January Justice (34 page)

My captain had paused the video and pointed to the screen. “We’ve identified that one there as Simpson, and that’s Wallace, Pierce, and Edwards. Who’s the one behind the camera?”

The Afghan dust had never been so thick inside my throat. I swallowed, but the dryness wouldn’t go. My voice cracked when I said, “I don’t know.”

My captain slipped the phone into the right front pocket of his blouse. “Gunny,” he’d said. “I know this is tough. If I was in your shoes, there’d be a strong temptation to close ranks. But it won’t do. This thing is already all over the Internet. These guys’ families have seen it. The press has seen it. Congressmen and senators have seen it. The president has probably seen it, or he will, you can bet on that. These guys are done, and so is the one who filmed them. There was nothing anyone could do for them after the knucklehead who filmed it posted it on the web. Tell me who he is.”

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t you think I’d run interference if I could?”

“Yes, sir. I know you would.”

“You need to get on the right side of this, Gunny. Who shot the video?”

“Sir, I really do not know.”

He sighed and stood up. “All right. Doesn’t matter. We know it was Ford. I just wanted confirmation before I sent the MPs over to his hooch.”

After the captain left, I sat on my bunk thinking about Ford. He was an E3, a lance corporal, with a little under two years in the Corps. We’d been on tour together for nearly five months. He had turned nineteen on that tour. It had only been a week since a couple of the men and I had arranged a little surprise for him. We had sneaked Ford into the command center of our forward operating base and there, courtesy of a satellite uplink, he had enjoyed almost ten minutes of conversation with his teenaged wife, who was at home in California smiling at him from the computer screen.

Before the men and I had left Ford in the room, his wife had held their son, Tommy, up to the camera. Little Tommy was seven days old, wrapped in a white blanket, with a scrunched-up pink face and baby-blue eyes and a little crocheted beanie on his head. The guys and I withdrew and waited just outside. When Lance Corporal Ford emerged a few minutes later, his eyes were red and swollen. “Thanks” was all said before walking off alone.

I sat on my bunk that day after the captain left, and I thought about that baby. I thought about what it had been like to grow up in a small town in south Texas, ashamed and afraid to speak my father’s name. I had been taken in by my mother’s parents after my father murdered their daughter, my mother, when I was six years old. I knew what it was like to live with unrelenting shame, to wonder if the taint was on me, too, if the wicked thing had been passed down.

I thought about that and about the baby, little Tommy Ford. I thought about his father turning nineteen in that hellhole of a country, and the way the things a man saw there could attack his mind. The damage done could be as deadly as a bullet. The rage. The guilt. The horror. You had to beat it back or it would own you. I had fought that battle myself, years before, on my first combat tour. Every soldier does. But I was the seasoned veteran. I was Ford’s sergeant. I should have seen it coming. I should have gotten out in front of it, talked him through it, saved Ford for his son.

One Christmas in Uvalde, I had gone outside to get mesquite wood for the fireplace and found my grandfather sitting on the front porch swing, alone. He hadn’t noticed me in time to wipe his eyes. The sight of that strong man’s cheeks awash with tears had stopped me in my tracks.

“What’s the matter?” I had asked.

“Nothing, son. Don’t worry.”

“What is it, Grandpa?”

“Oh, you know during the holidays sometimes, I think about your mom.”

It was my thirteenth Christmas. She had been dead for more than half my life.

I had watched his rugged profile as he looked away across the valley. The sun had been about to set.

He said, “Your father came to me that day, before he did it. He was always in some kind of trouble. That time he had got crossways with some El Paso boys. He said he needed money. If I’d given what he wanted it would’ve nearly wiped us out. But money would’ve fixed things. Maybe if I hadn’t been so stubborn…” My grandfather shook his head and wiped his eyes again. “God help me, it was only money.”

Twenty years later, sitting on a bunk in an Afghan war zone, I knew that there are moments when the flow of life presents a choice between an awful sacrifice and a future of regret. Ford had a wife and a newborn son. I had nobody to shame. It was too late for the other men in that video. But maybe there was still a chance for little Tommy. They couldn’t know for certain who had been behind the cell phone’s camera. I decided that they must not know. They would not know.

I stood up and went looking for the captain.

38

“This is it,” said Vega.

From behind him in the van, I rose up to check the situation through the windshield. It was a residential neighborhood of three- and four-story apartment buildings on each side of a narrow street. I saw trash standing in the gutters, the grime of air pollution coating everything, cracked stucco and concrete walls defaced by graffiti, six or seven kids kicking a ball, lots of clothing hanging out to dry on balconies above us, cars and trucks parked with two tires up on the sidewalk, and a pair of mangy-looking dogs trotting toward the van with their tails tucked tight between their legs. Both of the dogs cast furtive glances toward anything that moved. I knew exactly how they felt.

I said, “What’s the plan?”

Vega pointed toward a second-story apartment above us on the right. “The man you want lives there.”

“Who is he?”

“Emilio Delarosa.”

It took a moment to sink in. “Alejandra’s husband?”

“That is correct.”

“Give me the car keys.”

The driver passed them back.

I gave a twist tie to Vega. “I want one of his hands sticking through the steering wheel, and then you tie his wrists together, understand? Then I’ll get out first, and then You’ll get out.”

“I cannot go with you.”

“Why not?”

“Delarosa would not speak freely if he knew I was involved.”

“He’s afraid of you?”

“He is afraid of what would happen if the junta knew I had been to his house. Everyone fears that.”

It made sense. I said, “Okay, strap this guy’s wrists through the steering wheel like I said before.”

Vega did as he was told.

“Now put your left hand through the wheel beside his.”

I leaned forward and strapped Vega to the wheel with another plastic tie. Then I got out of the van. The children’s ball came rolling down the sidewalk. I kicked it back and waved at them. They grinned and waved back. I walked to a steel gate that was standing open, then climbed the stairs to the second floor of the building Vega had indicated. There were four doors along a corridor that was open to the air on each end. The stairs continued up. I knocked at the door that looked as if it must open on the correct apartment. A man’s voice called through the door.

“What?”

I said, “Mr. Delarosa? Emilio Delarosa?”

“What do you want?”

“My name is Malcolm Cutter. I am here from Los Angeles, California. I would like to talk to you about your wife.”

The kids yelled loudly in the street below. I waited. I was about to knock again when the door opened.

According to the file I had received from Congressman Montes, Emilio Delarosa was about ten years older than I, but while I’ve been told I look a little younger than my age, the years hadn’t been kind to him. Dark brown bags hung underneath his eyes, and a pair of deep creases descended from each side of his nose. His forehead was a ladder of horizontal wrinkles. His white cotton shirt was stained by something brown, and his thick black hair was matted on one side, as if he had just gotten out of bed.

“What about my wife?” he said.

The scent of alcohol billowed from his mouth. Ignoring it I said, “I have some information, and I thought you would be interested.”

Emilio Delarosa stared at me with rheumy eyes, and then he turned and walked back into the apartment. He left the door wide open. I took that as an invitation and followed.

He sat on a chair near an open window that faced out toward the street. The chair was the only piece of furniture in the room. On the floor beside the chair were a bottle of rum and a plastic cup. He picked them up and poured some rum into the cup. He put the bottle back down on the floor, then took a drink from the cup. I heard a gurgling sound as the rum passed down his throat.

On the floor near where I stood I saw a document in a simple black frame. The glass that once protected the document had been shattered. I took a step closer and saw it was a license to practice civil engineering in Guatemala.

“How long has it been since you saw Alejandra, Mr. Delarosa?”

Gazing out the window, he said, “Seven years.”

“How long since you spoke with her?”

He drank again. He turned back toward me. “Who are you?”

“My name is Cutter. I am trying to find your wife.”

“Everyone is trying to find her.”

There was a sudden burst of cheering from the football game in the street below. He didn’t seem to hear it. He stared through the window as if the view went on for miles instead of being blocked by the raw concrete of the apartment across the street. He swallowed the last of the rum in his cup, bent over, picked up the bottle, and poured himself some more.

“Why do you say that, Mr. Delarosa? Has someone else come by?”

“I told those Communists to go to the devil.”

“Communists? You mean the URNG?”

“Of course. Are you a fool?”

“But the URNG must know where Alejandra is since she works for them.”

“Works for them? Works for
them
?” He laughed. It was a bitter sound. “What are you, American? You must work for the government.” He shook his head and muttered, “Fascists.”

“Your wife is not with the URNG?”

He turned to look back at me again with obvious disdain. “You go back and tell your bosses she is innocent of everything. For the thousandth time, tell them we only wish to live our lives. We are not political. We are not Communists. We are not Fascists. I hate them all. My angel hates them all. We are not political. You go back and tell them that, Mr. American.”

Vega was right. Nothing the man said would stand up and court, but I did believe him. Nobody could have faked so much contempt for the URNG, or the junta. He and his wife were not Communists and they weren’t operatives for the government. Which meant they were just victims caught up in the conflict like a million others. But I needed proof, or a lead at the very least. Something I could take back with me to California.

I said, “How are you paying your bills, Mr. Delarosa?”

“She sends me what I need.”

“Where does she live? Where does the money come from?”

“From Spain, obviously. She is in Spain, as you know very well.”

“Are you sure? I heard she was still in Los Angeles.”

“Spain, you fool.” He belched, then took another drink. He muttered, “Everybody knows she is in Spain.”

Something about the word “Spain” triggered the awareness of a missing memory. It should have been a simple thing to call to mind. I knew that, and it frightened me because it wasn’t simple. The memory was someplace in my head, but I couldn’t reach it. For all of my life, I had been able to remember what I needed to remember, then had come the night when I lost Haley, and now I was a man with mysteries inside his head.

I sensed fear arising just outside my perimeter. It was the worst possible moment, but I felt the floor beneath me start to vibrate. I heard the humming of machinery. Was it the refrigerator I could hear, or the vast metallic core at the earth’s center? How had I missed it before? What else was I missing? How could I be sure that what I seemed to remember was actually a memory? I told myself to concentrate on what was true, to cling to what was excellent, but how could I be sure of where I stood? What I saw? What I heard?

The screams of children in the streets took on a terrifying connotation. I had only the past sense of experiencing a football game to explain them. The light through the window seemed to produce little flames around the edges of the things it touched. I told myself it wasn’t true. I told myself the room was not on fire. I told myself to think of what is good. I knew it was only beams of light that formed impressions in my mind of solid things. I didn’t see the things. I only saw reflections from the things. Did that mean the things themselves existed only as reflected light? What if the football game had merely been a vision? What if real children were in trouble, just outside, screaming as they fell apart in pieces, and I stood there doing nothing?

Everywhere I looked, the edges were alight. I needed a distraction. I began to move about the apartment, looking for something, anything to cling to. I saw very little that was excellent or noble.

The chair where Delarosa sat and one other were the only furniture in the apartment. In the kitchen was a concrete countertop with open concrete shelves below, a sink, a gas hob, and a small refrigerator. Dirty dishes filled the sink. Clothes lay piled in the corner, and books had been stacked haphazardly along the walls. Mostly they were pulp fiction novels. Spy stories and the like. Also, I saw some civil engineering magazines and a stack of newspapers. Nothing romantic. Nothing that seemed like it would interest a woman. Grime from the filthy air had drifted in through the window to settle on every horizontal surface. The apartment clearly had not been properly cleaned in months. Maybe years.