The Return: A Novel (14 page)

Marder looked around. Somehow, almost magically, everyone in the plaza had disappeared. Then, with another roar of engines, the cars departed to the east. Something that had not been there before was leaning against the base of the statue. They walked over to see what it was and found it to be a male human torso, facedown. On its back someone had written, “He deserved this!” in green marker.

“The justification is a nice touch,” said Skelly. “It speaks to a certain formality of style, which I find endearing. Who do you think did it?”

“
Los otros
,” said Marder. “La Familia or one of its factions, or someone wanting to send a message to all or any of them.”

“A mobbed-up beach town? What’s the angle?”

“It’s not so much here, but Lázaro Cárdenas, up the road, is the only serious container port on the Mexican Pacific coast. All the precursors for making meth come through there, not to mention coke and heroin. It’s a contested area for the narcos. And Playa Diamante has a nice little harbor itself, as you saw, if someone wanted to run stuff in and out.”

“And you chose this town?”

“What can I say? I like the beach. Here come the newsies. They must have better intel than the cop.”

“Well, it stands to reason—the cops are probably being paid off more than the newsies.”

A white van had run up to the curb nearest the park, and a cameraman, a sound man with a mike boom, and a young woman got out. They did the usual getting-ready-for-taping routine, working efficiently as a team, and in something of a rush, it seemed. Marder watched the woman. She was wearing a tan suit, very chic, and had her light-brown hair cut close around her face, which was appropriately pale but bore stronger features than one typically saw on female reporters north of the border. She spoke, and Marder heard with a pang the Mexican accent called
fresa,
clipped and precise, that marked a member of the country’s upper classes. His wife had spoken like that. The cameraman recorded the reporter’s contribution and then moved to get tape on the torso. Sirens wailed, followed by the sound of heavy vehicles approaching.

Marder said, “Here comes the army. Let’s get out of here.”

They left just as several truckloads of soldiers entered the square. Marder drove out of town to the west, following Avenida Jaramillo until it crossed a bridge over a sluggish estuarine stream, the Río Viridiana, after which they turned left toward the sea. Before them was a low bluff with a cut through it, which led the red dirt road past a broad white beach to a causeway built on pilings and rough boulders. This in turn led to a humped green-clad island, on the top of which, through the thick vegetation, they could see the white terrace and the red tile roof of a large house.

Marder had seen the photographs, but these did not do justice to the magnificence of the setting and the palatial dimensions of the house. There was a high whitewashed stone wall around it with an open steel gate, the gatepost bearing a ceramic sign that read
CASA FELIZ
. Past the gate was a garden with fruit trees and flowering bushes, hibiscus and oleander, and then a gravelled courtyard before the house itself. It was two stories tall, capped by a little square tower at each of the four corners of what appeared from below to be a roof terrace. They could see the tips of folded umbrellas above the terrace wall, or parapet. On the left of the house, separated by a low adobe wall, was a less imposing structure of concrete-block stucco, and beyond that was a line of what appeared to be smaller houses in various stages of completion, as well as various piles of construction supplies and equipment. A thin plume of white smoke arose from a distant structure, and Marder wondered what it was.

They entered the main house through the front door. There was a small entrance hall, with a door to the left and one to the right and in the center a rounded archway. They went through this and found themselves in an enormous room, with a staircase in one corner leading to a gallery that ran around three sides of the room. Through the rails of this they could see the doors that must lead to the bedrooms on the upper floor. Great windows opened on a view of the sea, flickering palms, and the sky. Overhead was a black wrought-iron wheel chandelier of the type that Zorro liked to swing from.

“We’ll be cramped, but I guess it’ll do,” said Skelly.

“Yes, it’s a little hard to judge size from photographs. I thought they were using the kind of lenses that hotels use to make a closet look like a big room, but I guess not.” He called out but received only a slight echo in answer.

They went through the kitchen and out a back door, toward the small house they’d seen from the drive, without doubt where the servants lived—and there must be servants here, and good ones too, for the place was spotless and still had its appliances.

He knocked. The door opened and there stood a thin woman of about forty, in a plain dress and apron, with a small girl and a smaller boy flanking her on each side. All three stared at him with a look that he had not seen addressed to him since Vietnam, a look of hopeless terror.

He said, in the mildest voice he had, “Señora, my name is Richard Marder. I’m the new owner of this property. May I ask your name?”

The woman moved her mouth silently for a moment, and then croaked, “I am Amparo Montez. I’m the housekeeper.”

Marder extended his hand, and after staring at it for a dumb moment, the woman shook it. He felt her hand tremble like a bird.

“I didn’t hear—I mean, no one told me the house had been sold.”

“Well, it has. I can show you the paperwork if you like. And allow me to introduce my friend, Patrick Skelly…” Marder looked behind him, where Skelly had stood, but Skelly was not there.

“Well, perhaps later. And now, if you would be so kind, I’d like you to show me around the house and grounds.”

The woman gaped, and then her face collapsed, and she began to weep and the children began to weep.

Marder watched this for a few moments, feeling increasingly confused and helpless, then said, “Señora Montez, I don’t know why you’re distressed, but let me give you a minute to compose yourself. I’ll unpack, and when you’re ready you’ll come into the house, we’ll make some coffee, and we’ll have a talk.”

Marder knew his Spanish was fluent, but the woman looked at him as if he were speaking Hmong. He left her staring and snuffling and retreated to the camper, where he began to unpack his things.

He had his own stuff nearly cleared out when Skelly appeared.

“Where did you get off to?” Marder asked.

“What happened with the woman?”

“She’s the housekeeper, she says. She had a nervous breakdown for some reason.”

“I can guess why,” said Skelly, climbing into the camper. Unpacking sounds emerged.

“Why?”

“The place is full of squatters. There must be near a hundred people living back there, men, women, lots of kids. They’re growing corn and peppers and beans and living in the unfinished houses, and they’ve got what looks like a commercial fish pond going. They used a big hole the previous owner dug for a foundation or a swimming pool.”

“Oh, shit! That’s why she was scared. She probably thinks I’m going to evict them and fire her.”

“Are you?”

“I don’t know,” snapped Marder irritably. “Oh, hell, no, probably not, although becoming a
hacendado
was not part of my original plan.”

“And what
was
that original plan, chief?”

“Obtaining peace and quiet in a pretty little village on the Mexican coast and returning my wife’s ashes to her homeland.”

“Uh-huh,” said Skelly, emerging from the camper with a case in each hand, one of which held the sat phone and the other—a long heavy one—what Marder believed were shotguns. “I think I can pretend to believe that for a little while. Meanwhile, you should take a look at this.”

He led Marder into the four-car garage, which held only a battered yellow Ford pickup truck of seventies’ vintage.

Marder looked at where Skelly was pointing. In one corner of the garage, the concrete wall was pocked with what could only be bullet holes, lots of them, and the smooth white surface of the wall there and the floor below was spattered with dark reddish-brown stains.

“Someone was killed here,” said Skelly. “Any idea who?”

“The previous owner is among the missing,” said Marder.

“Then it’s a good thing we brought all these guns,” said Skelly, and grinned alarmingly at his pal.

6

“I’m really sorry, Statch, but that’s all I can tell you,” said Ornstein. “He called me up, he said he’d be gone indefinitely, and he offered me the use of his loft.”

Ornstein was a little embarrassed as he said this and apprehensive too. Carmel Marder had shown up demanding to know what he was doing living in her father’s loft and where her father had gone off to, and why, and while Ornstein could answer the first of these questions, he was perfectly ignorant as to the others. Perhaps he ought to have asked, as a friend, why Marder should have made such an arrangement, obviously, as was now clear, without telling his family anything about it. Besides that, Ornstein was frightened of Statch Marder. He was a small, retiring man, and while utterly prepared to battle global capitalism to the last drop of his blood, facing down a tall, angry young woman a few feet away from him was outside his normal range. And, he wanted (and, oh, how difficult it was to preserve the selflessness that any good red should exhibit!), he very much wanted to remain in this wonderful loft.

Statch glared, threw up her hands, said, “Okay, I got it—do you mind if I look around?”

“Oh, be my guest!” he replied, “or, really, since I’m
your
guest…”

Statch left the living room and the undrunk tea that Ornstein had made for them. She went immediately to the room her parents had used as their study, the Aladdin’s cave of her childhood, and began to explore her father’s desk and filing cabinets. As she did so, her apprehension increased. There was nothing besides the usual office supplies and some meaningless papers, receipts, odd notes, catalogs, family papers of no revelatory value.

She switched on his computer and cursed when she saw that it was password-protected. That had been Peter’s suggestion, she recalled; he’d lectured his father on how vulnerable his machine was, had scrubbed it of accumulated malware and installed the password. And, being Peter, he hadn’t used a word or memorable phrase but a ten-digit random string. Which meant that Marder had probably written it down somewhere, on a Post-it, or in his antique Rolodex. She looked; she found plenty of other passwords but not the master key.

She took out her phone and called her brother in Pasadena.

“It’s me,” she said.

“What’s wrong?” he said.

“Why should anything be wrong?”

“It’s six-fifteen here, a little early to call just to say hi. Gosh, I was deep in dreamland. Maybe this is still part of the dream.”

“It’s not. Look, Pete, I’m in Dad’s loft and … have you heard anything from him in the last few days?”

A pause on the line, then, coldly, “Why would I hear anything from Dad? We don’t talk much. As you know.”

“Yeah, right, but the fact is, whether you like it or not, he’s still your father, and he’s gone missing.”

“What do you mean, missing?”

“As in, he left the loft and gave it to Ornstein, no return date specified. I tracked his cell phone and the last time he used it was in Mississippi, and the last time I got through to it a Mexican kid answered, suggesting theft or abandonment, neither of which makes me happy. I’m really worried about him. Look, do you happen to have his master password? I want to check his computer.”

“No. I don’t keep other people’s passwords. Unlike some members of this family, I’m not a snoop.”

“Thank you. But do you know if he wrote it down? He probably didn’t memorize a ten-digit random string.”

“Yes, he wrote it on the back of his driver’s license,” he said, and heard his sister’s short, vivid curse.

“And you can’t think of any reason why he would disappear like this? I mean, Peter, it’s freaky—he’s totally cleaned everything out of his files.”

Another pause. “Did he take his gun?”

“Oh, God! Wait a minute, I’ll check.”

She hurried to the gun safe and punched in the combination, a number she had known since the age of eleven, this quite outside the knowledge of her father, who had not discovered it until she was old enough to be taught how to use a pistol, at which point it didn’t matter.

“The Steyr and both pistols are missing. The only thing he left was the Woodsman.”

“Well, then, we know he didn’t go off to commit suicide. He’d need only one gun for that.”

“Jesus, Peter! That’s a horrible thing to say. You really think Dad is suicidal?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know who he is. I thought I did, but obviously I was wrong.”

“You’re never, ever going to let that go of that thing with Mom, are you?”

“No, I’m not.”

“Well, that just sucks. He’s our father, for God’s sake. He’s your father, who made a mistake. I’m sorry he didn’t live up to your standards of perfection, but we’re still a family.”

“Well. We’ll have to agree to disagree on the subject. I still love you, if that’s any help. And I get it that you’re worried about him. Have you tried calling Hal Danielson? Or the accountant, what’s his name—Benny?”

“Bernie. No, I haven’t yet. That’s a good idea.” She said goodbye and closed the connection.

But Statch never called either the accountant or the lawyer, whose names and numbers appeared on the log from Kavanagh’s friend, nor did she even notice the name of Dr. Gergen or Patrick Skelly on the list. Only one of the names interested her, and she called its number immediately.

“Buenos días!”
said a recorded voice. “This is Nina Ibanez at Su Hacienda. I can’t come to the phone right now, but leave a message at the tone and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”

She did not leave a message. Instead, she unlimbered her laptop, brought up Su Hacienda’s website, and found Nina Ibanez’s email address. Then she called a Cambridge number. She got voice mail and at the tone said, “Boro, this is Statch Marder. I need to talk to you right away. It’s sort of an emergency.”