Stolen Grace (30 page)

“Are you sure? You don’t feel nervous about its contents, knowing a criminal left this for me?”

He laughed. “We’ve had many criminals here over the years. Ronnie Biggs used to come by often for a drink.

Sylvia wasn’t in the mood to chat. She fixed her gaze on the envelope.

The concierge went on, “You must have heard of Ronnie Biggs? The Great Train Robbery man? The British villain who escaped England and lived in Rio for years? He even did a record with the Sex Pistols. Recorded it right here, in Brazil. That was before there was an extradition treaty with Great Britain, so they couldn’t touch him. And we’ve had some other non law-abiding characters staying here. Usually, they pay their bills, though.”

Sylvia smiled and watched his fingers while he opened the envelope with a sharp silver knife. She winced . . .
what would be inside
? “But you’ve had a few
glamorous
famous guests too, haven’t you?” she said to be polite.

“Oh yes. So many—from all corners of the globe.”

She kept her eye on the envelope. Why it was taking him so long, she couldn’t understand. “Who was your favorite?”

“I was honored to meet Princess Diana once. My father worked here before me—he declared that Rita Hayworth was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. May I say you have a Rita Hayworth air about you, Mrs. Garland. Tall, poised.”

She wished he’d stop chitchatting and
flirting,
and open the goddam envelope already, but she smiled to be gracious. “Thank you, I’m so flattered. I love Rita Hayworth. Gilda is one of my favorite movies.”
Hurry up, goddamn it
!

“Ah yes, I know that film. The love-hate relationship between the two protagonists is alarming but fascinating. They are so in love yet they torture each other.”

Sylvia looked down at the polished marble floor. It was as if the concierge
knew
about her and Tommy.

The man must have noticed her uneasiness because he maneuvered the subject back to the package. “What have we here? It feels like a cell phone.” He peered inside the envelope and pulled something out. “I was right. An iPhone.”

Sylvia instinctively stepped back. “What if it triggers a bomb?”

“You’re serious, aren’t you, my dear? Did you know this woman, this Rocío Guirnalda?”

Sylvia let out a long sigh. She had been unaware she’d been holding her breath. “Yes. And no. Tell me, what kind of identification did she show you, if any?”

“Her passport.”

“A real passport?”

“The police already scanned it. Yes, it was real.” He chuckled to himself—“a real fake, I suppose. Nothing surprises me anymore. It had
us
fooled, anyway.”

“Was the photo with the new nose or the old one?”

“I can show you a copy, if you wish.” He spoke to one of his colleagues in Portuguese and then handed Sylvia the phone. She held it gingerly in the palm of her hand. If she pressed it too hard, she feared the whole building would blow up.

“Isn’t that what suicide bombers use? Cell phones? She turned it over, her touch soft, cautious. She let out a little yelp.

“Is anything wrong?” the man asked.

She re-read the engraving she knew so well:
For Daddy on his birthday – we love you,
Grace xxx (and Mommy too).
“This phone?” Sylvia said. “It belongs to my husband.”

Footsteps behind Sylvia made her heart skip a beat. “
There
you are! I’ve been looking for you everywhere.” It was Melinda, rushing up like an unexpected exclamation mark. “You got me worried! I couldn’t find the police anywhere. I’ve been all around the hotel, the pool area, the gym, everywhere. What have you got there?”

“Tommy’s cell phone. Ruth stole it from him last night and then returned it to me in this envelope. Crazy, huh? This gentleman was kind enough to open the package for me. I was too scared to do it myself—thought there could be a nasty surprise inside.”

Melinda gasped, “Oh my God! This woman is beyond insane.” She looked at the concierge and held out her right hand, “Excuse me, how do you do?” Melinda said, shaking his hand. “By the way, should we even be touching it? What about her fingerprints?”

Sylvia rolled her eyes at her own stupidity. “That’s a very good point.”

“The FBI already have her prints,” the concierge revealed.

“Oh yes? From her room?”

“Her room was swept clean. But her prints were on a broken piece of glass in the waste-paper basket. I overheard them say something to that effect.”

“Strange, Agent Russo didn’t mention that.”

“Perhaps,” the concierge replied, “because they are trying to be discreet. Who knows? Maybe she isn’t working alone. There have been child prostitution rings, et cetera.”

Sylvia felt herself blanche.
Child prostitution rings? Jesus, is that what Ruth is? A goddamn child trafficker?
She leaned against the desk to support herself. Her knees felt like Jell-O.

Melinda bit her lip and said, “Wasn’t there something in the envelope apart from the phone? A message or a note?”

“I don’t think so. Let’s have another look.” The concierge reached his hand inside the envelope and, fumbling about, pulled out a piece of hotel letter-headed paper that had gotten lodged behind the flap. “You’re right. Here’s a hand-written note. Lucky you said something.” He handed it to Sylvia. But Sylvia felt too weak to read it. She passed it on to Melinda who read the scrawled writing out loud.

Dear Sylvia,

Tommy’s iPhone enclosed. You’ll find Grace in a cabin at a beach known by surfers as the ‘Boom’ but next to Playa Aserradores, nearest towns Chinandega and El Viejo in Nicaragua. She’s being looked after by a very nice guy called Lucho.

Good luck with your script, sorry things have been a bit jumbled. Rx

P.S Did enjoy my time with Tommy – shame it didn’t work out. He’s pretty cool.

P.P.S Hats off to you for being such a great mom – not easy.

Sylvia could feel her knees quivering under her as she crumpled to the floor.

Grace

I
t was dark and Grace was lost in an ocean of garbage. Her flip-flops had broken and now she was barefoot. Her friend María had disappeared and Grace didn’t know where to search. She felt for money in her pocket. She had one 50 centavo piece remaining. There were horrible smells of burning and her throat was sore from the stinky-gray smoke. She couldn’t stop coughing and she now felt cold.

Nobody had taken her to find the school. The other children said she needed to buy a uniform, that nobody could go to school without one, and she didn’t have enough money. Maybe, they said, she could talk to the priest and see what he could do to help. But she hadn’t seen a priest. They laughed at her and said she should have stayed in El Viejo where she came from with her silly accent—that she was stupid to have gotten on the bus. That if she was better than them and had all the things she said she had then she wouldn’t have come to the dump in the first place. They said she’d have to work the way they worked. That she’d have to scavenge and sell things. But she didn’t see what anybody would want to buy. There were old rubber tires, plastic bags, broken glass, spiky metal, and bloody needles doctors gave injections with. Why would anybody want to buy these things?

They giggled at her when she told them she was American, and said Americans were rich and didn’t have dirty clothes covered in blood like hers, and ugly brown skin like hers. That they were white and clean and they washed their hair every day with hot water and ate in restaurants. Not in a trillion years, they said, was she American. When she told them she ate French-fries with ketchup and fresh fish at the beach for dinner just the night before, they laughed even harder.

She was hungry. And tired. She wanted her mom. She squeezed Hideous to her heart as tears soaked into his dirty yellow fur. A little boy had tried to take him from her earlier that day but she screamed and screeched until he ran away. Now everyone had left her alone. They hated her. Where was María? The grown-ups didn’t care. They didn’t have time. Grace tried to leave the dump but it went on and on and on. Forever. She couldn’t find a way out. The sky was dark and smelly and mean. Even the dogs ran away from her. Her only friend was Hideous. She was going to change his name. She decided to call him Amarillo.

She loved him even more than she loved Pidgey O Dollars.

Suddenly, she heard a pitter-patter. She looked up and saw the faint outline of María coming toward her in the purple, smoky air.

“Silly girl, why did you run away from me?” María demanded, smiling.

“I didn’t.”

“Come on. Let’s go get some supper. You’re hungry, aren’t you?” She grabbed Grace’s hand and pulled her away from an upside down broken bucket that was her seat. “Hurry up! Or all the tourists will have finished.”

“Where are we going?”

“To get food! Follow me.”

María ran ahead, as fast as the wind. Her bare feet were like hooves of a goat because she didn’t feel the broken glass or the stones. She jumped over boxes and plastic, and leapt in the air like a running deer. Grace tried to keep up.

“Wait! María, wait!”

They arrived at María’s little house, a wobbly shack with a wobbly tin roof. She pushed aside a curtain which was their front door. “Where’s your bowl, Adela?”

Grace peeped inside from behind the curtain. “I don’t have one.”

“You didn’t find one in the dump today?”

She shook her head. She didn’t know she was meant to look for a bowl.

“Never mind. I can lend you one.” The little girl wiped her hands and nose with her T-shirt and looked about the room. The floor was dirt. There was a funny-looking bed in the corner, with a stripy blanket, and a poster of a man playing baseball on the wall above it. There was a plastic vase on a table, with plastic flowers in it. Finally, María found a bowl under a pile of old newspapers.

“Where are your parents?” Grace asked.

“My mother works nights,” María replied. “I don’t know where my dad is. I haven’t seen him for a long time. My brother’s on the streets somewhere. Maybe we’ll see him later. Quick, let’s go. Here, take yours.” She shoved a tin bowl into Grace’s hand. “Never mind about a spoon. I can’t find one now, we’ll eat with our hands. If we’re lucky. If the tourists are generous tonight. And if the restaurant doesn’t shoo us away. Come on, let’s hurry before the boys get there first.”

They ran off again. This time Grace kept a tight hold on her friend, clinging with her little nails to the loose fabric of María’s T-shirt. She wasn’t going to let her out of her sight, ever again.

They stood outside the restaurant where there was a group of American girls sitting around a table, eating. It smelled delicious. Fried rice, chicken with mango. Grace peeped over the barrier that separated them from the terrace outside, where the girls were eating. María didn’t say a word. She just held out her bowl and smiled. Grace listened to the conversation. One of the girls was speaking. She looked about seventeen.

“I’m like so grossed out with this place. Have you seen the dump? It’s sooo bad. It like, totally stinks. I’m so glad we can give something back.”

Another older girl added, “I didn’t get to have a shower today. I feel all scratchy and verminy. I can’t even imagine how they feel. I mean, I’m surprised by how many kids don’t really know how to wash their hands, and then when we did the actual hand-washing part today, how incredibly—and I mean incredibly—dirty their hands were. Not only were their hands dirty, with black under their nails, but there were like bugs swarming all over most of the children’s faces, their eyes and hair. It’s like the gnats just
live
on these children.”

The seventeen-year old said, “I mean it’s so
disgusting
, the dump is like practically
on top
of the sewerage system.”

“What ‘system’? It’s all, like . . . open.”

“I know. So gross. We need to get them clean water wells. So much more money is needed. I’m so glad my mom made me come here to be a part of this organization. I mean, you have to see it to believe it. I’m so proud to serve Jesus in this way.” She looked over and caught María’s eye.

María smiled and held out her bowl. “Por favor.”

“You see? Every night they’re here,” the teenager said.

Just then a group of shirtless little boys appeared. Grace saw they were making signs with open mouths, their fingers gathered together, miming “feed me!” The older girl said, “They’re here because people keep
giving
to them. I bet some of them have already eaten. She shouted at the boys. “No! Go away! FUERA!”

“Don’t be so mean. You can’t eat all that. I’m going to give them some of mine. “Aquí.”

The boys scrambled over each other to reach the food, elbowing each other out of the way. “Quickly,” one boy whispered, “before the manager comes!” They shoved their hands onto the tourists’ plates, grabbing at rice and chicken bones. María ran over with her bowl and presented it at the table. She didn’t want to miss out.

“We can’t feed everybody!” one girl whined. “Look, wait in turns, you guys! We’ll ask the waiter for some extra bananas.”

María kept smiling patiently, still holding her bowl in front of her. Grace came forward and did the same. “I’m hungry,” she said quietly.

“Oh my Gosh! This little girl speaks English.” The seventeen-year-old emptied the leftovers of her rice into Grace’s bowl. “Where do you live? Dónde vives? Everybody? Check out her
eyes
! Oh my God, this little girl has the most beautiful eyes I’ve ever seen! They’re like,
golden
. Dónde vives?”

Grace wanted to tell her that she lived in Wyoming, but she couldn’t remember the words in English; her tongue felt thick in her mouth. She wanted to explain that she was American but she knew they wouldn’t believe her—they would laugh just the way her friends had laughed. Instead she held up her teddy and said, “Se llama Amarillo.”

“This little girl is
so cute.
What’s your name, sweetie?”