January Justice

by Athol Dickson

  Whoever made the bomb hadn’t bothered to remove the plastic wrap from the C-4. The black printing on the plastic indicated US military issue. The blasting cap was an M6 electric type, also something I had seen in the Marines.

  I left the bomb on the counter, slipped on a pair of shorts and running shoes, grabbed a flashlight, and went outside to look around. Walking to the back of the guesthouse, where my bedroom window was, I saw no sign of anything out of the ordinary. I scanned the ground in front of the window. Nothing. I went to the eight-foot-tall stucco wall that ran along the road beside the property and walked its entire length. Again, I saw nothing of interest. I wasn’t surprised. Based on the quality of the ordnance, I hadn’t expected them to leave evidence.

  Back inside the guesthouse, I carried the bomb into the living room, put it on the coffee table, and sat down on the sofa to stare at it and think.

  The C-4 plastic explosive and the M6 detonator weren’t readily available to civilians. The whole assembly was compact and efficient, obviously assembled by someone who had been well trained, probably by US military munitions experts.

  One place a person might learn how to build such a bomb was the WHINSEC, the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, at Fort Benning. It used to be called the School of the Americas when it was still in Panama, where US military specialists had provided counterinsurgency training for thousands of personnel sent by Latin American allies of the United States, like Guatemala.

  The thing was, there had been no need to throw the bomb into my bedroom. It could have been attached to the wall outside, and I would have been just as dead. So I thought it had probably been a warning rather than an actual attempt to kill me. But a warning from whom?

  Castro was the first to come to mind, but I dismissed him almost immediately. For one thing, he carried a Glock 26 handgun, not a US military issue M9 semiautomatic, or an M11. If he had access to US military explosives, it seemed likely he would favor US military sidearms. For another, he had an air about him that didn’t line up with the kind of training they gave at Fort Benning. It wasn’t something I could explain, but I knew it when I saw it.

  On the other hand, there was the classically trained way the two men from the Suburban had stood when it looked as if I might attack. I thought about the holstered M9 I had seen on one of them, and the fact that the curriculum at WHINSEC included its proper use. I thought about the fact that our Central American allies in training there almost certainly had their minds fixed on current and former insurgents like Vega and Castro when they aimed at targets on the Fort Benning firing range.

  With the power source disconnected, the bomb no longer worried me. I leaned back against the sofa, put my feet up on the table beside the plastic explosive, and thought about friends and enemies. I tried to keep an open mind. I tried to think of everyone. I thought and thought, and sometime in the night, I finally fell asleep.

  The next thing I knew, the rising sun had angled through a window and fallen on my face, awaking me. I went into the kitchen, and made a pot of coffee. I sipped the first cup of the day. Always a treat. I decided I had insufficient information. It would be helpful to have the bomb checked for fingerprints and DNA evidence. I dialed 9-1-1.

  The first squad car showed up in about five minutes. Within the hour there were five other squad cars and a panel truck for command and control. I was impressed to learn that the Newport Beach Police Department also had an explosives disposal vehicle, which they drove onto the lawn to get as close as possible to the guesthouse. It was a black Ford van with armor plating between the front seats and the cargo bay. In back was a large steel box with a heavy-hinged door facing the rear.

  Teru wouldn’t be pleased with the damage it did to the lawn.

  My assurances that the bomb wasn’t operational and my offer to carry it out for them were both ignored. They sent in a guy wearing a disposal suit. He hobbled into the house like a sumo wrestler in body armor, pushing a small cart that had oversized rubber tires and an elaborate shock-absorbing suspension. The bomb was on the cart when he came out. At the rear of the explosives disposal vehicle, he lifted the bomb and put it in the steel container. Then he closed the heavy interior door and the two exterior doors and began removing his body armor.

  Around noon the police were finally done with their work. They told me their lab had confirmed that the C-4 and the detonator were both real, but the timer was faulty. I asked if the timer had been purposely modified. They said it appeared the defect had been caused when it was manufactured. So it seemed more likely that the bomb was no mere warning. Maybe they had thrown it through the window just to make double sure. Or maybe they wanted me awake when it happened. Maybe they wanted me to know I was about to die.

  The police explained to me that the bomb had been thrown through my bedroom window after the glass had already been shattered by a brick, which was taken from the edging of the planting bed outside, and there was in fact no other evidence relating to the crime elsewhere on the property. I didn’t tell them I already knew all of that.

  A Newport detective asked if I had any enemies. I told him I had several and explained that I was in the personal security business. I told him about the two Latinos in the Suburban, that they had been following me for at least two days. I gave him their vehicle’s tag number. He promised they would run the plates and question the owner. He said they had found no fingerprints on the bomb except for mine, and no DNA evidence.

  When the crime scene crew had gone, I went into the guesthouse and started another pot of coffee brewing. While I waited, I went over recent events.

  The bomb was interesting. I thought about the fact that it was interesting, and my first encounter with Vega and Castro had been interesting, and being followed by the guy with the gold medallion and his partner was interesting, and I decided it was a good thing to be interested in something. It was a relief, and I had a feeling I should try to make it last.

  So to remain interested, I considered the two guys in the Suburban, Medallion and the Other One, following me and threatening to kill me if I agreed to work for Vega. They had made a tactical mistake. I tended to press into threats, not run away from them.

  And of course, there was still Castro. I went back and forth on Castro. Sometimes I wished I had killed him, and sometimes I pitied him because I had the feeling he wasn’t totally in control of his own actions. But I figured Vega might be in control, and it would be a good thing to find out for sure.

  The most interesting aspect of it all was Haley’s plans to produce the film in Guatemala. It could be a coincidence, of course. It probably was. At any given moment, she had been working on about a dozen business deals all around the world. But that particular deal had been centered on Guatemala, and tenuous though the connection was, I had no other leads, nothing that tied in with her murder. There was no way I could ignore the slim possibility of a connection with the rest of it.

  Everything pointed back to Vega’s proposition, one way or the other.

  When the coffee was ready, I poured myself a cup, carried it over to the telephone, and called the Renaissance Hotel. I asked the hotel operator for Mr. Brown. Castro voice came on the line.

  He said, “Bueno.”

  I replied in Spanish. “It is Cutter. I want to speak with Vega.”

  There was a long pause. I heard him breathing into the telephone’s mouthpiece. Finally he said, “A moment.”

  Half a minute later, Valentín Vega came on the line. He spoke cheerfully in English. “Good morning, Mr. Cutter. This is a pleasant surprise.”

  Either he was an excellent actor, or he didn’t know what Castro had tried to do to me the last time I saw him. I said, “Did Castro tell you what happened at the cemetery?”

  “Cemetery?”

  I explained that I had nearly killed his bodyguard, and why. When I was done, he said, “Mr. Cutter, on behalf not only of myself but also of my people, I wish to apologize for Fidel’s threats against you and his disr
espect toward your deceased employer. He will most certainly be punished.”

  “Do what you think best. As far as I’m concerned, it’s over and done with unless Castro wants to press his luck.”

  “I assure you he will not ‘press his luck,’ as you say.”

  “Fine. He got it wrong, by the way. I’m not connected with the guys following you.”

  “I did not think you were.”

  “You need to convince Castro. And don’t let him come at me again. For his sake.”

  “I am beginning to realize it was a mistake to bring him on this mission. But Fidel can be controlled.”

  “If not, I won’t be responsible for what happens.”

  “Yes, I understand. And I would not blame you.”

  “All right.” I took a sip of coffee. I swallowed. “Do you still want some help?”

  “Very much. Are you now interested?”

  “It depends. If I take the case, I’ll follow it wherever it goes. I’ll expose the truth, even if the truth isn’t convenient for you. That’s the only way I work.”

  “This is not a problem, Mr. Cutter. The URNG had no involvement in the matter.”

  “Okay, what are Castro’s specialties?”

  “I do not understand your question.”

  “Is he a specialist in hand-to-hand, small weapons, artillery, motor transport, munitions?”

  “I believe it is accurate to say he is a specialist, as you call it, in everything you mentioned.”

  “Where did he qualify in munitions?”

  “Qualify? You speak as if Fidel has had formal training. We learned what we know of warfare in the mountains, by—what is your expression?—trial and error?”

  “He didn’t train at the School of the Americas?”

  “Of course not. Your country reserved that opportunity for our enemies, as you most certainly know. Please explain these questions, Mr. Cutter.”

  I told him about the bomb, including the fact that it had been made from US military ordnance.

  He said, “You have my word no person connected with our cause had anything to do with that. We are a political party now. We do not resort to violence. But in the days when we did use bombs, you can be sure they always exploded.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I’m in.”

  15

  Simon prepared grilled-cheese sandwiches and tomato soup for himself, Teru, and me. We ate together at a table in the shade of the stand of palms beside the pool. Teru complained about the damage to the lawn. I noticed that he still cared about the lawn even though he would soon no longer be responsible for it. I thought a moral lesson was in there somewhere. Something about caring for caring’s sake. Honor. Duty. All that kind of thing. But I didn’t want to read too much into it. After all, I was the reason he would soon no longer be responsible for the lawn.

  Out on the harbor before us, about a dozen kids were holding a regatta in snub-nosed Sabots, the triangular sails filling and luffing as their little boats darted and tacked across the water. We discussed my theory about who had thrown the bomb. I explained about Vega and Castro and the other two guys in the black Suburban. Teru and Simon agreed the other guys were probably operatives of some kind with the Guatemalan junta, and the bomb had probably been their way of making sure I didn’t get involved with the URNG.

  “So,” said Teru, “I imagine you’ve decided to get involved with the URNG.”

  I said, “Of course.”

  Teru nodded, then took another bite out of his grilled-cheese sandwich. “This is pretty good,” he said.

  “Thank you,” replied Simon.

  That afternoon as Teru worked on the damaged lawn and Simon took charge of cleaning up the glass and supervising a guy who came to replace the broken window panes, I thought through how I’d go about investigating the Doña Elena kidnapping. I could have started in a lot of ways, but the kidnapper’s friends and neighbors were as good a place as any. I figured Sal Russo might not want to cooperate with me after I had given him so much attitude at our lunch together, so I called the Orange County Sheriff’s Department and left a voice mail for Tom Harper. I asked if he would call Russo and get a copy of the file on the Toledo kidnapping and murder case for me, or at least the last known address of the perpetrator, Alejandra Delarosa. Then I searched the Internet for everything I could find about the woman.

  I learned that Delarosa had been in the United States illegally and had worked for Arturo Toledo for some time prior to the crime. She had a daughter and a husband who was deported soon thereafter. Almost every article called her a “URNG terrorist,” or “a member of the URNG terrorist organization.” The police were quoted making statements along those lines. In one interview, the Guatemalan ambassador to the United States denounced the kidnapping and murder as the act of Communists. A single grainy black-and-white photograph of the Delarosa woman had been picked up and repeated countless times across the web. I printed out a copy.

  I also watched the videos Russo had mentioned during our lunch conversation. They were pretty bleak. Doña Elena stared at the camera with terror clearly written on her face. The Delarosa woman stood behind her wearing a black-knit ski mask with holes for her eyes and mouth and holding a .38 special to Doña Elena’s temple. To see such a glamorous person looking sweaty and filthy and reduced to pitiful begging made me feel vaguely embarrassed. The videos felt personal, as if I was watching a friend in trouble, someone I actually knew.

  In one sense it was true. Doña Elena had already been well on her way to fame back then. In the seven years since, she had become one of Hollywood’s major stars. I would have known her anywhere, but as a glamorous celebrity, not as the pitiful woman begging on the screen.

  All of the videos were easy to find on the Internet. I made a point of watching them in chronological order. I looked for connections and differences between them. I watched the edges of the frame, hoping to spot a hint of something the kidnapper hadn’t intended to reveal, some kind of clue that might lead in a direction other than the URNG. But of course I saw nothing the police had missed, nothing to refute Delarosa’s claim that she was working for Vega’s organization. I watched them all three times. When I was done, I had a feeling I had missed something, but it was probably wishful thinking.

  Harper returned my call after a couple of hours. He said, “Listen, I know you didn’t want to tell Russo why you’re interested in this case, but this isn’t the kind of thing you usually handle. You got a client connected to this Delarosa woman somehow?”

  “Got to keep busy.”

  “Seriously, what’s the deal?”

  “Seriously, I need something to do to keep from going back to the nuthouse. A guy asked me to look into this thing, so I thought I would.”

  “None of your usual clients need a driver anymore? A protection detail?”

  “I’ve only had one call since I got out of the hospital. Apparently my regulars prefer bodyguards who don’t lose clients.” I didn’t blame them either. Nobody cared that I had nearly lost my mind forever. In my business, there was no room for excuses. All that mattered was success or failure.

  “You’re gonna make a comeback, buddy.”

  “Sure. You got that file from Russo?”

  “It’s still an open case, Malcolm. He’s not going to let you see the file.”

  “He answered my questions when we had lunch.”

  “And you kind of insulted the guy, if you remember. Besides, you made it seem like idle curiosity. Now you’re coming off like a guy with a case.”

  I sighed. “Did you at least get Delarosa’s last known address?”

  “Listen. Sal’s not a bad guy. What was with your attitude the other day?”

  “Guess I’m looking for someone to blame.”

  “Don’t blame Sal.”

  “I apologized at lunch.”

  “He’s still mad.”

  “I’ll apologize again the next time I talk to him. Did you get that address or not?”

  “Sal wasn
’t happy about it, but yeah.”

  Harper read the address to me and I wrote it down. I said, “That’s Pico-Union, right?”

  “Yeah. You want to watch yourself up there, Malcolm.”

  Pico-Union was the most densely populated urban area west of the Mississippi, almost exclusively populated by Latinos. Most were originally refugees from Mexico’s economy and from the bloody civil wars in El Salvador and Guatemala. The neighborhood was in a nearly constant state of dispute between about a dozen gangs and had one of the highest murder rates in LA. But I figured it would be a walk in the park compared to Kunar Province in Afghanistan.

  “I can handle it,” I said.

  Harper said, “Oorah,” then hung up.

  It would have been dark by the time I got to Pico-Union if I left right then, so I decided to wait. I walked over to the garage and backed the stretch Mercedes stretch out onto the asphalt pavement. I gathered a bucket, chamois, some microfiber towels, soap, and wax. Also a little brush for the hard-to-reach spots on the wheels. I unwound the water hose and went to work. For some reason, washing and waxing cars helped me relax. I did some of my best thinking with a soapy rag in my hand.

  A little over an hour later, as the sun was going down, I finished with the car. It stood there, a black and shiny reminder that I would never drive Haley anywhere again.

  I sighed. I needed a different kind of distraction. A different kind of work.

  I went over to the guesthouse. In the kitchen I opened a fresh bottle of Glenlivet single malt. I poured two fingers in a water glass, took the bottle and the glass into the living room, and sat at the desk. I fired up the computer. I still had the nagging feeling I had missed something in those videos of Doña Elena and Alejandra Delarosa.

  Sipping the Glenlivet, I watched them all again, Doña Elena’s famous features filling the screen, as she cried and begged for her life while a masked and uniformed Alejandra Delarosa held a semiautomatic to her head. There were four videos, each about three minutes long. I paused between each of them to think, pacing myself with the Scotch. When the last video was over, I finished off the glass, poured myself another, and started again with the first video. When the last video was over the second time, I poured another drink and replayed just that one. It was different.