The Travel Writer (3 page)

The worst part of the trip, the Pearsons agreed, was the press conference held in the Matamoros’s atrium. Every reporter, cop, government official, and hotel employee who spoke left the Pearsons more convinced that the entire country was conspiring to protect the secret behind their daughter’s disappearance.

* * *

After they finished deploring and I finished commiserating, I asked for a picture. Mrs. Pearson fetched a shoe box from another room and presented it to me. It was full of jumbled copies of a single photo. Hilary was perched on the guardrail of a hotel balcony at twilight, her head tossed to one side so that her straight dark hair flowed at a slight angle from her face, like a flag caught in a breath of wind. So that was my editor. Lovely in this photo, at least. Behind her lay the sunset and the bay and the lights of the city. I thought I recognized the view; it was from a high-rise lanai at the Hilton Hawaiian Village on Waikiki. Not the finest hotel in Honolulu but not bad.

“Don’t take one,” Mr. Pearson said. “Here. Take twenty. Stick ’em up in restaurants. That’s what we did. Nail ’em to trees and telephone poles. Do they have telephone poles?” He took a manila folder from his wife. “And take these.” They were eight-and-a-half-by-eleven flyers that featured a photocopied version of the picture below text that read, in Spanish and English, “Have you seen this woman?”

“Kids at the high school made these,” he said. “Senior project. They’re good but they’re not color. Color makes a difference. Brings a girl alive. Do they have telephone poles or not?”

“You don’t even remember!” his wife accused.

“How could I remember? They show you around, shake your hand, jabber some of their Spanish mumbo jumbo, and then it’s time to go home. You can’t think in a country like that. It’s as high as a mountain, everywhere you go. You can’t get enough air. You get sick if you stand up too quick.”

“I’m sure the cops will find her soon,” I said, knowing that this was almost as silly as “God will make it all right.”

“Cops! They take money from the hotel, which takes money from the government, which takes money from
our
government. And they don’t even speak English, most of them. You can’t trust anybody. What we need is a real investigation.”

“You’re right,” I said. “That’s why I’m going. I knew her. She was the first editor who ever helped me out. I won’t let them lie to me.”

“I believe you,” said Mrs. Pearson, but probably just because she knew her husband didn’t. He glowered at me and turned on the television.

“Well, I don’t,” Mr. Pearson said. A local news program was closing its telecast with a close-up of a litter of puppies tumbling over each other. His eyes never wavered from the screen.

“I have sources in Bolivia,” I said. “I’ve talked to an employee at the Matamoros. They’ve got a secret.”

The appeal to his paranoia stirred his interest, and he turned from the puppies. “I know that!”

Mrs. Pearson stepped closer, her hair standing stiffly at attention before me.

“Can you find out the secret?” she said.

“I can try,” I said. “They know me at the hotel. They trust me. The FBI didn’t find anything because nobody trusts them. Isn’t that right, Mr. Pearson?”

“Of course it is,” he said.

“You can’t understand what it is to lose someone,” said Mrs. Pearson. “What if she’s gone? Really gone. It’s terrible for this to happen to someone so young. I suppose it’s terrible for it to happen to anybody.”

“Wrong!” said Mr. Pearson. “Most of them got it coming.”

As the train took me back to civilization, I stared at my handful of Hilary photos and imagined a different rescue scenario, starting with me ripping apart the ropes around her wrists and ankles with my knife. I would have to throw her over my shoulder to prepare for my quick and noiseless rush out of the hut, past the unconscious sentry, and back into the jungle. Why not? Every great achievement begins with a bold and childish dream. Pilar and her bosses would stare as I carried Hilary into the lobby and laid her down on the sofa, safe, healthy, though dark with the sun and jungle dirt, sleeping away her fear and weariness. Hotel minions would scramble to call an ambulance, her parents, and the U.S. embassy. Pilar would take me in her arms. Sometime later, she would be seated at my table of honor, gorgeous in her uplifted hair and sparkling necklace, as I received the Pulitzer for the story. Hilary would be there too, our special guest.

Outside, the sun was almost down and the forested New Jersey countryside blurred into one mass of deepening dark green. I gathered my senses and launched a new, more realistic fantasy, in which by bullying and browbeating some witnesses and feigning ignorance with others, I would lay bare the conspiracy and uncover Hilary’s fate. You’re lying, I’d say to the manager, who looked just like Gonzales, and I’d slap him down with the truth as gasps and then knowing sighs rose from the cops, Pilar, and onlooking hotel staff. It’s easier to envision yourself fleeing boldly with a girl over your shoulder than to hear yourself asking brilliant questions, but I
marched on undaunted through the stickiest of possibilities.

As I entered my apartment I almost slipped on an envelope just inside the door. It contained a note that read, “I have found you, Mr. Smalls.”

There was no signature, just an exclamation point at the bottom of the page. I called the super, but he took his usual professional pride in having noticed nothing all day. Gonzales, or someone, must have got my address from the phone book and followed a neighbor into the building. Not so difficult. But it was a long haul out to my neighborhood just to write that note. Since double-locking was nothing more than the usual precaution, I fixed my desk chair under the doorknob as well. Yertle was safe in his turtle tank, basking on the two bricks I had stacked under the sixty-watt bulb of a desk lamp. His snout was lifted proudly to the light, as if daring someone to take a swing at his chin.

The publishing industry had inverted the boom economy’s corporate tendencies: it provided its employees with low salaries and fabulous offices. The midtown office of Lisa Ravitz, Hilary’s boss at Folgers Travel Guides, had a view of the Hudson River and New Jersey. The sun fell obliquely on the back of Lisa’s head, so her moonish face was in shadows. Visitors would always be gazing past her to the view as she spoke to them. But I was not that type of visitor. As I entered I noted the mural-size map of the world taped to the wall beside her. Red pushpins were scattered about it, as if Lisa were keeping track of her growing network of worldwide franchises. I glanced down at an open copy of
The New York Observer
on Lisa’s desk. She saw me and folded it up.

“Have you
been
to all those places?” I asked, indicating the map with a world-encompassing stroke of my arm.

“No. They’re still on my list.” She raised her eyebrows, implying that if she had put up pins for everywhere she’d been, there wouldn’t be much of a map left.

“So this is the famous Jacob Smalls,” she said. “I had friends at the Matamoros press conference. I hear you had a friend at the conference too. Pilar Rojas.”

The New York travel-publishing universe is like a Park Avenue dog: small and nasty.

“She’s the Matamoros’s PR agent,” I said. “I needed her help to get down to the Matamoros. Now it’s all set.”

“I bet it is. How much are they paying you? Are you flying first-class? Comped spa treatments and excursions? It’s nice to have an in. Hope you have a better time than Hilary did.”

“They’re not giving me any money,” I explained, fixing a reasonable expression on my face. “In fact, they’re very suspicious of me. As they should be. I told them I’m planning to write a puff piece, but that’s just a front. Don’t tell me your authors never do the same thing; don’t tell me you’ve never done it either. The only two ways to get inside a luxury hotel is with money or with promises, and I don’t have money. Promises I can fake as well as the next writer.”

“I’m sure you’re an excellent fraud.”

“This time I’m going straight. I’m going to write up the real story. Nobody wants to read fluff about the Matamoros now. People want to find out what happened to Hilary. So do I. I wrote for her. She helped me out when no one else would.” This was true. Before Hilary had given me that first assignment, I had been electronically rejected or ignored by a number of obviously less intelligent editors.

“That’s not all you want,” she said.

I paused for a moment to let Lisa ponder what I wanted: a name for myself, a byline in a reputable magazine, an agent, a book deal, a review in the
Observer
, a lunch with a legendary editor at the Four Seasons. These were her own goals, though perhaps long ago given up (which would explain her temper), and to tell the truth, they were mine too, though I had no time for them now. Pilar and Hilary were more than enough to occupy me.

Now that Lisa thought she grasped my ambition, she eased back slightly in her chair, holding her fire while still keeping me covered. “Go on,” she said.

“I went online and read all the newspaper reports,” I said. “I know the facts, and I know Hilary as an editor. But it’s not enough. The stories say she’s fun-loving, pretty, intelligent, generous—that’s what everybody always says about the dead. I need to know her better than that, if I’m going to find her, or at least find out what happened to her.”

Lisa rolled up the
Observer
and twisted it in her two hands like a wet towel. “She was a good editor,” she said. “She got her stuff in on time.”

I wrote “good editor” in my notebook and nodded for her to continue. Lisa just slapped the twisted-up paper against her desk, as if killing the same fly over and over again.

“What makes you think you can find her?” she asked. “The FBI couldn’t. You’re just a guidebook writer.”

Guidebook writers are the peasantry of travel writers. Apparently my magazine work hadn’t caught Lisa’s attention, which wasn’t surprising. It hadn’t caught anyone else’s.

“I told you,” I said. “I’ve heard rumors. I know people at the hotel, and all over the country.” A network of undercover agents, infiltrating every crevice of Bolivian society.

“What rumors?”

“As yet unverified. It wouldn’t be responsible to discuss them at this point.”

She folded her meaty arms, unimpressed, and raised an eyebrow.

“I visited Hilary’s parents at their home yesterday,” I added.

“Freaks, huh?” she said. “Her dad owns six Honda dealerships and he won’t pay full price to copy missing-person flyers with his daughter’s picture. He told Kinko’s he’d call the media if he didn’t get a discount. Plus he calls his own cars Jap-mobiles.” The subject of Mr. Pearson’s contemptibility was clearly near her heart. “Did you know Hilary had to go to Alma College, in central Michigan, even though she got into Cornell? Daddy wouldn’t put up the scratch, but he made too much money for her to get a scholarship, so she was out of luck. Alma gave her a free ride.”

I wrote “Alma” down on my pad.

“Have you talked to the FBI yet?” she asked. “They investigated on-site. You haven’t called them, have you? I bet all you did was talk to that PR bitch at the hotel. Not me. I wouldn’t take her calls. I got the lies straight from the manager. So did you talk to the FBI or what?”

“I haven’t had the time—”

“Time! Unbelievable. I could write this story myself, you know, if I had the time and the money to schlep down to Bolivia. Or the stomach to suck up to the Matamoros like you. But I bet you have a pretty strong stomach, don’t you?”

“That’s what you need to write about South America.” I tried to offer a smile.

“Don’t get all Third World on me. You think I’m impressed? I’ve been to Cambodia, and not just Angkor Wat. I’ve been to Laos. But now I’m an editor. I’ve got a real job and responsibilities. You don’t even have cats. Right?”

I nodded. I hate cats. I also hate editors. In their own minds, editors are much smarter, more sophisticated, and more talented than us writers, but they’re too devoted to their regular paychecks, window offices, and health insurance to quit their jobs and show us how real writing is done. So they seethe and sigh and get crabby about deadlines. That’s why I hate them, that and the way they rewrite my sentences to conform to their imaginary rules of grammar and good taste.

The door to Lisa’s office creaked, and a tall, gangly young man entered, bearing two coffee mugs. His long, thin arms and potbelly reminded me of E.T.

Lisa looked at him as if he had walked in naked.

“I brought you some coffee,” he said, and set one of the two mugs carefully on her desk.

“Since when do I drink coffee?”

“I don’t know. I thought you might want some. This the reporter?” He hefted the other cup at me, sloshing a bit onto the rug. Then he took a sip. Evidently it wasn’t for me. “You got to talk to me.” He shot me with the finger and thumb of his free hand.

“He’s not a reporter. He’s a travel writer,” said Lisa.

“Whatever. If you want the real deal, you better talk to me.”

“What do you know about this, Kenny?” she asked.

“What do I know? Nothing. Nothing at all. Nothing big. Nothing that just maybe might have been the most important thing in her whole entire life!”

“Come off it, Kenny.”

“I said maybe.”

“Get out.”

He shut the door just loudly enough to show defiance.

“Is he Ken Rawls?” I said. I recognized his name from my online trawling; he had been quoted in the Morristown
Herald News
. “Does he really know—”

“No. He’s not even my assistant. He works for the whole department. That’s why I can’t shitcan him like he deserves.”

I tried to nod sagely. The interview seemed to be dribbling through my fingers. There were still only three words written in my notebook: “Alma” and “good editor.”

“You know what kills me?” she said. “More than anything else?”

The question didn’t seem to require an answer, but still she waited until I shook my head.

“Hilary never should have been there in the first place!” she said. The skin on her forehead and gerbil cheeks puckered in anger. “We don’t have a book on Bolivia. Who has a book on Bolivia?”