Blood Makes Noise (14 page)

“Everyone knows Hector.”

“Especially those of you in the attaché’s office.”

Michael’s turn to smile.

“What do you write home, Mr. Suslov? To Mr. Acheson?”

“As a commercial attaché?”

“Yes, Mr. Suslov, as a commercial attaché.”

He should have backed off five minutes ago. What was pushing him? “That Argentina was never great, that possibly it can never be great. But that now, because of you, Argentina believes it is great. And in the end perhaps that’s the same thing.”

He expected anything and got a small nod. “Few speak to me like this.”

“Few are as ill-mannered. I apologize.”

“I know plenty of ill-mannered. Embassy Row is full of them. No, you’re different. There is something…sad about you. You have a Latin soul, Mr. Suslov.”

“I was raised here.”

“As I thought.”

José Espejo, CGT head and number four in the Perón administration, stuck his head in. “Senora, pardon—”

“Get out.”

“But—”

“Shut up and get out!” No dog ever slinked away faster. She turned back to Michael. “I must go. The children…”

“Of course, Senora.”

She turned for the tiny door and paused. “I should think, Michael, your life in that embassy, with such a soul, must be a very lonely one.”

“I think so must be yours.”

“Good afternoon, Mr. Suslov.”

“Good afternoon, Senora.”

Children’s voices could be heard, tiny voices calling her name. “My children await.” She smiled with lips famously full and was gone.

Even then cancer was already spreading through her groin, and Michael would always wonder if on that day she suspected all that awaited her come summer would be Ara and his embalmer’s syringes of heated glycerin. Along the way there would be small notes left for him in the embassy. Never signed but smelling unmistakably of her. They would be snippets of Latin poetry, always of patriotism and the melancholy thrill of giving one’s life. Sometimes there would be a handwritten line beneath the poetry:
For your soul, Michael…

He never answered these notes—he knew the rules—but they warmed him with maternal affection, touched regions long in ache, and he would reread them often, when alone in the station.

Near Evita’s end, Michael came home one night to an envelope tacked to his door, written in a shaking, chemotherapy hand:

At this moment, I think of the young man with a Latin soul and the mother who never said good-bye. Pray for her, Michael Suslov, pray for me, and protect both our souls.
Included in the envelope was a small lock of blonde hair. Scrawled below it, in handwriting so degraded it was nearly unreadable, a last line:
You Will Never Forget Me.

Two weeks later her casket, rounded and sleekly black, inched from her bed to the National Congress building through streets heavy with mourners. He was there.

She lay in state for two days, and the faithful waited hours, drenched in freezing rain, for a glimpse. And he was there. Among the farmers and street workers, her army of poor clutching not Bibles but her autobiography. He lied to his wife, called in sick to the station, and stood in the rain ten hours to see the corpse. Ara had done a rushed, temporary job, and it showed. She was still Evita. When the crowds thinned the doctor would take her away, roll up his sleeves, and spend the following year turning her into…his.

The line never stopped moving, but Michael slowed, brushed the rain from his face, and whispered, for her, a prayer.

A glob of sweat rolled off his nose and broke across her lip, running away like rain on polished chrome.
See, look at those lips
, the oligarchy had cried, as if their fullness were in itself proof of her rumored skill at fellatio, a talent reportedly shared with every producer and nickelodeon jockey she met as a young actress. Before the earthquake relief concert and the General she stole
from her best friend. Before the sanctifying of that turgid, ruby mouth. Ara’s mouth now. Effigy as reality. She was in there somewhere…

Karen came home, baby-to-be and mom given a clean bill, D-day in two weeks. Karen’s back hurt, her legs kept cramping, and she knew instantly something was wrong with the house.

“What have you done, Michael?”

“Nothing that won’t be over soon.”

The hurt ran so deep it was almost lost to the eye. “This is my house too.”

“I know. Why do you say that?”

She took in the room with an eerie perception that made Michael squirm. “Is it here?” she asked.

“What?”

“Whatever you’ve done.”

He tried to let the words filter with the confidence of a technicality. “No.”

She stopped talking to him.

He fidgeted, tried to come up with something to say. But what was there except what couldn’t be said? He bounced off the walls, useless, and finally went to bed an hour after Karen.

He didn’t remember sleeping, and waking was a nauseating, fuzzy jolt. He fought for a reason, mine-shaft darkness around him, and was going to let it go when he heard a shadow. Outside, along the foundation wall. His vision flushed hot, and his hand was groping, numb stupid, for Hector’s .45 under the bed. It was heavy and giant and his fingers closed over it all wrong. He swung his feet down, smacked a heel on tile, and sat there, ghost frozen.

Karen was asleep, and he measured time by her breaths. He listened till his eyes hurt, finally stood, and shuffled agonizingly to the bedroom window. The backyard stretched out a story
below, gardens and olive trees running to the alley. He waited for the backyard to make the first move.

An olive tree shifted.

Something went black in Michael’s veins. He bolted through the bedroom, barked his toe on the staircase, barreled without reason through the kitchen to the backdoor. He stood there, gun out, and tried to wait.

Somewhere along the way the sun came up.

His arm was asleep, and he couldn’t feel the gun. You could see the backyard now through the kitchen window. Fleshy blue. Silent.

When he opened the back door, his feet sunk in dew. Michael lowered the gun, turned back inside…

And saw the rose tied to the door.

“Gotta stop swimming in meat grinders, son.”

Michael jerked up. He was in the embassy lunch room—hundred square feet of linoleum, coffee pot, and Coke machine. Lofton leaned on the back of a chair.

“Didn’t get much sleep.”

“Doesn’t look like you got any sleep at all, pally. Trouble at home?”

A jolt of alarm rocked Michael’s colon then spread dully through his exhaustion, as nothing registered on Lofton’s face. “Got a kid coming. It’s hard on Karen. I’m a little nervous I guess.”

“It’s a roller coaster for sure. Just remember you’re not the first. Mommies been doin’ this forever just fine.” Lofton lingered, and Michael wondered what he was waiting for him to say.

“Yeah. You’re right. I guess.”

The chair creaked as Lofton rocked it. “Makes a guy think about his future, having a child. What would best serve that future, for you, for Karen, for your baby.” It sat weirdly a beat before he released the chair and backed away. “Gotta go back and look busy. Do the same if I were you. Bud’s got the green folder out again.”

He left, and Michael’s mind went back where it’d been all morning.

The rose.

He’d checked twice to make sure it was real, crumpling it before Karen got up. A chance in a million it wasn’t what it had to be. One night. One fucking night and it had started. A bunch of old women—and, Jesus Christ, what Wisner would give for ears like that. What Dulles himself would.

The shadow in the yard hadn’t looked old.

It was all too much now. He didn’t know where to move the box till Tuesday, but it wasn’t staying in the garage next door. And he was getting Karen out of there. Today.

Rushing through a budget report so he could duck out early; Karen wary on the phone: “I can barely move, Michael. Why on earth do you want to go somewhere now?” He’d tried to make it sound relaxed, and it came out flushed and edgy. Karen’s breath broke and shortened, and he knew she was crying. “Damn you, Michael, I’m your wife. It’s my life too. Why won’t you talk to me?” He promised he would. He’d tell her everything. But later. Right now, please, she had to pack a case for the weekend. “I’ve been sick all day, Michael…” A resigned sigh. “Just make it someplace quiet, huh?”

“Promise. I love you.”

“Sure.”

On the way out Norris hit him with the green folder, a blurry extra hour tracing money transfers through British-owned BA banks. Pumped with Miller’s coup, Norris actually smiled. Actually
said
please.
Michael fought the need to punch him. A roomful of flatfoots was one thing. A roomful of
smug
flatfoots was one cross too many.

It was dark when Michael got home. He dropped the car at the curb, looked for Karen’s bags in the hall—didn’t see them—and bounded up the stairs.

She was in bed.

“What are you doing?” He fairly squeaked with it.

One eye opened with difficulty. “Oh. Hi.”

“How come you’re not packed?”

You could see the shape of her belly under the blanket, a small mountain drifting up and down. “I’ve been feeling like crap for an hour and half, Michael. If you want to leave that badly, you’re going to have to do it alone or carry me over your shoulder.”

“You’re not just screwing with me, are you?”

“Don’t flatter yourself.”

He let his shoulders loosen and rubbed his eyes. He was being stupid about this. He sat down beside her. “It’s okay. It’s not that big a deal. Really. Can I get you something?”

“Some water maybe. Thank you.”

She was asleep again when he came back. He set the water on a nightstand, watched her face, easy and soft with a strand of hair over one eye. She was peaceful, and it snuck up on him. The ache of how he could have let so much drift to sea so far.

He’d fix it. He’d ship the Pampa Princess out, and with Hector’s promised juice, Karen and Michael Suslov would soon follow. Away from this shit. Away from Buenos Aires.

He made himself something in the kitchen and didn’t eat it, settled on coffee, and roamed the living room. Tried to focus but just ended up pacing. Raw and exhausted from last night, he finally turned off most of the lights and sat in his armchair, .45 in his lap, and faced a window that looked out on the neighbor’s alley garage. A knee drummed as he waited for shadows.

An eternity passed before he checked his watch. Eleven o’clock. Jesus Christ, it was only eleven o’clock.

He blinked. Looked at his watch again and felt his guts freeze. 4:26 a.m. A five-hour blink…

He sat straight up in the chair, rubbed his eyes, and they were still blurry. He rubbed them again, took in the room.

And knew he wasn’t alone.

Something screwy calm in him. Not like last night. Maybe the certainty. Maybe he’d just run out of adrenaline.

It started as just a sense but now it was a creak. From the kitchen. Behind the wings of his easy chair. Hidden, he picked the blunderbuss from his lap. Rammed his thoughts with where to go, which way to leap…

When the lights went out. The fuse box in the kitchen. It had to be the fucking fuse—

Another creak. Hard sole on kitchen tile. He flooded with possibilities, till it all gridlocked and he was jumping out of the chair—blind in his own house—and suddenly his nose sang, his breath exploded, and he was falling backward, the carpet coming up sooner than he expected. His lungs refused to suck, and he realized he’d been hit—body-blocked—and there was shuffling, but you couldn’t see…

Something, maybe a leg, and he slammed his fist, breaking a knuckle against bone. The leg shouted—“
Sasiko!
”—a male voice that kicked Michael furiously aside. He rolled, got his gun off the carpet and tried to stand, tried to scream, but nothing came. He rocked to his feet, tumbled after the voice retreating into the kitchen.

He hit the tile and banged into the range. Pain shot through his side. He gasped, spun—

And the room lit up.

A flash, and Michael knew he was being shot at. He wasn’t hit—maybe—and threw himself through the opposite doorway,
where he locked down and grasped his gun so tight he thought the grip would crumble.

A battery night-light. In the living room. You could see it through both kitchen doorways. He waited. Waited till moving darkness swallowed the pin of light. Then he fired.

He couldn’t tell what he’d hit through the pounding whine. The grainy stench of sulfur. Michael wiped his nose, fumbled for a circuit breaker…

And felt his universe cave in.

The round had caught the body midchest and passed through the kitchen wall. The plaster was smeared with blood down to where his target sat against it, swaying punch-drunk. It gurgled and looked up at him and it was Karen.

Black numbness started up his legs. She tried to say something, but he wouldn’t have heard. His body, his mind, were swallowed one by one in a cold forever that lowered him gently to the floor, across from his wife, and whispered that it would be all right, all right if he just went to sleep…

I
t was a half hour before anyone came. A neighbor heard the shots but didn’t know which house they came from. The first BA police car turned on a street crazy with barking dogs and went door to door, till one cop, running his flashlight through yards, saw the jimmied back door.