American Visa (28 page)

In the Plaza Murillo, a hundred people had gathered to see off Don Gustavo, the ex-ambassador, ex-congressman, ex-mayor, ex-rector of San Andrés University, ex–coup leader, and former crook. A military band was taking a break, waiting for the corpse to pass by. Political and military figures were amicably rubbing elbows. I positioned myself in the plaza under the shade of a tree. I managed to catch the arrival of several solemn police lieutenants with moustaches. Suddenly, everyone turned around toward the presidential palace. The president of Bolivia, accompanied by his entourage, was heading toward the Congress building. Minutes later, the band director raised his baton. A funeral march took control of the scene. A dozen congressmen carried the coffin in which Don Gustavo, all quiet and cold, was taking one last spin around a plaza that had been like a second home to him. Behind the coffin followed the entire family. There was Isabel, and Doña María Augusta covered with countless black veils. The president took the first step and the rest of the crowd proceeded down Ingavi Street. From the Foreign Ministry, somebody threw a bouquet of roses, which was quickly picked up by an Indian boy who had mixed in with the passersby.

I concentrated on Isabel; I was seeing her for the last time. She was dressed, fittingly, in black, without affectation, plainly, with the kind of class that is only God-given. It's one of the few things you can't buy in this world.

Chapter 12

I
got ready to leave.
I made some final arrangements, dug up the money, and stowed it away in one of the pockets of the new jacket I had bought from the Israeli. I then left my luggage in the lobby, before the sneering gaze of the manager. I didn't owe the hotel a penny. I took the pleasure of tipping the Scotsman's helper and the bellboy. I held out hopes of finding Blanca at the last minute. I went out to the street and walked past El Lobo and two or three gambling houses nearby without any luck.

Upon returning to the lobby, I bumped into Don Antonio, who was getting ready to leave the hotel for the used bookstores with a work by Tolstoy under his arm.

“I need something to read during the trip,” I said. “I'll take it for fifty dollars.”

“Always the jokester, Alvarez,” he replied.

I placed a fifty-dollar bill in the palm of his hand.

“I'll always remember you,” he stammered, clearly moved. “Read it carefully; the old man's got important things to say.”

“I can't find Blanca.”

“You've grown fond of her, eh? She loves you in her own way. She'll be sad too. Those girls have their soft spot. I'll tell her you were looking for her.”

We embraced, and then I asked the bellboy to hail a taxi. Don Antonio went out to the balcony and raised his hand with that gnomish, mocking smile of his.

“Smoking or nonsmoking?” the ticket agent for Lloyd Bolivian Airline asked.

“No preference,” I answered.

The girl scribbled something down on my boarding pass and said: “Please go to immigration. The flight is delayed.”

When I asked a Lloyd employee the reason for the delay, he answered that it had something to do with passports. After buying the magazine
Cambio 16
, I duly stood in line before the immigration windows. A man advanced in years, with a well-groomed white beard, commented with an Iberian accent to his wife: “I don't know what the problem is with the passports. What a bunch of crap!”

It was my turn to show my passport to a young man who was dressed like a city slicker. The man reviewed it meticulously and handed the document to a policeman in the office.

“Please, señor, would you be kind enough to follow him?” the immigration guy indicated.

“What for?”

“They'll explain it to you. Go on.”

The game's up
, I thought.
Just as I feared. They know everything about
the murder. They'll frisk me and find the dollars. They'll know the serial
numbers for sure.

The policeman led me to an adjacent office, opened the door, and showed me in. Standing casually against the edge of a desk, another policeman observed me as I entered. Beside him, also standing, a tall suntanned man with blond hair and Anglo-Saxon features studied me with a certain benevolence. Seated on the sofa, a fortyish woman wearing an eccentric, flowery dress was crying and using an old handkerchief to dry her tears. Beside her, a young man about twenty years old, pale and visibly shaken, shot me a frightened stare. The police officer was handed my passport by his subordinate, who called him “captain.” After giving me a quick once-over, he passed it to the Anglo guy, who was wearing a Bogart-style trenchcoat. The gringo leafed through it and carried it over to a beat-up computer, into which he punched mysterious figures. A cathedral-like silence prevailed. The Anglo returned and informed the captain: “This is another one.”

The police officer cleared his throat and raised his chin, unbuttoning his shirt collar. “Señor Mario Alvarez?” he barked with the tone of a jailer.

“That's me,” I said. “Is something the matter?”

“Where did you get your American visa?”

“Through a travel agency, why?”

“What's the name of the agency?”

“Andean Tourism.”

The policeman and the Anglo exchanged conspiratorial glances. The latter smiled an imperial smile. “Did you pay money for the visa?”

I didn't know how to respond. The woman was sobbing and the boy was sending me vibes of metaphysical pain.

“A little something to speed up the paperwork.”

“Like how much?”

“I don't remember; enough to cut out the bureaucracy.”

“American visas are free. Did you know that?”

“Yes, I did, but Señor Ballón said that they would take two weeks to give it to me.”

“He said the same thing to me,” the señora pleaded.

“And to me,” the young boy chimed in.

“Not only to you three, but to many others. He tricked you,” the police official said, driving the point home.

I felt my heart in my throat. It wasn't about the murder; Ballón had pulled a fast one on us. He had taken our money when we shouldn't have paid a cent. He had ripped us off. Now what? “If it was free, then Ballón is a crook,” I said.

“That's not the only thing,” the American commented with a slight accent. “He falsified the visas. These passports never went to the American consulate.”

My throat went dry. My backside stiffened. “That can't be,” I said. “Nobody falsifies American visas.”

“Señor Ballón is part of a ring of international counterfeiters,” he explained. “Our immigration officials in Miami caught a dozen Chinese people with fake visas. It was a professional job. They had us confused for several months; the Chinese people got their visas at the Andean Tourism Agency.”

“It's not my fault,” I said. “I thought the visa was real. I was certain he sent it to the consulate; he assured me he'd done it to speed up the paperwork.”

The American official took several steps forward and held out his hand to me. “My name is Jack Martin. There's nothing to be afraid of. If you didn't know what Ballón was up to, you're innocent.”

“That's right,” I stressed.

“Señor Alvarez, why didn't you go to the consulate yourself? Don't you know you're supposed to apply in person?”

“I went one day, but the line was really long. So I decided to look for a faster way, you know, a travel agency.”

“Are your papers in order?”

“Sure, the deed to my house, my bank statements, everything . .

.”

The American smiled to himself. “Why Andean Tourism? It's out of the way; there are other travel agencies downtown, better-known ones . . .”

“A friend who used them to go to Brazil recommended them to me. They seemed to know what they were doing.”

“Didn't Ballón tell you that you're supposed to apply in person and that sooner or later you would have to go to the consulate?”

“Yes.”

“How much did you pay him? We'll find out anyway.”

“Ask Ballón yourself,” I said. “Ask him or his secretary.”

“What time did he give you the visa?”

“Ten, ten-thirty.”

“Didn't he seem nervous?”

“Ballón? Happy as can be.”

The señora, brimming with anger and frustration, got up from the sofa and stood face-to-face with the American. “Ballón knows everything. What do we have to do with it?”

The American took a step back, as if his face were being sniffed by a rabid dog. “Ballón escaped by a hair,” the police captain said. “He beat us by half an hour.”

“Some cop must've given him the heads-up,” the boy said. The captain directed a sinister look at him.

“Do you have any relatives in the U.S.?” the American asked me.

“My son lives in Florida. He bought me a ticket to go visit him.”

“What does he do over there?”

“He's in school.”

“With a scholarship from the U.S. government?”

“No, I send him money.”

“How much?”

“Sometimes five hundred dollars, sometimes more.”

“You can't live on that over there,” he responded.

“I suppose he makes ends meet with some job or other. The kid's really frugal.”

“Then you must make a lot of money.”

I wanted to tell him to go to hell, but I had to play it cool. “I'm a businessman.”

He smiled again, smugly, arrogantly. “The police have to look into whether or not you knew what Ballón was up to.”

The woman protested: “How could you think that? We fell for it like flies.”

The young man, on the verge of exploding, added, “We're not idiots. What would we have given him money for if they were just going to find out when we got to your country?”

He was right about that. Silence reigned for a few moments. The American took the captain aside and they conferred in low voices. The captain scratched his head and said, “Ballón will fall soon enough. He still hasn't left the country. Until we have that bird in our hands, it's my obligation to deliver your passports to our American friends so that they can annul your visas.”

“And then?” the young man asked.

“I'll keep all of you in custody until Ballón is caught.”

“That could be years,” I protested.

The captain was angry. He wanted chocolate but we had given him strawberry. “I said a few days. Once you've proven your innocence, you can go back to the consulate and start the visa application over again.”

“Nothing could be simpler,” the American said.

All three of us, the accused, let out a spiteful burst of laughter.

“How will I live in La Paz?” the young man asked. “I'm from Sucre.”

“Go on back to Sucre. We'll send for you,” the captain said.

The boy cursed.

The policeman arched his back like a cat. “You better keep cool, unless you want to end up behind bars.”

“We're not under military rule. You can't detain me without letting me call a lawyer first. The days of bullying are over,” the boy said.

The official peered at the American, who returned the look. It was the plain and simple truth.

“You can go now,” he said. “There are no charges against you. Go on to the Lloyd counter and pick up your luggage.”

“I want my money back,” I said. “I want that asshole Ballón to confess. If you guys are serious about it, Ballón will be caught in a few hours.”

“How much did you pay him?” the American asked. The guy was a stubborn bastard.

I didn't answer. The woman was crying. The young man was uttering expletives slowly, the way people do in Tarija.

The captain said, “Ballón will be ours in a few days at most.”

“And his secretary?” I asked. “She must know everything, or almost everything.”

“She was his lover,” the captain clarified. “They ran off together.”

The three of us, the surprised and angry victims, sat in resignation in the waiting room where international passengers get ready to board. The foreign tourists, mostly Germans and Frenchmen, savored their last Bolivian coffees for one peso each. Then they stood in the line that would lead them to the steps for boarding the airplane on the tarmac. A beautiful young woman in a blue uniform collected the boarding passes, smiling and wishing them a good trip. The Lloyd jet roared on the runway. The colorful, glittering lights emanating from its imposing armor were hypnotizing. There went our hopes and dreams, the happiness we coveted. The waiting room emptied within a few minutes and we stayed there as if mute and paralyzed. The jet, like a gigantic bird flapping its wings, prepared to take to the skies and disappear into the night. Only when we could no longer hear the churning sound of its engine, which had been swallowed by the heavens, did we stand up. We went out into the vast airport lobby. Hardly anyone remained from that bustling crowd. Only a few taxis, the ones that hadn't picked up any passengers yet, were waiting at the exit doors. The señora got a small man to help with her luggage at the Lloyd ticket counter.