Blood of My Brother (32 page)

“Yes,” Jay answered.

“You are blessed, then. She is very special.”

“There are people looking for us,” Jay said. “Trying to kill us.”

“Do they know you’re here?”

“No.”

“Here is Juanito,” Sister said. “Let’s go inside.”

At nine o’clock Isabel and Sister Josefina were sitting at the wooden table in the nun’s small kitchen. Through the beaded curtain behind them, they could see Jay asleep in Josefina’s bed, an army cot, in the house’s only other room,
a sitting room/bedroom/office onto which the villagers had tacked a skeletal bathroom which contained Josefina’s one luxury, a shower. Jay had consumed a huge amount of rice and beans and a large glass of Jake Decker’s Irish whiskey. Showered, fed, his head shaved and sutured, he was snoring lightly, but had not changed position for two hours.

“He will sleep all night,” said Josefina.

Isabel nodded. She was not tired. She should have been, but she wasn’t. The cup of hot chocolate she had been sipping from, laced with the same whiskey, sat on the table in front of her, half full. A hurricane lantern, fueled by a pale yellow oil, rested between them, shedding light on the women’s hands and partially exposing their faces to each other.

“I am not used to seeing you without your habit,” Isabel said.

“Yes, it hid all my faults.”

“What faults?”

“I am not beautiful, as you can see, and I am old now.”

“Shall I tell you something, Sister?”

“Yes.”

“Your face—the memory of your face—kept me many times from committing suicide.”

“What happened, Isabelita? Please tell me,” Josefina said. There was no shock in her eyes, or even surprise, as if, Isabel thought, she already knew or sensed that something was deeply wrong. “I will suffer more,” Sister said, “if you keep this barrier between us.”

The evening had been busy. Juanito’s mother, Esperanza, had appeared with her husband’s razor, a sewing kit, and the food. Isabel had listened while Sister Josefina had blandly lied to Esperanza, telling her in Spanish that her visitors were an old student from Mexico City and her friend whose bus
had run into a large pothole while taking them from Oaxaca City to the coast. They would be staying a few days while their wounds healed. A small canyon—
un pequeño cañón
—she had called the pothole, and Esperanza, apparently familiar with the state of the roads in their rural and forgotten part of Mexico, had nodded knowingly. Esperanza had left with Jay and Isabel’s dirty clothes to launder, and Juanito had returned with the thick slab of bittersweet chocolate for their after-dinner drinks.

In the moments they were alone Isabel had avoided Sister’s searching looks, but there was no sense putting off the inevitable.

At ten o’clock, Josefina took another lantern from a kitchen shelf, lit it, and stood silently before Isabel.

“Are you going to bed?” Isabel asked. “Where will you sleep?”

“I will sleep in the church,” the nun said, “but first I will pray.”

“Pray for an answer?”

“No. I will be thanking Our Lady.”

“Thanking her?”

“Yes, for sending you to me.”

“So you will do it?”

“Yes, I will make the call. But only on one condition—that I will be the one to kill Herman Santaria.”

Staring at Sister Josefina’s homely face, Isabel now realized why she had remained so beautiful in her memory. The kindness of her heart shone brightly on it, a brightness now dimmed, no doubt by the horror of Isabel’s story, leaving in its place the drawn and haggard face of a woman who had
seen too much suffering and was old before her time.

“I am responsible for what happened to you, Isabel,” Josefina continued when Isabel remained silent. “I was blinded by Herman’s money, by the good it could do for the other children. I was proud of my role in bringing in that money. I should have asked many questions. If I had, I might have saved you. It is a bitter lesson.”

“Sister . . .”

“Yes, Isabel.”

“I am no longer
Isabelita
?”

“Not tonight, no . . .”

Isabel could see the tears welling in Sister’s eyes. “Go,” she said, “and pray for me as well, and for Jay. Tomorrow we will make our plans.” But I will pull the trigger, she said to herself, not you, nor anyone else.
Me
. I will do it.

“Who’s calling?”

“It is Sister Josefina from the Santa Maria Orphanage in Polanco. Do you remember me? I am calling about Isabel Perez.”

Josefina was sitting facing the large baroque fountain in the center of Oaxaca City’s beautiful zocalo. She was in her street clothes but had her headpiece on so that she would be recognized as a nun and obtain the minor but often helpful advantages that this status conferred almost everywhere in Mexico. In the pause that followed her last statement, she watched as two schoolgirls, sitting on the fountain’s low perimeter wall, bent to cup water in their hands and splash it onto their faces. The weather was hot for the winter, ninety degrees or more, and she made a note to herself to do the same thing when she was finished with Herman Santaria.

“Yes, Sister, it is me, Herman. How is Isabel?”

“She is not good, that’s why I’m calling. I need your help.”
Bueno
, Josefina thought, so far so good.

“I will help, of course, Sister. Where is she?” So sincere. Be careful, Josefina.

“She is in hiding,” the nun answered.

“In hiding? Has she done something?”

“I don’t know,” Sister replied. “She seems almost out of her mind. She is talking about murder and drugs and documents and tapes, and . . .”

“Yes, Sister?”

“And incest.”

“Incest, my God”

“She is raving, senor. I am very worried.”

“Sister,” Herman said, “I must tell you, Isabel was not well in her mind. We often had to send her for treatment. She hallucinated and had what the doctors called multiple personalities.”

“I did not know this.”

“I did not want to burden you. She was my responsibility.”

“She needs treatment now, senor.”

“I will take care of her. Where is she?”

“I think it best if I brought you to her, senor. She told me not to call you. I think she is ashamed. If you and I went to her together, it would be best, I think.”

“
Bueno.
I understand. Where shall I meet you?”

“I am stationed in Santiago Ixtayutla.”

“Where is that?”

“About sixty miles south of Oaxaca City.”

“
Bueno
, I will come now.”

“No, senor, come on Wednesday morning. Our priest will be there for a funeral. He will help us persuade Isabel to go with you.”

“Is she staying with you, Sister?”

“No, senor. She is in the mountains. She has promised to call me tomorrow. I will persuade her to come down. The funeral is for Sister Adelina, who Isabel loved. It is the only way.”

Herman did not reply immediately. As Josefina waited for him to speak, she glanced over at the schoolgirls. They had dunked their whole heads into the fountain, sunglasses and all, and, laughing, were wiping the water from their faces and their black, Mexican hair, which was shimmering in the bright sunlight.

“Yes, Sister, that is a good plan,” said Santaria finally. “I will meet you there at nine on Wednesday. Is there only one church in the town?”

“Yes, the Church of the Precious Blood of Christ, on the plaza.”

“
Bueno.
Sister?”

“Yes?”

“I will bring you a check for your troubles. For the parish.”

“Oh, no, senor . . .”

“I insist. One more thing, Sister.”

“Yes?”

“Have you seen these so-called documents?”

“No, senor. They are locked in a suitcase which she guards with her life.”

“
Bueno
, Sister. I will see you on Wednesday.”

“Who did you speak to?”

“Your friend, Angelo.”

“Was he at Victor’s?”

“No, they went next door to get him.”

“Did he believe you?”

“Yes, I told him the things you said.”

“And?”

“He said he would contact Frank. He said to tell you they’re on their way.”

Jay and Sister Josefina were sitting in Sister’s kitchen, drinking lemonade as yellow shafts of late-day sunlight crossed between them over the top of her scarred but sturdy little table. In the morning he had given her Bryce Powers’s satchel-full of documents and tapes to bring to the nearest FedEx office in Oaxaca City to send to Linda Marshall. He had taped the business card Linda gave him at the Spanish Tavern to the top document, Powers’s meticulous twenty-page list of money laundering transactions going back to 1982. He had given Josefina the money for this plus additional cash to buy a prepaid cell phone to use to make her two calls.

“Did you throw the phone away?”

“Yes.”

“Did you use a phony name?”

“Of course, as you told me. But they did not ask me for identification.”

“When will the package arrive?”

“Tomorrow morning, as you requested.”

Josefina rose. Her refrigerator, a Frigidaire from the fifties, had started clanking and rattling from somewhere deep in its dying innards. She kicked it swiftly and hard on its left flank and the noise stopped. Opening it, she pulled out the half full plastic pitcher of lemonade and brought it to the table.

“And the other call?” Jay asked.

“Yes, I made that, too.”

“Yes, and?”

“It went well. He is meeting me here at the church on Wednesday morning at nine.”

Jay looked at his watch. Could Dunn and Angelo get here in thirty-six hours? Would it matter?

“Tell me what you said and what he said.”

“As we discussed, I told him Isabel had contacted me with a crazy story about murder and drugs and documents. And incest. That she seemed out of her head. That I didn’t know who to call except him. I begged him for his help. He asked several times for her exact location, as we suspected he would. I told him I thought it would be best if he met me here and I brought him to her. That she was in a very fragile state. He agreed finally.”

“Did he believe you?”

“I have made a discovery: I am a good liar.”

“When you have to be.”

“Yes.”

“Thank you, Sister.”

“
De nada
. . . Jay?”

“Yes.”

“How is your head?”

“Getting better.”

“And your heart?”

“My heart?”

“Do you love Isabel?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me about your parents.”

“My parents?”

“Yes.”

“They’re both dead.”

“Yes, Isabel told me. But tell me about them. Do you miss them?”

Jay did not answer. He looked straight at Sister Josefina, through her black-rimmed soda-bottle glasses into her dark brown eyes.
Do I miss them?

“Sister . . .” he said, shaking his head almost imperceptibly.

“You must honor them by thinking about them and talking about them. They are waiting for you to do that. Their death has brought you here, to Isabel, to me. I will pray for them for the rest of my life.”

Before Jay could answer, the small house’s front door swung open and Isabel entered. She was carrying garments—one black, one white—which she laid over the back of an empty chair. In her free hand she had a manila folder, which she placed on the table before sitting down herself.

“How did it go?” she said, looking first at Sister and then at Jay.

“Well,” Josefina said. “He will be here on Wednesday morning at nine.”