Blood of Paradise (27 page)

“I didn't overcome it or figure it out. I just decided to pretend it hadn't happened. As you can imagine, that didn't work. The dread was still there, always. In the background.” He waved vaguely toward the windblown palms, as though they were examples, the things we ignore. “And gradually I came to realize the terror had nothing to do with disease, it was because my wife had genuinely loved me and seen me for who I am, then left in disgust. Long-suffering woman, she was. In any event, I've reached that point in life when death seems to be getting nearer, faster. This pitiless blank slate coming at me, and what do I have to show for it? A revolted ex-wife, no children, and a life of dubious work—including this odious business with Estrella, for which I was hired only because three other hydrologists Torkland would have preferred were unavailable.

“Then suddenly this woman is with me in my room. She's lovely, but more than that she's simply, ineffably feminine—all that amplified by her intensity, this ferocious commitment to these children. That's when she told me what was truly bothering her about Estrella. Not
what
so much, actually, as who. But I wasn't listening, not yet. I was smelling her perfume and trying not to stare at her breasts the way Bauserman had. And either I sensed a return interest on her part or I invented it. In any event, I heard her out as best I could, paid just enough attention to be able to say honestly I'd do what I could, and then she sat there, not getting up, looking at me. She wanted something more. Something stronger. And I took that to mean what I wanted it to mean.”

Axel's eyes clouded over. A dove cooed somewhere in a nearby garden.

“Looking back on it now, I realize she must have felt trapped. Maybe she wanted to trap me in return. Regardless, she stayed. Till morning. And I ignored everything except the way she made me feel young and worth something and unafraid for at least a little while.”

He looked straight into Jude's eyes as though he might find forgiveness there. But all Jude could think of was that line of Waxman's:
Why is it so hard to believe we're not wanted?
Axel had gone one better:
How hard we pretend we're wanted regardless
.

“This woman's going to extort you.”

Axel recoiled a little. “I hadn't considered it along those lines, to be honest.” He reached up absently to scratch behind his ear. An odd gesture, it made him look old. “I mean, what I figured might happen is she'd use our liaison as leverage, to get me to press her concerns.”

“Use it how?”

“Guilt, I suppose.”

“You mean, what, nag?”

Axel lifted his chin in defiance, but the rest of him sagged. “Basically. Yes.”

“And if that didn't work, expose you.”

“Of what—having a libido at sixty-two? Welcome to Viagra. Besides, I'm a divorcé. Where's the scandal?”

“Axel, the woman came to you for a sympathetic ear, not a revitalized dick. And she'll get first shot at setting the scene as to what happened in your room.”

A sudden shadow darted along the moonlit wall behind Axel. Jude turned toward it just as the
gorrobo
, a small brown lizard, vanished up a low-hanging tree branch.

Axel let out a brooding sigh. “I've been foolish, I suppose.”

“There's nothing here that can't be handled. We keep her away from you.”

“That's not possible.”

That caught Jude off guard. “Why not?”

“I'm quite fond of her.” The words came out with sapped strength, as though Axel were their victim. Then he added, even more abashed, “I'm in love with her, actually.”

Jude felt like he was talking to three different people. “You're making this too hard.”

“I'm going to ask that you try to understand.”

“You realize what this exposes you to?”

Axel scoffed, “Now you're sounding paranoid.”

“I get paid to be paranoid. Why drag me up here if there's nothing—”

“Look, I've put all this in its worst light. Let's get things back on track.” Axel closed his eyes to regain his focus, his hands scrubbing together worriedly—another aging, enfeebling gesture. “I told you, Consuela's issues with Estrella go beyond what it's doing, to who's involved. Does the name Wenceslao Sola mean anything to you?”

Jude could put the name to a face but little more. “He's on the Estrella board.”

“Hasn't a whiff of business sense, let alone experience, but he's connected by family to some influential people. I'm not sure there's a scam going on, exactly, but it's damn odd how miserly the well-to-do down here can be when it comes to investing in anything local. The money sails offshore to banks in Miami, the Caymans, Luxembourg, wherever. Nobody's going to risk anything of his own to see this place improved. So development capital comes through loans—the World Bank or IMF or export-import banks like U.S. Ex-Im or export credit agencies like ODIC—and as often as not gets skimmed or paid out to cronies in kickback schemes, some quite clever, or just stolen outright. That's what Consuela suspects is going on here. The bottling plant's expansion is just an elaborate reward to Sola and his cronies for their continuing support of U.S. plans down here. That's why ODIC's involved. To ensure that Torkland Overby isn't on the hook for plowing money and equipment into a white elephant being used principally for payoffs.”

“And again,” Jude said, “she knows this how?”

“She doesn't know,” Axel said wearily. “She suspects.”

“Because?”

“Because of this Sola character!” Axel threw up his hands. “She was married to a cousin of his. A disaster of a marriage, apparently, but it gave her an inside glimpse at the clan. Wenceslao is the family scapegrace, spends money like a whore on holiday, is rumored to have a thing for little girls, and is generally just one of those louche, pampered little deviants who couldn't make his own way in life, let alone earn an honest buck, if his soul hung in the balance.”

“Axel, I don't mean to sound harsh, but that's the way the sewer runs down here.”

“During the war, Sola joined a group called Los Patrióticos, a kind of bourgeois brotherhood cum weekend death squad—I know, I know, death squads, the great bogeyman of Latin America. But hear me out, all right? He also has ties to Judge Regalado, the owner of the sugar operation upstream from the bottling plant. He's practically an institution when it comes to venality.” Axel scratched his head and sighed. “I'm sorry this is so complicated. I'm doing my best to crib it, believe me. Consuela, for all her virtues, can be a tad scrambled in her tale telling, and her delivery is, shall we say, a bit on the breathless side.”

Jude said, “Axel?”

“Yes, yes. I'm coming to the denouement. Despite all the disavowals Estrella tries to make, it's unthinkable it doesn't get at least some of its sugar from Judge Regalado's plantations, given not just their proximity but the links between families, his and Sola's. And it's one of the worst-kept secrets in El Salvador, apparently, that the judge has no compunction about children working in his fields. Christ, he almost insists on it—builds character, helps support families, all that rot.” He let out a long, shuddering sigh, looking spent. “There. That's what I was trying to get out.”

A cluster of
golondrinas
suddenly scattered in frantic wing bursts from among the swaying branches overhead. Another
gorrobo
, or maybe the same one, scurried down the stone wall and burrowed in the sand.

Jude locked his hands behind his neck. “Well, that's quite a yarn.”

“Yes. And I've only told you half.”

“You're joking.”

“My mention of death squads wasn't for the sake of drama. Whenever Sola visits the bottling plant in San Bartolo Oriente, he stops for lunch at a restaurant owned by a man named Hector Torres. Consuela may have little kind to say about Sola, but he's a mere pest compared to Torres. Consuela's terrified of him.”

Jude considered that for a moment, taking full account of the gravity in Axel's eyes and voice. Then he said, “Sola, he has lunch. At this guy's restaurant.” He didn't mean to spoil the party, but really. “That's it?”

“Torres has long played the role of pivot man for the death squads operating in the eastern departments. Not just during the war but after. He's the godfather of Los Soldados de San Miguel, and you've heard of them, I'm sure. They're particularly fond of snatching uncooperative prostitutes, gutting or beheading them, leaving the bodies on the steps of local churches, to flaunt their impunity. He's made all the right friends and people fear him. Consuela hears he runs a protection racket now, muscling theft rings, kidnap rings, drug dealers—prostitutes, naturally—even street vendors. He's ruthless, has a little army of
veteranos
and
mareros
he uses for henchlings. People pay.”

Of course they do, Jude thought. He recalled what Strock had said.
We taxed them, sure
. And suddenly Torres the respectable gangster got conflated with the Candyman and Malvasio, the Laugh Masters. Jude's father. Overhead, the
golondrinas
resettled in the palm branches.

“Axel, correct me if I'm wrong, but none of this involves you unless—”

“The day before you got back from the States—and shortly after the last time Wenceslao Sola paid his respects to Hector Torres—a woman named Marta Valdez disappeared from a tiny village outside San Bartolo Oriente. She'd complained to people—in particular, to Consuela, who works with a few citizen committees in the area—about the
pozos
, the wells, below her village. The wells, they've become brackish with mineral deposits because the water table's dropped so low, partially because of the bottling plant—or so everyone suspects, including me, but I've still not been able to confirm it satisfactorily. Regardless, Consuela went up to the village when this woman, Marta, didn't appear for a follow-up interview. No one there would so much as talk to her. Except, as she was leaving, a boy came up. His name is Oscar. He's all of eight years old.

“He says he heard a car drive up the hill and park outside Marta's house. Four men were in the car. Two went inside the house and stayed for a while. When they came back out, they were carrying what looked like a body wrapped in a blanket. Then they drove down the hill again. No one's seen Marta since.”

A light came on in the window of a nearby house, then almost instantly went out again. Jude gestured for Axel to start walking with him downhill. Once they'd moved on a ways, Jude said, “This boy, he's told all this to your friend Consuela. Anybody else?”

“He's too terrified to tell the authorities. I don't know, I can't help wondering if this prostitute-to-be-named-later from Usulután, who's now been found beheaded—”

“And you didn't mention any of this to McGuire why?”

“Once I heard the way they were going at you, I didn't trust them. You didn't either, obviously. And then this Lazarek character. ODIC doesn't have an ongoing presence at the embassy. People come and go, and beyond the pencil pushers it's always a bit of a game, figuring out which consultants are spies and vice versa. But Lazarek was a different story altogether—a name people whispered. I was looking forward to meeting him face-to-face, actually, just to see if he really existed. Well, now I have. All that crap about stable government and gangs. Spare me. If the gangs were pro-ARENA, we'd pay for their weddings.”

“But if ODIC is Lazarek's cover—”

“That could mean they're not turning a blind eye just to Sola and the other trough-feeders on the Estrella board, but to this crooked judge and Torres and whoever killed this woman.” Axel sighed at the strangeness of it all. “As for the FBI, I haven't a clue why they're involved.”

“My guess is they're not.” Jude wouldn't be sending McGuire or Sanborn any valentines, but their contempt for Lazarek now seemed reassuring.

“One last thing,” Axel said. “Excuse me if this seems intrusive, but what might your father or this man you flew back with or the other one they were harping about—”

“Malvasio.”

“What have they to do with any of this?”

“Nothing.” Jude tried for nonchalance. “Cop tricks. Trying to put me off guard.” Nothing had changed his mind about that. Yet. And if anything, Malvasio now seemed less a menace than a seer:
For all you know, the people involved in your hydrologist's project could be the worst of the worst down here
. “Back to Lazarek for a minute—any chance he or somebody else at ODIC would know about your thing with—”

“Consuela? Possibly.” Axel cringed. “Thing, please. God. But Bauserman knows, yes. Fitz knows. I've no idea whom they may have told in turn.”

“And the fact she knows that this Sola character, the judge, Torres are all connected?”

“I've shared that with no one but you.”

26

Malvasio reached the San Bartolo Oriente city limits just before midnight—hours late, delayed by his detour into the mangrove swamp. He was driving the van with its telltale dark-tinted glass, pistol in his lap, doors locked, his eyes always trained not at the cobbled tunnel-like street twisting before him in his headlights but at the mercurial shadows melting into the doorways to either side.

By day you'd see the streets jammed with women shopping at the
mercado central
, boys making bread deliveries on their basketed bikes, and schoolgirls in blue pleated skirts and white blouses walking arm in arm, while horn-honking traffic squeezed through the crowds beneath the blistering sun. But the night belonged to the
mareros
. The city was too poor for after-hour police patrols. People shuttered their homes come nightfall and waited for dawn.

He slowed at the cathedral plaza, dodging stray dogs rooting through trash. On the plaster wall of the cathedral itself, a recent inscription in loopy spray paint read:
Por mi madre nací y por mi barrio muero
. By my mother I was born and for my brothers I will die. It was punctuated with the customary
MS 13
in Gothic lettering, marking the area for Mara Salvatrucha, and surrounded by a bilingual roll call: Poison, Travieso, Snorky, Choca …