Red Jungle (30 page)

“Listen. I can’t talk for long,” Russell said as he sat down. Mahler was wearing the same dirty clothes he’d left the jungle in. He hadn’t shaved, and looked oddly glamorous because of it. A gaggle of well dressed bodyguards, waiting for their military employers, stared at them.

“Carl’s given me the money we needed. I . . . I just left him,” Mahler said. A waiter came, and Russell ordered. “You have to come back with me.
Now
.” Mahler handed back the menu.

“I can’t. Not right away. You have to go back without me,” Russell told him.

“We haven’t much time. Selva is going to win, or just take over. You know that. He’ll nationalize
Tres Rios
and take it all for himself. We have to take advantage of this chaos,” Mahler said. He ate scrambled eggs quickly, jamming them into his mouth.

“Blanco suspended the elections because of the crisis,” Russell told him. “I just heard it on the radio.”

Mahler snorted with contempt.

“Don’t be a fool. Blanco is on the way out, and Selva will be the next president. It’s pre-ordained. It’s what the Yankees want.” Mahler nodded towards the corner table of military men. “Selva’s their man. And that’s the way it’s always gone here. The generals always win.”

“Maybe not this time,” Russell said, trying to keep his voice down.

Mahler fished in his dirty vest and threw something on the table between them. “I found that before I left,” he said.

Russell picked up what appeared to be a small Mayan figure of a woman, solid gold, weighing several ounces.

“And some other things. We’re close to the Red Jaguar, I tell you.” Mahler’s blue eyes were electric. “You have to come back with me
now
. I can’t promise you I’ll wait. If I find the Jaguar—I can’t promise anything if I find it,” he said, wiping the plate with a piece of bread.

“But you haven’t found it. Or you wouldn’t be here,” Russell said, looking at the antiquity.

“No. I haven’t found it—
yet,
” Mahler said. “But I’m warning you. You’ve fucked around too much as it is.”

“I have a meeting,” Russell said, standing up. “I’ll see you at
Tres Rios
in a few days. I told you.” He tossed Mahler back the gold figure. The two men looked at each other.

“I’m trustworthy,” Mahler said. “If that’s what you’re thinking. And I saved your life, remember.”

The elevator opened and the IMF country team Russell had met earlier in the week trooped into the cafe, all very well dressed. They were all Russell’s age, or even younger. Mahler turned to look at them.

“Who are they?” he asked when he turned back around.

“IMF officials. They’re here to try and save the currency.”

“You mean they’ve come to arrange the deck chairs on the
Titanic,”
Mahler said.

“I’ve got to go. I have a meeting with Antonio,” Russell said. It was, he suspected, his political connection with Madrid that was keeping Mahler from stealing what he could and disappearing. For all he knew, Mahler had already found the damn Red Jaguar and was afraid Russell might be too important now to cheat.

“Madrid can’t win. If that’s what you think,” Mahler said, as if he’d been reading Russell’s mind. “Your man was finished before he ever started. The liberals here are a pack of fools.”

Russell sat down again.

“Don’t be a fool. Don’t you understand, Madrid has a good chance of becoming President. If he does, we’ll be able to do whatever we want at
Tres Rios
. Can’t you understand that!” Russell leaned forward and spoke in a soft voice. “Do you really think I’d back a loser?” He looked at Mahler carefully.

“What are you saying? Is there going to be a
golpe,
is that it?” Mahler said.

“I’m saying finish your breakfast and then get the fuck out of here before I decide I don’t need
you,”
Russell said.

•••

The dawn had been red and sour-looking when Olga pulled the living room curtains open. She had sat patiently in the kitchen, looking at the clock on the wall, a white shawl around her deformed shoulders to keep off the cold. Sometimes she would get up and go to the hallway if she thought she heard something. Twice the phone rang and she ran to answer. But each time it was someone calling for Isabella. Each time she had to say her mistress was not in. When the callers asked when her mistress was expected back, she didn’t answer.

The third time the phone rang, she didn’t bother to answer. It was a strange reaction. It was her job to answer the phone, but she couldn’t. She was frightened by then, and didn’t know what to tell people. She could hear the clock tick by her simple wooden chair, in a corner by the stove.

She finally picked up a cup of cold coffee she’d poured herself hours before and put it in the immaculate sink. She touched the dish towel with both hands and bit her lip. She would have to go to the police. She didn’t know what else to do. If Don Roberto were here, she would tell him, but he was far away and she had no idea how to reach him. The child was far away.

It was so different than when they were girls together, Olga thought. There had been so much family on the plantation. If there were a problem in those days, it was just a moment until you were home and safe. But now? Where were Isabella’s people? It seemed so strange, she thought, getting her coat.

It seemed so strange that such a beautiful girl could be so alone, without her family. Olga realized that she was better off than her mistress. She had two children back on the plantation. It was true she didn’t get to see them as much as she would like, but she had someone of her blood. It was a shame.

She went down the cold white marble steps to the lobby. When she opened the door to the street, she realized it was raining. She thought of going back and getting a better coat and maybe an umbrella, but she didn’t. She trudged off instead to
la Reforma,
and headed towards the central police station— just another deformed Indian in cheap black shoes, walking in the rain, her gait uncomfortable to watch.

She’d been hit by a truck the month Isabella was sent away to school. She hoped for a card from Isabella while she was in the hospital, but no one had bothered to tell Isabella what had happened to her childhood friend. Isabella was shocked the day she came home from school to see Olga limping horribly up the driveway.

“I’m looking for a white lady,” Olga told the pockmarked sergeant at the central police station. Her deformity had a bad effect on people, making them oddly apprehensive. They didn’t really want to look at her.

The sergeant glanced at her, then looked at the two young soldiers standing guard at the doorway. The war had moved to the city. Sandbags protected the front of the building, and a wire mesh covered the door in case someone tried to toss in a grenade.

The sergeant pushed a form at her, after making her wait for several minutes before he turned to her again. Olga could smell gun oil and leather and a Xerox machine.

Two American men with short haircuts walked through the doorway, unchallenged by the guards. They were having a heated conversation. They pushed a young man in front of them. The young man’s face was swollen from the beating he’d gotten when he was arrested; he was barefoot. Olga watched the two white men walk the young man down a long hallway, then turn and disappear. No one had paid any attention.

“You’ll have to fill that out,” the sergeant told her.

Olga tentatively reached for the form, looked at it, and then laid it down on the counter again.

“I can not read,
señor,
” she said. “I’m sorry.”

“Then
how
in God’s name can I help you, woman?” the sergeant said. He looked at her, waiting for an answer. She was ugly, and he didn’t want to deal with her anymore. She didn’t know how to answer. But she didn’t move, either.

“Perhaps,
señor,
if you would be so kind, you could write the name for me?” Olga asked politely.

“We charge people for that,” the sergeant said. He looked across at the two young soldiers standing guard at the door. It was raining harder now, and the water was hitting the building’s protective fence and dripping off. The two soldiers, very solid young men and as dark as Olga, looked coldly at her.

“Isabella Cruz . . . Doña Isabella Cruz,” Olga said, digging in her pocket. She put the few quetzales she had on the counter without looking at the sergeant. He took her money and grudgingly picked up a pencil. He rushed her through the inquiry.

The two men in raincoats were not spotted on the road. Their Cadillac came to a stop near a wide ditch, full of rainwater and debris. It was so early that the dawn made the ditch seem almost like something else, something natural, but it was just a ditch with dirty brown water.

The two men took Isabella’s body from the trunk. Neither man wanted to do it. Neither man was a bad man, or a heartless man, but they were about to do a heartless thing. The chief of police had called back and told them they would have to dispose of the body themselves. There had been an attack by the communists in the center of the city, and he could do nothing for them right now.

Antonio De La Madrid reached for Isabella’s legs. He remembered, as he did, how pretty she’d been. He thought he might not be able to do what they had to do.

He stopped and looked down the deserted dirt road before them. They were a half hour exactly from the capital.

Someone named Hugh had called from the embassy. Antonio had answered the phone. Hugh said that it was important that the embassy not be involved in what he called “the accident.” It was too sensitive a time, he said. Hugh asked them if they could do the United States government a favor. Hugh said that it wouldn’t be forgotten. Hugh said they wanted the problem to “just disappear.” That was all he had to say.

“Help the needy and show them the way,” Antonio said as he put down the phone.

“What?” the minister said.

“It was a silly song. I remember when we were in the States. Isabella and I. . . . A song on the radio. She used to sing it,” Antonio said, looking at the minister. “I
have
to tell her brother.”

“Get a grip on yourself!” the minister said. “We can’t tell her brother.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Antonio said. “We
have
to tell her brother.”

“No. You know Roberto. He’s a lot of things, but he isn’t stupid. He’ll come back from Europe and look into this. He has a hundred friends. They’ll all help him find out what happened. He’ll kill us,” the minister said.

Antonio sat down in one of the minister’s club chairs. For a long time the two men sat like that, without speaking, because neither man wanted to be the first to go into the room and take the body away.

“There’s a boy. A son. She has a son,” Antonio said finally. “In the States.”

“Had a son,” the minister said, picking up his car keys. “Look, you know if Roberto finds out, he’ll kill us, or at least try to. He’s that type.”

Antonio nodded. He knew it was true, because he would do the same if it had been his sister.

On the way through the city that morning, they both promised to help Isabella’s boy when the time came for him to come back to Guatemala. They made a solemn pact. The minister, Rudy Valladolid, became senator the next year.

All this went through Antonio’s mind as he reached down into the trunk and grabbed Isabella by the legs. Rudy took her by the arms. It was horrible, and Antonio tried not to look down, but he had to. He couldn’t help it. He wanted to look at her one more time; even in death, she was a beautiful girl.

After they’d driven away, the rain caught the angle of Isabella’s pretty cheek.

She’d had a dream as she died, watching the faces in the living room. She’d seen her father come out from the dining room. It was the exact moment of her physical death. Now alone, her legs tucked up awkwardly under her body, she joined a long list of missing people back on the counter in the police station. The sergeant tossed the missing person form the Americans had insisted they adopt. It seemed ridiculous, but like so many things they had to do now, they did them for appearance’s sake.

At that last instant of her life, Isabella understood something her father was saying to her. She was sure she caught it. He was standing across the room and he stopped, not to warn her but to say it before it was too late. The cold collection of molecules that sat in her brain still had the thought as the rain pelted her in the face and her legs bent toward the coming sun.

“Isabella, we’re ready. Aren’t you coming? We have to go. The plane leaves for the States at four, and you know how your mother hates to be late.”

“But I wanted to say goodbye to Olga,” Isabella said, her cosmetic bag in her hand.

“You’ll see her again,” her father said. That’s what he’d come to say, just as the thing penetrated her brain, did its damage, and ended it. “You’ll see her again, dear.” She didn’t hear the dear. But it was there, and he’d said it, and that’s all that was important. He’d called her dear and she’d loved her father so, it was good that he’d said it.