Woes of the True Policeman

later the Toltecatl. Castillo kept laughing and drinking more mescal.
    The Toltecatl was a big, rectangular room, the walls painted sky blue. On the back wall, a six-foot-square mural featured Toltecatl, god of pulque and brother of the maguey goddess Mayahuel. Indian drifters, cowboys and herds of cattle, policemen and police cars, ominously abandoned customs stations, amusement parks on either side of the border, children on their way out of a school blazoned with the name—painted in blue on a whitewashed wall—Benito Juárez, distinguished son of the Americas, a fruit market and a pottery market, North American tourists, shoeshine men, singers of rancheras and boleros (the ranchera singers looked like gunmen, the bolero singers suicidal or like pimps, Castillo remarked), women on their way to church, and hookers talking, running, or gesturing mysteriously: this was the backdrop, while in the foreground the god Toltecatl, an Indian with a chubby face covered with welts and scars, laughed uproariously. The owner of the bar, Castillo told him, was a man by the name of Aparicio Montes de Oca, and in 1985, the year he bought the place, he had killed a man at the busiest time of day, in front of everyone. At the trial he got off by pleading self-defense.
    When Castillo pointed out Aparicio Montes de Oca behind the bar, Amalfitano noticed how much the bar owner looked like the figure of Toltecatl painted on the wall.
    “It’s a portrait of him,” said Amalfitano.
    “Yes,” said Castillo, “he commissioned it when he got out of jail.”
    Then Castillo took Amalfitano home with him to prove that he wasn’t lying, he really was a forger.
    He lived on the second floor of a dilapidated three-story building on the edge of town. On the first floor hung the sign for a tool wholesaler; no one lived on the third floor. Close your eyes, said Castillo when he opened the door. Amalfitano smiled but didn’t close his eyes. Go on, close your eyes, insisted Castillo. Amalfitano obeyed and ventured cautiously into the sanctum to which he was being granted access.
    “Don’t open them until I turn on the light.”
    Amalfitano opened his eyes immediately. In the moonlight coming in through the uncurtained windows, he got a glimpse of the contours of a large room plunged in a gray fog. At the back he could make out a big Larry Rivers painting. What am I doing here? wondered Amalfitano. When he heard the click of the switch he automatically closed his eyes.
    “Now you can look,” said Castillo.
    The studio was much bigger than he had thought at first, lit by many fluorescent bars. In a corner was Castillo’s spartan-looking bed; in another corner, a kitchen reduced to the bare essentials: hot plate, sink, a few pots, glasses, plates, cutlery. The rest of the furnishings, apart from the canvases stacked everywhere, consisted of two old armchairs, a rocking chair, two sturdy wooden tables, and a bookcase filled mostly with art books. Near the window and on one of the tables were the forgeries. Do you like them? Amalfitano nodded.
    “Do you know who the artist is?”
    “No,” said Amalfitano.
    “He’s American,” said Castillo.
    “I can tell that much. But I don’t know who he is. I’d rather not know.”
    Castillo shrugged.
    “Do you want something to drink? I think I have everything.”
    “Whiskey,” said Amalfitano, suddenly feeling very sad.
    I’ve come here to make love, he thought, I’ve come here to take my pants off and fuck this naïve kid, this art student, this forger of Larry Rivers, early-or mid-career Larry Rivers, what do I know, a forger who brags when he should cringe, I’ve come to do what Padilla predicted I would do and what he surely hasn’t stopped doing for even a moment, even a second.
    “He’s Larry Rivers,” said Castillo, “an artist from New York.”
    Amalfitano took a desperate gulp of whiskey.
    “I know,” he said. “I know Larry Rivers. I know Frank O’Hara, so I know Larry Rivers.”
    “Why did you say you didn’t, then? Are they that bad?” asked Castillo, not offended in the least.
    “I can’t imagine who buys them, frankly,” said Amalfitano, feeling worse and worse.
    “Oh, they sell, believe me.” Castillo’s voice was smooth and persuasive. “There’s a Texan who buys them—short little guy, a real character, you have to meet him—and then he sells them to other filthy rich Texans.”
    “It doesn’t matter,” said Amalfitano. “Forgive me. We’re here