CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
The rhythmic echoing in her ears resolved into “Miss Aranda? Miss Aranda?”
“Yes?” Luz lay on the floor now, curled up like a newborn.
The doctor spoke in his soft voice. “My wife and I are visiting her cousins who live out by the lake to say goodbye before our trip to the United States. I’m calling you from Santiago Atitlan. We return to the city tomorrow morning. Shall we say ten at my office? I hadn’t planned on working tomorrow, so my secretary won’t be there, but these tests should be done as soon as possible—come on in when you arrive.”
“I’ll be there,” Luz whispered. Poison.
“This new information about possible cadmium contamination will make testing considerably more straightforward,” continued Dr. Guzman. Luz laid her cheek on the cool tile and panted. “We’ll take another blood sample and one from your hair and fingernails. You do understand what I’m telling you, señorita?”
“Yes.” Not sick. Not dying. Poisoned.
“Be careful,” he said.
“I will.” Poison.
“Until tomorrow, then.” A click and Luz was alone.
It was all a lie. Everything. From the beginning. Luz lifted to hands and knees, unable for the moment to summon energy to sit or stand. One hand rested on a black tile, the other on a white one. Everything she’d believed was false.
She wasn’t dying. Richard had put cadmium in her sugar. In the sugar of Luz, the little girl with the sweet tooth he’d known for almost two decades. Richard had taken her out to buy school supplies, tried to teach her to drive. He’d loaned her mother money for her braces, although she wasn’t supposed to know that. He sent presents at Christmas, funny cards for Valentine’s Day, and always remembered her birthday. He was poisoning her.
Luz clambered to her feet and moved to the back of the apartment. She leaned her head against the glass of the window overlooking the little patio. Emerald hummingbirds flitted among the hibiscus flowers. The weekend storm had passed and towering white clouds dotted the sky. She was in Guatemala—Richard had returned her to Guatemala. He meant Martin Benavides to die. Since she was the instrument, that must be true. Luz had been eager to do it because Martin had murdered her father. And because she was going to die soon anyhow.
Except she wasn’t.
So vast a chasm was his deceit that Luz could only scrabble around the edges searching for small pieces to examine: Richard had caused those months of headaches and dizziness, the weird numbness that began after her mother’s funeral. Living alone. Richard driving up to reminisce, buy groceries, make dinner. As her symptoms worsened—blurred vision, muscle spasms—Richard consoled her, all the while knowing he was the agent of her misery, knowing her fear of inexorable decline and slow, suffocating death. Richard created that fear so she would do his bidding. So she would come to Guatemala and … what was she really doing here?
Like a newborn exploring its strange new world, Luz rotated her forehead on the glass, seeking out virgin areas where the warmth of her body had not yet raised the temperature. She was alive. She was well. The tests would prove it, she knew.
The first couple of weeks in Guatemala she’d been so weak and shaky. The damn ants had saved her. But now, if everything Richard said was a lie, she was free—cut loose. She could do anything. Or nothing.
As Luz stood by the back window, hummingbirds fed on hibiscus nectar, then fluttered off to taste the plumeria. Massive clouds sailed across the sky. She rocked her head to the side and considered the world from a different angle.
Of all the immediate choices, two stood out: She’d go back to the Benavides’ once more. She’d retrieve the damn flash drive and give it to Toño’s people; she owed him that. As soon as she handed it over, though, she was done. Finished. No more killing.
She’d call Evan then, and Luz would tell him everything. Picking and choosing what part of the truth to share—it reminded her of the old children’s story about the blind men and the elephant: Each person had a piece of the truth; none saw the whole elephant and with that fragmented knowledge came disbelief and discord.
And then there was Evan. Richard was his family, after all. Luz pressed her fingers to the windowpane and flexed her hands slowly.
He’d either believe her or not. If he did, this time she’d listen to his plans for the future, her future. They’d go away together, or stay here together. Maybe it wouldn’t work out between them. Luz recalled how Evan’s hazel eyes lit up when he saw her.
Maybe it would.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
An hour later, Luz keyed the residence floor code and entered the elevator, already preoccupied with her computer task, but Cesar pounced the second Luz walked in the door. “Let’s go see my father.”
“What?” An electric charge raced along her spine. Toño’s informant had said Bobby was gone.
“He promised we could watch a movie with him today, and now that stupid woman with the pointy shoes is pretending he’s not here. So what’s she doing in his apartment if he’s not around, huh?”
Alicia sneaking around solo was far preferable to Alicia with Bobby in his quarters, but Luz had to know for sure.
Cesar’s bottom lip quivered. Both hands jammed deep into the pockets of his jeans. “Nobody tells me anything. I’m just chico, the kid who always gets in the way.” When he flung his head violently to punctuate his statement, his neck vertebrae cracked with staccato bursts, like rapid-fire gunshots. “She wouldn’t even take a message to Mami and Papi for me.”
It took Luz an extra beat to remember that was what Cesar called his grandparents. “What do you want to tell them?”
Cesar looked at his sneakers scuffing at the tufts on the rug. “I don’t know. I want to do something different. It’s no use asking if I can get out of this stupid house. Maybe Papi will play checkers or teach me chess. He said he would when I got older.”
When he got older. And now she was going to get older, too. If only she could stay on as Cesar’s nanny. Right, and forget about Bobby. Ignore Richard’s vile manipulation that would make her life here perilous. No, she had to get out. Today was her last day with Cesar.
Luz pulled him into a hug. She’d have to make tonight’s leave-taking as normal as possible. Just another hasta mañana, although there would be no tomorrow. She squeezed Cesar tighter. Too briefly, his warmth flowed into her. Then the boy wriggled out of her arms and picked up the remote control for the new race car toy he’d been zooming across the floor.
“Perhaps you can come with me when I go read to your grandmother this afternoon,” Luz said. “I’ll get in touch with your grandfather to see if he’ll be around.” And I’ll find out for sure if I risk running into your father.
Cesar ran the car at high speed into the sofa. When it ricocheted off, he sent it crashing into the wall where it flipped over and lay, wheels spinning, like a dying bug. Cesar dropped the remote and clomped into his room. The boy was right; people did treat him like a guest who’d overstayed his welcome or a pet—a pat on the head, good boy. No wonder he was beginning to get these eruptions of foolish, increasingly frustrated willfulness. Given time, he’d be demanding, grabbing, taking. Just like his father. Luz sucked her lower lip hard at that thought.
Now, instead of bribing Cesar with a workout on the muddy soccer field in return for privacy on the computer when they were finished, Luz had to follow through on her promise. She had no direct line to Martin and Dominga’s suite—everything went through Raul de la Vega or Alicia. Since Cesar’s description of the “stupid woman” could be none other than Alicia, Luz called Raul. And quickly had answers to her questions.
It would only have taken a minute to fill Cesar in. He wasn’t a baby or a miniature adult. He was a lonely, unhappy child—a boy who needed someone to love and console him, someone with the patience to help him negotiate the world around him. Otherwise he’d grow up knowing nothing except the dry bones of book learning.
Luz’s nose ached f
rom the pressure of unshed tears. This was too close to home. Her mother had no understanding of the new world in which they found themselves. Luz had grown up in libraries, in classrooms, copying the sounds and behaviors she learned there. Cesar should have someone looking out for him.
Luz sniffed once more and opened Cesar’s door a crack. “Bueno, mijo, here’s what’s happening.” Cesar lay facedown on his bed, his face buried in the pillows. “The storm over the weekend made it impossible for your father to fly out yesterday, so he postponed his trip for a couple of days. Then the sky cleared sooner than expected, so he rescheduled for today. It’s a shorter trip now, so he’ll be back tomorrow morning.”
He really was gone all day. That was the information Luz needed.
“Señor de la Vega checked with your grandparents,” she continued. That got a wiggle from Cesar, and he stretched his neck turtle-like. “They’ll send Joaquín for us as soon as your grandmother finishes physical therapy.”
Time was growing short, but reading Bobby’s purloined drive would have to wait until later.
Although he greeted Cesar with affection, Martin’s hands trembled, his skin was gray, and his pants hung in folds. The belt had an irregular gash where he’d added a tighter notch. And after his initial warmth, he seemed weary and disoriented, like he wasn’t sleeping.
Cesar commandeered the game board and requested checkers, leaving Luz to read to Dominga. She lay with her swollen legs elevated on the rolling daybed, not in her wheelchair. Her lips pinched tight, as though warding off pain.
Luz began Men of Maize where she’d left off. “Los mozos le entreban al huatal …”
After several games, Martin said he needed to check on something and left the garden for his study. Cesar came over to listen to Luz but quickly became bored.
“Can I read you one of my books, Mami?” he asked.
“Of course,” she said. “Pick one on the shelf.” To Luz, she added, “Wait under the pergola. There’s lemonade on a tray.”
Luz sat in a wicker armchair sipping the tart-sweet lemonade as the breeze on the rooftop ruffled her hair. In the magical world of the book she was reading to Dominga, life and death were fluid concepts, and humans could assume animal form. In Luz’s world, dead was dead, and protectors shouldn’t be able to shape-shift into predators at will. In the book-world, perpetrators of violence were condemned by sorcerers and punished. There was no counterbalancing force to mete out justice in Luz’s universe.
Luz had imagined she could be that sorcerer, with the power—and the duty—to destroy the wicked. Knowing Richard had betrayed her, however, she was released of any obligation to him. Still, her hunger for justice remained—retribution for Martin’s murdering her father and a chance to even the score in Toño’s decades-long struggle for legitimacy, thwarted by the Benavides at every turn. She couldn’t walk away from that.
Martin emerged from his study and shuffled across the rooftop patio, sagging into a chair near Luz. He kept his gaze on Cesar, apparently uninterested in talking. The silence between them was peaceable. Eventually, Martin turned to her with a meandering glance and made a sound—“ehhh?”—that might’ve invited conversation.
Luz experienced a sudden, insane desire to tell the whole story to this man, her oldest enemy. She’d never get out of the house alive, though, if she did. Think about something else.
“It’s hard on Cesar, not being around other kids,” Luz blurted.
Martin looked swiftly over to Cesar on the far side of the patio, the boy’s dark hair bent over his book, his outstretched finger keeping place. Then he nodded. “It was an imperfect solution,” he said. “I thought we’d try it for a while. My old friend Father Espinosa was willing to come in every day so Cesar’s schoolwork didn’t suffer, but …” Martin lifted his hands fractionally above his lap and then let them drop as though the effort to elevate them required too much energy.
“No,” he said in reply to a question that existed only in his mind, “I’m afraid we’ll have to send him away, like his sister. Like Paulina.”
“I hear she’s in Spain?”
Another nod, another hungry stare at Cesar.
Luz had assumed nothing more was forthcoming when Martin suddenly began to speak. “They ambushed Paulina’s car on her way to school.” His words picked up steam like an accelerating locomotive as Martin explained how the tactical driver they’d hired for Paulina varied the timing and the route to her school, but one day men with guns had been lying in wait. They killed Marco, her driver, but the security guard fought them off, killing two, wounding another. Then he pushed Marco onto the street, got behind the wheel, and raced home.
“Paulina saw everything.” Martin swallowed hard after the last word.
Luz had lived through her father’s murder at the same age; she still remembered everything. “Someone tried to kidnap her?” Luz leaned forward and came within a hair’s-breadth of patting his liver-spotted hand before she remembered who he was. “How awful.”
Martin shook his head in time to an internal rhythm. “Not kidnapping. The attackers were rebels affiliated with the FPL.”
Luz let out an involuntary gasp. “I don’t understand,” she said. “Why would they—?”
But Martin wasn’t listening; the story had taken over. “We made the wounded one talk. Eventually. They had orders to kill her. And that was their second attempt. Paulina had to leave.” His eyes narrowed. “I am telling this much to explain the precautions we take with my grandson, but you notice I do not reveal precisely where Paulina is.”
That morning in the forest, Toño had told her how he deplored the necessity for violence—deplored it, but employed it. He’d said something about power not being what you did, but what people believed you were capable of doing, so you pushed for any angle to increase it.
Oddly, she didn’t suspect Martin of lying. Evan—courtesy, no doubt, of his gorgeous do-gooder girlfriend—had told similar stories about the guerrillas’ cruelty, not that Luz believed them at the time.
Now she did; it was even easy to believe. Dr. Guzman’s revelations had obliterated her trust in Richard, a trust she’d believed as immutable as the earth revolving around the sun. Its loss was disorienting, like the sudden absence of gravity. Richard—and now Toño. Neither was who Luz thought. Sure, Toño killed people; he was a soldier. He’d killed, as a teenager, to save her life. But as an adult, he’d ordered the cold-blooded murder of a child.
The killing had to stop. The line of dead men, women, and children from both sides would stretch clear across the country. If the dead joined hands, they would connect every village and town. Everyone in Guatemala had lost someone to the war.
“It will be the same with Cesar,” Martin said. “We’ve become prisoners. Only my son Roberto, with the army clearing a secure path, is free to come and go. He takes off in the helicopter, lands on another roof, somewhere else guarded.”
Martin sagged against the cushions and closed his eyes. For a minute, Cesar’s halting voice as he read was the only sound.
“But you know,” Martin said, sitting straight again, “that talk of helicopters gives me an idea.” As though by a trick of lighting, Martin’s color improved. He said to Luz, “The Lions are playing a home game tomorrow afternoon. My son—and thus our helicopter—will be back by then. What do you think Cesar would say to an excursion to the football game with his father?”
“He’d love it,” said Luz immediately, “but what about security?”
“A onetime event is reasonably safe. Using the helicopter makes it even safer,” said Martin. “They take off from the roof here. They land inside the stadium.” Martin began to speak rapidly; his leg swung back and forth. “I’ll call the chief of police. He can arrange everything. There’s always lots of security at the stadium. No one will notice a little extra. Cesar will have a wonderful time.”
Martin clapped his hands, apparently a signal. The guard at the elevator entrance approached. “Please escort my grandson
home,” he said.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
As Luz and Cesar waited for the elevator door to close, Martin leaned in and whispered in his grandson’s ear, “Be ready at noon tomorrow. I’ve got a surprise for you.”
Cesar skipped all the way back, pestering Luz with questions, his good humor restored in the flash of his grandfather’s simple gesture. He asked to play cards, but it was after four already—a day like any other. Luz resisted the urge to fold Cesar into an uncharacteristic hug.
“Let’s get you organized.” Luz tugged him toward his desk. “With your big day tomorrow, you’d better make a head start on your multiplication worksheets.”
“Luz, what’s Papi planning? Is it a good treat?”
Luz permitted herself a quick squeeze around Cesar’s bony shoulders. A day like any other. “It’s such a good treat you’ll be glad you finished all your math problems.”
Cesar beamed at Luz and scooted into his chair.
After she settled him down, Luz extricated the thumb drive from its hiding place inside the hollow crucifix in Cesar’s room. Back to the computer to insert the drive into the USB port. The old computer booted; it whirred and announced it had detected a new device and offered to display its contents. There were three folders: Bookkeeping, Insurance, and Inventory.
Inventory sounded like drug shipments. Opening the folder revealed a list of documents, titled by month and year, going back about five years. She picked the most recent one. The hourglass cycled monotonously. Finally, the document appeared. It was in calendar format, a detailed record of ships, notations for where they loaded and unloaded. Dollar amounts. Cryptic listings that might be names, other stuff she couldn’t decipher. A gold mine.
U.S. law enforcement should see this. She’d make two copies—one for Toño and one for her future. There were writeable CDs in the desk drawer. Thank goodness for old-fashioned technology, thought Luz, who hadn’t remembered to buy additional thumb drives. Keeping Bobby’s drive in its port, she slipped first one disk and then another into the CD bay and copied all the material. Then she tucked the CDs into the cardboard front pocket of her day planner, behind some receipts.
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