January Justice

by Athol Dickson

  All the tables were empty. I didn’t want to sit at the counter, since that would put me sideways to the door, so I went to the cashier and said, “Can someone serve me outside?”

  “If you want,” she said.

  I went back outside and took a seat near the door, with my back to the wall. I put my bag on the sidewalk beside my chair. I folded my hands on the table and waited.

  About five minutes later, a small man came out the door to stand beside my table.

  “You want something?” he asked.

  “Yes, please. A beer in the bottle, some grilled chicken, and some bread.”

  “We do not have chicken.”

  “But it is the Fat Chicken.”

  He shrugged.

  I said, “All right. In that case, a beef filet, very well done.”

  “We have pork.”

  “All right. Bring me pork, but cook it very well, okay?”

  He shrugged again, then went inside.

  Ten minutes later he came back out with a beer. It was room temperature. I sighed and took a drink. In half an hour, he came out with a plate. On it were three pork chops, two slices of bread, and a mound of steaming vegetables. He put the food in front of me.

  I said, “I have no knife or fork.”

  He turned to go back inside.

  I said, “Please.”

  He returned and stood beside the table. I put a pair of one hundred quetzal bills on the table, worth about twenty-five dollars. I said, “It would be a great tragedy if this excellent food became cold while I wait on a fork.”

  Looking at the money, he shrugged. Then he went back inside.

  He was out again in a few seconds, with a fork, a knife, and a cloth napkin. I gave him the two bills. “What is your name?” I asked.

  “Ernesto.”

  “My name is Malcolm, Ernesto. As you can tell from my accent, I am a visitor to your fine country. Could you recommend a good hotel nearby?”

  Ernesto frowned with concentration. It seemed to cause him pain to think. Then suddenly he brightened. “La Posada Elena.”

  “An excellent name. Where would I find it?”

  “Why, it is right there, on the other side of the park.”

  “I see. And may I ask you one favor?”

  Ernesto shrugged. “You can always ask.”

  “Would you please tell Valentín Vega I am waiting for him here?”

  “I do not know this man.”

  I nodded. “Well, some people at the Guatemalan consulate in Los Angeles, California, gave me this address for him, so maybe he will come by. I will eat this excellent food and then sit here and wait for him if that is okay.”

  Ernesto shrugged, then went back inside, and I began to eat. The food was surprisingly good. I ate it leisurely and then sat back to nurse the warm beer. There was no hurry. I was there to be seen, after all.

  Ernesto reappeared and took away the plate. I ordered another beer and asked him to get it from the refrigerator this time. The two hundred quetzal bills had the desired effect. He returned more quickly than before, and the beer was slightly cooler.

  The street was one way, from my left toward the right. I watched the cars and trucks roar past. I watched the old men over in the park. I watched pedestrians pass by along the sidewalk. I finished the beer, picked up my bag, and went inside the restaurant, looking for a restroom.

  On my way back outside, I passed Ernesto, who was sitting at the counter reading a newspaper. I asked him for a mineral water. He stood up, went into the kitchen, and came back with a clear bottle. I took it, thanked him, and went back outside to the same chair, where I dropped my bag to the sidewalk and sat down to watch the cars and trucks and old men and pedestrians.

  Children started walking past, laughing and jostling each other, the boys in black slacks and white shirts, the girls in white shirts and black-and-blue plaid skirts. Most of them wore backpacks. Some carried books. I decided a school down the street must have just let them out for the day.

  A man and woman passed me and went into the restaurant. It was good to know there were other customers. I would have hated to see the place go out of business.

  Ernesto came outside to stand by my table again. I said, “It is a beautiful day, Ernesto, is it not?”

  He squinted up toward the sky and shrugged.

  I said, “Would you like a beer or something? I would be happy to buy.”

  He went inside and came back out with two beers, ice cold this time. He gave one to me and sat down at the table with the other. He said, “You are American?”

  “I am indeed.”

  “My brother lives in Houston, Texas.” He pronounced it “Oo-stone Tay-has.”

  I said, “Houston is a fine city.”

  “He says it is much bigger than Guate.”

  “That may be true, but size is not the most important thing. You also have to consider history. And culture. And civic pride. In all those ways, it seems to me your city is superior.”

  He shrugged again. He took a drink of beer. Cars and trucks went by. Old men played dominoes. Ernesto finished his beer and went back inside. I remained where I was, waiting.

  If I had been given good information about that place, I figured Valentín Vega must know I was there by that time. I wondered how the man would play it. Would he ignore me? Would he come himself to meet me? Would he send someone to meet me? Would he send someone to try to kill me? The restaurant address was my only lead, so I could only wait and see.

  The shadows lengthened. Lights mounted on the wall behind me were illuminated. I remained alone, and alive.

  Ernesto emerged again. He said, “Dinner?”

  “What is good?”

  “Pork.”

  “What else?”

  “Spaghetti.”

  “Does it come with tomato and meat sauce?”

  “Of course.”

  “And the meat in the sauce is?”

  “Pork.”

  “Excellent.”

  Two hours later, Ernesto emerged to say, “We close.”

  I stood up. “Thank you very much,” I said. “The hotel is across the park?”

  “Just there,” he said, pointing.

  “Is it safe to walk across the park after dark?”

  “No place is safe in Guate after dark.”

  I gave Ernesto enough money to pay for the meals and the drinks, plus another tip of two hundred quetzals.

  “If anyone should ask, Valentín Vega perhaps, would you please tell them I am at the hotel?”

  Taking the money, Ernesto shrugged.

  I might not be feeling suicidal anymore, but I hadn’t traveled all that way to avoid trouble, either. I picked up my bag, crossed the street, and entered the shadows of the park.

  36

  I overslept. Probably I would have slept much later, except for the insistent pounding on the hotel room door.

  I called, “One moment,” got out of bed, and slipped into my blue jeans and a shirt. After maybe ten seconds, whoever was outside started pounding again. I called “One moment” again and sat down on the side of the bed to put on my shoes.

  It wasn’t much of a hotel room. Creaking ceiling fan, no bathroom, old-fashioned washstand in the corner with one threadbare towel, and a single window overlooking Columbus Park. I had just begun to tie the laces on my second shoe when the door flew off its hinges and landed on the floor in front of me.

  Four men came in after the door. They all carried guns. I wasn’t surprised to see that one of them was my new friend from the day before—Ernesto. Everything was proceeding according to plan.

  I said, “Good morning.”

  Ernesto gestured toward the door with his gun. “We go.”

  “Sure,” I said, standing up. I had finished with my laces anyway.

  Ernesto and another gunman went ahead of me, and two remained behind as we walked along the dimly lit interior hallway, then down the stairs to the street level lobby, which was only a small room with a counter
in one corner. The man behind the counter didn’t bother to look up from a magazine when we walked through.

  At the curb outside the door stood an old Ford Econoline van. The sliding side door was open. The men herded me straight across the sidewalk and into the van. The entire rear of the van was empty. There weren’t even any seats. Three of the men got in with me. Ernesto went around front and got into the passenger side. There was a fifth guy already behind the wheel. One of the men in back with me slammed the door closed. We all sat cross-legged on the steel deck.

  The van rocked away from the curb on its old suspension like a ship tossed at sea. There were no side windows, so I couldn’t see much from where they made me sit, but that didn’t matter much, since I didn’t know the city anyway.

  One of the men in back with me handed his weapon to another one and said, “Turn around and put your hands behind your back.”

  When I did that, he pulled my wrists together and slipped a plastic twist tie around them. He didn’t notice when I flexed my wrists and held them slightly apart. As soon as he was done, I turned back around and went to work on getting my hands free. He had left me wiggle room. It was good to know they were amateurs. Once I was certain I could slip out of the restraint, I stopped trying.

  We took a lot of turns. I figured they were checking for tails. After a while the driver slowed and shifted into low gear. The engine whined as we headed up a steep incline. We leveled off, turned left, then right, then left again, and then we climbed some more. About forty-five minutes after we left the hotel, the van stopped.

  Ernesto got out. A few seconds later, he opened the sliding door and said, “Come.” He kept his handgun aimed at my stomach.

  I got out and looked around while the others followed. We were on a level place high above the city. From there I could see that Guate was essentially in a hanging valley. On the horizon were three mountains so perfectly conical they could only be volcanoes. One of them was even spewing smoke. The mountainside below us and behind us was obscured by a dense jungle.

  “Follow me,” said Ernesto.

  “You know, those pork chops were pretty good,” I said. “But the spaghetti recipe needs more garlic or something. It was a little bland.”

  “I will tell the cook,” he said.

  I walked behind him across the level area and into a nearly invisible break in the jungle alongside the road. The three other men followed. As we stepped out of sight behind the wall of vegetation, I heard the van driving away.

  We followed a trail that would have been almost impossible to find without knowing exactly where to look. It was fairly level for the first hundred yards or so, and then it began to climb. It wasn’t always easy climbing the steep path with my hands behind my back, but I managed. We had gained another quarter-mile in elevation when we came upon a building made entirely of rusting corrugated steel. I figured it had been hauled up there in sections and assembled years before by a logging company, then left behind when they moved on. The others took up positions around the building. I followed Ernesto inside.

  Valentín Vega sat at a wooden table, writing on a legal pad by the light of a battery-powered lantern. He looked up when we entered. He put down his pen and stood.

  “Mr. Cutter,” he said in English. “You are a long way from home.”

  “No farther than you were when you hired me.”

  “Why are you here?”

  “You forgot to pay me.”

  He stared at me a moment, then he began to chuckle. “You are correct. I did forget that completely. I am very sorry.”

  I shrugged to conceal the effort of slipping off the plastic strap around my wrists. “That’s okay. Unexpected events arose, and you were in a hurry. It happens.”

  His smile disappeared. “I ask again, why are you here?”

  “I just told you.”

  “How did you know about Ernesto’s restaurant?”

  “I’m a professional sleuth, remember? That’s why you hired me.” I had my hands free by then but continued to hold them behind my back.

  “I dislike speaking in clichés, Mr. Cutter, but sometimes they are most appropriate. So forgive my lack of originality when I say we have ways of making you talk.”

  “Ways? Who has these ways? Him?” I nodded at Ernesto.

  “Exactly,” replied Vega.

  “Nah,” I said.

  I set my weight on my right foot, delivered a lateral left kick to Ernesto’s ribs, and followed through to take his gun before he hit the floor. He lay clutching his chest and moaning as I covered Vega with the weapon. It was over in less than a second.

  To Vega I said, “Lock your fingers behind your head and turn around.”

  He did as he was told. I approached from the rear and removed his holstered Glock, I also took a knife he had slipped into the top of his right boot.

  On the floor Ernesto continued to groan. I spoke to him in Spanish. “Ernesto, my friend. I am truly sorry about that. Can you breathe?”

  He said, “Yes,” through gritted teeth.

  “Excellent. That means your lung is not punctured, so you will be okay in a few days. Someone cracked some of my ribs only last week, and look how great I am doing now. You just stay down there on the floor and rest, okay? And Valentín, put your hands in your front pockets and call the others in.”

  Vega dropped his hands to his pockets and called, “Mario, come in here. Bring the others.”

  I gripped Vega by the back of his shirt and pulled him with me into a corner where I could cover the whole room from behind him. His men came in with their guns holstered. Distracted by Ernesto on the floor, they didn’t realize I was positioned to their rear until I said, “If you go for those guns, I will shoot your boss in the head.”

  All three of them turned to look at me. “Vega,” I said, “Tell them to put their right hands in their pockets and then reach around and put their weapons on the floor with just the thumb and first finger of their left hands.”

  They all looked at Vega. He said, “Do it.”

  After they had kicked the guns into the corner where I stood, I told them, “Put your other hands in your pockets too and sit down on the floor.”

  With a nod from Vega, they all did as they were told. I released Vega and told him to go across the room and sit with them. Still covering everybody with Ernesto’s gun, I stooped to pick up their weapons one by one and pitched them through the open door into the jungle. They all glared at me, watching my every move.

  When I held the only gun in the room, I relaxed a little. I switched to English. “Hey, Valentín. Don’t look at me that way. I know this is awkward, but it’s not my fault. All you had to do was ask me nicely for a meeting, but were you polite? No, you sent these guys to kick in doors and tie me up and scare me with their great big guns.”

  “Why are you here?”

  “Always the same question. But since you’re being more polite now, I’ll tell you. I’m here for you. We’re going down the mountain in a minute, straight to the American embassy. When we get there, you’re going to tell them that the Montes’s home invasion was your idea and that I had nothing to do with it.”

  I was betting Vega didn’t know the embassy security detail would probably arrest me and send me back to Los Angeles as soon as they found out I had violated my bail. And I was betting he would want to avoid a visit to the embassy as much as I did.

  He said, “You must be insane.”

  “That’s definitely possible. But we’re still going.”

  “I have men positioned all throughout this part of the country. You will not survive the walk down to the road.”

  “In that case, neither will you.”

  “But even if we get there, why would your people believe a witness with a gun to his head?”

  “You’ll give them details. Inside information. Things you couldn’t know unless you were in on the crime.”

  “I cannot do that.”

  “You’d better.”

  “It i
s impossible. I do not know any details. We were not involved in the attack on Mrs. Montes. Also, if you force me to go there, I will surely be assassinated by the junta. Is that what you want?”

  I said, “I’ll shoot you here and now if you don’t do exactly as I say. Do you believe me?”

  Vega nodded. “I am certain you will shoot me.”

  “Then stand up and let’s go.”

  “Mr. Cutter, you must understand that this is all for nothing. I cannot clear your name. I know nothing of this home invasion, except what I learned from the television in my hotel room in California. I only know one of two things has happened. Either Fidel attempted to betray our cause for money or else the junta was behind what happened.”

  “There’s a third possibility. You and Castro set me up. You sent him and Delarosa in to kill the congressman, and you played me for the patsy.”

  “It is not true. I swear it. The proof is that Fidel is dead, and I am back here in the jungle, hiding from the junta again as if all our progress over the last ten years had never happened. I tell you, they are the ones behind this. They would do anything to keep the URNG from getting more political power.”

  “That would be a lot easier to believe if you hadn’t left me there to face the police alone. You know I had no connection with Alejandra Delarosa. You can verify my reasons for investigating the Montes’s finances, and you can verify that I had no reason to attack the congressman or his wife. But you left town as soon as news of the attack came out. And there I was, swinging in the breeze.”

  “I am sorry, but I had no choice. If I had remained there, I would probably be dead. Listen. Here is how it happened. Fidel said a couple of men approached him, claiming that they represented Congressman Montes. They told him the congressman wanted to make a private deal with us. They said the congressman had recognized his mistake and decided to shift his support to the URNG, but he needed to meet with us first to get certain assurances.

  “Of course I knew it was nonsense. Nothing had happened to explain such a complete shift in the congressman’s position. I refused the meeting. But the men had filled Fidel’s head with visions of himself as a great hero. Fidel argued with me. He became quite angry. And I think he went ahead without my permission. I think he walked into the Montes’s house expecting a warm welcome, and received a bullet instead.”