The Immigrant’s Daughter (36 page)

“Are they available?”

“You bet your life they are. Like Saigon. When your troops were in Saigon you could buy anything from a Cadillac to a computer. Not too many Yankee troops are here yet, but the groceries and aftershave always come first.”

It was dark by the time they reached San Salvador, and thus Barbara's first impressions were punctured by street lights and loud music from the houses, and what appeared to be, as well as she could make out in the darkness, large and impressive homes — a scene that for some reason recalled the single time she had been in Savannah, Georgia.

“The best part of town,” Abrahams told her. “Tomorrow, we look elsewhere.”

As the Sheraton Hotel rose out of the night, glassy, glistening, the first light rain of the season began to fall. There were people on the streets now, the sound of music from inside the hotel, music played very loud. The music reassured her. It chased away some of the imagined devils hidden by the night. They drove into the parking lot, where two young men raced for Barbara's single piece of luggage.

“Nothing doing, no way, no job here!” Abrahams snapped in bad Spanish, explaining to her, “They're not thieves. It's the utter hopeless poverty of the place. Better not chance losing your bag. Anyway, it weighs nothing.”

But apparently poverty stopped at the Sheraton parking lot, for alongside Abrahams' jeep, two Mercedes, a Cadillac and a Rolls-Royce were parked. Going into the hotel, Barbara noticed two men in uniform, uniforms that fitted so perfectly that they reminded her of Hollywood film SS men in their fine-tailored costumes, covered with gold braid in this case. Obviously officers. One of them had a holstered pistol, the other carried a small submachine gun.

“Don't stare,” Abrahams whispered to her. “For God's sake, Barbara, don't stare.”

“Oh, yes, of course. They couldn't take me anywhere when I was a kid.”

“Don't joke about this.”

“Cliff, when you stop joking about anything — oh, the devil with it. When in hell, do as the imps do.”

Abrahams shrugged. They stopped at the reception desk, and suddenly the reception clerk, a skinny man with a pocked face, dropped his jaw and fairly dived through a door behind him. Cliff and Barbara both turned to see the cause of his curious behavior, and there, just past them, were the two army officers they had seen outside at the parking lot, this time led by a man in civilian clothes and followed by two soldiers, both of them carrying what Barbara discovered later were Ingram .45-caliber submachine guns. They moved at a steady pace to the room from which the music came, the main hotel restaurant, and then flung open the double doors that separated the restaurant from the lobby.

Without thinking, Barbara took a few long strides to keep them in sight. Cliff Abrahams caught up with her, and grabbed her arm. “Stay out of this, damn it!”

But they were in her line of vision now. They marched into the restaurant, paused by a table where three men were having dinner, and deliberately, without hesitation, without a word spoken, opened fire with the submachine guns and kept firing until the three men were riddled with bullets. Then, as calmly and deliberately as they had entered, they did an about-face and marched out of the hotel.

Cliff Abrahams grasped Barbara's arm tightly. “Steady, steady, old girl. Don't move quickly. Let's just ease ourselves away from any possible line of fire, and we'll see what happens.”

Chaos happened. First, a mad scramble inside the dining room to get away from the blood-soaked table of the three murdered men. One of them sprawled across the top of the table; the two others lay on the floor; and this stark scene played to a background of screaming and shouting. Then people began to move in, carefully, to look at the carnage. The horror was dramatic and irresistible. At last, men in uniform poured into the hotel.

“Police,” Abrahams said. “Calm. They may ask questions. If they do, you answer in English, not in Spanish. Do you understand? You don't speak Spanish — oh, maybe a word or two. We saw nothing. We don't know who went into the dining room and we don't know who came out, because we saw nothing, not yet. Later, when we get some of the picture we can amend our position. Right now, it's a bloody awful horror.” He looked at her keenly. “You all right, old dear?”

Barbara nodded. “I'm all right.”

“I know the desk clerk. I can get you your room now. Take a lie-down.”

“Damn it, I'm fine. Now you do your thing. I'll trail along.”

Following Abrahams, Barbara moved into the crowd around the bodies. It was increasing rapidly now, guests, hotel workers, police, some army officers, the hotel manager. From outside the hotel, Barbara heard the sound of sirens, men shouting, and a few scattered gunshots.

Abrahams moved out of the crowd. Barbara followed him. They walked across the dining room to where one of the waiters stood as if in shock, his back against the wall, his eyes staring straight ahead.

“Terrible. Just terrible,” Abrahams said in Spanish. “A terrible business, Angelo.”

“I saw nothing,” Angelo replied. “Nothing. I was looking the other way.”

“She's all right,” Abrahams assured him. “I'd trust her with my life.”

“She's Jewish?”

“Absolutely.”

Angelo breathed deeply and said, “You know them, señor.”

“Yes. But who was the civilian?”

“He eats here sometimes. His name is Fritz Oberman. He didn't do any shooting. He brought them to the table, and then just nodded his head like this, and then the shooting started.”

A policeman turned toward them, and noticing this, Angelo raised his voice, and cried shrilly, “I told you I saw nothing. I was in the kitchen.” He turned on his heel and walked into the kitchen. The policeman faced Abrahams and Barbara questioningly.

“I'm a correspondent; Reuters. She was here for the
Los Angeles World
.” Abrahams was not at his best with the tenses, and it came out somewhat mangled, but the policeman appeared to understand.

“It's very confused,” he said. “I wouldn't write about it yet.”

“Who are the dead men?”

The policeman shrugged. “Who knows?”

“The lady just arrived. I want to get her registered.”

The policeman stared blankly, and Barbara said in English, “I must check in. I just arrived.” Abrahams smiled and nodded and drew her away and then over to the desk.

“What on earth was that all about? I'm not Jewish.”

“Angelo grew up in a little village in the hills where his father kept a small store. His father used to tell people that he was a Jew, because only a Jew can run a store properly. Angelo admired his father, who was killed by the soldiers in one of their purges. He thinks I'm Jewish because of my name and he seems to trust me for that reason. I'm not Jewish, in case you're wondering.”

“I'm not wondering. Why are we staying here?”

“I wanted to get you registered, but that seems to be impossible. We'll do it later. Now I want to get over to the office. You might as well come with me. There's a chance we can clear a wire.”

“You mean I could phone this in?”

“Possibly, but Carson could pick it up from our wire. Let's see what happens.”

No one stopped them as they went out to the jeep, Abrahams carrying Barbara's suitcase, even though the parking lot was teeming with soldiers and civilians. An ambulance had just pulled up in front of the hotel, and an army vehicle with a bright search beam had parked itself in front of the hotel and was sweeping the sky with its powerful light. To compound the insanity, two runners in tight white shorts and undershirts were in the parking lot, interrupted in their late run by the commotion around the hotel, and curious enough to remain, jogging in circles. Catching a glimpse of them in the light, Barbara realized that they were wearing new, rockered North American running shoes. A man in khaki blew his whistle again and again as Abrahams carefully jockeyed his jeep out of the parking lot into the street.

“It's insane,” Barbara said.

“Oh, yes indeed, but viciously insane. It's all mad, their lunatic army, their demented death squads, the way they go about getting rid of people they don't care for — oh, bloody well insane, like a world seen through one of those circus mirrors. Why ever did you come down here, Barbara?”

“I was dying up there — oh, not this kind of death, but shriveling up, being pointless and useless. But never mind that. Who were those three men? You knew them, didn't you?”

“Yes, I know who they are — which makes it even more senseless. The youngest one of the lot is a chap called Alex Hellman, American, as was Pete Roberts. Roberts is a bit older, in his forties, if I recall correctly. I'll have to verify for my story. The third one was quite a decent chap, Carmen Luis. He was chief of the land reform agency. You know, the notion of splitting up the vast estates and dividing the land among the landless peasants — a sort of impossible dream project with this government in power, but very good political feed for the liberals in your Congress. This will be a bad mouthful for them, but the liberals seem quite capable of swallowing anything.”

“And the Americans? Who are they?”

“That's the odd part of it. Both of them worked for the big labor combine in your country, the AFL-CIO. Specifically, a part of the labor union called the Institute for Free Labor Development. I've never really understood the workings of the labor movement in your country, but it appears that the AFL-CIO is a big supporter of all your wars. They were hot as hounds on the scent in Vietnam, and down here they've been staunch allies of what is euphemistically called the government. And that chap, the fat fellow with the brush hair, his name is Fritz Oberman, and he's cheek-by-jowl with the death squads and the government as well. All odd bedfellows. Pete Roberts made a nuisance of himself, going around as a sort of point man for the Reagan bunch, telling us all how good the local government was and how vicious and rotten the peasants in the resistance were; and the other one, Hellman, even defended lunatics like Fritz Oberman, and here Fritz Oberman leads in an assassination squad that blows the three of them into kingdom come. It's one of those unanswerable conundrums that haunt this place.”

“Then why were they killed?” Barbara asked hopelessly.

“Ha, dear lady. Why indeed? I haven't spoken to either chap for some time. I don't take to these so-called trade union lads. For my money, they're as corrupt a lot as you'll find, but maybe these two saw the light. Maybe they were going to blow the whistle, as you Yankees say, and tell the world what a pen of pigs run this country. Such judgment is all right coming from chaps like me, but coming from the Reagan camp, it bespeaks trouble. Who knows? I'm just guessing. I'll name you in the dispatch. Barbara Lavette standing beside me as it happens. That ought to reassure Carson.”

“I'd like to file my own story.”

“Don't know. I do have a clear eyewitness beat — no other member of the press there as it happened. But let me brood over it.”

The streets were quiet, deserted, lit by cold, impartial moonlight as they drove back to the hotel. Barbara had not been able to phone a story in, not because the wire service preempted her, but because, after Abrahams filed his story, there was no way to get through, either because the crush of demand had simply wiped out any free access or because the circuits had been deliberately blocked. By one o'clock in the morning, they gave up, and Abrahams took Barbara back to the hotel. Except for two bellboys and the desk clerk, the lobby was empty, although there was activity in the dining room. The glass doors were closed, but Barbara could make out the figures of several women, scrubbing the floor where the killing had taken place.

“Terrible, Señor Abrahams,” the desk clerk said. “Such things should not take place in a fine hotel like this. If they must go about such business, one would think that they could find the proper place.”

Abrahams voiced his agreement and introduced Barbara. The night clerk pushed a registration card toward her, shaking his head regretfully. “Please do not think that such things go on every day or every month. You will enjoy your stay with us.”

“I am sure,” Barbara said in Spanish.

Up finally in the two-room suite that Abrahams had promised, he asked Barbara why she had done that. He was plainly irritated.

“What?”

“Oh, you know damn well. Spanish.”

Barbara dropped onto the bed, arms flung out, sighing with relief. “It's been a long day, Cliff. I've been thinking about what you said about language. My feminine wiles, considering I ever had any, have gone with time, and it's too late for me to learn how to punch. Language is the only weapon I have, and I'm pretty well lost without it. I know that you know what's best down here, but there's no way I can come out of this with anything worthwhile unless I use my language.”

Abrahams thought about that for a while, and then he nodded. “Do it your own way, then, but for heaven's sake, be careful.”

“Always.”

“Tomorrow morning, I have to do a follow-up on tonight — if I can drag myself out of bed. It's two
A.M.,
and I'm going to dash off in a moment. But about tomorrow — suppose I pick you up here for a late lunch, say about two o'clock. The whole schedule of meals runs late down here.”

“Cliff, you've been lovely, but I can't monopolize your days.”

“Barbara, you've been a godsend. I'll have none of that, and I can't think of anything more pleasant. In the morning, if you can't sleep, you might wander around the streets and get the smell of the place. Now, sleep well.”

Abrahams left, and Barbara double-latched her door, managed somehow to crawl out of her clothes and got into bed. She was asleep almost instantly.

Eleven