Ballad & Dagger, page 19
I nod. I’m shocked by her words, for sure. But they also make some sense. Still, it all breaks my heart. And there’s so much we don’t understand yet. “I just want to…blow up everything,” I say, gritting my teeth. “I’m so mad.”
Tams nods, eyes far away. “What’s your plan?”
“Heh.” I rub my eyes. Dig the tip of my sneaker into the pavement. “Find the child of Madrigal so we can raise the island ourselves and then shout from the rooftops that everything we know is a damn lie.”
“Sounds about right.”
Walking over to the club that night, I open my recorder app and hit Play—it’s already cued up to where I want it, because I’ve listened to this clip so many times.
“Not that kind of weird,” Gerval’s voice says through my headphones. “Things about our history that no one knows. Well, almost no one…A secret history.”
A secret history, huh, Gerval?
The only thing that’s clear about him is that nothing he says can be trusted.
The big screen looms over the stage at Tolo’s club.
It’s an impressive setup, I’ll say that. Yes, Big Moses Arroyo is the baddest bouncer in town, but quiet as it’s kept, he’s also a mean IT guy, and a few years ago, he went ahead and modernized the entire wildly outdated, extremely fudgeable Galerano voting system. It’s probably for the best that Tolo had him do it all in the wee hours of the morning when no one was paying attention, because I’m sure more than a few powers-that-be achieved their positions by miscounting raised hands or ballots tossed in a hat.
Any member of the Cabildo has to win a majority of not just their own community, but also at least one of the other two. The idea is to keep any one group from voting in someone endemically hostile to another and, hopefully, prevent the intercultural warfare that everyone’s so afraid of. So, there are three circles on the huge screen—one for the Santeros, one for the Sefaradim, one for the pirates. And each seat at each table in the great hall comes with a little mechanism that lets you cast your vote. As votes come in, the circles, which are really pie charts, show the shifting balance in real time.
After the first vote, the loser can call for a revote within one week. They usually ask for exactly that much time because they’ll need all of it to try to shift the narrative somehow. And if they lose that one, it’s over for them. If they win, though, one more challenge can be raised, this time within only twenty-four hours, and that’s it: the results of vote three are final final. It’s rare anyone challenges and even rarer that they win the challenge.
The system is impressive, I’ll give it that. But it’s also terrifying now that so much rides on this election. And there’s so much we still don’t know. First and foremost, for me, anyway, is where the hell Chela is. Because she’s not here.
The place is mostly empty when Tams and I walk in for preshow setup and sound check. (Of course there has to be music playing on vote night! And, of course, it’s us who have to play it!) I’m not saying I expected Chela to just be sitting on a barstool fiddling with her phone, or perched on some pillar preparing to assassinate someone, but…Okay, yeah, I did. And when she’s not, something sinks in me, because maybe she’s gone for good, she’s just had it with all of us regulars, and who could blame her? Or maybe she’s dead.
“Mateo,” Tams says.
“Hmm?”
“Stop frowning like that, man, come on. You’re freaking me out.”
“Ah. Right.”
We set up in our regular spot on the creaky wooden stage, right under the skylight, and the place feels so empty. Even when people start shuffling in and the general hubbub of excitement rises, I barely feel it. I’m playing, my fingers dancing along the keys to our regular shuffle through the Galerano hit parade, boleros and praisesongs and murder ballads, but I barely hear the music.
Chela’s not here, and noticeably, neither is Gerval.
Tolo came in a few minutes ago, nodded solemnly at us, made the rounds shaking hands and chatting with folks. Councilwoman Anisette Bisconte did the same, in her stiff, politico-type way that still seems to work on some people. Vedo came in with her and quickly wandered off to sit with a bunch of other teens in a far corner. Even Tía Lucia made it, along with a whole crew of Santeros; and there’s Rabbi Hidalgo and his retinue.
But no Gerval. No Chela.
Suddenly, I hate this whole thing. Lives are hanging in the balance, and all anyone wants to talk about is a place hundreds of miles away that’s been gone my whole life—a ghost island! What about what’s right here, in front of us? I want to yell at the whole room, to make them see that we’re what matters, not some sunken memory. Chela matters.
“Mateo,” Tams calls sharply from her kit. “You just gonna keep soloing, or we gonna go to the chorus?”
“Arg,” I growl, raising a fist to let her know we’re closing out the number.
“What’s up?” Tams asks as we simmer to a sudden end.
I take my ancestor’s weird old music book out of my bag and set it up on the piano. “Trying something different.”
I’d plunked out a few of the melodies on my keyboard at home, but they kept creeping me out and didn’t really help. The only thing I noticed was that the voz part of each song—the part that someone’s supposed to sing but doesn’t have any lyrics—is just the same melody line over and over. It’s just as chaotic and nonsensical as the rest, but it’s the one thing that repeats in the whole book.
“We’re playing a song that’s a secret code?” Tams asks, and I whirl around.
“What did you just say?”
“I’m guessing it doesn’t have the clave, just given what a mess those rhythms are. I can tell from over here.”
Clave.
Like a shortsighted, overly focused clown, I had assumed that the word was being used in a musical sense.
But it has another meaning, too, of course. I slap my face, a little too hard. Clave means key code.
I feel like I’m going to burst. The melody is the code we were looking for! How did I miss that? It’s literally been right in front of my face this entire time, probably the least hidden thing about the whole situation.
“You okay there, buddy?” Tams asks.
I haven’t filled her in on what we discovered in those old books. I don’t even know how to explain it to myself, let alone to someone else. But I’ll learn how. Whatever the truth turns out to be, we need to face it. That much I know.
“Let’s play,” I say. That’s the only way I’m going to crack this.
We do, and man, this song sucks.
People notice immediately. Out of the corner of my eye, I see them looking up, scowling. The music is—this is the only word for it—ugly. Sorry, great-great-great-great-grandpa or whatever. But then again, it clearly wasn’t supposed to be pretty, jumping two octaves up for one note and another back down for the next. Ugly.
The notes of a scale have alphabetic names, and even though, yes, most Spanish-speaking composers use the do-re-mis instead, if I were making a secret code with music, I would start with the letters. Archibaldo Medina obviously did—that would explain why it’s all just the white keys; there are no sharps or flats, which would complicate things beyond comprehension.
I keep playing, keep cringing. Keep tuning out the looks of disgust and anxiousness around me.
What if it…? What if at the end of the scale, instead of starting over again after G, the alphabet kept going? So the A below middle C would be H; the B, I; and—I squint through the crunch on my poor overused brain as I play—the note I’m about to play, G, would be an N. Then back to the low D, making it D. And the B below middle C, so I, followed by the low A…
NDIA.
I hit a long chord, signaling Tams to slow it down so I can check the note that came before what I worked out. It’s that same B, which makes it I, which makes it INDIA.
Wait. India as in Dutch East India?
I stand up, slamming the song to a close.
“¿Qué carajo fue eso?” someone demands, and I can’t blame them.
“We cracked it,” I whisper.
Tams blinks her question at me.
When I look around the room, most people are glowering back irritably, and a few have gotten up from their seats. Mostly pirates. There’s Arco “El Gorro” and Simpático. There’s Tantor Batalán. I can see it all over their faces: they heard something they recognized. Worse: they’re nodding at me, like I’m in on it somehow. I glance up at the stage and realize Anisette Bisconte is staring sheer murder at me.
In an instant, she wipes off that death glare and the friendly neighborhood politician mask falls into place.
What have I done?
“My fellow children of a lost island!” she calls with a weird little laugh that doesn’t fit the occasion at all.
“Uh, go solo a sec,” I whisper, and Tams nods, sliding into a corny jazz run on the hi-hat while I pore over my long-dead ancestor’s partitur.
“Shalom, mi gente! Alafia!” It sounds so forced coming from Anisette, but we’re all used to that. Pandering. I signal Tams to switch to brushes and wonder how this utterly uncharismatic woman got elected to anything in the first place, even with her dead best friend’s implied endorsement. “It’s a big night, huh?”
DUTCH EAST INDIA COMPANY is exactly what the first song says!
Holy crap.
Around me, people cheer on the councilwoman, others yell to get on with it. Tolo moves into position on the far end of the stage from her. He’s wearing funeral blacks, a three-piece suit instead of his usual guayabera, looking like a mean young gangster lord through and through.
Where is Gerval?
Bisconte must be wondering the same thing—she shields her eyes with one hand and squints out into the crowd, frowning. Truth is, she doesn’t have it in her to act this well, so Gerval being absent probably isn’t part of some elaborate theatrics. At least not any that she’s in on. “Well,” she says, giving up with an exaggerated shrug, “even without the candidate present, we can still go on with the excitement of the night, right?”
Sure, okay seems to be the general response from the murmuring crowd.
The second song doesn’t take much time to untangle now that I have the code: LA FRUTERA. The United Fruit Company, which every Galerano kid knows plundered Latin America with its steel grip on the banana trade for most of the twentieth century.
“As always, there will be a five-minute timer on the clock as we vote and make our cases. I’ll be speaking on behalf of the Maestro until he shows up, of course, ha!”
It’s all right here in front of me. Now all that’s left is to connect it to the ledger.
The councilwoman raises her hand, shapes her fingers like a pistol, and screeches, “Let the voting begin!”
IN ANOTHER LIFE, ANOTHER WORLD, Tolo could’ve been a rapper. He probably knows it, deep down, but either way, he uses that lyrical prowess to devastating effect. It’s in the way he chokes up on the mic and struts across the stage like the world is being laid to waste around him, like he’s invincible, and the words fly out of his mouth in a furious torrent. He’s not thinking; he barely pauses for breath, just unleashes that cannonade of words onto the room, unstoppable.
My brain is still on fire from what I just figured out, but I gotta play. And anyway, I need a moment to process the whole thing.
Tams and I know exactly what to do for this kind of verbal rampage. She breaks into a high-octane thrash beat with early ’90s hip-hop inflections, and I switch to a bass-heavy, static-laced setting and chime in with syncopated hits on a crude reggaeton rhythm.
“It’s a new future we lookin’ at,” Tolo asserts heavily, reaching the end of the stage and then turning to face the audience. “I’m not talking about forgetting the past, I’m talking about bringing it with us as we move ahead. But we can’t make up easy answers just because we have nostalgia, mi gente.” He pauses, lets the beat run past a measure, and then we grind to a halt, too, and Tolo yells, “We gonna raise San Madrigal, y’all!”
Tolo told me earlier he wasn’t going to use what we had unless it was rock solid. Said it was too risky; such a huge revelation has to be done right. Otherwise, it could blow up in his face. I know he’s right, but now that I have the other piece of the puzzle lined up, all I want to do is shout it from the rafters.
Fortunately, Tolo seems to be killing it without the help of any giant history-changing bombshells.
Cheers erupt all around.
“But we gonna do it right,” Tolo insists as we kick back in behind him. “Not because some celebrity sellout insists on it for popularity!”
“Oooh!” people yell at the undeniable burn.
“Not because some washed-up politico used-car-dealer lady said it!”
“Ayyyy!”
The councilwoman, standing behind him, giggles awkwardly, trying to play along.
“And we don’t need no hotels to make it work! We don’t need no theme parks! Am I right?”
Behind him, the pie charts had been wavering around the fifty-fifty marks. Now Tolo’s purple surges, eclipsing Gerval’s yellow in all three circles.
“She says the three initiated children of the original saints have been found. So where are they? Or maybe she’s too busy looking for the dude she wants to take over!”
Jeers. Love it.
Tolo passes the mic to Councilwoman Bisconte, and I almost feel bad for her.
“Well, young Mr. Baracasa and I agree on one thing,” she snarks as Tams and I slide into a smooth jazz feel to match her tone. “It’s a brand-new day. And it’s Gerval who will guide us into that future, because he’s ready to take action now! He has a plan, unlike Mr. Vague No-Plan Baracasa here! Gerval is ready to make moves today! Not in some indeterminate point in the future when half of us will be dead! Right?”
The room seems unsure of what they’re supposed to say to that one. When half of us are dead isn’t really a talking point that people can get excited about, even in a derisive way. A few folks cheer, but most just kind of scrunch up their faces.
There’re only two minutes left. The Santeros are still firmly with Tolo, I notice, but both the pirates and Sefaradim are wavering back toward the half-and-half mark. You’d think pirates would be more wary of an established politician, but I guess she’s their politician, so…go figure?
“My good people, we can do this together!” the councilwoman exclaims. “But not with this inexperienced local glad-hander leading us. We need someone with worldwide recognition to bring us into a new era of Madrigal history. And we have that in Maestro Gerval!”
The Sefaradim hover somewhere in between, and with a minute and a half on the clock, they could still swing it into a draw. But then Rabbi Hidalgo rises and calls for the wireless mic. Gone is the genial giant who invited me over for dinner the other day. This is the Rabbi Hidalgo who’s a grave pillar of his community, a warrior, his face stern and drawn.
Accordingly, Tams and I pull back to a sparse vamp.
“As many of you know,” the rabbi says, sounding more like he’s speaking at a funeral than an election, “my nephew and I haven’t spoken in years. Tolo Baracasa chose a lifestyle I neither agree with nor condone.”
Onstage, Councilwoman Bisconte grins. Tolo stands perfectly still, eyes glued to his uncle.
“However,” Rabbi Hidalgo goes on sullenly, “criminal or not, I believe my nephew is a good man, an honorable one. And I do not trust Maestro Gerval, who has already brought much unwanted attention to our streets, and who did not even have the respect to show up for his own vote.”
Boom! Scattered yelling and arguments erupt, and the line dividing the Sefaradi circle trembles once, then swings hard for Tolo.
“Furthermore!” the rabbi yells over the rabble. “With all due respect to the councilwoman, I call on the pirates to embrace their roots and recognize their true leader, one from a lineage of pirates and Sefaradim, one who has done the hard work of building trust in our community his whole life!”
That seals it. As Tams and I ramp up the music’s tempo to match the clock ticking away its final seconds, Tolo’s votes slide just over the fifty percent line on the pirate circle, and cheers explode all around us.
It’s done.
My phone vibrates with a text.
“Wait!” Councilwoman Bisconte hollers into the mic. “I call for a twenty-minute recess and then an immediate revote!”
They almost never call for immediate revotes because if someone wins twice in a row, that seals it. Usually, a revote only comes after the losing side has taken their week to change the story.
But my work is done, so I pull out my phone.
It’s from Safiya: Tolo’s office. Now.
“Bring Maza,” I tell Tams, showing her the message. “Meet you there.” And then, before Anisette or anyone else can reach me, I pack up the music book and make myself scarce.
“And that’s the long and short of it,” I say about ten minutes later. Across the room from me, Tolo, Safiya, Tams, and Maza all stare with their mouths open.
For a moment, I’m not sure if I messed it up somehow and they’re looking at me like I’m a complete fool. I’m already reworking the whole thing in my head when the silence shatters and they leap into action.
“Whoa,” Maza says. “I’m extremely geeky, and I’m blown away by your levels of geek.”
“Yeah, that was brilliant,” Tolo says, launching toward the makeshift chart I’ve set up with the code on it. “So the only thing we’re missing is what these letters mean, right?”
Everyone gathers around, and we just stare for about ten seconds before Maza yelps, “Colors!” and we all step back in awe.
They’re right.
Each song spells out the name of a company or government organization that was a trading partner; each song is also a different color. “The colors are what’s matched in the ledger,” Maza explains. “R is rojo, V is verde, A is azul, AM is amarillo, yellow.”
