Cesar was incredulous. “You play football?”
“I used to play,” said Luz. With a not-quite-prayer to the memory of her friend Hector and their games in the small forest clearing, Luz added, “When I was in school.”
“Really?”
“Really. I said I wouldn’t lie to you.” Luz offered what she hoped was a reassuring grin. I haven’t actually lied yet. Her very presence was, of course, one enormous falsehood, even if it wasn’t the cushy-job-for-the-girlfriend fiction some people assumed.
Soon, she would finagle access to his grandparents’ tightly restricted private space and kill them.
“Obliterate them,” Richard had said the last afternoon in Miami as he checked once more that she’d mastered the bomb assembly. “Blast a hole in the roof, make it loud, rattle the windows for miles, send a message.” Richard began pacing. He could never sit still when he talked about the bomb she was going to unleash.
That explosion was going to turn Cesar’s life upside down. Since only Martin and his wife were to be eliminated, he’d still have his father. Unlike her mother, Roberto probably had millions stashed in numbered bank accounts. They could take off for Switzerland. Or perhaps Roberto would fight to resurrect his family’s business in Colombia. Or Miami. Cesar would become a refugee like her, grow up far away, learn another language, play with children again. Perhaps.
It couldn’t be helped, Luz thought. Besides, Cesar would have his father. And if she could survive, so would he.
For more than an hour, Luz drilled Cesar on dribbling technique, standing on the sidelines as much as possible, making the boy do ninety percent of the running. Even so, muscle fatigue left her wobbly, and she signaled for a break. As Luz lolled on the grass, a man came to lean against a fat white pillar at the edge of the porch. He was a little too tan, his hair a little too brilliantly black. His teeth too white, his smile too wide. An extra undone button left little of his torso to the imagination.
Cesar stopped dribbling and followed her gaze. “Papá!” He shot across the lawn.
The man held out his arms, and Cesar leapt into them. He clutched Cesar tight and turned round and round in a dancing bear hug. Roberto Benavides, Cesar’s absentee father and Luz’s second Benavides, was back—and there, next to him, lay his briefcase containing a thumb drive with enough incriminating material to prevent him from continuing the Benavides’ stranglehold on Guatemalan politics. All Luz had to do was get it.
She moistened her lips, then scrubbed them dry on her sleeve before stepping across the lawn. The briefcase never left her sight. As soon as she completed Richard’s task, she could proceed with her real mission.
Cesar, back on the ground, grabbed his father by the hand. “Papá, Papá.” Cesar yanked him along like a toy train.
The man, to his credit, stumbled along with good grace. Luz stopped when she reached the edge of the polished terra-cotta tile porch. The briefcase sat a few feet behind Roberto, unattended. If only he wanted to stay outside and kick the ball around with his son and asked Luz to take his briefcase inside.
“Papá, this is Luz.”
Roberto extended his hand, smooth and warm, with nails polished to a high gloss, and held hers a shade too long. “A pleasure to meet you, señorita. Roberto Benavides, at your service.”
“My pleasure as well, Señor Benavides.”
“Call me Bobby. All my friends do.”
Bobby stayed to dinner. His briefcase stayed in his quarters. They ate bistec, arroz, and ensalada at the little table in Cesar’s sitting room, Cesar chomping the crunchy greens without a squawk. Luz studied the pictures of Bobby scattered about Cesar’s room. They had been touched up to eliminate the spider’s web of fine lines crisscrossing his cheeks and the red veins distending a once-aquiline nose.
The last time Luz had seen Martin, he’d been a few years older than Bobby was now. By then Martin had been wounded twice that she knew about—and probably more often. He cultivated the aura of a field commander who’d lead every charge and be in the thick of the action, exhorting his men to follow. Luz couldn’t detect any of Martin’s toughness in Bobby, with his playboy wardrobe and oily-smooth moves.
A cheerful Cesar monopolized the conversation; Bobby listened. Cesar bubbled over with enthusiasm about incidents Luz had thought insignificant, but the afternoon’s drill was the highlight.
“How’d my boy do?” Bobby asked when he could get a word in.
“It was our first practice,” said Luz, “and I’m not in good enough shape to run the field with him. It would be much better if he had other kids to play with.”
“His cousins are coming after Christmas. They can play all day if they like.” Turning directly to Luz, Bobby added, “I’m sure Raul de la Vega explained the security here. It’s too dangerous for Cesar to be out in public right now. He stays in the compound at all times. In and out by helicopter only, absolutely no ground transportation. On that, if only on that, do my father and I agree.”
The edge to his voice at the words “my father” reminded Luz of Delores’ tidbit about the men arguing when Paulina was sent to Spain. She still hadn’t found out what had happened.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Nine o’clock bonged on the church bells. Evan, arriving far too early, had stopped in a café near the market and nursed one coffee after another. Trucks and vans jockeyed for position to unload their wares in the narrow street. As horns honked, barrel-chested men scurried about, carrying on their backs gunny sacks and woven straw baskets overflowing with produce from the country. Evan paid for his coffees and drifted toward the outermost ring of market stalls.
Richard had phoned again, this time waking Evan from a sound sleep at dawn. “Up and at ’em, sleepyhead.”
A heartfelt grumble at Richard’s cavalier assumption that the pittance he paid Evan granted him 24/7 access was about to erupt, but it evaporated the second Richard continued. “It’s the girl from the bus last week—would you recognize her again?”
The girl from the bus? Evan sat straight up in bed. The girl from the bus? It had been eleven days, not a week, not that he was counting. And, of course, he’d recognize her. Good Lord, he’d memorized her. Drawn nothing but her—watercolor portraits in a range of lighting conditions, pen-and-ink drawings of her hands in repose on her lap, a charcoal profile he was particularly fond of that captured her aloof intelligence.
“We need a source on the ground,” Richard was saying as Evan struggled to pay attention, “someone she’s already met who can contact her regularly.”
Luz, the girl whose name Richard had let slip, was still in town.
“So, here’s the deal: She goes to the old downtown market every morning around nine, making the rounds, chatting with the old ladies. Bump into her this morning.” Richard detailed her route through the market. “Remember, I want you to keep this low-key. Let people there see you together. Buy a few things for yourself. Be amiable. Tell her you’ll show up regularly in the mornings, and she should hand you the material she’s collecting for me—it’ll fit in her shopping bag,” Richard hurriedly added. “When you get it, call me immediately. There are some timing issues.”
Evan fingered a row of cheap silver necklaces. Be amiable. I can definitely do amiable, he thought. Maybe even charming. He plucked at the sparkling necklaces on display as though he were picking out a melody on a guitar and watched the arriving throngs of shoppers. By ones and twos, in larger chattering groups, they paraded toward the market entrance. Evan tried to scan each face, but they came in dizzying waves of color and form—infinite variations on bright shopping bags, high slanting foreheads, and shiny dark hair, most costumed in striped fabric with floral embroidery. To Evan, it was like being in a live-action Where’s Waldo book, looking for the one exact match in a sea of look-alikes. He’d wait a few more minutes, but if Evan missed Luz here, he’d have to wade into the dim interior of the market to search for her in the crush of shoppers in the narrow aisles. What had sounded reasonable on the pho
ne now seemed hopeless.
Then Luz appeared, half a block away, on the shady side of the street, swinging her plastic shopping bag in time to the salsa from a passing boom box. She stopped to greet a flower seller with his great sprays of gladiolus. She exchanged buenos díases with the old melon ladies. Too feeble to walk, the women were carted here each morning, along with a truckful of fruit, and left alone all day in the hot sun. Luz bought a melon, then rooted in her bag and set a couple of bottles of water in front of them. The one with a tiny topknot of wispy white hair said something and patted Luz’s hand.
Next, Luz paused to admire a collection of birds in tiny bamboo cages mounted in a huge framework on the back of a grizzled barefoot Indian. She told the bird-seller she needed to get on with her shopping and said adiós. She came closer. Crisp white blouse, moisture on her cheek, a red hair ribbon. Closer still. A glint of gold, an ornate ring on her finger. Evan strolled toward her. Before he drew near, however, she skipped across the street. All he could do was turn and look after her as she walked away.
“Señorita!” A dozen faces—youthful, brown-skinned, expectant—turned. Luz walked on. “Luz! Wait a minute! Luz, is that you?”
She stopped, and her head swiveled round. Her eyebrows drew together, and she glanced around as if looking for someone she recognized.
“Hi, it’s me, Evan. From the airport?” That should jog her memory.
She didn’t run, but that was the only good news. He stuck out his hand. She put hers on her hips and squinted up at him. “Hello,” he tried again, “remember me?”
Luz rotated her head in a tension-relieving arc. Then, with a sigh, she folded her arms in front of her chest. “I don’t believe we’ve been properly introduced,” she said finally.
“That’s right. But we have a mutual friend. Richard Clement. I’m Evan McManus. I live here in Guatemala City.” He moved his hand toward her, slowly. This time she took it, her fingers cool and dry.
“I’m Luz Aranda,” she said, “and I live here, too.”
“Richard asked me this morning if I’d seen you around.”
“Richard did?”
Shit, I should have called him “Mr. Clement.” This was business, after all. “Yes, he telephoned and happened to mention you shopped here.”
Luz narrowed her eyes and tiny pearl-white teeth nibbled her lower lip. “He happened to mention that?”
Evan ducked his head and rubbed his forehead. Richard would fire my ass if he heard me making such a mess of this introduction. He cleared his throat. “What Richard said was, ‘Meet her at the market this morning and talk.’ So here I am.”
“Ah.” Luz puckered her face, as if weighing the odds he was telling the truth.
A donkey cart piled high with cartons of Coca-Cola pulled up on the sidewalk behind them. The bent old driver tossed the reins to a little girl sitting next to him on the wooden bench and jumped down to rebalance his cargo—and immediately got into a shouting match with the owner of the tienda whose outside displays he now blocked. Evan took Luz’s rigid elbow and steered her to a quieter spot under the awning of a clothing store that hadn’t yet opened for business.
Luz shrugged off his hand and stared at the sightless mannequins in the window. “Bueno,” she said. “Come on. I need to get a few things.”
Evan hustled into step next to her before she could change her mind. The silent muse of his fantasy was even more striking than he remembered—her flawless skin glowing rosy under the cocoa surface, the perfect color balance between her hair, hair ribbon, and pristine white blouse. The very real and no-longer-silent woman walking beside him turned out to be a study in contrasts, too. Amateur she might be, but Luz was not intimidated. She wielded her words like a sharp knife—but with ironic detachment instead of malice.
“So, Evan McManus, what is it you want to talk about this morning?” Luz zinged the you with a head-toss, leaving no doubt who they were really talking about, so Evan squelched his important question—will you come to my studio so I can paint you?
Business first.
“Richard wants an inconspicuous way to touch base with you,” Evan said quietly. “I got elected go-between. He wants a hang-out, be-friends thing. So no one would think twice if they noticed you handing me a small package—which is what you’re supposed to do with something you’re getting for him.”
Luz paused beside the doorway leading into the covered market. Her eyebrows arched into twin half-moons. “Why didn’t he contact me himself?”
Thank goodness he didn’t. Still, Luz had probably been brought in—because she was Guatemalan? A woman?—for a job none of the regular personnel could do. Evan thought of one complication resulting from that, so he asked, “Does Richard need to be careful about any direct links between the two of you?”
“No freakin’ clue.”
The clipped New England accent and American slang so out of place gave Evan the odd sensation of talking to an actor slipping momentarily out of character.
Luz abruptly swiveled on her heels and waded into the tumult of the covered market. In the outermost ring, dozens of flower sellers competed for attention: “Mira, señores, señoras. Rosas hermosas y fragantes. Los mejores precios. Mira.”
Luz didn’t look back at him until she arrived at the meat and seafood vendors. Then she slowed and tapped her foot with an exaggerated display of impatience. This was starting to feel like a classic First Date from Hell. He was going to have to try harder.
When he reached Luz, however, she said, “So we chat. I guess I should ask how you come to be here.”
“Here, like at the market or—”
She cut him off with a slicing backhand. “I know why you’re here.” Luz rotated an upturned palm to encompass the radiating lines of stalls where you could buy anything from a lemon to a cellphone, diapers to roofing nails.
Evan ran his fingers through his hair. Focus. He’d been gauging the proportions of Luz’s shoulders in relation to her waist and hips, too distracted from the flow of conversation.
“Why are you here?” Luz repeated her question extra-loud and with the slow cadence Evan associated with boorish American tourists to Guatemala who assume anyone can understand English if you e-nun-ci-ate.
I could tell her why I get to be Richard’s errand boy, Evan thought. Richard had never forbidden him to divulge personal information; it had just never come up before. But that could remain a last resort to keep her talking. So Evan said, “Well, I’ve lived in Guatemala for six years. I came on vacation, to paint, and stayed because of the light.”
“The light,” she said, as though light was not in her vocabulary, or was, at least, a novel concept. Then, for the first time, Luz looked right at him and smiled. “The light was what I missed most in the States, the way sunshine takes on a physical presence here. How it washes over the lakes and rivers, the mountains, the sky—and molds everything into this huge solid presence. It isn’t anything like that in New Hampshire.”
Evan came to an abrupt stop. The woman behind him stepped on his heel. He deflected her apology and waved her on her way, reeling in icy clarity, like the shock of an unexpected dunking in a cold mountain stream that dislodges and rearranges a host of unexamined assumptions. The last time Evan had trotted out that line had been at one of the mixers for Margo’s new staff and the attractive young nurse—or lab tech or doctor, whatever—had smiled warmly at him and said, “Oh, a painter. How cool.” Sometimes, “lucky you” was the response, said variously with jealousy or admiration.
But Luz—she got it.
“The ‘staying for the light’ thing?” blurted Evan. “It’s, like, the short version for a quick introduction, at a bar, a party. No one’s ever understood what I meant before.” Her reply had opened the door wide, inviting Evan to enter. He whirled to face Luz. “Can I paint you?” he asked.
“Oh, I don’t think so.”
She hadn’t hesitated. He pressed, “You said ‘think.’”
“Well, then. I do n
ot want you to paint me.” Luz sidestepped around him and began walking up the aisle before she finished speaking.
Evan took two hurried paces and stopped in front of her. Change her mind—while being amiable and charming—had driven away all rational thought. “No, I meant you said you didn’t think so, but you didn’t take any time to consider it.”
“In that case …” Luz scrunched her face into a cartoon version of deep concentration and tapped her index finger on her chin a half-dozen times. Then, opening her eyes wide and flashing a broad, insincere grin, she said, “Nope, don’t think so.”
“It’s really important.”
“Ask me later.” Luz laughed. “Later.” She started walking again. “You’re not only here to paint,” she added over her shoulder, not making it a question. “You’re doing whatever for Uncle Sam—taking care of me and who knows what else.”
Evan’s face crinkled. Luz had just given him the perfect setup for his big disclosure. That should buy him more time to persuade her. “Actually, I’m doing it for Uncle Richard.” He waited, watching her expression while she processed his words.
She rewarded him with a wide-eyed “Uncle Richard?”
“Yeah, he’s my uncle. When I settled here, he asked me to keep an eye out for people passing through that he would send my way.”
“People passing through.”
Every time she repeated his words, he heard them as though they’d been translated from a foreign language.
But Luz had moved on, and again Evan had to play catch-up.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Luz set off at a brisk pace, frantically assessing whether to follow her normal routine, a path that would take her right past Juana’s stall. It had taken Luz almost two weeks of patient conversation with the market ladies to establish that Juana was the right person, and Luz had the note for Juana in her pocket, folded with the money she would use to buy her oranges.
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