January Justice (3 page)

Valentín Vega’s voice came over the glass behind me. “You have nothing to say?”

“I do not.”

“Are you not curious about why I arranged this meeting?”

“I’m not paid to be curious.”

I had already taken the Cahuenga Boulevard exit. We were creeping along behind a guy on a bicycle who wouldn’t get out of the center of the lane. He wore nothing but flip-flops and a Speedo. Welcome to Hollywood.

There was a taxi in front of the restaurant. I circled the block, steering with one hand while I checked the two Glocks for chambered rounds with the other hand. When we approached the restaurant again, the curb in front was open. I paralleled into the spot, always an interesting process in a stretch. I emptied both of the weapons’ magazines. I lowered the glass between the front and back seats an few inches. Then, one at a time, I passed the pistols back through the narrow space above the glass partition behind me. I got out, walked around the car, and opened the rear door on the sidewalk side.

“Gentlemen,” I said.

Both of the men emerged, adjusting their shirttails over their empty weapons. They stood blinking in the sunshine, looking around at Hollywood Boulevard. Both of them were nearly a foot shorter than me, but Castro was nearly as wide in the shoulders.

“This is Hollywood?” said Vega, speaking Spanish. “It is not as I imagined.”

I replied in his language. “Lots of people say that.”

“It is less…something.”

“Yes.”

Still looking around, but not at me, he said, “Would you like a job?”

“I have a job.”

“Excuse me, I mean, perhaps, a case?”

“This guy pulls a gun on me”—I gestured toward Castro—“and now you want to hire me to protect you?”

Castro slipped on a pair of sunglasses and then tried to stare me into submission. I would have tried it with the glasses off. “While I am here,” he said, “Comandante Valentín needs no other protection.”

I looked him up and down. Mostly down. “If you say so.”

“I do say it.”

“Uh-huh.”

He thrust his broad chest out and took a step toward me. “What do you mean?’”

Vega reached between us, gesturing toward a tree in a sidewalk grate beside the restaurant’s entrance. “Perhaps we could speak over there?”

I headed for the tree, with Vega at my elbow. When Castro tried to follow, Vega said, “Please comrade, if you would wait by the car?”

“But this idiot
—
”

“Fidel, this matter was decided long ago. Exercise the necessary self-discipline.”

The man aimed his sunglasses at me for another moment. When I failed to collapse from fear, he said, “As you wish,” then turned and walked back to the limousine, where he lit a cigarette.

Vega and I reached the shade below the tree. It was a welcome relief from the unseasonal January heat.

He wiped his forehead. “I apologize. He was a fine soldier, but he has very strong feelings now. Sometimes they overcome him.”

“We’ve all seen things we wish we could forget. It’s not an excuse.”

Vega stared at me. “I am surprised to hear you say that, Mr. Cutter. You, in particular, I mean. Were you not court-martialed and discharged from your Marine Corps because of… how did they put it? Conduct unbecoming a noncommissioned officer? Desecration of the dead? Oh yes, and failing to properly prevent or report misconduct by junior marines under your command?”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Vega nodded. “Possibly. And there are things about my friend and comrade you do not know.”

I thought about Haley, out of her mind and flying toward the rocks. It was the single most important fact in my life, yet I knew almost nothing about it. There was a lot I didn’t know, a lot I would give my life to learn, if that was what it took.

Vega continued, “Now that you are a private citizen, you provide security? You drive people and keep them safe?”

“That’s right.”

“And sometimes you conduct investigations?”

“I’ll look into things for my regular clients when it’s connected to the security services I offer. But it’s not something I do on a stand-alone basis.”

Vega nodded, his eyes focused on something across the street. “I understand. But I hope you will make an exception in our case.”

“Are you saying you want to hire me for some kind of an investigation?”

“I do. May I explain why?”

“If you like.”

“There was a man, Arturo Duarte Toledo Ramos, who was the mayor of Cobán. That is a city of about one hundred thousand, and as you may recall, it is the capital of our state of Alta Verapaz?”

“Go on.”

“Toledo claimed to be a coffee grower, but his main business was politics. Which is to say, of course, that he was a thief and a murderer. Over the years he imposed many unofficial taxes on the people, which he called ‘fees,’ and he confiscated much property. Those who spoke against him were disappeared, or if their presence remained necessary to the junta for some reason, members of their families disappeared. Either way, nobody opposed Toledo for very long. Ríos Montt was Toledo’s original patron, of course, but nothing changed when Mejía overthrew Ríos Montt, or when Vinicio Cerezo took over after that. Our dictators came and went, but Toledo was a master politician and managed to survive no matter who was in control. He preyed on the people of Cobán for over twenty years. Finally in 1999 we had truly free elections. Like all the other cockroaches running from the light, Toledo left Guatemala. But there were rumors he had amassed a fortune worth more than sixteen million by that time.”

“Dollars?”

“Yes, Mr. Cutter. And every bit of it was stolen from the people.”

It was a lot of money for an impoverished country like Guatemala. I said, “Go on.”

“We do not know where he went at first, but he showed up in Mexico City in 2001. There he met Doña Elena Trujillo, the actress. You have heard of her, perhaps?”

“Of course.”

Vega nodded. “Yes, she has become quite famous in your Hollywood. But at that time, she was merely acting in what I believe you call a Mexican soap song?”

“Opera.”

“Ah. I knew that was not right. A soap opera, yes, on the Mexican television. She was not as famous then, at least not yet famous in the United States, but she was always very beautiful, of course, and Arturo Toledo was known to be quite rich, so it surprised no one when they were married. Then they moved here. Many people said it was so Doña Elena could become a movie star with her beauty and his money.”

“It’s coming back to me. I think I was out of the country at the time, but wasn’t her husband murdered?”

“Yes.”

“And that was this husband? Toledo?”

“Exactly.”

A woman passed us on the sidewalk, pushing a grocery cart piled almost eight feet high with a collection of seemingly random items tied in place with a spiderweb of different lengths of rope and cord. I saw plastic garbage sacks overflowing with clothes, a boom box lashed in place, a table lamp with the shade crumpled, a pair of hedge shears, and many other unrelated objects.

The woman could have been twenty, or she could have been sixty. It was impossible to tell beneath the grime; and the very large sunglasses she wore; and the purple hat with a wide, floppy brim; and the filthy pair of men’s penny loafers; and the red-and-white-striped leggings under a Lakers T-shirt, which hung like a dress to her knees. She argued with thin air as she pushed the cart along. A schizophrenic, probably. I recognized the symptoms. Where I had been lately, I had seen a lot of that.

I noticed that the ropes and cords around her worldly possessions had begun to move. I watched as they writhed in and out among her things like snakes among a pile of rocks. I told myself it wasn’t true. The ropes weren’t really writhing. I looked away.

I said to Vega, “It was a kidnapping gone wrong, if I recall. The kidnapper took Doña Elena. Her husband was killed when he delivered the ransom money, and they never caught the guy.”

“It was not a guy, Mr. Cutter. It was a woman. Alejandra Delarosa, who was Toledo’s mistress.”

“With a sex symbol like Doña Elena as his wife, he also had a mistress?”

Comandante Valentín shrugged. “It is not uncommon.”

Now that I had remembered some of the story, the rest began to come in bits and pieces. I remembered seeing pathetic videos that had been released by the police and posted on the Internet. Doña Elena begging for her life. Mascara running down her cheeks. Dried blood at the corner of her mouth. And her masked captor, in an olive-drab uniform, standing behind her, forcing her to state demands, pressing an old Colt automatic against her temple.

I looked hard at Vega. “They said it was you guys. They said the URNG did it to get Toledo’s money back.”

“They lied.”

“The kidnapper claimed to be with the URNG.”

“Our movement was not involved, Mr. Cutter. And we want to hire you to prove it.”

3

I made the mistake
of looking down the street. Down there, snakes were still writhing on a mound of treasures. I told myself it was only ropes and cords restraining a homeless woman’s worldly possessions. I forced myself to look back at Vega. I forced myself to speak normally. “There have been at least a hundred thousand unsolved murders in your country over the last three decades, and the drug cartels have taken up the killings where the military left off. It’s become so bad, even the coffee and banana growers are getting out. Why should you care about one old kidnapping and murder in the USA?”

Comandante Valentín replied, “You have perhaps heard of Doña Elena’s second husband, Congressman Montes? Hector Montes, chairman of the Congressional Caucus on Central America? He has been building a career in the media over the last year, complaining about the war on drugs.”

I said, “I’ve heard of him.”

Vega went on. “Ever since URNG became a legitimate political party in our country, we have been assisting your Drug Enforcement Agency and standing for policies that make it difficult for the narcos. In return, we have been receiving dollars from your government. We need your money to win political campaigns and to influence public opinion. But your congressman Montes wants to reduce funding for the war on drugs. If he gets his way, there will be no more money sent to Guatemala.”

I said, “You think the congressman is campaigning against more funding for Guatemala because he thinks his new wife was once kidnapped by the URNG?”

“We are certain of it.”

“And you think if you can prove the URNG wasn’t involved, the congressman will stop opposing the funding?”

Vega shook his head. “Who can say? But it is impossible to discuss the funding with him and his committee while he continues to believe we attacked his wife. That much I know for certain.”

I stared down the street. The schizophrenic woman had progressed to the middle of the next block west. She stood shouting at a couple of men who sat inside a black Suburban, which was parked at the curb. The snakes among the woman’s things had disappeared, at least for the moment. I wished I knew why. Then maybe I could stop them from returning.

I thought maybe it was because I was distracted by the men in the Suburban. They interested me. Their vehicle was the one that had been behind us on the 405 when I swerved to avoid the leaking gravel from the dump truck. I had no doubt of it. After a few firefights, you develop instincts. And even if it was a coincidence that the their destination was so close to ours, considering my speed of travel while I had been preventing the apparently insane Fidel Castro from shooting me, it seemed strange that the Suburban had arrived so soon after us.

I said, “A few minutes ago, your friend there wanted to put a bullet in me. You have a funny way of hiring people.”

“Mr. Cutter, I am truly sorry that he drew his weapon, but as I have explained, he is a patriot. He has been slightly damaged in his mind because of the sacrifices he made for his country. If you had fought beside such a man, would you not make allowances?”

“All right,” I said. “So you keep him around for old times’ sake. But why are you so gung ho on hiring me? I mean, why me in particular?”

“We have this problem which I have explained, and when I tried to think of who could help us, you were the first person who came to mind. You were the only person, actually, because I remembered what you did while you were in Guatemala.”

I opened my mouth to answer, but Comandante Valentín held up a hand. “Please, I am not asking you for confirmation. I only mention it as part of the answer to your question. I know no other sympathetic person in Los Angeles who might be able to provide this particular service. Or perhaps ‘sympathetic’ is the wrong word. You were not sympathetic to our cause, but you were fair. You listened. You believed your eyes. You opposed Ríos Montt, even though you disagreed with our politics.

“A moment ago you were correct to say I know nothing of what really happened to you in Afghanistan, the reason for your court-martial, but I do know you behaved honorably in Guatemala. You spent enough time there to perhaps begin to understand us. Your Spanish is very good. I know you were attached to the Naval Criminal Investigative Service for a while in some capacity, and now you investigate crimes privately in your country. I also know you have connections with the motion-picture industry, because you work mainly for people in the movie business. That could prove helpful in approaching Doña Elena Montes. You also know some people in your government, but you have no reason to trust them blindly. In all of this world, I think there is no one as well qualified as you to help us with our problem.”