God's Favorite (27 page)

Endara motioned to quiet the crowd, but the people were already silent, or only murmuring, and so the gesture seemed superfluous and strangely silly. He dismounted laboriously from the bed of the truck and approached the officer in charge, a pinch-faced colonel whom Father Jorge recognized as a member of the white middle class—the same people, by and large, that the officer was standing against. Perhaps for that reason the officer was unable to look into Endara's smiling, reasonable face. Once Father Jorge would have doubted that such a man could order his troops to attack his own social class, but he had learned how easily a man's allegiances could be perverted. He supposed the officer was the victim of some kind of sadistic loyalty test.
Once this man had declared himself in this fashion, he would always belong to Noriega. No one else would have him.

A stirring in the crowd caused Father Jorge to look into one of the side streets. He saw the Digbats massed there, wearing their colorful T-shirts and carrying chains and pipes. Some of them held boards with long nails protruding from them. They were just unemployed teenagers with handmade weapons, but their faces were hard and eager. Others in the crowd noticed them as well, and they began shouting like animals that have suddenly discovered that they've been trapped in the slaughterhouse. With no avenue of escape, the people pressed even more into the center, into a compact, frightened horde. Father Jorge tried to push his way to the front, thinking that he might be able to persuade the officer to let the women leave, but he could scarcely move his arms in the crush.

And then the Digbats charged.

The plaza echoed with the shrieks of the mob and the wild cries of the Digbats. A woman next to Father Jorge dropped to the ground in a heap. He thought she might have been shot, but then he realized that she had fainted from fright. People around her were stepping on her in their panic. He lifted the woman's limp body and held her upright, but then he didn't know what to do with her. He simply stood there, stupidly hugging her to him and waiting for the Digbats to beat their way to them.

The Digbats advanced in a disorganized mob, swinging their bludgeons like crazed reapers moving through a field of wheat. Blood flew into the air as if it were raining upward. Father Jorge caught sight of Guillermo Endara just as a fist brushed past the candidate's face, knocking his glasses off. He looked confused and oddly denuded, the way people do who are never seen without their glasses. He dropped to his hands and knees, patting the ground and looking for his glasses, but then a pipe crashed across his skull and his face slammed into the pavement.

The woman Father Jorge was holding came back into consciousness. Her eyes were vague, but then they filled with terror.
For a moment she clung to him, but then she pushed away and began wobbling through the hysterical crowd like a sleepwalker. The entire scene was surreal—the cries, the violence, the movements that took place with hallucinatory slowness. Father Jorge struggled toward a car where he had noticed the vice presidential candidates were hiding. He wasn't certain what his own intentions were, but he felt the urgent need to act, perhaps to redeem himself. The Digbats had surrounded the car and were knocking out the windows with bats and pipes. There was a gunshot. Then Father Jorge recognized the lanky, white-haired figure of Billy Ford being pulled out of the car. His white shirt was covered with blood. Ford pushed one of the Digbats away, but just as he did another hit him squarely on the back of his head with a heavy steel pipe. Ford staggered. He began to paw the air as if he could claw his way through the mob, but they had him now. One blow after another landed. Ford's head snapped back and forth, but somehow he kept walking. It was as if he had some destination in mind and a superhuman determination to achieve it. He turned to the window of a video store where a bank of televisions was showing the stern face of Jimmy Carter lecturing the press. Ford waved at the pictures in confusion as a PDF soldier grabbed him and pushed him into a waiting armored van.

All of a sudden, as if responding to some unspoken command, the Digbats stopped their assault. Some of them tossed away their crude and bloody weapons. They looked tired and surprised by what they had done. The screaming died, and the moaning of the beaten protesters could be heard. In this moment of release, some terrible understanding passed between the Digbats and the protesters. It was the recognition that they were not separated by politics or class or generations but by their very natures; and that because of this, humanity would never be reconciled; peace would never be more than a pause in the eternal cycle of wars and revolution.

In this tragic moment Father Jorge noticed Teo Sánchez standing a few feet away with a pipe in his hands. Teo's clothes
were splattered with blood and bits of gore. He was standing over the body of an unconscious woman whose face had been mangled. As soon as Father Jorge saw him, he realized that Teo had been staring at him for some time. Perhaps he was weighing whether to attack him. Father Jorge walked toward him, then fell to his knees beside the beaten woman and began to pray. Teo stood over him for a moment, then dropped his pipe and ran away. The pipe made a clanging noise in the street and then rolled over the cobblestones.

A few feet away from Father Jorge, the PDF colonel was vomiting beside his waiting jeep. Father Jorge held the hand of the woman whose face Teo had destroyed. Her nose was ruined and flat and bits of her teeth lay on the ground. He felt useless. He could tell that she was alive, but he didn't know what to do with her except to pray. He got back to his feet and walked through sticky puddles of blood to the presidential candidate. Endara was sitting up, holding a handkerchief on the wound to the back of his head. “I'm all right, Father,” he said, “but check in the car—my bodyguard.”

Father Jorge went to the car and looked in the shattered windows. The bodyguard had been shot in the face. Bits of his brain had scattered onto the upholstery. A fly crawled across the man's open eyes. For a moment Father Jorge thought he would be ill. He quickly blessed the bodyguard and made a cross on the man's gory forehead. Then he stared fixedly at the bright blood on his finger. Everywhere people are suffering and dying for freedom, he thought helplessly, and here I am, a traitor talking to a dead man.

T
ONY STOOD IN FRONT
of a three-way mirror examining the stylish reflections of himself. Señora Morales stood behind him and on either side. “There's nothing wrong with the jacket,” she said. “It's your attitude.”

“What do you think, Lollipop?” Tony asked.

Carmen sat sullenly in a stiff Danish chair. “I think you should listen to Mama,” she said in a voice of weary experience.

Señora Morales tugged roughly at Tony's shoulders. “A jacket like this has a statement to make. You need to relax and let it speak for you.”

Tony tried to relax, but Señora Morales was unconvinced. She took his wrist and shook it. “Loosen up!” she commanded. “This is not a uniform, General! If you want to look like Jack Kennedy, do like this—” And she slumped a bit, rolling her shoulders forward and sticking her hand where her jacket pocket would be.

“Like this?” asked Tony, trying to imitate her.

“No! Not like this.” She replicated his stiff bend at the waist, a sort of Japanese bow that completely missed the point. “Like
this!”
She transformed the movement into an elegant, Eurotrash slouch. “Great men are confident! Great men carry themselves with grace and assurance! They do not poke out their chests like Tarzan. When you see them, you know what they are inside.”

“You can't judge a book by its cover, Mama,” Carmen said.

“Nonsense.”

Tony struck another pose. Señora Morales stepped back and appraised him. “Better,” she said grudgingly. “Remember, everybody loved Kennedy because he was so suave, so sophisticated. He dressed so well.”

Tony stared at his reflections. He looked like a small, squat mobster in a stylishly shapeless jacket. In his opinion, the slouch made him appear a bit infirm.

“They will love you, too,” Señora Morales said as she ran her hand across the rich Armani wool blend. “Now, when you speak, do this—” And she poked the air in a characteristic Kennedy gesture.

A
FTER CELEBRATING
early Sunday mass, Father Jorge napped in the vestry. He fell deeply asleep almost immediately, and when he awakened it was with a jolt, as if he had stepped in a hole. He was disturbed without really knowing the reason why. He supposed he must have had a dream that he had now forgotten.

When he went outside the sun was so bright he felt almost blind. He squinted and limped toward a patch of shade under a banyan tree. As he was approaching, he recognized Major Giroldi sitting on a bench, waiting for him.

“May I walk with you, Father? There's something I'd like to discuss.”

Father Jorge nodded.

“Let's go this way, away from the Comandancia,” Giroldi suggested.

They turned down a narrow street filled with shuttered shops that had been closed since the economy died. They moved slowly
because of Father Jorge's feet, which were almost healed but still tender.

“I trust I have your confidence,” said Giroldi.

“Of course, although perhaps we should return to the confessional if there's something—”

Giroldi laughed grimly. “If it's a sin, I haven't committed it yet. Perhaps you could advise me.”

“I will do as best as I can.”

Giroldi cast an anxious glance down the street, then resumed walking and speaking in a low tone. “I am considering a desperate action. Can you imagine what this might mean? Pardon me for being so mysterious.”

He wasn't being mysterious at all, in Father Jorge's opinion. The major reeked of conspiracy. “I can make a guess,” the priest said.

They came to the remnants of the old walled city. Near the rubble of the wall there was a corrugated iron fence that was orange with rust and gaudily painted with graffiti. A vine had burst through the pavement and seemed to be tugging the fence into the ground, into the past, along with the vestiges of the ancient wall and the rotting apartments of Chorrillo.

“I am a Christian and a patriot, Father. Now I find these two sides of myself in a dangerous struggle. I wish to do something for my country that may place my soul in jeopardy.”

“Sometimes men of faith take great chances,” said the priest.

Giroldi stopped and looked directly at Father Jorge. The officer's eyes were haunted and filled with sleeplessness. “Do you ever think about the story of Abraham and Isaac? I have often wondered why God would place a man in such a position that he would have to sacrifice his son.”

“He did not have to make the sacrifice, only to be willing,” Father Jorge said. “God stayed his hand.”

“But what if God had actually demanded the blood of Isaac? This is the question I ask myself. Can it ever be right to kill in cold blood?”

“I don't believe God would ask this.”

Giroldi stared at him intently, then he began to walk again. “This is a great burden off me, Father.”

“Whatever you do, you must take care to protect yourself and your family.”

“Believe me, this is very much in my mind. And for that reason, I have a big favor to ask. I cannot think who else to turn to.” Giroldi looked at him in embarrassment. “I want you to take a message to the CIA.”

“The CIA? I don't know any such people!” Father Jorge said under his breath. “Besides, I am not sophisticated in these matters. I'm afraid I would place you in greater danger than you already are.”

“Father, I need someone I can trust. At least I know where you stand. You are a hero. You have suffered for the cause. In you, Hugo's spirit lives. That is a rare thing in this country, where so many play both sides. Besides, no one would suspect you of being a conspirator with the army.”

The sound of it made Father Jorge draw a quick breath. “No, no, it's too risky, too absurd.”

“I can't do this myself,” said Giroldi. “If I am seen, then it's over for me. There will never be an end to Noriega. But if my plan succeeds, with the help of the Americans, think how much good we can accomplish! You said yourself that men of faith must take chances. If we don't act for the good, then why should we expect goodness to follow?”

I
THOUGHT WE WERE
on an enemy-reduction plan,” Gilbert Blancarte said as he surveyed the curses on Tony's voodoo altar. There was a photo of Ronald Reagan under an ashtray; a picture of Guillermo Endara stuck in a ball of cornmeal; and an article by Sy Hersh wrapped around a rotten tamale. Father Jorge's name was inscribed on a slip of paper and nailed to a cow tongue. Joining the pin-filled dolls of Pablo Escobar and Jesse Helms
were George Bush, General Honeycutt, and a huge, menacing female figure that the witch doctor failed to recognize.

“Felicidad,” Tony admitted guiltily. He was deep into a bottle of Old Parr.

“You are also having marital difficulties?”

“She's a very powerful woman. You've got to give me something for her.”

Gilbert looked at the lingering yellow bruise under Tony's eye. “Do you want her dead or merely terribly punished?”

“No, no, not dead. Something like, I put it in her coffee and she becomes pleasant. And thin. Something like that.”

Gilbert sniffed in his patronizing, too easily exasperated manner. “Honestly, Tony, where do you get these ideas? First, we must consult the orisha. I need a few minutes to prepare things. Why don't you get your offerings together?”

Gilbert wrapped a black turban around his head, then briskly set about clearing a space on a coarse wooden table upon which a concrete head of the god Elegguá reposed. The icon had a mouth, eyes, and nose made of cowrie shells and a knife blade sticking out of its forehead. Gilbert lit five black candles and set a coconut on the table. Then he pressed his hands together and looked around the room. Apparently everything appeared satisfactory. “Okay,” he said, “what do you have to offer?”