Some Rise by Sin

by Philip Caputo

“This was supposed to be an experiment, to see if we got along?” said Pamela plaintively. “I think we did pretty well, all things considered.”

  All things considered.

  “You didn’t think I could stay down here forever, did you? You couldn’t have possibly expected I would.”

  “No.”

  I don’t want to be a rock or an anchor.

  “I know I caught you by surprise. I don’t expect an answer right away. You need time to think it over.”

  There is nothing to think over but everything, too. A split screen switched on in Lisette’s mind, neither showing attractive images. Screen 1: a medical office in some dull Connecticut town, filling out Medicare forms, commuting home to Pamela, gallery showings, lots of Brie and white wine. Screen 2: here, this courtyard, eating by herself a dinner cooked by herself in the long shadows of endless evenings.

  “I need a couple of weeks to finish a mural in the church. I’m not leaving right away,” Pamela said, crinkling her eyes. “It’s a big step, asking somebody to spend the rest of her life with you.”

  Lisette could promise to think it over, but she knew with a mathematical certainty that it would be an empty exercise. A cold resolve welled up in her. She made sure to keep the coldness out of her voice but not the resolve. “Baby, I’ve got to turn you down. I’ve got to say no.”

  Pamela’s upper lip quivered, but she caught herself.

  “I’m giving you time to think it over.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t need to,” Lisette said, laying her hand on Pamela’s. “I don’t want to spend the rest of my life with anyone. It’s not you.”

  “Who if not me?”

  “For one thing, I don’t believe in marriage, gay or straight. That poem, about not giving a damn what old men say? All these gays demanding the right to marry, they’re giving a damn. They want to be accepted, respectable, middle-class people. That’s not how I see us.”

  “Okay,” said Pamela, with a forced evenness in her voice. “Please tell me what you see.”

  “We could spend time together when I’m in the States. You could come here on summer breaks—”

  “A shuttle romance? Oh, please. My … my condition, is that it? You can’t deal with that? Or don’t want to?”

  Lisette shook her head with more vigor than was necessary, because, in truth, Pamela’s condition was on her mind, and it violated her best image of herself to think that she could not cope with it.

  “You know, when you love someone, you want to spend your life with her. So how should I take the fact that you don’t want to spend yours with me?”

  “I never expected you to throw your whole life over for me,” said Lisette irritably. “Why do you expect me to throw mine over? I don’t see myself in Connecticut or Massachusetts or California or anywhere but here. I can make a difference here. That’s all I’ve ever wanted—to make a difference.”

  “I was feeling pretty damn good half an hour ago,” Pamela said, her sadness and hurt curdling into anger. She got out of bed and into jeans and threw on a shirt, buttoning the top button in the wrong hole, so that it hung askew. “How about the difference you made to that blind girl? These people haven’t changed in a hundred years, but if you think you can change them, hey, you’re welcome to keep kicking a rock with your bare foot.” Her face reddening, she pantomimed a kick, then turned and made for the bedroom door. “I need another drink.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Riordan sat in his room, making notes on what he was going to say to His Excellency, Bishop Arturo Perralta. He felt like a jailhouse lawyer preparing his own case. The meeting, postponed until after the bishop’s trip abroad, was scheduled for Thursday, the day after tomorrow. He would first confess to what he’d done. But absolution from the sin would not remove the excommunication that arose from it. That would have to be appealed. Convincing the bishop that his case had merit would be the hard part. He was determined not to hedge or shade the truth, but also to avoid excessive self-recrimination. He had to present his crime in the proper light, hoping Bishop Perralta would give him a favorable recommendation when he sent the appeal to the Vatican.

  He was interrupted by his cell phone. It was Marta Díaz, and she didn’t bother with a hello.

  “You must come over right now,” she said, in a taut, nervous voice.

  “Marta, it’s six-thirty in the morning and I … It’s not César, is it?”

  “Es una emergencia. Por favor, ven ahora.”

  She hung up.

  His heart, Riordan thought. He dressed, climbed on the Harley, and in ten minutes was there, finding César not only healthy but lugging a heavy, rope-bound suitcase out of the house. Moises and the other two bodyguards were loading furniture into the bed of a farm truck, the same one they had taken to San Tomás. César shoved the suitcase into his pickup, parked in front of the truck. Tension showed on everyone’s face, and there was a panic-stricken quality to their quick, jerky movements. To Riordan, they looked like figures in a film running at the wrong speed.

  “What is this?” he asked. “Marta phoned me…”

  The look in César’s black eyes was not one he’d seen before. Dread.

  “We’re leaving for El Norte now,” he said. Reaching into his pocket, he produced a business card and gave it to Riordan. It read:

  EXCELSIOR PRODUCE DISTRIBUTORS LLC

  3019 N. GRAND AVE., NOGALES, AZ 85621

  IGNACIO DIAZ, WAREHOUSE MGR. 520-761-1313

  ig.diaz@epd.com.

  “My brother. I wrote his home number on the back. I will phone you when we’ve arrived at his house, but if you are not hearing from me, call him. Tell him to contact the U.S. consulate. The one on the Mexican side of Nogales.”

  This was all more than Riordan could absorb.

  “What’s going on?” he said. “Leaving now? There’s your heart—”

  “I’ll have it checked in the States. Right now, it’s the last thing I have to worry about,” César said, his voice strained. “You didn’t hear what happened last night?”

  “No.”

  “Come inside and see for yourself.”

  What Riordan saw were a desk drawer thrown on the floor, the contents strewn about, a bedroom dresser tipped over, clothes torn from an armoire and tossed everywhere, kitchen cupboards flung open, shards of glass and broken dishware scattered across the tiles.

  Soldiers—paratroopers—had battered down the door at three in the morning, César related, rousted him and Marta out of bed, and, after forcing them to lie on the floor at gunpoint, ransacked the house. A sergeant informed César that they were looking for drugs and weapons because they had information that the autodefensa was trafficking in narcotics.

  “What?” Riordan exclaimed. “That’s—”

  “Loco, sí!” said Marta, hastily picking up the scattered clothes and stuffing them into plastic trash bags. “Loco y más loco! They are as bad as the narcos! Worse!”

  “They did not find any drugs, of course, but they took my rifle and pistol, and all my records,” César went on. “From the autodefensa, from my orchard, even my insurance papers. Every document they could get their stinking hands on.”

  “But not these,” Marta said, pulling the couple’s Mexican and U.S. passports from her handbag. She raised them and her eyes toward the ceiling, as if in offering. “Gracias a Dios, they did not find them!”

  “They raided other houses at the same time,” César said. “All belonging to my men.” As he spoke, he grabbed a corner of the toppled dresser. “Help me with this, Padre Tim.”

  Riordan took the opposite corner and they stood it up, then slid the drawers back into place. Moises and the others came in and carried the dresser out to the truck.

  “We have Lupita to thank for this!” Marta said, furiously balling up shirts and blouses and cramming them into the trash bags. “Tell him, César, tell Padre how we have to thank her.”

  He’s confessed to her! Riordan thought, and pressed his palms to his te
mples.

  “Where is she?” he asked, hoping to divert the conversation.

  “I’ve sent her away, with her girls. To Magdalena,” César replied. “She has people there. Maybe we’ll try to get her into the States legally. If not, then we’ll hire a coyote. She’s in as much danger as we are.”

  Something else, then.

  “She deserves to be!” cried Marta. Moises stepped back into the bedroom, and she tossed a bag at him like a stevedore. “This goes in the pickup!” she snapped. Out of all of them, she was, or seemed to be, the least frightened; her anger had either overcome her fear or was masking it. “Maybe I would be as crazy like her if I lost a child, I don’t know. Screaming in the middle of the night for revenge, talking to everybody that the killing of the soldiers was justice. A madwoman!”

  With an abrupt wave, César motioned for Riordan to go into the front room, now empty. A sadness jabbed the priest’s chest when he saw, on the wall where the photo of the Christ of Atil had hung, a square of blue paint lighter than the rest.

  “Let me tell you, quick, what happened,” César said.

  Not two hours ago, he’d received a warning: Next week would be too late to leave Mexico; tomorrow would be too late. He had to leave now. The reason given for the raid had been a pretext; Capitán Valencia was collecting “evidence” that César, with a few militiamen, had ambushed the paratroopers in December and tried to make it look like the work of the Brotherhood. Proof was to be offered that the bullets had been fired from their guns, including César’s rifle. He was going to be arrested soon, possibly as early as today. And he well knew what would be waiting for him.

  “It was that federal cop who called,” he said. “The one who looks like a gringo.”

  “Bonham?”

  “Him. Who else would know what that fucking Valencia is up to?”

  Riordan couldn’t fathom what Bonham’s motives might have been. Valencia: that brutal officer was an example of what happens to a man obsessed. Expelling these thoughts, he asked, “What about the others? The ones whose houses were searched?”

  “They can do what they want. They’re on their own. I have to think about myself and Marta. And Moises and those other two. They protected me, now I got to protect them. They’re coming with us.”

  “But they’re all deportees. They’ll be arrested as soon as they cross the border.”

  “An American jail is better than what will happen to them here.”

  “Have you told your brother about this?”

  “No. Only that I’m coming today instead of next week. I don’t want him to worry.”

  There was nothing further to be said. Riordan offered to help load their belongings. César shook his head. Not necessary.

  “Please give us a blessing,” he added. “We’ll need it, I think.”

  They returned to the bedroom, where Marta was still packing frantically.

  “Padre Tim is going to bless us,” César said to her.

  She paused, dropping a blouse or two, and the couple assumed a reverential pose, hands crossed over their waists, heads bowed. Riordan drew the sign of the cross in the air and prayed for God to grant them a safe journey. They crossed themselves and raised their eyes to him.

  “Abrazos, Padre Tim,” said Marta.

  “Sí. Abrazos, mi amigo,” her husband echoed.

  And as they all three huddled in an embrace, a sense of loss swallowed Riordan up. He was embarrassed to discover himself crying.

  * * *

  He rode slowly to the rectory to avoid making too much noise. After he locked up his bike, he sat in the courtyard, on the stone bench by the weather-stained bust of Padre Kino, and tried to find a clear signal in the static crackling through his head. The Old Priest, watering his herb garden, bid Riordan good morning and said that they’d missed him at Lauds and at breakfast.

  Riordan murmured, “There was an … an emergency.”

  Wanting solitude, he resented the presence of the back-bent figure holding a watering can; but the Old Priest wandered to a far corner of the garden without waiting for further explanation.

  A nation of sheep and wolves, Riordan thought. And this wolf wears a paratrooper’s uniform, and what is in his predaceous mind? He forced himself to engage in a mental soliloquy: So start with Valencia, a monomaniac fixated on finding who was responsible for ambushing his troops.… He put the interior monologue on pause, thinking back to the conversation when he’d had lunch at Valencia’s headquarters. Even though it looked like the Brotherhood perpetrated the massacre, the captain had been disposed to consider alternate possibilities.… Now enter Lupita, calling out loud for justice, broadcasting her satisfaction with the soldiers’ deaths to anyone who will listen.… Eventually Valencia hears about her ravings. He thinks, “If not narco assassins, who else had the motive and the means to pull off this heinous act? Who else but Lupita’s brother-in-law and the uncle of Hector Díaz?” Riordan probed his memory, and in a few minutes he recalled that the patrol had been sent to investigate an anonymous tip about a … what was it? A poppy field. So Valencia’s next Sherlock Holmes deduction would be that César Díaz assembled a handful of his most trusted men, called in the tip, and lured the soldiers into a trap.… Easy enough to print pictures of La Santa Muerte and plant them on the bodies.… The major missing piece is, what’s convinced Valencia that the Brotherhood did not commit the crime?

  Riordan slumped on the bench, his eyes on the ground. He had hoped that Salazar’s capture would bring, if not an end to his parish’s afflictions, then a long respite from them. César would be safe once he crossed the border, but what about the other militiamen on the captain’s list? What was to happen to them?

  Suddenly he sat up straight, startled by the realization that in reconstructing Valencia’s logic, he had unintentionally built a case against César. Not an airtight case, but a plausible one. His thoughts leapt back to the day in the hospital. Surely, facing a heart operation, César would have confessed if he’d anything to do with it.… Surely he would not have regarded the act as justified.… But this is Mexico. Six years—no, it’s seven now—of unremitting bloodshed might stretch the firmest conscience to accommodate committing murder without remorse or guilt.… But no! Stop it! he argued with himself. He’s not capable of that kind of treachery, that kind of violence …

  He looked at the Old Priest, hoeing at the far end of the garden, and recalled the myth of Azazel and the sacrificial goat that bore the sins of the people. Chivo expiatorio—expiatory goat. Riordan thought the Spanish sounded better.

  He went quickly into his room, unlocked the cupboard in his desk, and took out the encrypted burner phone; but he hesitated. What did he hope to accomplish? Then, determined to get some questions answered, he punched in Bonham’s number. Following the instructions given months ago, he ended the call after three rings, then waited for a response. When several minutes passed in silence, he redialed and waited again, once more without a callback. This was unbearable. He needed to finish his note-taking and to psych himself up for what was bound to be the most critical hour of his life. His vocation, his reputation, his standing as a communicant Catholic—everything, in short, hung in the balance. But his brain felt frozen. A couple of hours, give or take, since he’d watched César leave with Marta, Moises, and the other bodyguards. It had looked like a scene out of The Grapes of Wrath, the farm truck piled high with furniture, bedding lashed to the side slats with old ropes. They would be in Hermosillo by now, turning north on Mex 15 for Nogales. Three to four more hours would bring him to the border and, Riordan hoped, safety.

  Knowing that he would be in no fit mental condition for anything till he heard from César, he pocketed the phone, got up, and entered the church to quiet his mind. Ladies of the parish were removing Easter decorations, and Pamela Childress stood high on a platform, rubbing some sort of compound onto the mural of Saint Mark. One of the women stopped work and approached him—the Very Pious Señora Herrera. She wished him a good morni
ng, her face pinched and somber in the dim flickering of the Paschal candle. His own face felt as if he’d been walking into a cold wind, so much so that when he manufactured a smile he thought his skin would crackle.

  He asked what he could do for her, silently praying that the subject would not be her daughter. Prayer answered: Two boys were giving her trouble in catechism class; she’d scolded them but to no avail. It would help if Padre Tim gave them a good talking-to. Of course he would, but not today, nor tomorrow or Thursday—he would be in Hermosillo on Thursday. Friday, then? she wanted to know. Yes, yes, fine, Friday, he replied, trying to keep the irritation out of his voice. Now, if she would pardon him.… He broke off the conversation and shambled down the side aisle to where Pamela was at work on the mural. He stood beneath her for a half minute before she became aware of his presence.

  “You’re just the man I wanted to see,” she said, and began climbing down the scaffolding.

  “I’m much in demand today,” he said.

  Reaching the floor, she rubbed her hands with a cloth and faced him. In two seconds, her expression passed from serious to cheerful and back to serious, as if she couldn’t make up her mind which was appropriate for what she had to say. She was, with regrets, giving him notice; she would be leaving in about two weeks—

  “You, too? Everybody seems to be leaving here,” he said, with no attempt to conceal his disappointment. “Where to and why?”

  “To Connecticut, to look for an apartment. I landed a teaching job at Yale. Then it’s on to Philadelphia for an exhibition of my work.”

  “Good for you,” he said. “If that doesn’t sound sincere, it’s because it’s not. I’ll be very sorry to see you go. And Lisette? I hope she’s not leaving, too.”

  “She’ll be here forever.”

  He caught the mixed disappointment and resignation in her tone. “Did you two have a fight?”

  “Uh-huh. But we more or less patched things up. We’re very good friends. That sounds like such a cliché, but…” She pursed her lips and glanced up at the mural. “I meet my commitments. I’ll have San Marco done before—”