He stuck out his hand. "Gene McInerny. Or Eugene O'Neill McInerny, if you want the whole moniker." His voice had a real lilt to it, like he was happy to be living. He wore wire-rimmed aviator glasses and a purple Ralph Lauren Polo shirt.
I shook his hand. "Ed Rogan."
"I'm a freelancer."
I grinned at him. "Isn't everybody?"
He laughed. His voice was deep, but when he laughed, it became high pitched. "No, I mean I'm a freelance reporter — a stringer. I write for the Times, the New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, and any other pinko rag that would actually be willing to pay me for my worthless verbiage.”
"Ever try the National Review?"
He shook his head. "Naw, I tried it once but I couldn't bring myself to do it. It's not my slant. I've been in and out of Salvador for ten years, mostly writing about the civil war. Now that it's over I've been bored out of my mind, so I've taken to drinking myself into a stupor every night."
"Sounds like an honorable pastime," I said.
"That's why I was so pleased when you showed up."
"You don't say."
"You're here to investigate the kidnapping, right?"
"What makes you say that?"
His eyes gleamed like he'd just found a dime bag of Panama Red. "Listen, man. This burg's been dead for months. Dullsville, you get my drift. All of a sudden, praise the Lord, we get this super story — an international snatch. And then the rumors are flying around that a hot shot private investigator is on his way and then you show up looking like old Philip Marlowe in the flesh.”
"What makes you thing it's international?" I asked him.
He squinted at me. "You Jewish?"
I grunted. "Why do you say that?"
"Why do you keep answering a question with another fucking question?"
"Hell, you just did it too," I said.
He spread his hands in the air. "I give up. Ream me with somebody else's member. You got me. Status quo ante bellum, OK?"
I shrugged. "OK. What's your angle?"
“It's like this," he said. "You investigate the case. I profile you for the mass media. I make you into a superstar. Your business grows exponentially. You get rich. You get to bang any broad you want. They come swarming around you like bees to honey."
"It's flies to honey," I said.
"I'm not too good on metaphors. My long suit is insightful reporting." He looked at me. "Well, what do you say?"
"What's in it for you?"
He hesitated for a moment. "I get a story with a different angle. The kidnapping is just a story. Everyone's writing about it the same way. You're the twist that differentiates the story. Lochinvar from out of the West, you know. The hero who saves the day.”
The waiter came over to the table and stood next to me.
"Beer?" I asked McInerny.
He shook his head slowly. "Flor de Cana for me," he said.
"How can you drink that swill?"
His grin widened. "It's better than absinthe. It rots the brain twice as fast."
"You one of those self-destructive reporter stereotypes?"
"I commend you on your acuity," he said.
I ordered a Suprema for myself and a Flor de Cana for McInerny. The waiter gave me a slight bow, a curt "Si, Senor" and backed away from us.
"Listen, Mac," I said. "I want information. You give me information, I'll give you a story. Quid pro quo."
His smile became diabolical. "A gentleman of great judgment and wisdom. I think this is the start of a beautiful friendship."
"He's literary, too," I said.
"Screenplays are not literary."
"Have it your way," I shrugged. "Tell me what you know about the kidnapping."
The waiter came back with our drinks and placed them very carefully on little coasters on the table, as if he was handling some plutonium cocktail. I took a swig of beer. McInerny tossed back his head and gulped the foul liquid without a grimace.
"It happened at high noon on the doble via — the Avenida Franklin Delano Roosevelt, for you gringos," he said. "It never should have happened."
"What do you mean?"
He took another gulp of his drink. This time he did grimace. "Roderick was riding in a Range Rover that had more armor-plating than a fucking Abrams tank. One car with the kidnappers was in front of him — one car with kidnappers was behind him. They boxed him in. But there was no way they could've gotten to him. He could've just sat there till the Fiesta de Agosto."
The waiter reappeared silently and asked very softly and politely if we wished to order. I hadn't even opened the menu. But I was hungry.
"Give me a steak," I said. "Medium rare."
McInerny shook his head. "Bad choice," he said to me. To the waiter he said, "Give my friend the fish."
"I don't like fish," I said.
"All the more reason. The steaks come from malnourished cows that look like they're about to drop dead."
"What else do they have?"
"The shrimp is good. Real tasty and as big as your loblolly.”
"Then they must be big shrimp," I said. I took another slug of beer. "OK, I'll buy that."
"Dos camarones del rio," McInerny said to the waiter. "And another round of drinks."
He turned back to me. "You want to know how they grabbed him? The driver's the key. Either he panicked or he was in on it."
"Why?"
His eyes narrowed. "The driver opened the goddam door and got out. That's how the kidnappers got in and grabbed our Mr. Roderick. El Gordo."
"He was fat?"
He shook his head. "Nah. It's an idiom. Don't take it so literally. It means the jackpot, the prize."
I nodded. "The police question the driver?"
McInerny snorted. "Listen, Rogan. Everybody's got an agenda here. The police want to pin it on the left, the left want to pin it on the military, the military want to pin it on the politicians, the politicians want to pin it on the criminals."
"So, who did it?"
He spread his hands palms up. "As they say here — a saber." He looked at me for a long time. "You remember what Churchill said about Russia?"
"Yeah," I nodded. "A riddle wrapped in an enigma surrounded by a mystery."
"It's like that here," he said. "Only worse. When you think you know what it is — it's not it."
CHAPTER IV
It was early in the morning but the day was already stifling. The shirt was sticking to my back so I decided to forget the suit jacket. I opened the collar button and loosened my tie.
I stood in front of the Camino Real waiting for Luis.
I had told him to pick me up at a quarter to nine. He showed up at nine thirty-five. Not bad for Tropical Standard Time.
The embassy was a five minute drive from the hotel. In front of the multi-tiered fortress-like building was a redondel with some half-dead flowers in the middle and vendors selling vegetables and pupusas around the perimeter. There was a tall fence of iron bars around the compound and the three-story white building in the middle but it wasn't nearly enough to protect the people inside against fifty-caliber machine gun rounds or a shoulder-launched rocket. And there were signs of a halfhearted attempt to cover the battle scars on the facade of the building.
In front of the embassy was a line of locals that snaked all the way around the block like they were giving away fifty-dollar bills.
The Marine guard at the entrance wouldn't let Luis park there to wait for me. Part of the painfully-learned lessons of one too many car bombs and the ghosts of the people who died in the embassy bombings and the Khobar Towers.
I told Luis to come back for me in an hour. As I passed the Marine, I snapped off a salute out of force of habit. There was a Salvadoran girl behind the reception desk in the large spare lobby. She was wearing a flowered dress and she had a small pink flower in her hair. She wrote out a pass, gave me a sweet smile and pointed to the elevator that would take me to Broadbent's office on the second floor.
I took the stairs instea
d. He was waiting for me outside his office with the same ear-to-ear grin I'd left him with in Chile years ago.
"Hello, Rogan," he said, as he gave me an abrazo. "How's your hammer hangin'?"
"Same as always, Jim. Only a little lower."
I stepped back to take a look at him. He'd aged a lot. Some people age rapidly, like they're burning up all their reserves. Some people don't age at all. What little hair he had was practically gone. So he shaved the rest.
I knew his age. He was only fifty.
He was large and heavy, with a bullet head, a square jaw and that loopy grin. His nose was slightly askew, and he walked with the movements of the boxer he was in his youth at Dartmouth.
He was ostensibly Commercial Attache here just like he was in Chile. Sure, it was a demotion, and I knew why. You can't go around banging the Ambassador's wife with impunity.
The woman in question, a charming hostess and an asset to any diplomat's career, had never had an orgasm before she met Broadbent. When he was busted for lascivious carriage and the Ambassador called in his markers to have Broadbent transferred to Paraguay, the Ambassador's wife, crazed by lust, demanded that they move to Paraguay, Paraguay for chrissake, but saner heads prevailed. The gray-haired men convinced her that her husband's career was more important than her orgasms. So much for the ways of the world.
Broadbent led me into his office and pulled up a chair for me. "Sit down, big guy," he said.
I sat down, leaned back and crossed my legs. "Whatever happened to Madame Ambassador?"
He moved his big frame behind his desk, sat down and waved his hand in a grand gesture. "She entered the pantheon of all-time outstanding lays."
Broadbent was known as a swordsman and the odds were good that he was still actively dueling. Parry and thrust, parry and thrust.
"Why did you send Mrs. Roderick to me?" I asked.
He put the palms of his hands on his face and rubbed his eyes, then slid his hands over his bald pate. "I figured you were as good as anybody in New York. Maybe better. Want to know how this is going to play out?"
"Sure."
"The family pays the ransom. Roderick is released. The whole thing is over in ten days."
"The family have any trouble raising the cash?"
He shook his head. "Hell, no. It's cigarette money for them."
"What is Atlacatl?"
His eyebrows went up. "What?"
I repeated. "What is Atlacatl?"
"What the hell does that have to do with anything?"
"What does it mean?"
"It's the name of the Army's elite combat unit. But I don't see..."
"Tell me about Roderick," I said.
Broadbent got up and went over to the window. He pulled back a drape and looked out at the sun-washed street. A shaft of sunlight fell across the top of his desk, illuminating his In box like the beam of a spotlight.
"He's a remarkable man. An institution, really. And impressive to look at, too. A big man, raw bones, and a full head of red hair. The guy really stands out in this country where everyone's five-five and dark hair. And a royal son of a bitch, to boot. A lot of enemies over the years. His father came over from Ireland on a freighter that docked off the port of La Libertad. One night, his father got drunk and jumped ship because of some real or imagined slight. I disremember why. Roderick must have told me the story half a dozen times at cocktail parties, but I was too sloshed to remember now."
He went over to his desk, opened the top drawer and dropped a manila folder on my lap.
"I made up a file for you. It's all in there. Anyway, his father sent back to Ireland, to the old county, for a bride, like they did in those days. Roderick was born in El Salvador. Grew up here. Took over his father's finca — coffee farm to you — started other businesses, stores, factories, et cetera. Anyway, he became one of the richest men in the country. And he became the Honorary Consul of Ireland about ten years ago."
"That why he was grabbed?" I asked. “Does this have anything to do with the Provisional IRA or the Ulster Defense League?”
"I don't know...we don't know," he said, with a sigh.
“Is he Protestant or Catholic?”
“Never thought about it.” He scratched his head. “Catholic, I guess.”
"What do you think?" I asked him.
"You singular or you plural?"
I grinned at him. Ostensibly he was the Commercial Attache. But in Chile he was the CIA Station Chief and we worked together on a couple of hard cases when I was in security for ITT during that time when it was just a little more nasty than your friendly local telephone company. Reach out and destabilize someone. He was probably Station Chief here also.
"That's a shortcoming of the English language," I said. "We'll have to get the political correctness experts to come up with a plural You that isn't sexist."
He looked at me like I had two noses. When you're overseas for any length of time, you miss out on all the fun nuances of stateside life. "Both," I said. "Singular you and plural you."
He gave me a shrug. "Personally, I think the Left did it. Plural, we have no opinion."
"But you're looking into it?"
"Nope," he said. "None of our business. Doesn't affect our national interest one way or the other."
"Then how did I get into this?"
He rubbed his face again. "Personal matter. I felt sorry for Mrs. Roderick. I wanted to help her."
"You think it's political?"
"There's less of it now since the civil war wound down. But this is the kind of thing that used to happen all the time. Maybe old habits die hard."
Broadbent leaned forward and stared at me, as if he wanted to say something. Finally, he said, "There's one more thing. Roderick has a heart condition. He takes medication for it. You better find him and get him back to his family before the medication runs out."
CHAPTER V
At one o’clock that afternoon Luis drove me to a dusty part of town called Mejicanos. To call it a lower middle-class neighborhood would have been kind. Cobblestone streets gave way to dirt roads. The little Toyota humped along like a real trooper, but it was tough on the kidneys.
The fronts of the houses were crumbling and in need of serious repair. It was even hotter here than the other part of San Salvador where the hotel was, if that was possible. Hot and dusty. No wonder the beer monopoly was a gold mine.
We kept bouncing over rutted streets until Luis pulled up onto the sidewalk in front of a house with a small rusted Coca-Cola sign next to the front door. There was a Policia Nacional car parked on the corner half a block away. Two cops were sitting in the car. The cop in the passenger seat turned around, took a look at us, then turned back again.
Luis got out of the car, walked around it and opened the door for me.
"Luis," I said. "You do not have to do that. I am not an old lady."
"Si, Senor. It is only a gesture of courtesy."
"It is not necessary."
"Si, Senor. At your orders."
We stood on the cracked sidewalk in the midday heat and Luis pointed at a house across the street. "That is the house of my wife's cousin."
I nodded at him. "I see. Very well then, let us talk to the driver."
Luis knocked on the door. It was made of heavy wood and painted a pastel green. There was a shuffling sound inside and a middle-aged woman wearing an apron opened the door slowly. She looked at us without expression as Luis explained to her that I was a visitor from the United States on an important mission and that I wished to speak to Senor Alvarenga.
The woman nodded and said in a matter-of-fact way, "Imagine, Sir, it is like this. The Policia Nacional have been here and the Army have been here. They asked my husband many questions, which he answered completely and truthfully. Then yesterday he told me he was going to the store to buy cigarettes. But he never returned to the house. I waited all day and all night, but he never returned. I have much fear for his safety." She folded her fleshy arms over the apron to emphasize
her words.
"Was this unusual behavior for your husband?" I asked her.
She studied me for a long time. There was no fear in her eyes, only a kind of resignation. "Yes," she said finally. "My husband is a good man. He slept at home every night. I have much fear." She was one of those stolid women I had seen so often in Latin America, decent, hard-working, uncomplaining.
"You think something bad happened to your husband?" I said.
She nodded impassively.
"You think someone took him?"
"Si, Senor," she said.
"Who do you think took him?"
Her large brown eyes closed slightly. "A saber? Who knows?"
"How long did your husband work for Sr. Roderick?"
"My husband was the chauffeur of Don Jaime for seventeen years." She drew a deep breath and stuck out her chin. "My husband never missed one day of work in seventeen years."
"Very commendable, Senora. But tell me what happened the day of the kidnapping."
We were still standing in the doorway of the house. The woman kept looking behind us into the street as if she couldn't make up her mind whether to ask us in or not.
"It was like any other day, Senor. My husband got up at the usual time, five o'clock. I got up and made breakfast for him, as always. He left for work at six, as always."
"How did he get to work?"
For the first time, she showed a sign of discomfort. She blinked. Then she blinked again.
"Our car was in the garage for repairs. So Don Jaime let my husband drive the Rover home." She pronounced it Rober, like Robert in French. "That was the auto he drove to work that day."
"What kind of car do you have?" I asked.
"We have a Morris." She pronounced it Maurice.
"And your car is back home now?"
"Si, Senor. It is fixed and we have it at home."
I nodded and signaled to Luis that it was time to go. "Many thanks, Senora Alvarenga," I said. "I hope your husband returns home soon in good health."
She showed no emotion. "Thank you, Senor. I pray to God this comes to pass."
Luis and I left and headed back to the car. "One moment," I said to Luis. "Is your wife's cousin home?"
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