She just needed to get through the rest of the afternoon. Cesar—thank goodness for his ignorance—was consumed by his own misery. Delores had been and gone. So no one noticed her tear-streaked face. The blood on her ear. Her ripped buttons.
Luz put on a DVD and locked herself in Cesar’s bathroom. She drew the hottest bath she could stand and lay in it, replenishing the water as it cooled. After repeated entreaties by Cesar for her to come out and read, talk, watch TV, play checkers, finally he called out “dinner’s here,” and Luz knew she had to try for normal and pray Bobby would not return.
Her ear—the only mark visible to the world at large—had stopped throbbing. It was shiny-red and distended, though, so she undid her ponytail and shook her hair loose to cover it. The lump on the back of her head was tender, but her hair concealed that, too. Her jaw and neck, although sore, were not discolored. A purple bruise spread from under her ribs to her navel.
But the physical signs of damage were nothing compared to her emotional wounds. For now, Luz stifled her tears and stuffed the pain into the vault that held all her memories, a place of scars from wounds that never healed.
Before she sat down to pollo asado and frijoles negros with Cesar, Luz hid Bobby’s flash drive in the hollow of the crucifix where she had once concealed the substitute. She didn’t have a computer at home, but Cesar’s old desktop had a USB port. Tomorrow, after her hands stopped shaking and her tears dried—tomorrow, she would read the damn thing. It was important enough that Richard planned to use it to control Bobby’s ambitions. Acquiring it had cost Luz dearly.
Bobby was going to pay.
The night nurse, who didn’t look the slightest bit sick, appeared on time and with cheery apologies for inconveniencing Luz the previous night. Luz fled for home, ignoring Cesar’s pleas for a couple of her stories before bed.
Bone-weary and emotionally drained, her battered muscles protesting, Luz wanted only to crawl into bed. She’d heap on every blanket she could find. A scalding shower might help warm her, but Luz doubted she had the energy. Anyhow, the chill came from a distant scary place she was not yet prepared to probe.
Luz stepped into her bedroom and reached for the light switch. A scratchy sound from her window announced the presence of the stupid bird that liked to shelter there. Not in the mood for disturbance, she walked over to shoo him off.
She parted the curtain and rapped on the window. A bloody hand clung to one of the iron security bars. Luz dropped to her bed, trembling. Calling the police was not an option. In Guatemala, that could cause a thousand unintended complications, not a smart idea in her current situation. First, Luz needed more information. She crossed to the window, pushed aside the curtain once more, and peered into the darkness.
Now, two hands showed, as though her tapping at the glass alerted the person. In the faint light filtering in from the living room, both hands appeared to be streaked with blood. Turning on the bedroom light would let her see better, but it might also alert her neighbors. And Luz still wasn’t sure how she was going to handle this.
It depended on who was out there.
The hands held on to the bottom of the bars. The man—for the rough, broad hands were those of a laborer—was hanging below the level she could see. She rapped at the glass again. Fingers tightened on the bars; blood oozed with the pressure.
Alive. Responding to her knock, not dropping away. The little window, a tiny two foot square to begin with, only slid open about six inches. She cracked it open and whispered, “Who’s there?”
A hoarse moan. “Ayyydaaaaa.” Ayúdame? Asking for help?
She had to investigate. Running a palm over dry lips, Luz turned off the porch light and opened her front door. All quiet, dark. A night bird cooed. She blinked a few times to adjust to the absence of light. Hugging her arms around her chest, she stepped onto her miniature porch. One step down to the grass. Two to the edge of her building and around the corner where a line of hibiscus bushes obscured the side wall. Four more paces to the pale square of light marking her bedroom window.
Luz flashed back to the jungle, to running in the dark away from the noise, away from the light, her mother’s hand slippery with her father’s blood as they raced away. Away.
More than anything, Luz wanted to run into the house and lock the door. Turn off the lights and close her eyes, find oblivion in sleep. Not tonight. Not yet.
A few more steps revealed the corrugated soles of heavy boots—and a dark lump between two bushes. The man still drooped from the lowest part of the bars. His head sunk onto his chest. Knees on the ground. He could be praying with uplifted hands. Perhaps he was.
Her arrival had been so silent that when she mouthed “aquí estoy,” the man writhed violently. He let out a piercing cry and loosed his grip. He slid down the wall, leaving behind a dark smear.
No longer afraid, Luz moved to his side. “Toño, what happened?”
His eyes pleaded, but his mouth couldn’t form words. A hand moved to his hip and brushed a ragged hole in his pants. Toño had been shot there, and from the blood on his chest and head, possibly elsewhere as well.
First Bobby and now this. But Luz would not die tonight from the violence done to her, while Toño might. He had saved her life once. Now it was her turn. A dead cold calm replaced the earlier chill. She patted his cheek. “Momentito. I’ll be right back.” Luz grabbed a spare blanket and a pillow from her bedroom and ran back out. She knelt next to her cousin, bent close. She whispered, “I’m going to roll you onto a blanket.”
He was alert enough to register understanding with a minute nod.
Bushes all around made it difficult to position the blanket. Eventually, Luz spread the blanket near Toño’s legs. She lifted his legs, brought the blanket under, and pulled. Inch by inch, Luz eased the blanket under his thighs, his midsection, then his shoulders, tugging Toño out onto the lawn as she worked. Finally his head was exposed. Luz gasped at the blackened flesh. Blood crusted along his scalp and into his thick hair, matting it down. Leaves and twigs stuck to it.
Pulling a few inches at a time to minimize the shock of the uneven ground, Luz brought her cousin closer to her door. She paused at the front corner. From here, they would be more visible. A distant street-light through fluttering branches cast indistinct and wavering shadows. It wasn’t perfect camouflage, but unless she or Toño made too much noise—or neighbors came inconveniently out to walk their dog—it would do.
The height from the grass to her little cement porch was only eight inches, but Toño couldn’t walk, and she couldn’t lift him over the rise. Luz cushioned the gap with the pillow she’d dropped there on her way back to him. The careful bump up to the door strained her arms and back, and Toño’s head lolled as he let out a groan.
Inside. Door shut with a quiet snick, not the slam she earnestly desired. She locked, then bolted the door.
“Luhhh.”
“You’re in my apartment. You’re safe.” Luz tried to encourage him. “I’ll take care of you.” But Toño had been shot at least once and had lost an awful lot of blood. She had to do more than kneel next to the man and mouth platitudes. Triage—the word came out of nowhere. Then, first things first—a cliché that suited her situation.
Toño’s head was a dark, bloody mess. A streak of red started on his temple and disappeared into his hair. She laid two fingers gently on the wound. Tacky. The blood was coagulating. Luz gently rocked his head so she could inspect the underside. It was filthy, but blood wasn’t flowing. That meant the wound was superficial. Didn’t it? At least it meant Luz wasn’t going to disturb it immediately.
The other side of his head was merely dirty. His neck streaked with dust and blood. She lifted his right arm.
Toño’s eyes opened wide and filled with tears. “Aaaaaaah,” he gasped.
“Sorry.” Luz lowered his arm, then ran to the kitchen for scissors and a roll of paper towels. She cut his shirt off. The injury to the right arm was a massive welt, red and pulpy. Not life-th
reatening. She wrapped a layer of paper towels around the injury and placed his arm back on the blanket. Toño’s left arm was in good shape, except for a gash on his hand. He’d been making it worse by holding himself at the window. Now that his hand had relaxed, the blood pooled and began to thicken. She made a bandage with more towels. A red target blossomed in the center.
Luz was avoiding looking at his hip. Gunshot wounds. Toño and his men hadn’t planned to decamp for another week or so, but perhaps they’d gotten an early start and run into an army patrol. Luz sank onto the floor and pressed her clenched fists to her chest. The bruise there from Bobby’s assault burned under her hands. Not now. Once again, she pushed her fury aside. There would be time later to settle the score with Bobby. For now, she had to concentrate on Toño.
Just bringing her scissors under the fabric of his pants bloodied Luz’s hand. Teeth clamped tight to keep from exclaiming in horror at the gore, Luz sliced the material until Toño’s hip was exposed. Rivulets of blood—bright red, liquid—dripped like a leaky faucet.
Oh, no. Luz bowed her head and laid her hand lightly on her cousin’s chest. “I need to stop the bleeding around your hip. First, I’m going to clean the area. See if I can figure out how to—oh, Toño, you picked an awful refuge—you know I don’t have medical training.” At her cousin’s piteous hint of a smile, she said, “Yes, I know I’m family. I’ll keep you safe. And I won’t call a doctor unless you say so.”
Toño tried to lift his hand, which Luz took and placed in her lap. He blinked his thanks, but Luz wasn’t necessarily telling the truth. Although there was a price on his head, she had no intention of letting Toño die on her living room floor. If she had to call an ambulance and give him a false name, she would.
Luz warmed a pan of water and had just sat on the floor again when the telephone shattered a silence broken only by Toño’s shallow breathing.
The phone. She looked at the clock over the stove. Oh, Jesus, it was after ten. She’d told Evan he could come by after work. He should have arrived an hour ago.
Maneuvering clumsily to her feet, Luz lunged for the phone, knocking it off the small table. “Aló?”
“Luz, you okay?” Evan’s voice whispered from across town.
“Yeah, I—”
“I’m sorry I didn’t call earlier. Listen, I’ve got a problem and can’t make it tonight,” he said, barely audible.
“Oh?” There’d been that moment in the morning when sharing her burden with Evan had felt possible—and dangerously close to comfort. Between Bobby’s assault and Toño’s injuries, however, Luz hadn’t given a second’s thought to formulating a more personal and direct plan for killing Martin. Evan’s help might’ve given her new options but now, like sand slipping through her fingers, time had run out.
Evan’s defection tonight was too much like the answer to a prayer she hadn’t made. It wasn’t likely his chic girlfriend had given up on him that easily. He was still whispering, probably locked in the bathroom so Margo didn’t hear.
“I’ll try to be at the market at the usual time,” he said.
Damn him. But—the market. Juana! If Toño survived the night, she’d ask Juana for help.
“No,” she said, too loud. “Don’t come. I—I’m skipping it tomorrow. Call me after work, okay?”
“You sure?”
“Yeah, ’night.” Luz set down the receiver. If it was Margo, she’d lost him for good, but it couldn’t be helped. She turned back to Toño and dipped the washcloth in warm water.
Evan flushed the toilet, stuffed his cellphone into his pocket, and walked back into the studio. Luz had sounded far too relieved he couldn’t come over. She could’ve been humoring him this morning, saying anything to make him leave peaceably. He really believed she’d been interested, but it was pretty clear now that he didn’t get women. “Want another beer?” he asked in passing. “I sure do.”
From the living room, a voice said, “Let’s head out for dinner instead.”
Evan remained in the kitchen. He tilted back his head and let the cool liquid run down his throat, then held the bottle to his overheated forehead. An hour earlier, Evan had been watching the clock as he got ready to leave for Luz’s, rehearsing what he’d say, when his doorbell rang. The last person he wanted to see stood on his doorstep.
“What are you doing here?”
“I was in the neighborhood and thought I’d drop by.”
The absurdity made them both chuckle, but Evan’s only choice was to open the door wide and say, “Come on in.”
Now a toneless whistle grew louder as footsteps approached the kitchen.
“C’mon,” Richard said. “I could eat a horse—and in this country, I probably could order one grilled to perfection.” He clapped Evan on the shoulder and steered him toward the front door. “We’ve got a lot to talk about.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Pale pearly light had begun to erase the darkness before Luz finished cleaning the gunshot wound on Toño’s hip. She discovered one bit of good news: The bullet had gone clear through. At least she thought it good news that no metal fragments remained. Although she’d stanched most of the bleeding, blood still oozed. Luz suspected the bullet had done serious damage. Toño needed a doctor. When Luz told him she planned to get word to Juana, he’d nodded his approval. She would be at the market as soon as it opened to get help.
A knock on the door startled Luz out of an uneasy sleep on the couch. In her disorientation, she imagined it was Toño trying to get in, but it was daylight. People would see him covered in blood and call the police. Luz sat up and tried to shake off the remnants of sleep that prevented her from thinking clearly. A neighbor must be at the door since the buzzer at the gate had not sounded. Perhaps someone had seen Toño after all and waited until morning to confront her. Or they’d sent for the police, who now stood on her doorstep with grim expressions.
The knock again, louder.
Wake up, wake up.
Another knock.
Luz put her bare feet flat on the cold tile floor. “Who’s there?” she called.
“It’s Richard, honey. I came to see you.”
A simple pine door, painted green, was all that stood between Luz and the ruin of her plans. She had to keep Richard out of the house.
“Momentito.” Luz ran into her room, snatched a loose housedress from her closet, and pulled it over her head. Toño slept on a nest of blankets. She had dragged him around the corner into her little bedroom as dawn broke, and then scrubbed her floor and counters, cleaned out her pots and the pink-tinged cloths, removing all traces of gore. His color was better now. She touched his forehead. Hot, dry.
Leaving her front door on the chain, she opened it the few inches permitted and blinked in the bright sun. “I didn’t know you were in Guatemala.” Luz hoped she sounded surprised and curious, but panic lurked in the undertones.
Only a few days earlier, she would’ve given anything to talk to him again. Now Richard Clement stood solid on her porch, not a figment of an overwrought imagination. Dark pants, sports shirt, a lightweight blazer, silvery hair, trim mustache—he hadn’t changed a bit.
But Luz had. Aside from small social fibs, like pretending to enjoy the bizarre seafood things he’d occasionally brought as treats for her and her mother, Luz had only lied to Richard once: When he and John had first discussed the Guatemala job with her, John brought up her father’s connection to the Frente Popular de Liberación.
“Do you have any contact with the guerrillas?” he’d asked
Luz had answered no, technically true since, at that precise moment, she did not.
“Don’t you think it would be nice to connect with your cousins, old friends, people you knew when you were younger?” John asked the question, but Richard paid close attention. “I would,” he added, as if that might make Luz more comfortable with an admission.
“I don’t know who’s alive or where they are,” she’d replied. More or less true. “And I don’t know how
to contact anyone. There’s no reason to bother.” Pants on fire.
Now Richard stood less than ten feet from the top general of the FPL. Luz needed to deliver an Oscar-winning performance.
“Wha … what a surprise,” Luz stammered. “I had no idea.”
“I got the chance to come down for a long weekend, so I thought I’d get the ball rolling.” Richard rested one hand on the doorframe as he looked inside, beyond her, into the dim apartment—ay, Dios, let me have cleaned everything. “I brought the materials you’ll need. Since Evan says you haven’t contacted him, you’re probably not ready, but it was too good an opportunity to pass up.”
I’m too exhausted to do this.
You have to safeguard Toño.
“Can I come in?” Richard flicked his fingers at the thin chain, now the only barrier between her and catastrophe.
No, I’ve got to get you away from here. “I’m out of coffee, Richard, and I desperately need a jolt. Want to buy me a cup? Or three?” Luz said, sidestepping a direct answer.
“That would be a pleasure.”
“Won’t be a minute, then.”
He stepped forward as Luz closed the door in his face.
No, no. She’d screwed up. Luz squeezed her head in her hands. She’d never left him on the doorstep before. Plus, she had to get to Juana immediately. She couldn’t spend the morning parrying Richard’s questions, not telling any more lies than necessary.
Luz squared her shoulders. He can’t come in, so that’s that. She dashed to her desk and wrote a terse note to Juana. She’d have to deliver it soon. And alone. Distracting Richard would be more challenging, and way riskier than diverting Evan’s attention each time she spoke to Juana.
“Where’s a good place for coffee?” Richard asked when she joined him. He’d moved away from the door and appeared to be admiring the blooms on her scarlet hibiscus. Oh—blood on the outside wall. If Richard had walked around the side of the building, he might have seen it. And her bedroom curtains—surely, she’d closed them again last night after she discovered Toño. Hadn’t she?
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