by Paul Harris
For a while they talked about themselves and ignored the wider world. Mike talked passionately about the campaign and Hodges and his desire to make a difference. As the words poured out, they helped him ground himself in his purpose here. It reminded him why he joined Hodges’ cause and agreed to what Dee asked him to do.
“I believe in him,” he said. “I’ve spent my life trying to make a difference with people’s lives. I’ve had my triumphs but mostly it’s a struggle just to keep things from getting worse. But this? This is different. If Hodges wins and he follows through on even half of what he’s promised, it’ll change our nation.”
Lauren smiled. “You really believe that?” she asked. She seemed genuine and Mike was genuine back.
“I honestly do,” he said. “Nothing is as important to me as getting Hodges elected. He’ll make people’s lives better. I’ve never really believed that before.”
They sat closer together now and drew in to each other as they talked.
“But who is that woman?” Lauren asked. “It makes no sense she would want to kill Hodges.”
Mike shook his head.
“No idea. But she tried to kill me too,” he whispered and unbuttoned the high collar of his shirt to show the purpling bruise around his throat where she tried to throttle the life out of him.
Lauren blanched.
“She attacked me when I saw her in jail a few days ago,” he said.
“Jesus,” Lauren said and gingerly caressed the damaged skin of his neck with a brush of her hand. Mike closed his eyes and luxuriated in her touch. But then an alarm bell went off in his mind. Stop! Get a grip, he thought. He opened his eyes and edged away.
Lauren withdrew her hand. “So what next?” she said as if nothing were amiss.
“We do what Rodolfo said,” Mike replied. “We go and see that priest. I asked the concierge. San Gabriel is a church out in the slums. We find the church and we find him. It’s our only lead really.”
Lauren sensed any moment of flirtation had passed. She yawned theatrically and stretched her arms. “I’m beat,” she said.
They headed upstairs to rooms that were opposite each other on the sixth floor. Mike closed the door to his room and breathed out a sigh of relief. He needed to keep self-control. This was too important to mess up and Lauren represented a time bomb on this story. He did not want to complicate things any further simply because he was attracted to her. He walked over to the window of his room and flung back the curtains exposing the nightscape of the city stretching out below.
His phone buzzed in his pocket. It was Dee. Her Southern drawl, more pronounced than he remembered, carried down the line.
“What’s up, Mike?” she asked.
He told her about the experience in the village. To his surprise she was not outraged or shocked. There was just a measured response.
“I always thought that shooter was just a plain old nut job. Some scary psycho,” she said.
“You did not see these people’s reaction. It was more than…” Mike began but she shushed him.
“Keep digging. We need to know her identity and the link with the General and Hodges. Every time I look at Hodges I see a man I believe in. But then I remember the money paid down to this goddamn Carillo in Guatemala and it’s like an itch I can’t quite reach. It’s bothering the heck out of me, Mike. I need you to scratch it.”
“There’s a priest here who should know who she is. We’ll try and find him tomorrow.”
“Good. But how’s our little blogging friend? Are you keeping her close by? Not too close I hope.”
There was a hint of playful accusation in Dee’s voice. Mike ignored it.
“It’s all under control,” he said.
Dee laughed. “Remember, Mike, men always mess things up because of their peckers. Keep yours in your own pants.”
Mike spluttered in embarrassment but Dee just steam-rollered on. “There’s one other thing,” she said. “My friend on your home town sheriff’s department just updated me on Jaynie’s case. He sent me her arrest report and case file. It’s pretty bad.”
Mike felt struck in the stomach. Jaynie. He thought of her screams when the police burst in. They were animal-like: pure anguish and fear. On instinct alone she must have known that moment was the end of freedom.
“How bad is it?”
“She’s been mixed up in some pretty nasty stuff, Mike. She’s brewed meth for a crew of dealers for a year or so. The cops have her red-handed with a still in her trailer and enough meth to float the boats of half of New York’s cracker population. She’s staring at five years, minimum. Maybe a hell of a lot more.”
There was nothing left to say.
“Thanks for letting me know, Dee,” he said and he hung up the phone.
Five years inside? Jaynie would not survive that he thought. He remembered the last time he saw her, in the back of the cop car. She had reached out to him with her bound hands and he edged away from her. He felt a terrible rush of guilt and he pulled down the blinds on his window, blocking out the sparking lights of the city in a series of shadows that looked like the bars of a cage.
CHAPTER 19
DEE WATCHED BOB “Swampy” Murphy lift the tumbler of expensive scotch to his mouth and down it in a single gulp. He smacked his lips with loud theatrical effect and settled back in the comfy leather of his chair. They sat in a back room at Magnolia’s, one of the finest restaurants in Charleston, which took the common food of the South and gave it a haute cuisine twist. Dee hated the place. But Murphy insisted. After all he wasn’t the one paying the bill.
“So will he agree to it? Has this candidate of yours got what it takes to win down here?” Murphy asked.
He was almost a parody of the dark side of South Carolina politics. Obese and short with what seemed a permanent sheen of sweat on his forehead, Murphy ran a small political consultancy in the state. He had done so for decades. Just like his father before him and his grandfather before that. Down in the South even dirty politics were passed on in families like a real sweat-and-blood trade and no game-player was dirtier than Murphy. For a fee, he arranged rumors to sweep through an election. Fly-posters appeared over night in any neighborhood in the state. Untraceable stories popped up on the Internet or in gossip columns. Push-polls planted the most outlandish stories about an opponent. It was a dark, seedy underbelly of “The Swamp“ and Murphy was its master practitioner.
Dee poured him another glass from a whisky bottle the waiter left on the table along with a carafe of expensive red wine.
“I do believe he will, Bob,” she said. “But we have to convince him it is the right thing to do. Not just tactically. But morally.”
Murphy chuckled, his fat cheeks inflating and deflating. “Oh boy, Dee. Have you got yourself lumbered to a candidate with a serious case of morality? For a campaign that hopes to win anything, that can be a very debilitating condition.”
A warm glow of dislike rose up in Dee. She needed Murphy. She would sanction anything he would do if it de stroyed Stanton and won this fight. But she baulked at his casual joy in the dark arts of their craft. Dee still believed in a cause. She was a means to an end. Murphy lost any notion of an end long ago. He was all about the method. She sighed inwardly. She disliked Charleston, she thought. It was genteel and Southern and wealthy, but it masked its ugly side. The terrible race relations and the ghettos just a few miles from the mansions of Broad Street were all hidden under the surface. Like this restaurant, she thought. Dress up chitterlings with some fancy sauces and slap a high price tag on it and call it gourmet. But at the end of the day you still ate pig belly.
“He’s a good man, Bob,” she said quietly, gritting her teeth.
Murphy failed to notice anything amiss. “They’re the worst,” he said. “What do you need?”
“To undermine Stanton’s support in the black community. She’s from Virginia. She knows her way around this territory better than Hodges. She’s got a long record of support from black church
es. We need to chip away at that. Splinter off some of her base. If we do that we can take her down.”
Murphy nodded. “Go on,” he said.
“Nothing too extreme, Bob,” Dee said. “I don’t want a repeat of the McCain fiasco when everyone thought his own adopted daughter was a black love child.”
Murphy gave an impish grin.
“Just kick up a bit of doubt,” Dee said. “If we can puncture Stanton’s black support, then all the air will go out of her campaign. It’s her weak underbelly,” Dee said.
Murphy smiled and revealed a mouth of stubby off-white teeth. Dee had a sudden mental image of some ugly, bottom-dwelling fish that lurked deep in the ocean far from sunlight.
“Creating doubt is my specialty,” Murphy said. “I can push-poll some stuff about her comments on cutting welfare and portray that in more racial terms. She’s been close to a few evangelical leaders in her time. I bet a few of them have some associations on the extreme right I can use. Colored folks don’t have too much time for the Jerry Falwells of this world.”
Dee smiled. Murphy was a son-of-a-bitch. But, for the right price, he was going to be her son-of-a-bitch. She began to speak again but just then the door to their semi-private dining room opened and Hodges and Christine walked in, arm in arm, accompanied by a blast of sound and laughter from the main dining room outside. It was like a light switched on in the room.
“Dee!” Hodges said, striding forward. “This place looks fantastic. Christine and I have been blown away by Charleston. It’s wonderful.”
Dee made her introductions. She described Murphy as a trusted political consultant and poured out the wine. She filled four glasses until they almost over-flowed as she listened to Hodges and Christine praise the delights of the city. Murphy played along and oozed his local charm and recommended a series of other restaurants they should try. Then he offered the use of his weekend beach house the next time they were in town.
“It beats hotels,” Murphy said. “It will save your campaign some money down the line too.”
Dee interjected. “Yeah, well, we have to win here first, Bob,” she said.
Now was her chance. She looked at Hodges. “Jack. Bob has offered to run some polls for us, maybe take the fight to Stanton a little. He thinks he can knock five points off her in the next week by going for the black vote.”
Hodges put down his glass of wine. “What sort of polls, Dee?” he asked. “You’ve been telling me Stanton’s pretty solid with African-Americans here.”
Murphy spoke up. “It is my belief that there are some serious doubts to be raised about Governor Stanton’s commitment to minority rights. It’s time someone started asking some tough questions of your opponent.”
Hodges was not fooled for a moment. He ignored Murphy and fixed Dee with a stern glare.
“Push-polls?” he said. “I told you this campaign did not want to go down that route.”
Dee opened her mouth to speak. But Christine suddenly spoke up.
“What are push-polls?” she asked.
Hodges turned to her angrily. “That’s when you ring someone up to ask: would you still vote for Candidate X if you knew they were beating their wife? It does not matter that they haven’t been. Just asking the question suggests they might have.”
He turned to look at Dee again and ignored a blustery protestation from Murphy.
“Stanton deserves better than that,” he said.
“We would raise legitimate issues,” Dee said, repeating Murphy’s line. “We won’t take this into the gutter.”
Stanton continued to glare at her but he said nothing.
“Jack,” Dee said softly. “We’ve got one more week of campaigning in this state. If we beat Stanton here, it’s over. We have the party nomination. Then we can run for the White House. Then we can make you President. But we can’t get there by playing softball.”
Hodges drained his glass of wine as if possessed of a desperate thirst. Then he stood up and stalked out of the room. They watched his back disappear out of the room. To Dee’s surprise Christine remained seated. She ran a finger along the top of her own glass to create a distant buzzing sound.
“You think this will work?” Christine asked quietly.
Murphy nodded. “Ma’am,” he said. “I know my business.”
Christine looked at Dee.
Dee nodded in agreement. “It’s time to get a little dirty to get the job done. Do you think you can persuade him?” Dee said.
Christine took a deep breath and then let out a laugh. She was fully composed, in control. Her eyes sparked like icy wells in the middle of her face, hard and firm.
“Oh, Dee,” she said. “Did you hear Jack actually say no?”
Then she got up and followed her husband.
Dee watched her leave the room, her trim form sashaying in her tightly fitting dress. Dee could not stop herself from casting an admiring glance over her body. The door closed with a soft click.
Christine called it exactly right. Hodges gave them the green light without actually having to say anything. To Dee’s surprise, she felt a stab of disappointment. He was compromising his stance. He was doing what he needed to do to win, not just what he thought was right.
But Dee got what she wanted. Or at least she thought so. What did the CIA call Hodges’ tactic? Plausible deniability. Hodges did not explicitly say yes, but he got all the gain if it worked. Meanwhile, they took all the pain if it didn’t. She looked at Murphy and saw that he thought the same thing. His slack jaw broke out in a blubbery grin.
“Damn, he’s good,” Murphy said.
* * *
MIKE AND Lauren were in a slum about ten miles from the center of Guatemala City. They followed a handwritten set of directions from the hotel concierge to the mission of San Gabriel. Lauren read them and tried to direct Mike’s driving, but both of them were too distracted by the sights and sounds around them to be sure they were on the right route. The slum was like nothing they ever saw before. It was vast. It began on a flat plateau and then tumbled down the sides of a series of steep ravines that encircled the city. In some places shacks flowed down the slopes like a waterfall of buildings and there were people everywhere. Men and women walked to and fro or lounged outside little cafes and bars that were painted in garishly bright colors. Hordes of children seemed to spring up like a fertile crop from the ground itself, catching a glimpse of the two white people in the car driving by and giving them curious looks or a frantic little wave and broad grin. Eventually, after attracting a little crowd of urchins trailing behind their vehicle, Lauren threw down the directions and gave up.
“We’re lost,” she said. “Let’s just ask some of these kids.”
Mike stopped the car just as the path they were on headed for a dead-end. He wound down the window and a gaggle of young boys appeared and thrust their hands and giggling faces through the open space. Mike asked them in Spanish about finding the church but received nothing in reply apart from a burst of laughter and shouts. Then one of them who, despite his tiny size, seemed the leader of the gang, spoke more clearly.
“Dinero!” he said and put out a hand.
Mike pulled a few grubby Guatemalan notes from his wallet and handed them over. Then he repeated the name of the church. The boy nodded with an impish grin and gestured for him to reverse the car. Mike did so, afraid that some of the kids surrounding the vehicle laughing and running might fall under the wheels. But they skipped effortlessly out of the way, like a flock of birds, dipping and wheeling in the sky.
Mike backed out of the lane and the boy came to the window again. He rapped on it once and Mike wound it down.
“Esta aqui!” the boy said, and pointed to a low, dirty white brick building just twenty yards away. Mike now saw the rambling structure was a church with a squat bell tower that was almost hidden by a thicket of shacks around it. They drove right by it just two minutes earlier. The boy darted away, followed by the others as Mike and Lauren opened their doors and got out.
Away from the air conditioning of the car they felt the sudden heat and warmth of the air hit them like an open oven. So did the sour stench of the area, a mix of cooking fires and rotting rubbish that gave the air an acrid tinge that they could taste. They walked side by side to the church. Its whitewashed walls were covered in cracked and faded plaster, exposing the mud bricks beneath. It looked several hundred years old at least, clearly founded as some sort of rural mission back when this whole area was open fields or thick forest. Now it was swallowed by a vast urban slum.
Mike and Lauren walked through an arched gateway and immediately it was like they stepped back in time. They were in a cobbled courtyard opposite the church building but the high walls kept out the sounds of the city. It was suddenly quiet and peaceful. Mike led the way through an open door into the church.
Inside the atmosphere was dark and lit only by a dozen or so flickering candles. It reminded Mike of the shrine of Maximón back in Santa Teresa; of stepping over a threshold into a different and much older world. The walls were festooned with golden statues and a huge figure of Christ crucified on the cross hung at one end. The figure’s skin was black in color with the trails of blood from his wrists and forehead painted a bright, thick, garish red. A group of young women kneeled in front of the Christ and prayed fervently with their heads bowed. Mike and Lauren tiptoed forward and one of the women looked up, cocking her head.
“We are looking for Father Gregorio Villatoro?” Mike whispered. The woman gestured in the direction of a door at the back of the church and resumed her quiet prayers. Mike walked over and gently pushed the door open to reveal a short corridor branching off into several rooms. From one they could hear the soft sounds of a male voice speak. Mike and Lauren walked forward and slowly pushed open the door. Inside a priest in a black robe talked to a group of young women and boys who lounged at a series of desks set up like a schoolroom. The priest stopped at the interruption and looked at the unexpected visitors. He was a short man, with a graying beard and hair that made him look around 60. But there was a sense of energy about him, a physical presence that dominated the room. He waved Mike and Lauren to sit down and then resumed his talk.