The man had screwed up everything.
First, instead of sending her off solo, as she’d expected—and counted on—Richard wanted to stay in touch. Even worse, he must be having her watched. Otherwise he wouldn’t have known to direct Evan to the market. The stupid flash drive thing—that had to be the package Evan mentioned—was turning into a huge hassle. And, Madre de Dios, Richard’s intermediary was none other than his nephew, a direct pipeline. Luz needed to be on her own. Richard would not approve of the other things she had to do.
Her first impulse was to abort and try later. The next day was Saturday, though, and another seller took Juana’s place on the weekend. Luz guessed that was when Juana traveled home to see family, returning with fresh fruit. And information.
I can’t wait another whole week. I’ll have to get creative.
She could detour to the tourist market on the far side of the building where endless stalls of local crafts—brightly painted wooden masks, straw hats and baskets, ceramic angels, woven fabric, leather bags—might engross Evan long enough for her to slip away.
No, she couldn’t count on him being that easy to lose, and she didn’t want him getting suspicious. Better to get it over with. So Luz veered into the covered market at her usual entrance by the flower stalls, not to buy, but to be soothed by the harmony of their fragrance and rainbow hues.
They crossed into the food section. Slabs of meat dripping blood hung from overhead hooks, glistening fish on ice, live chickens in cages. Evan stayed a few paces behind her. Thank goodness he’d stopped trying to be her new best friend. Then once, when she turned back to check on him, he had disappeared. If she hurried, she’d have time to dash across two aisles to complete her mission with Juana.
No, darn it. Evan was only twenty feet away and coming toward her, his height making him an easy target in the four-foot-six to five-foot-six crowd. A wide smile lit his face, and his long arms were hidden behind his back. Luz, who’d already half-turned to continue bustling through the narrow aisles, paused. Something was up.
When Evan reached her, he whisked a bouquet of zinnias from behind his back. “For you,” he said, with a bobbing half-bow. “I saw you looking at them as we passed.”
Of course she’d been admiring the zinnias. Whenever money wasn’t too tight, her mother often treated herself to a bunch, for the welcome burst of color in their otherwise drab apartment. Richard and Luz had both brought zinnias to the funeral.
Luz buried her nose in the flowers, equal parts touched and terrified by his perspicacity. Equally unwilling to let Evan see her tears. “Thanks. They’re beautiful,” she said when she could make her voice calm. But, Luz wondered, what else will I inadvertently reveal?
As they continued on their way with Evan strolling at her side, they progressed to small talk—favorite foods, Spanish words for the more exotic items on display. When Luz bought eggs, she asked where she might get a good price on sugar. The woman directed her down the corridor to a large stall with a yellow awning and a row of barrels out front.
“You don’t have the sugar lady on your radar?” asked Evan.
“I haven’t had to buy any before—in fact, I shouldn’t even have to now. Whoever set up my apartment filled a big canister with sugar, but ants got into it. I tried to get rid of them, but they kept coming. I finally dumped it this morning. I’m going to start over. And this time, I’ll keep it in the freezer.”
Luz bought sugar. Around the corner, bread of all shapes and sizes. She bought a few empanadas de leche and some savory tarts. They entered the vegetable zone—tomatoes, garlic, onions, cucumbers, carrots, squashes, a thousand kinds of peppers, all stacked or piled in crates, baskets, and bowls. She chatted with the vendors, mainly older women wearing huipiles, intricately embroidered blouses, who scolded her about her eating habits and teased her about her skinny American friend. Evan parried their comments about his weight with ease, deftly mixing in Mayan words and addressing them properly as ustedes, rather than vosotros, which is taught in American schools. He must’ve faked his gringo accent on the bus the day she arrived. If he—if Richard’s nephew—could do that, who knew what else he was faking, what else he was observing as they walked along.
Luz led them down another aisle. This time, fruit—mango, pineapple, papaya, oranges, bananas surrounded them. They neared the corner where Juana sat. Completing a few transactions had given Luz the glimmer of an idea.
“Señorita Luz,” called Juana. She wore the traditional, boldly colored traje of women from the highlands, and her head was crowned with a bright purple cinta. “Cómo está?”
“Bien, gracias, Juana.” While she exchanged pleasantries with the old lady, Luz fleshed out her plan. “Juana’s oranges come from her family’s farm,” she told Evan. “They’re so sweet and juicy.” Closing her hand around the prepared bundle of quetzal notes in her pocket, she said to Juana, “Doce, por favor.” Luz scooped a few oranges in her hand and, turning to Evan, held them up. “Maravillosas, verdad?”
At the same time, she let the change purse slip from her fingers. When it hit the cement floor, coins spilled and rolled in all directions. While Evan bent to retrieve her money, Luz handed over payment for the oranges, along with her note, before kneeling to help.
“How about coffee?” Evan asked as they left the market.
Luz stopped right in the middle of the sidewalk and turned to face him. A stream of exiting shoppers flowed around them. “Listen, Evan, I’m not sure of the rules. Maybe there aren’t any, but are we supposed to know each other more than neighbors running into each other occasionally?”
Surely, Richard’s instructions—casual meetings at the market—could be stretched to include coffee. While the flowers had smoothed Luz’s prickles, she’d continued to parry his attempts to discuss drawing her. Maybe if they had a chance to relax, sip some coffee, he’d find the right words to persuade her.
“I think a coffee now and then would be fine,” he said. “And perhaps you’d let me get out my sketch pad?” He tacked on what he hoped was a no-pressure grin. “Whaddaya say, Luz?”
“Coffee, yes. Sketch pad, no.”
The smile dancing around the corners of her mouth curved her lips. Challenging, inviting. Confusing—like he’d stumbled into an amusement park funhouse where mirrors multiplied and magnified those rounded lips, slightly parted.
Kiss her. The thought walloped Evan squarely between the shoulder blades, shoving him forward. He staggered, his breath caught in his throat, and he masked the shiver of desire by shuffling his feet, as though he’d tripped. Bad idea. Anything more than café and market meetings and he’d be walking a tightrope of careful half-truths. He shook away the impulse; those tiny images of Luz and her red lips distorting his vision dissipated like popping bubbles. When they had all vanished, Evan matched her smile with one of his own. “Come on,” he said. “There’s a café down the street.” As Luz fell into step next to him, he asked, “How long will you be in town?”
“Oh, I’ll be gone before Christmas,” she said.
Almost a month. He could get the painting done by then, channeling his sexual tension onto the canvas. Then she’d be gone, his life could go on undisturbed—and he’d have the centerpiece for his mural. He ought to observe Luz in different lighting conditions, though. “How about getting together tomorrow evening?”
“Sorry,” she said, not sounding the least bit apologetic. “I work evenings.”
She has a job. She comes to the market in the morning. Evan’s smile widened. She’s staying until Christmas. I can make this happen.
Back off now; no need to press. “Oh, where do you work?” Evan asked.
“I don’t suppose it hurts to tell you.” Luz laughed. “I’m the nanny for Martin Benavides’ grandson, Cesar.”
“The Benavides?” Evan hoped he didn’t give away how startled he was at Richard sending Luz into that nest of vipers. He knew the stories. Hell, everyone in Guatemala did—how the old man had betrayed each of his
allies in turn, displaying their bullet-ridden bodies as a warning to others. How he’d parlayed political power into a personal fortune and used both to forge distribution alliances with South American drug cartels. Making him ever richer and more powerful. Sure, his supporters pointed to how the family plowed money back into the country—roads, bridges, dams, schools—but it was dirty money, distributed tit-for-tat with complicit local strongmen.
“Yeah, Richard couldn’t have found a better job for me,” she said.
A better job for what? Evan had never allowed himself to think about the people who crossed his path because of his errands for Richard, preferring to keep a comfortable distance from their world. Until now. Until Luz. “Isn’t that dangerous?” he asked.
“The closest I get to danger is being hit in the head with a soccer ball.” She laughed again.
But Evan could’ve sworn she flinched—a momentary hiccup, like an engine stalling out—before she recovered and laughed. Despite his limited exposure to the covert world of U.S. intelligence, Evan knew you didn’t insert an agent into such a tightly guarded situation merely to play babysitter. “Richard didn’t say anything about the Benavides when he was here last month.”
“Richard was here?”
“Yeah, he stayed with me for a week at the end of October. Oh—” Memories from his uncle’s visit coalesced: Richard arranging an account with Empresa Eléctrica, ordering furniture over the phone. “I bet he set up your apartment then.”
“I wondered if you’d done that,” said Luz, with a soft smile.
That tingle of excitement again. This time, desire mingled with his concerns, and Evan let the awareness linger. “No, I don’t know where you live. I’d love to stop by, though.”
After dodging their way across the crowded street, they grabbed a table in the shade of a striped awning. She really should have turned down Evan’s invitation, but having accomplished the mission with Juana, heady exhilaration tempted Luz to play hooky. She had time to kill before work, and after weeks of isolation and play-acting in a stressful role, she was having fun.
It was more than merely the chance to let down her guard. Luz had spent the better part of two decades resenting the loss of her native tongue and culture, but it had taken only a short time back in Guatemala to realize those two decades had changed her forever. At the Benavides’, in the market, with neighbors, Luz was constantly reaching into the dim recesses of her past to recall grown-up words and phrasing to substitute for the child’s Spanish vocabulary she possessed, forever fearful of making a mistake that would brand her a foreigner, or worse, an impostor.
But with Evan—speaking English, the language of her adolescent put-downs, her adult flirtations—the words tripped effortlessly from her tongue. Her evasions and lies were crisp; her repartee, witty. This morning, she was smarter, funnier. Sexier.
They ordered coffees, and then there was that awkward moment when they started speaking at the same time—like the promising, but uncoordinated, stumbling of a first date. They both stopped and motioned the other to continue. Luz laughed. The weight of her masquerade slipped away. Goose bumps raised on her skin, as if a cool breeze had brushed her.
“Ladies first.” Evan zipped an index finger across his mouth.
“Is Richard really your uncle?” She needed to clear that up immediately.
“Yeah,” said Evan. “He’s my mother’s brother. My dad died when I was in high school, so Richard looked after us. He traveled for work a lot and couldn’t always be there, but he didn’t miss much—holidays, science fairs, school plays, baseball games. We did some great camping trips in the summer.”
The waiter brought their coffees then and bustled around, refilling the saucer of sugar cubes and emptying the ashtray. While Luz stirred the lump of sugar into her coffee, she surreptitiously studied Evan. Now that she looked for it, the resemblance between him and Richard was unmistakable—both men tall and fair, slender with broad shoulders. Evan’s face was narrower and sprinkled with freckles, however, his eyebrows tamer, and his hair a more subdued color than Richard’s startling bright-penny copper that had spooked Luz when they first met. It was weird, seeing a younger Richard in this man she hardly knew. And it was galling that he’d actually gone camping with Richard, while Richard had only arranged summer camp for her.
Stop it, Luz. They’re family. Richard was paid to watch over you—and he went far beyond what was strictly necessary.
“I’ve known Richard since I was a kid,” she said, in apology for her uncharitable thoughts. “He was the man the State Department assigned to relocate my mother and me. Part of his job was to check in on us regularly, but even after he retired from State, he visited several times a year. He always came around my birthday. I’d get all dressed up, and we’d go off to a fancy restaurant.”
Luz wasn’t going to share what had happened at her last birthday lunch. Richard had taken her to their favorite place, an elegant bistro overlooking Portsmouth Harbor. It was raining, and the harbor appeared misty and monochromatic, like an old photograph. Over gourmet hamburgers in the almost empty restaurant, he had woven his Benavides web and snared her in it. If Evan believed she was just another one of the “people passing through,” then Richard hadn’t told him what she was doing in Guatemala.
Evan took a cab home, his thoughts darting like mating dragonflies. Despite her reluctance to model, Luz agreed to rendezvous at the market. He figured he could eventually persuade her to sit for a portrait. If not, second best would be to spend time with her, memorizing lines and shades to re-create on canvas later.
Meanwhile, it was all good. He loved the incongruity between her Guatemalan exterior and her idiomatic English with those flat New England vowels. Her odd twists of conversation, as though she saw beneath some surface he was barely aware existed.
But then she’d said something Evan knew was false. She was lying. Or she didn’t know the truth. He’d never questioned Richard about an assignment—and for all he knew Richard would tell him to butt out—but he had to at least try to find out.
Evan ran up his steps two at a time. He punched in Richard’s number but got a secretary: Mr. Clement was away. Did Mr. McManus have a message for him?
“No,” Evan said. “I need to ask him a question.”
Would Mr. McManus care to leave the question with her? She would be happy to relay to Mr. Clement when he checked in.
“When will that be?”
The secretary was insincerely sorry, but she couldn’t say.
Mr. McManus said no thank you, but please tell him I called.
Evan dropped the phone and stood staring out the back window. He’d have to wait.
CHAPTER NINE
The extra time at the market, flirting with Evan, a missed bus. Luz arrived late for work. Delores, still the only smiling face Luz regularly encountered, saw her running down the hall and, with silent complicity, broke a cardinal rule by keying in the code and then holding open the elevator for her.
“Gracias,” Luz panted.
Upstairs, she jogged to the end of the hall and opened the door to Cesar’s suite. Singing in the bedroom? It wasn’t like punctilious Father Espinosa to stay even one minute late—and singing, too. But before Luz processed the dissonance, she burst into the room, and all the dread she’d kept at bay—and the atmosphere of danger she’d denied to Evan—rocked her like an earthquake. She tripped over the claw-foot of Cesar’s bureau. The man whose face she would never forget sat in the big yellow armchair with Cesar on his lap. He was older, yes, and a receding hairline exposed more of his domed forehead, but the hawk-like nose and wide-set eyes, eyes Luz had once believed could see into the shadows, were unmistakable. Even reclining with slippers on his feet, his barrel chest and muscular arms looked strong enough to crush Cesar.
The singing stopped. He frowned at her. Martin Benavides would recognize her, too. She’d never reach the door in time, never get as far as the gate. Luz couldn’t even turn her head. She was beyond fo
olish to believe she was strong enough to stand up to him. Her vision blurred as she relived the night of her father’s death, the last time she’d seen Martin Benavides: far-off staccato blasts, screams, incandescent flashes, her mother’s hand yanking her to safety.
No. Not now. This was her time to prevail. To kill. She had to regain her composure. Luz put a hand on the bureau to steady herself. “I didn’t know—”
“Of course not,” interrupted Martin Benavides, with a dismissive sweep of his hand. A flick of his wrist; a machete flashed in firelight. Luz shivered once more. “I sent the good Father home early today. My heart has been heavy, and nothing soothes me more than spending time with Cesar.”
Martin Benavides wrapped his arm around his grandson, and his hand—the hand that had murdered her father—squeezed the child to his chest. “Eh, Cesar,” he said. “We had fun this morning.”
“Yes, Papi.” The boy wiggled happily and called to Luz, “Would you play the piano for us? We can sing Papi’s favorite songs.”
Sing? Play? Luz’s hands were shaking badly.
Martin stood and tipped Cesar to his feet, keeping one of the boy’s small hands tucked into his large paw. “Do you know ‘Y en Eso Llegó Fidel’?” he asked Luz.
“Of … of course.” She couldn’t look at him. I will do this for my father, Luz told herself, as she dropped onto the piano bench and began, at first hesitantly, to play the revolutionary favorite about Fidel Castro wresting control of Cuba from those who, according to the lyrics, lived in luxurious houses and didn’t care if the people suffered.
Luz let Martin and Cesar belt out the words. She only got through the interminable verses by silently reviling Martin. Murderer. Liar. Two-faced hypocrite who traded an honest workingman’s life for one of those fancy houses, whose traffic in illegal drugs inflamed the suffering of thousands. They sang about land reform and income disparity, about young people making their voices heard. Exploiter. Tyrant. Crook.
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