by Maile Meloy
The conversation took a different tone in the absence of the women. Gunther didn’t show off like he had at dinner on the ship; he’d stopped acting the South American swell. He seemed much more relaxed without any women around to charm. And Benjamin had enjoyed watching Raymond’s absorption in the game. Usually Raymond had an actor’s awareness of people looking at him. On the golf course, he furrowed his brow at the ball at his feet, oblivious to any eyes on him.
Benjamin had been absorbed, too, if less skilled. He’d thought about the arc of the ball’s flight, and the obsessive quality of the desire to hit it correctly, with the correct tool. The different sounds it made: the resounding thwock, or the light tap. He had barely given a thought to Liv and the children until Nora’s desperate call came in.
The truly manly move, of course, would have been to protect his family, guard his tribe, ensure his reproductive success. And now the bearer of his name, his treasure, the child who had, with total faith, watched Benjamin inexpertly tie his necktie for Christmas dinner, was out there in diabetic ketoacidosis, beginning to die. If he wasn’t already dead.
The feeling of rage and impotence that welled up at this thought was overwhelming, and Benjamin tried to tamp it down. They rolled past enormous trees along the parkway, with huge spreading roots. It was true that Raymond’s enthusiasm had given the golfing idea momentum. It was insane to hold that against him, but Benjamin secretly did.
“How long can Sebastian go without insulin?” Raymond asked.
“Two weeks max,” Benjamin said, looking out the window. “But he’ll be really sick after a couple of days.”
It made him nauseated just to say it. His mouth felt dry. Even on the insulin pump, Sebastian had swings in the night. Benjamin would hear the alarm and walk down the hall half-asleep, do a test, adjust the pump, wait until the levels evened out. Sebastian could be having a seizure right now, with no one to help him. They’d taught Penny the basics, but all that meant was that she knew how to ask for help, in English and Spanish. And in French, for good measure. At home she had a brother “with diabetes” but in other languages they had cleared her to use the adjective. She knew to give him sugar in an emergency if she didn’t know if he was high or low, and she knew how to use the pump, which was now useless in Liv’s bag. Without insulin, Sebastian would eventually start to seize; he would go into a coma. Benjamin saw his son’s small blond head lolling, hair flopping, the limp body getting dumped on a roadside. He tasted bile in the back of his throat.
They arrived at a brutalist concrete building, behind solid walls and black-barred gates. The small, high windows had slanting sills. The driver spoke to someone in a guard station and told them where to check in. The heat outside the air-conditioned car was oppressive. As Benjamin and Raymond walked toward the building, a young woman approached them, holding a little boy by the hand. She had dyed red hair with dark roots. The kid had a runny nose.
“Excuse me,” she said, in accented English. “I have seen you on television.”
Raymond gave her the vague smile he gave to crazy fans.
“My name is Consuelo Bolaños,” the woman said. “My husband was in this grave. The one your children found.”
“Oh,” Raymond said, shifting gears. “I’m so sorry.”
“I made an appointment,” she said. “I was hoping to reach you.”
“Walk inside with us,” Benjamin said. “It’s too hot out here.”
Consuelo Bolaños glanced around, as if she expected security to throw her out. She pulled the kid beside her. He stuck a finger into his nose and then in his mouth.
“My husband disappeared, since three weeks,” she said. “I could not find him. Everything seemed impossible.”
Benjamin realized that in his mind, the tragic accident of the grave had been that his children had stumbled onto it. Not that a husband and father had been murdered. That had not been his concern. But here was Consuelo Bolaños, bereft and angry. He tried to imagine how it would feel to have your loved one pulled from the ground, wrapped in a tarp. His intestines seemed to liquefy and his head went light. He wasn’t sure he could carry on this conversation.
“Why do you think he was killed?” Raymond asked.
“Drugs,” Consuelo said. “Some fight.”
“He sells drugs?” Raymond asked.
“He carries,” she said. “Mostly.”
“So who does he work for?”
“Different people. He is Colombian.”
“Do you know the people’s names?”
She shook her head.
“Had he received any threats?” Raymond asked. “Were there people who might’ve held grudges against him?”
Consuelo Bolaños made a defeated gesture that suggested that many people held a grudge against her husband. Benjamin was impressed that Raymond was able to formulate questions. He could barely think straight. They were inside the building now, in a lobby, where the air was cool, and they stopped.
“Have you spoken to Detective Rivera?” Raymond asked. “The woman?”
Consuelo glanced around the lobby and shook her head. “There was another detective, before,” she said. “A man. He did nothing. The police are only looking now because they want your children. Because you are Americans.”
“You should talk to Detective Rivera,” Raymond said. “Tell her your story.”
Consuelo seemed defeated by the idea of talking to the police. She nodded.
A lean young man in a lightweight linen suit came through a turnstile and strode across the lobby. “Kenji Kirby,” he said, reaching out a hand to shake. “We spoke on the phone. I’m so sorry for what you’ve been through.”
“This is Consuelo Bolaños,” Benjamin said.
“Of course,” Kenji said. Deeper sorrow took over his face, and he said a few swift words to her in beautiful Spanish. Benjamin was distracted from his confusion and pain by the young man’s preternatural smoothness. Kenji had light brown hair, an epicanthic fold, and a delicately pointed chin.
Consuelo was speaking urgently back to him. Kenji reached into his jacket and produced a card for her, presenting it as a gift. She took it with an air of defeat.
“I assure you, we are doing everything we can,” the young diplomat told her, and Benjamin understood that he had switched to English to include him and Raymond. Then Kenji steered them away, leaving Consuelo and her runny-nosed child near the door, without seeming to actually abandon them. It was a neat trick.
“She might have useful information,” Raymond said, as they passed through the turnstile.
“I promise you we know everything she knows,” Kenji said. His formality fell away as they drew out of earshot, and now he was pragmatic and confiding.
“Then why hasn’t she talked to Detective Rivera?” Raymond asked.
“She has talked to Rivera. She’s talked to everyone. Did she tell you she hadn’t?”
“Why didn’t you tell us about her?”
“I was going to, when we met.” They were in an elevator lobby now.
“Is it true that no one was looking for her husband?” Benjamin asked.
Kenji hesitated, but it seemed to be for effect, and not because he was at a real loss for words. “It’s true that the police look harder for a bunch of American children than for one drug mule,” he said. “Yes. He’s also not her husband, not legally. He has a real widow in Colombia.”
“But they wouldn’t have found the grave if not for our kids,” Benjamin said.
“Maybe not,” Kenji said. “But he’d just been buried, so who knows?”
Benjamin looked over his shoulder and saw Consuelo and her child still standing on the far side of the lobby, looking small and hopeless.
“Are you looking for his associates?” Raymond asked.
“Of course. We’re doing everything we can think of.” The elevator door op
ened, and Kenji held out an arm to usher them in.
16.
MARCUS WOKE ALONE on the second morning in the house. At first he couldn’t remember where he was. Morning light came through the windows. Then he remembered: the Jeep, the horse, the mango, the bunny. He climbed out of the bed he’d shared with his sister and pulled the covers straight. His mom said it was important to make your bed in the morning, because it made you feel better and more organized for the rest of the day. It was one of their strategies, to make him feel more in control. She would be able to think of some others for being in this house, if she were here. But if his mother were here, she would just take him away.
He knew that his parents were looking for him. Their most important job was to keep him and June safe, they always said that. Now it was Marcus’s job to keep June safe. And Isabel, too, because her brother wasn’t here. She’d left the sheets on her bed in a tangled mess, so Marcus pulled them tight and straightened the duvet, which had dusty streaks from her dragging it through the house. He lifted the pillow to see if it smelled like her hair, but he couldn’t tell. He fluffed it and put it back.
He had only known Isabel for a few days, but that didn’t matter. He was eleven and she was fourteen, but that didn’t matter either. When you were grown up, age difference was less important. When he was thirty and Isabel thirty-three, it wouldn’t matter at all.
There had been a picture on the television of Isabel in her yellow bikini, jumping into the pool, with her arms thrown back and her hair streaming. It gave Marcus a tingling, aching feeling. He had once thought he was in love with Hannelore, a girl in his music class, but that was nothing like this. He knew that Isabel thought of him as a child and paired him with Penny, like the grown-ups did. But Penny always had to be right, and win games, and tell everyone what to do.
In the entryway, he studied the deadbolt lock on the door that led outside. If they could just get out of this place, then he could get them back to the port. He knew what directions they had come. But the ship would have moved on to Panama by now. So maybe he could get to a police station, walk to the main road and flag down a car. Although flagging down the Jeep hadn’t worked so well.
And none of them had shoes. The main road was too long a walk without shoes.
He had just headed upstairs to find his sister when he heard someone come out of the other bedroom. Maria the housekeeper stood in the doorway with a cloth in her hand.
“Buenos días,” she said.
“Hi.”
“You okay?” she asked.
He nodded.
She peered past him, up the stairs. Then she leaned forward. “The girls okay?”
“I think so.” He hadn’t seen them yet this morning.
“Tell them have careful here,” she whispered.
“Okay.”
Maria looked at him unhappily. “Careful of Raúl,” she said. “You understand?”
“Can’t you just call our parents?”
She shook her head.
“Then can you open that door?”
But Maria was looking at something above him. Marcus turned to see Raúl standing at the top of the stairs.
“What are you doing?” Raúl called.
“Nothing,” Marcus said.
Raúl came downstairs, boots thudding on each step, his body filling the stairwell. Marcus withdrew and crouched.
“You’re talking to Maria?” Raúl said.
“Yes.”
“About what?”
“Just saying good morning.”
Raúl looked suspicious. “Go upstairs.”
“Why?”
“They are playing with Sancho.”
But the dog must have heard his name, because he came running down the stairs to his master’s side, panting and smiling. He sat proudly at Raúl’s feet.
“Ayii, tonto,” Raúl said, rubbing the dog’s head. “Okay, you come.”
He unlocked the door with the key from his pocket, went outside with the dog, and locked the door again from the outside.
Marcus watched the deadbolt slide shut. “Where’s he going?” he asked.
Maria shook her head.
Marcus ran up the stairs, noting June on the couch with the bunny, and found a window on the side of the house where the door was. He could see the security gate below. There was a police car parked outside the gate, and two uniformed policemen stood waiting. Marcus’s heart leaped. The policemen would ask to come in and search the house. Maybe they would even force their way past Raúl.
But then Raúl came into view, walking down the driveway, all swagger, the dog prancing at his side. He reached the gate and leaned against it, and the three men talked for a while. The policemen weren’t yelling. It looked like a friendly conversation. Raúl handed something to the policemen, through the gate. They both tucked whatever it was away, and talked a little longer, and shook Raúl’s hand. Then they turned to go.
“No!” Marcus cried. He pounded his fists on the window.
The policemen glanced up at the house. So did Raúl.
Marcus couldn’t tell if they could see him, but he kept pounding. “We’re here!” he shouted, and he waved his arms.
The policemen turned and walked toward their car.
Marcus felt an arm come around his middle and pull him away from the window. “Cut it out,” George said.
“You can’t keep us here!” Marcus shouted, thrashing. “You can’t, you can’t, you can’t!”
“Stop it,” George said. He spun him around and held his shoulders hard. “Listen to me.”
“Why did the policemen go away?” Marcus screamed, still struggling. “Why didn’t they come inside?”
“Because we can’t let them,” George said.
“Because Raúl gave them money,” Isabel said.
Marcus hadn’t noticed Isabel, he’d been so focused on the scene outside. She stood by the window, in the white T-shirt and red shorts, her arms hanging at her sides and her hair stringy and long. She looked like a messenger of doom, like a girl in a horror movie poster that Marcus would have to look away from because it was too scary. But she was still so beautiful.
“I’m going to get you out of here, I promise,” George said. “You just have to trust me and stay out of Raúl’s way, okay?”
“I don’t trust you!” Marcus said.
“I don’t either,” Isabel said. “Raúl’s your brother.”
“Just give me a little more time,” George said. “Try to stay out of his way. And stay together, okay?”
They heard the door open downstairs, and George let Marcus go and stepped away from him. They heard Sancho’s toenails clicking on the wood, then Raúl’s booted heels climbing the stairs. He came into the room and held his arms out wide, grinning.
“Who wants to see Sancho do tricks?” he cried.
17.
LIV WAS HOARSE from pleading and crying, and her digestion was shot. Every time she ate something, it went right through her. Her body was on strike; it didn’t want to keep functioning. But she needed it to, if she was going to get her children back. She had tried meditating, in desperation. If she could just clear her mind, focus on her breathing, even for five minutes, she might feel less crazy. But it turned out there were limits to meditation, or else she was just doing it wrong. When she closed her eyes and tried to think of nothing but breathing, she saw Sebastian in a coma, or Penny in her swimsuit with a man’s hand around her arm.
She had thought it impossible that six kids could just disappear in a modern country, in the alleged Switzerland of Latin America. But now that she had seen the capital, with its heat and dust, the gaping holes in the streets and sidewalks, she had started to believe it could be true. A relentless, hot wind blew grit up from the streets. The press had found them in their new hotel in the capital and bayed at them when they left for
the embassy in the morning.
There wasn’t even a U.S. ambassador, and hadn’t been one for over a year, because the Senate wouldn’t approve the president’s nominee. Liv hadn’t known there was a backlog of nominees. Kenji Kirby, the young diplomat Benjamin and Raymond had met the day before, assured her he was there for them, for anything they needed. They were the first priority for the embassy.
Kenji also explained that there was still a kind of feudalism here. There were criminal families that controlled the activity in their own regions or neighborhoods. One of those families had probably killed the Colombian drug mule the police had found in the grave, and so knew something about the children.
“So we just need to know who Bolaños worked for,” Liv said.
“Those guys don’t keep records,” Kenji said.
“But presumably it’s whatever family controls that region,” Benjamin said. “Where the kids disappeared.”
Kenji said there were multiple possibilities not far from the site. “We’ve mobilized a team,” he said. “We’re short-staffed at Christmas, but I assure you we’re working on it.”
Liv leaned forward, over the desk. “I’m sorry about people’s vacations,” she said. “But this is the third day they’ve been missing. Every minute, something terrible might be happening to my children. Do you understand that? You understand how I can’t think about anything else?”
“I do,” he said.
“What about asking in the local towns? People must know something.”
Kenji shook his head, regret on his face. He was so young. She pictured him out in the clubs at night, dancing and sweating, kissing—boys? Probably boys. “It’s very hard to get people to talk,” he said.
“About children?” she said. “There must be someone with a conscience who would talk to the police. A woman. A mother.”