by Paul Harris
Mike thought it would be a religious sermon but as he listened it became clear the subject was anything but spiritual. Father Villatoro lectured the group on the health perils of drug use and how to practice safe sex as a prostitute or a user of prostitutes. He did not refrain from using blunt language but there was no sense of judgment. It was an honest talk and he cracked rough jokes to enliven the mood. Mike looked at the assembled group. None of them was much older than about 16. But the dead look behind their eyes and the grim lacing of crude gang tattoos on their bodies spoke of life in the slums. They listened to the priest without murmuring a word of complaint. In that way, at least, it was like a Sunday sermon. At the end, Villatoro led the group in a short prayer. Each of the kids bowed their head and clasped their hands in front of them, following the priest’s words and then chorusing: “Amen.” Only when they had all shuffled out did the priest turn to Mike and Lauren.
“We don’t get many aid workers here. Have we met before? Forgive me, usually I have such a good memory for faces,” he said in English that was only lightly accented.
“We’re not aid workers,” Lauren said. “We’ve come from America. We work for Senator Hodges. He is running for president. Have you heard of him?”
The priest said nothing, but the friendly smile on his face flickered for a moment, like a TV screen getting a burst of electrical static. “I am not sure that an American senator can have much interest in our humble church,” he said.
Mike decided to plunge in. He took out his picture of the shooter and showed it to the priest. “We have come from Santa Teresa. We were told that you will tell us who this woman is.”
The priest looked at the picture. He reached out to take it, and then, thinking better of it, he let his hand fall to his side. He sighed and suddenly seemed years older than he looked, in habiting fully each and every one of his six decades. He walked to one of the students’ desks and sat behind it, slumped down.
“Do you know her?” Mike asked.
The priest nodded.
“Do you know her name?”
The priest regarded them for a long time. Mike felt his heart quicken. This was the moment. He thought of the woman back in the Iowa jail, so full of mystery and dark silence. Now he was about to switch on a light in that chamber of secrets. He would finally understand what was unknown.
“Her name is Natalia Robles,” the priest said. “She was a member of my flock. I knew her when she was born and I was a young man…”
Suddenly there was a rap on the door to the room and the priest stopped talking. A young woman was there. She was probably in her mid-20s though she looked much older. She was rail thin with lank, dirty blonde hair that dripped over her eyes. Her wrist bore the blue ink marks of a series of gang tattoos and her skin was pimply and stretched taut over her frame.
“Padre,” she whispered, asking for ten minutes of his time.
Villatoro stood up and asked her to wait for him back in the church. The young girl turned around and looked confusingly at Mike and Lauren. She opened her mouth to speak but the priest hushed her and repeated his command. He then shut the door after she left. His expression had changed now. He was angry.
“Put that picture away,” he said. “I have more important things to do than talk about the past. People here have needs for the present that I must attend to.”
Mike folded the picture and put it back in his pocket. But he didn’t move. “We’ve come a long way, Father,” he said. “We’re not going anywhere.”
The priest looked at the pair of visitors. He shook his head slowly, but he seemed to soften. “Very well. Please speak to no one here,” he said. “Come back tomorrow. At noon. I will tell you more then.”
“Okay,” Mike said. “We do not mean to cause any trouble. We are just seeking out information.”
The priest opened the door and held it wide for them. There was no smile on his face. They walked silently past him and back into the church. The young blond girl waited there, kneeling at the altar of the black Christ, her head bowed and deep in prayer. She did not look up as they walked quietly by and out into the sunshine outside.
* * *
FEDERICO SAT in the café in the lobby of the Marriott hotel, and lurked furtively behind a newspaper. The General’s man had been there all afternoon, nursing the same tiny cup of bitter espresso, casting a quick eye at the sight of anyone white walking through the air-conditioned space or at the sound of a snatch of English. He felt like a spy in one of the Hollywood movies that he watched as a boy. He felt proud to remember the newspaper ruse from some long lost adventure film, ducking his pockmarked face behind the comforting newsprint. He was half tempted to cut tiny holes in the paper to peer through them but then decided against the idea.
But Federico’s stoicism in the service of his master wilted after such a prolonged wait. It was tiring in the extreme to sit for so long, especially at a place like the Marriott with its constant stream of foreign and wealthy businessman meeting their government contacts. Federico watched them laugh and joke together, shake hands and discuss deals, enjoy the riches that peace, prosperity and power brought them. He shook his head angrily and thought of the General’s exile on the coast amid the accursed Garifuna and their devilish culture. Then, at last, he saw his quarry. He recognized the red-headed American immediately and ducked behind his newspaper. Then, peering over the top, he saw a woman accompany him. He admired her figure for a moment, wondering who she was, and then positioned himself so he could watch the pair cross the lobby through one of the many mirrors on the wall.
“Got you!” he thought.
He saw them talk excitedly to each other and then head for the elevators. Behind them he caught the eye of the man at reception who had given him Sweeney’s room number. But he had not mentioned anything about a woman. He would pull the hotel records on her and get her name too. Maybe she was just some tourist the Yankee seduced at the bar. He watched them go, a dart of envy in his heart, and saw them get into the elevator. Federico waited a moment and walked over to reception.
“Who is that woman? Are they traveling together?” he asked.
The man shrugged and smiled expectantly.
Federico cursed to himself. “There will be something extra for you if you tell me,” he said through gritted teeth. The receptionist smiled pleasantly and looked down at his computer screen.
“Lauren O’Keefe,” he said, struggling with the pronunciation of Lauren’s surname. “They checked in together but they are staying in different rooms. She is room 711, opposite his.”
Federico grunted his thanks and took out his phone. Carillo answered gruffly.
“He is here,” Federico said. “He is with a woman. I don’t know where they were today but they are staying here tonight. What do you want me to do?”
Carillo paused a moment on the other end of the line. Federico heard him breathe heavily, like some animal.
“I don’t like this, Federico,” Carrillo said, speaking his thoughts aloud, not looking for any response. “It looks like people are moving against me. Is my reward really so expensive that they would send people here to destroy me? Is that my fate?”
Federico imagined Carillo in his darkened living room weighing the fates of those around him. Planning, plotting, making a move. Once again his General was in command against hostile forces and Federico was his one-man army, dedicated to the mission. It felt good to get orders like this, rather than just make coffee and beat up the blacks who did not pay Carillo sufficient respect.
“I want to know who they are seeing and where they are going. Stick tight to them. Don’t let them out of your sight. Call me the moment you know something else,” Carillo said.
“Yes sir,” Federico said and snapped the phone shut. He smiled. He would book into this hotel tonight and instruct the receptionist to call him the moment the couple got their breakfast. He would stay on them so tight that they would not know they wore him like a coat.
CHAPTER 20
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DEE KNEW SHE was only a few miles from where her candidate was being made up in a TV studio, but it felt like a whole world away. She sat with Christine and a few other senior staffers in the Hodges’ hotel room in downtown Columbia and nervously watched a huge flat screen TV in the corner of the room. The local Fox station broadcast its news report. The news anchor had already flagged up the network’s exclusive live interview with Hodges for an hour, and the time of its airing fast approached.
Dee poured herself a thick glass of scotch and offered some to Christine, who shook her head without looking at it. Dee shrugged and gulped down half of it. She needed the warmth and the buzz to kill her nerves. The anchor, a woman with a big mane of blond hair, started the lead-in to the interview.
“Do you think she’ll go for it?” Christine asked, not looking around, resting a long-nailed finger on her perfectly rouged cheek.
Dee shrugged. This was her plan and she knew the stakes were high. Swampy had dug up a grainy piece of video recording of Stanton talking at some long forgotten town hall meeting more than a year ago. For years Swampy had someone go to every meeting anyone held down here, recording away with a cell phone for thousands of wasted hours. Most of it was use less but it all went into Swampy’s files ready for a day it might be useful. That day had now come for this clip. Stanton riffed carelessly in front of a wholly white upcountry audience about the need for self-sufficiency and against benefits cheaters.
“You know,” Stanton said. “It pains me that some members of our society look for a handout when they really should want a hand up.”
It was a snappy line. One that Dee could easily admire in a different sort of contest. But she knew that putting that quote in a racially charged context could be explosive for them. In a good way. That was precisely what they would now do. Two days of Swampy’s push-polling on Stanton’s race record prepared that ground already. Beneath the surface the black community started to burn with rumors questioning Stanton’s commitment to their cause. This video would ignite that powder-keg.
Dee just needed to tee up the release so it did not seem completely underhanded. So she took the news anchor out for lunch the day before and spun a web of off-the-record comments that should prompt the achorwoman to bring up the race question they wanted. That would allow them to release the video at others’ behest. But who knew if it would work. It was lighting a bomb fuse in a rainstorm. All you could do was apply the fire and watch it burn down to the charge, hoping a steady pour of other events would not over-take it.
Now the cameras cut away to the candidate. He sat beside the anchor and she opened with a question on the latest run of bad news from Afghanistan. Hodges listened intently his eyes never leaving her and not a flicker of a smile on his lips. He oozed military competence.
But Dee felt a stab of disappointment. “Come on, you bitch. Ask my question,” she breathed.
She need not have worried.
The interviewer shuffled slightly in her seat and glanced down at her notes. “Senator Hodges,” she began. “Our news team has learned from its sources that there are a lot of racial accusations starting to float around out there about your opponent. This is the sort of dirty politics that you are supposed to be standing against. Why have you allowed this to happen?”
That was it. Dee stopped breathing for a moment. That bitch of an anchor phrased the issue more negatively than she feared, but it was out there now. It was up to Hodges to run with it like Christine promised he would.
Hodges grimaced thinly. “You’re right, this is the sort of campaigning I am standing against. Innuendo and rumor have no place in my campaign,” he said and looked firmly into the camera.
That’s good, thought Dee, he’s defused the weapon she threw at him.
“That is because we are fighting this election on the issues and the policies,” Hodges now continued, never shifting his gaze. “But when it comes to affirmative action that helps some of the weakest members of our society, I am worried about my opponent’s opinions. My campaign recently uncovered some disturbing evidence of Governor Stanton’s real beliefs. She appears to think that we are all born with the same opportunities in this country. That we all start at the same place. But I know we do not. The sad thing is I wish she were more sensitive to the realities of life for minorities in America today.”
Hodges turned back to the interviewer who could not hide a widening of her eyes.
“What are you saying, Senator?” she asked.
Hodges smiled disarmingly. “I’m saying I wish Governor Stanton could be a little more sensitive. I heard some comments she made on a video that my staff came across and they worried me. Now, if we can move onto some of the real issues pressing this campaign, I am sure we would all appreciate it.”
Dee did not hear the anchor’s next words. She stood in the middle of the hotel room, danced a little jig and giggled uncontrollably. She reached down and tried to grab Christine’s arm but the candidate’s wife flinched away. Dee pumped a fist in the air.
“He hit it out of the park!” she yelled.
Hodges’ comments would have pricked the ears of every news reporter watching and they would soon start calling. Then the campaign would release their video to anyone who wanted it. Dee stared at her Blackberry. She held it up in the room and watched all the other staffers’ eyes turn to it, including the media director. Dee motioned for her to get her phone out too.
“It won’t be long,” she said.
And it wasn’t.
Less than 90 seconds passed and Dee’s phone started buzzing. So did the media director’s. Dee laughed and tossed the phone to another staffer.
“Everyone who calls gets a copy of the video emailed to them,” she said. “Even if it’s a telemarketer dialing a wrong number and trying to sell you insurance. Take down their email address and send them that tape.”
Christine looked over at Dee. Her face masked whatever emotions lurked under that surface, like a mirror-smooth sea.
“Does it bother you that you just played the race card?” Christine asked. She seemed to be studying Dee’s reaction, a little like a scientist looking at a specimen she was about to dissect. Dee was surprised that the sensation slightly unnerved her.
“Look,” Dee said. “We haven’t played anything. Stanton made those comments, we didn’t. You know what sort of audience she was talking to? A bunch of white folks up in the mountains. They know what she means when she’s talking about people cheating on benefits. It’s code. We’re just deciphering it for general consumption.”
Christine seemed unimpressed.
“You really believe that, Dee?”
Now Dee got angry. “I’ll tell you what I believe,” she said, leaning in a little closer than she planned. She got a buzz of satisfaction when Christine flinched slightly. “I believe that this is going to knock ten points off Stanton’s support with blacks in this state. That’s enough to have us sliding for home plate.”
Dee walked out of the room. How dare that woman take a moral high ground with her? After all Christine was instrumental in getting Hodges to play along and commit to getting the video out there. Dee stood in the corridor, suddenly aware she was alone, sealed off from the frenzy of activity in the hotel room. It was quiet, just the low buzz of the artificial lights above her. She took a series of deep breaths, getting back her center and her sense of calm. Then she smiled.
This is the final stretch, she thought. I can see the finish line and we’re in the lead. No mistakes and we’ll win. No mistakes and no surprises.
* * *
MIKE AND Lauren’s shoes clip-clopped loudly on the marble floor of the hotel lobby as they walked out into the heat of day and toward their rental car. Behind them, a mere twenty yards or so, Federico watched their every move. He wore a hat pulled low over his eyes. A sheen of stubble now grew over his chin, giving him the hint of a beard. He walked slowly and looked for a sign that they spotted him. He was confident they did not.
They cli
mbed into their car, laughing with each other like young lovers, and drove off. Federico quickly jumped in his car to follow them. He was lucky. A morning traffic jam snarled the road just a few hundred yards from the hotel and his target was already marooned in a sea of vehicles. He relaxed and enjoyed the sensation of the chase.
It brought back many memories of tracking and following a human target through the streets of Guatemala City. Even after so many years in that stink hole of Livingston, the pursuit was still as natural as walking. He was good at it too. The General always knew that.
A steady trickle of distant names and faces flowed through Federico’s mind. There was the priest out in the suburbs. The union leader in the coffee warehouse. The teacher from the village near his own home town. All of them were problems he solved. He recalled them like looking back on his school days. A brighter period that was more full of life than his current circumstances. He had purpose then. A sense of a life fulfilled by a cause. It was the best of times.
The traffic started to clear and he wormed his way forward to just a few yards behind his target. He opened the glove box and saw the dull metallic glint of the gun. An old fashioned revolver, but reliable and well-oiled. He took it out and rested it on the passenger seat beside him like an old friend and comrade. He liked to imagine the weapon too was full of happy thoughts; of a joint purpose rediscovered back in the fight. Federico whistled a marching tune, repeating the chorus over and over as the car ahead drove in the direction of the slums.