro cradled the newsroom's rangefinder Yashica between his knees, tucked deep beneath the folds of his black rubber raincoat. It was a heavy rig, its viewfinder perpetually clouded and its aperture prone to sticking at f/4, but it was the only piece of glass the darkroom foreman didn't lock away in the morgue safe.

"The problem is that by that hour every municipal wrecker runs on the exact same radio frequency," Ruiz said, easing onto the shoulder just before the Viaducto loop. "If the hit came down from above, there was never a slip logged with dispatch. They handed it down by word of mouth in the Balderas lot, over a thermos of black coffee and an envelope tucked into the glovebox."

They stepped out into the shoulder mud.

The Cuauhtémoc underpass looked like an abandoned railway culvert. Standing runoff pooled three inches deep, bearing floating butts, rusted bottlecaps, and thick black motor oil forming iridescent swirls under the sodium streetlamps. The echo of distant avenue traffic drummed against the overhead slab like a muted surf. Concrete pillar number twelve bore the fresh scar: a two-foot gouge where the magistrate's chrome bumper had stripped away the plaster, exposing jagged rebar underneath.

Castro fished a two-cell flashlight from his coat pocket and knelt upon the soaked tarmac.

The freeze of the asphalt cut straight through his wool trousers in three seconds, a sharp chill racing up his shins. He dialed the flashlight beam down tight and shone it directly onto the base of the pilar.

"Take a look at this, Ruiz," Castro whispered, trailing a gloved fingertip along the road.

There wasn't a single straight-line skid mark. No panic tread, no swerves characteristic of a man dozing off behind the wheel. What lay there were two wide, diagonal drag gouges, deep and parallel, carved by twelve-ply commercial traction treads. A vehicle weighing upwards of six tons had broadsided the sedan's left quarter panel mid-turn, whipping it across the lanes before pinning it against the pillar.

"Wet asphalt doesn't lie; what lies are the official precinct stamps."

Ruiz crouched with a grimace, resting a gnarled hand on his left knee which popped like dry kindling. His breath came in shallow, labored whistles. With the tip of an electrician's pocketknife, he pried a triangular shard of lens out of the pillar's expansion joint.

It was amber polycarbonate reinforced with internal wire mesh. No diplomatic town car or private vehicle used that grade of headlight armor: it was standard issue for the push-bumpers on heavy-duty tow trucks belonging to the Department of Urban Transit.

"Wrecker 44," Ruiz muttered, dragging his wet sleeve across his forehead. "The one stationed at the San Antonio Abad impound. The driver goes by Morales. They call him the Gator. He's spent ten years sweeping queer wrecks under the rug for general headquarters."

Castro raised the Yashica. He focused by hand with the flashlight clamped between his teeth: the scored pillar, the lateral drag scars, and the old detective's hand holding the amber shard against bare concrete. He tripped the shutter three times. The mechanism clicked with a dry, sharp snap that echoed underneath the concrete vault.

He advanced the frame with his thumb. The film advanced smoothly inside its aluminum housing.

Suddenly, three hundred feet up the on-ramp from Obrero Mundial, two round halogen spots slammed on.

No sirens. No flashers.

It was an armored three-ton crew cab with welded tubular ram-bars and pitch-black tinted glass. Its diesel powerplant roared with a whistling turbo spool, casting twin beams of blinding white light straight across the two men, pinning them against the pillar wall.

"To the car!" Ruiz bellowed, shoving Castro by the shoulder.

Their boots lost traction in oil-slicked silt. Castro dove headfirst across the passenger bench as a blast of muddy gravel peppered the Dodge's quarter panels with the fury of a shotgun blast. Ruiz forced the transmission into reverse; the gears gnashed with a sickening shriek of chipped teeth, and the sedan lunged backward through the flooded lane, clearing by mere inches the armored truck's steel snout as it tried to pinch them into the curb.

The smash never landed.

Ruiz yanked the handbrake, whipped the steering wheel in a violent ninety-degree slide, and dove against traffic into the narrow cut of Calle Doctor Barragán, throwing up a spray of black gutter water against the roll-up metal shutters of sleeping auto repair shops.

The heavy truck didn't pursue down the alleyway: it braked hard at the corner, flashed its hazards once in the dark, and idled in place like a guard dog that already knows where its prey is headed.