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Toward the Light

Page 25

by Bonnar Spring


  “I watched you murder my father,” said Luz. “I’ve hated you for seventeen years. I came to Guatemala to kill you. To avenge the death of my father and his men whom you slaughtered in the forest that night.”

  Martin’s chin fell to his chest. “I understand. I won’t ask for mercy.” His voice was scarcely audible. “It was the biggest mistake I ever made, and I have been paying for it ever since.”

  Luz had expected arrogance, bluster, pride, anger. Not total capitulation.

  After a moment of silence, he half-rose from his chair, and his voice boomed. “I made a deal with the devil.”

  “Sit down,” Luz yelled. It couldn’t be the bomb. Not yet. She needed time to explain.

  Martin sagged back and continued more quietly. “All through my years fighting the corruption and brutality of the junta, when I spoke about duty and sacrifice, people listened. There were others whose vision was different than ours, but the Benavides have always thought of the country first. I dreamed of big things—roads and factories, schools, hospitals. But we needed money to make my dreams come true. Lots of money. So I agreed to provide protection for the men who were moving drugs through Guatemala.” Martin sighed and patted Dominga’s shoulder. “Once we made the deal, their agent told me where to attack the other guerrillas. When. How. They made our victory easy.”

  “Who was this agent?” Exquisite calm, like a silk shawl, floated down on Luz. She knew what Martin was going to say.

  “A gringo. I knew him as El Pelirrojo.”

  The Redhead. Yes, his hair, now silver, was once coppery like Evan’s.

  Martin continued, “But I occasionally heard his confederates call him Rich.”

  Richard. So, it was true. The bastard.

  “Others would have jumped in if we hadn’t.” Martin squeezed the arms of the chair as he leaned forward. “Yes, a justification, but one as true today as it was then. If I had declined, they would have found another pawn, and I would have lost my chance to shape the future. Now,” he said, tears welling, “now I understand the price was too great.”

  A wave of pain washed across his face. “I remember you and your mother that night. I wondered what happened to you.” Martin bowed his head. “The boy I left guarding you—the boy you killed to escape—was my son. Like your father, called Emilio. Seventeen years old.” The old man looked away, and Luz knew he was seeing the same awful scene in the jungle that haunted her. “I left Emilio with you because I didn’t want him in the thick of the fight. When we came back—triumphant—he lay on the leaves with his neck broken, and you were gone.”

  The boy pointed the rifle at her. Her mother was wailing; her father’s blood rhythmically spurting onto the leaves. This time she remembered how the boy—Martin’s son, Cesar’s uncle—looked anywhere except at the blood, how the end of his rifle wavered. Toño peeping out of the thicket.

  “For years, I kept my end of the bargain,” Martin was saying. “The drug people paid handsomely for our blind eye to their activity. I built schools, factories with the drug money. Clinics. Malnutrition became rare. People could buy shoes and cars with their wages. For many years, I accepted the trade-off, the loss of my Emilio and the loss of my good name, for involvement with the drugs. But lately, I’ve fallen into despair over the crime, the lure of easy money, the loss of our country’s youth to taking the drugs. I wonder what sort of life Cesar can look forward to. So I told the man no more.” Martin tugged at his collar.

  “He was persuasive; he offered more money, but I held firm. Finally, he agreed I had done enough. I learned later he struck a deal with my enemies; the insurgent forces who control much of the countryside took over the business. Drugs again flooded the city. More dangerous drugs now—and the police cannot keep control.”

  Luz had to add one more nail to the coffin of this demoralized old man, sick and ashamed of the legacy he would leave. “The guerrillas don’t control the drug supply routes. Your son Roberto does.”

  The lion Martin once was appeared in the jutting chin, the flare of his nostrils, the thinning of his lips. “You have proof?” But even asking that question was tacit acceptance he might have been lied to again.

  “Yes, in my day planner there is a CD with files I copied from a flash drive that was in your son’s briefcase. It documents money and shipments going back five years.”

  “Five years?” he snapped.

  What was significant about that? Light dawned a second after the question occurred—it was when Martin walked away from the business.

  “That’s right,” Luz said. “I stole the files—supposedly for information to discredit Bobby, but I’ve found it implicates the man who sent me here to kill you as well.”

  Martin telegraphed his question with a brusque up-tick of his jaw.

  “Your Pelirrojo.”

  He didn’t move, but immediately he seemed to shrink. Then his head bowed with the slow finality of last hopes annihilated.

  Luz knelt in front of Martin. “In the beginning, I came to kill you, but I see now I must beg your forgiveness. I’m truly sorry about your son Emilio. There’s been too much killing, too much bad blood between men who could be brothers.” She raised her palms in supplication. “If you will help me, we can all get out of this alive.”

  Martin’s gaze dropped to the tape around her. “How?”

  “Richard no longer trusts me—with good reason—so he’s taped over the wires connecting each packet of explosives. In order to get this contraption off, we’ll need to cut carefully through the tape, without pulling or cutting any wires.” Luz licked her lips and pointed to the small box near her hip. “The detonator’s inside here. It works like a plunger. You unlatch this clip on the bottom of the box and push a pin down. Once we get this thing off, I’ll run a line so we can explode it from a distance.” Luz ought to have qualified her assertion to “I think I can,” but she couldn’t afford to show any lack of confidence.

  “We don’t have much time,” she said. “Richard’s taken a hostage, a man very dear to me. If this thing doesn’t destroy part of your house by three, he’ll kill him.”

  Dominga, whose taped mouth had forced her to remain silent during the exchange, began to writhe. Martin jumped out of his seat, then he stiffened and faced Luz. “With your permission, señorita,” he said, “my wife has trouble breathing, and this is too great a strain on her. She won’t call out. Isn’t that right, mi amor?”

  Dominga nodded. Martin deftly tore off the strip of tape.

  “Joaquín! Help!”

  Martin plastered his hand over Dominga’s mouth and bent close. “We have no choice, mi amor. Or rather, our choice was made long ago.” He cradled her plump hands in his trembling ones. Their arms vibrated as though a current ran between them, and Dominga sat up straighter.

  When Martin stepped away, she remained silent.

  “You ask us to extricate you,” he said, “and trust your handling of this bomb, let you destroy our home.” Martin paced, tossing the accusations over his shoulder like bullets. “First, I want to see proof my son is behind all this. If you’re telling the truth, I’ll need to call in Joaquín, at least. Perhaps others.”

  “Don’t alert anyone yet.” Luz could imagine Joaquín’s trigger-finger reaction. “Cut the vest off first.”

  Martin’s index finger shot out like a gun. “Proof.”

  “We’ll all be safer with this contraption at a distance.” Perhaps it was the cool rooftop air, the contrast between the chill on her cheeks and the dribbles of sweat that oozed from her pores and stuck the vest to her body, bringing with it the maddeningly impossible need to scratch—like a broken arm in a cast. More likely it was a delayed reaction, now that she had survived the initial drama of confrontation.

  “No.” Martin folded his arms across his chest.

  The clock was ticking. She’d make some idiotic—and deadly—mistake or the elevator door would whoosh open, and a guard would react instinctively to the unmistakable tableau. There wasn’t ti
me for this argument. “Is there a computer up here?”

  “In my office.”

  Luz folded her own arms and nodded. “Okay, ten minutes. The three of us in that little room.” She patted the vest to remind them what else would be sharing the space. “And then we get this thing off before anyone with a gun shows up.”

  Martin licked his lips. “Deal.”

  Yes. For the first time in an hour, Luz allowed herself to hope.

  Slowly, she laid her purse on the wicker table next to Dominga. She lifted out her day planner and removed the last CD. With equal slow-motion gravity, Martin received it. Then he took the handles of the wheelchair, and they processed funereally into the office.

  Martin pulled a pair of half glasses from his pocket and inserted the CD. His insistence on verification was reasonable, but Luz’s stomach said hurry, hurry, por el amor de Dios, hurry.

  The clock on his desk read 2:07. Only fifty-odd minutes left, but surely Richard wouldn’t execute his nephew too hastily. It should be enough time. Think about what came next. And next.

  It was 2:15, and Luz was still mentally reviewing Evan’s wiring instructions when Martin pushed back his chair. “Okay,” he said, his face pinched. “I believe you.” Then he held out his palsied hands. “However, we have a problem.”

  No. No way out. The evanescent bubble popped. Luz couldn’t cut herself loose, and neither could he.

  “We’ll have to call in the guards,” he said.

  They would shoot the second they saw her. “No.”

  Martin had outmaneuvered her after all. He’d tricked her into revealing the evidence against his son, and now—by dragging his feet, waiting for the inevitable appearance of a guard—he’d eliminate her as he’d done so often to those who opposed him.

  But Dominga snapped her fingers. “Martin, for heaven’s sake, let me. I’m much surer with my hands than you.”

  The old lady sounded like she really meant to cut Luz loose. For her to wield the scissors, however, Luz would have to release the tape binding Dominga’s arms. The Benavides hadn’t had a chance to concoct a plan, but surely an unspoken understanding had grown up between them over time. Luz didn’t trust her, but then she didn’t have much of a choice.

  Both women looked at Martin. He nodded.

  Luz pulled a pair of sharp scissors from Dominga’s sewing basket and sliced the duct tape binding her arms. A pause—dead air louder than any explosion—as the three people in the rooftop garden took stock of the balance of power. Luz handed over the scissors and put one hand over the detonator box. One questionable move on Dominga’s part and this would end the way Richard had ordained after all.

  Dominga held up the scissors, opening and closing them dexterously. “Stand here,” she ordered.

  Luz walked in front of her.

  “Clasp your hands behind your head.”

  “What?”

  Dominga brandished the scissors perilously close to Luz’s chest. “It’s important that you remain motionless and your arms and hands stay out of my way while I’m cutting.”

  The old bitch was right. Luz lifted her arms and laced her fingers together. She’d have to move fast if Dominga double-crossed her.

  “Martin, go get me some lemonade.”

  “He stays,” said Luz quickly. So it was a trick after all—Dominga was going to stall while Martin alerted the guards. Or get her husband out of range and blow them both to kingdom come.

  Dominga shot Martin a look of regret, love and regret. She took a tiny snip with the scissors.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  In the little house on Calle Ocho, the bang at 2:52 p.m. sounded at first like a truck backfiring on a nearby street. Then echoes started bouncing off multiple buildings. Evan jumped up, but Richard waved him back. In the hours since his uncle closed the door behind Luz, Evan had remained in the green armchair, not confined by ropes but by his own fevered imagination. And by the detonator on the kitchen table in front of his uncle, his uncle who was wearing the blue-patterned sweater Evan had given him for Christmas two years earlier.

  After repeated entreaties, Richard had finally let Evan have a sketch pad, but he’d only allowed him a single soft charcoal stick. Still, Evan took it as a small victory. Under the guise of sketching the all-too-familiar scene out his back window, he made surreptitious notes on the page underneath. He stuck to the facts, too shaken to try reconciling them with the person he’d loved his entire life, the stranger who sat coolly at Evan’s kitchen table having sent Luz to her death.

  “My uncle has tied ten sticks of explosive around me,” Evan wrote, remembering the Christmas Richard had spent with him and his mother. The three of them had gone ice skating on the pond near his mother’s place. Richard forgoing a winter jacket, he said, to show off the handsome blue sweater his nephew had given him.

  Evan looked over to his uncle, then to the distant volcanoes. He wrote, “He’d just come back from killing the doctor who treated Luz.” Sentence by awkward, damning sentence, Evan chronicled the events of the past days.

  The charcoal skittered from Evan’s fingers when the first blast sounded. As Richard warned him to sit, the reverberations continued. Nearby car alarms shrilled.

  Like a wild animal picking up a scent, his uncle shot across the room and turned on the television. Since it was a weekday afternoon, the program was a telenovela, the elaborate Latin-style soap opera. In a plush boudoir, a woman clad in infinitesimal patches of lacy white caressed a chisel-jawed man wearing low-slung jeans as he stared out the window, arms crossed and impassive.

  After several minutes, an announcer interrupted the show to report that a large explosion had demolished a home in an exclusive neighborhood in Zona 10. Reporters rushing to the scene. Details to follow as soon as they were available. Back to the soap opera—the man was buttoning his shirt; plump glycerin teardrops streamed down the actress’s face.

  Richard muted the audio and stretched his arms over his head, cracking his knuckles. When he turned to Evan, he, too, had tears in his eyes. Tears and a small smile that wouldn’t go away no matter how he tried to shape his lips into a straight line. “Really, son, I’m sorry it had to end this way. This is hard—and you’re too sensitive to understand how these decisions get made.” Richard strolled to the chair where he’d installed Evan and laid a well-manicured hand on his shoulder.

  Evan shrank from his touch and turned his head away, light-headed from a toxic mixture of hope and despair. Luz must’ve gone to the Benavides’. But after that—the unknowns his meticulous note-taking had kept at bay during the silent hours since Richard closed the door on Luz rose up to torment him. Luz was walking a tightrope of pitfalls and traps that would sway perilously with her every decision: enlisting Martin Benavides’ cooperation—or had there been a standoff, followed by gunfire, ending in a massacre? Switching the wiring—or had the explosion been premature, an accident? He wished he could feel whether she had stayed alive, but he couldn’t feel anything.

  An abrupt change of lighting appeared on the TV screen—fat black words scrolled along the bottom. Richard turned on the sound. Blaring sirens filled the air. Fire trucks. Ambulances. A swirling cloud of dark smoke served as a backdrop for the TV reporter who licked her lips repeatedly, her professionalism strained. A huge crowd on the street drowned out her words. She began again, pitching her voice louder to be heard over the tumult.

  “Fifteen minutes ago, an explosion rocked the residence of Martin Benavides, former president of Guatemala and one of our most respected leaders.” Her voice quavered. “Although there has been no official word, a member of the staff reported both Señor Benavides and his wife were home.” Visibly losing composure, she cried out, “How could anyone survive that?”

  The camera panned, zoomed. The focus adjusted on a black hole with smoke billowing out. Roof gone. Red and gold flames flickering out windows. The side wall had ruptured. Unidentifiable charred objects littered the lawn and gardens.

  “Time to move,
” said Richard. “We have one more stop before the promise of this day is fulfilled.”

  “Where?” The picture of absolute destruction shredded what little optimism Evan retained. As the TV reporter said, how could anyone survive that?

  Evan decided he didn’t even care whether he lived or died now. Nothing Richard could do to him would be worse than knowing he’d sent Luz to her death. Evan would do everything in his power to thwart Richard. No matter what.

  The picture on the television changed. Three solemn men sat at a news desk while Guatemala City’s well-known evening anchorman gave a concise summary of what was known. Then he asked the man to his left, “Is it possible, Enrique, that this attack is linked to a raid on the Frente Popular in the jungle around Las Margaritas, rumored to have occurred last week, in which the rebels sustained a direct hit by government forces?”

  “Highly likely, in my judgment. The rebels have long operated under the principle of an eye for an eye.”

  An earnest young man in a three-piece suit added, “Our sources tell us one of their leaders was severely injured, possibly killed. That would certainly account for this escalation of their struggle against the government, this assassination of a former head of state, and as Claudia said, a beloved statesman.”

  More pontificating in support of this point of view. With perfect teeth and somber mien, the evening newscaster announced they would be returning to the scene at the Benavides residence where Claudia Ramos was standing by.

  So that was the underlying idea: The FPL was being set up as responsible. Once Luz was identified as the bomber, Evan was sure her connections to the guerrillas would be leaked.

  On the TV, there was no audio at first, just a camera sweeping—this time from a different angle, higher and farther away, so you could see into the crater that had once been the west side of the house.

  When the reporter began to speak, Richard clicked off the TV. “Let’s go to the football stadium. We have transport arranged.”

  Keep him at the house, Luz had said. Luz. Evan pressed his mouth into a tight line and clenched his muscles. He’d go mad unless he could sustain the belief that she’d survived. He stared at the wreckage of his living room. He pictured her at the door, smiling as she dropped her handbag and loosened her heavy knot of hair.

 

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