Jungle of Glass

by Gerald J. Davis

  I followed her to the back of the truck. What I saw put a new color in my paint box. She was right. I wouldn't be glad to ride in back. The truck was a flatbed with slat sides to hold the cargo in place. The flatbed was piled two or three high with skinned carcasses of cows. The cows were as stiff as boards and the legs stuck straight out. Flies and other assorted brightly-colored tropical insects swarmed around like so many halos. The buzzing of the insects sounded like an approaching squadron of Piper Cubs. The midday sun shone brightly on this unholy scene. And the stench was overpowering.

  I had to take a step back. "Lunch?" I said.

  She shook her head. "We're delivering this meat to a town about fifteen kilometers from here. You can see there's no room for you. Why don't you just wait for another ride?"

  I looked at her. "Why did he call you Sister Angela?"

  "Because that's my name."

  "Your name is Sister?"

  She put her hands on her hips. "I'm a nun."

  That surprised me. "You don't look like a nun. You look like a kid out on a joyride."

  Her eyes narrowed. "That's not a compliment. I'm a serious person, not a kid. My work is serious. I help people who are in need."

  "Then you can help me."

  "I told you there's no room."

  I smiled at her. Maybe that would work. "Aren't you a sister of mercy?"

  She raised an eyebrow. "That's not my order."

  She was as unyielding as a stone wall.

  "Then it looks like we've reached what is called a Mexican standoff."

  "What do you mean?"

  "You won't give me a ride and I won't let you pass."

  Her eyes narrowed further. "We could ride over you."

  I smiled at her again. That seemed to make her mad. "You could, but you won't."

  She pointed her finger at my chest. "You're a stubborn man."

  It was my turn to put my hands on my hips. "You're pretty stubborn yourself, Sister."

  For the first time she stared at me like she had a major problem on her hands. She didn't say anything for a few minutes. Then she started looking all around as if she was searching for a solution. Finally she said, "What do we do now?"

  "You can give me a lift or we can stand here all day."

  "It's as simple as that?"

  "The choice is yours," I said.

  She took a deep breath. She was obviously in a hurry. I, on the other hand, could stand here until hell froze over or, at the very least, until I had to relieve myself. "OK," she said finally. "You can ride in the cab. But only until we get you to some transportation."

  "Fair enough," I said. "Your chariot awaits."

  She gave me a dirty look.

  CHAPTER XIX

  Sister Angela didn't talk much. A nun of few words. She was squeezed between Ernesto and me on the bench seat. Every time we hit a rut in the road, we bumped against each other. The seat had springs sticking out of it and it wasn't much fun getting stabbed in the butt at irregular intervals.

  We drove for about twenty minutes without saying anything. I thought about the Food and Drug Administration and what they would have to say about our fetid cargo. Then I wondered if the meat was USDA Prime inspected. Finally, my thoughts turned to that warm beer and about how another warm one wouldn't be so bad when a red light started flickering on the dash. Ernesto hit the offending light with the back of his hand a couple of times, but that didn't seem to help, so he stopped the truck and climbed out. Sister Angela frowned. "What is it, Ernesto?" she said.

  Ernesto looked up from under the hood. "It is the water hose. It is broken. The engine is overheated."

  "What do we do?" she said.

  Ernesto came back to the cab. "I think it is best if I walk to the village. I will bring back a new hose and some water." Ernesto pointed at me. "Will you be safe here with this dog?"

  She waved her hand as if she didn't have a care. "Do not worry about me. I will be safe. But come back quickly."

  He inclined his head slightly. "Yes, Sister. I will drive back here with Diego in his truck."

  "Very well, Ernesto," she said. "May you travel well."

  Ernesto started down the road and disappeared from sight.

  I climbed down from the truck. "Care for a game of Parchesi?" I said.

  "You're very funny," she said. "But I'm not amused."

  "Do nuns have a sense of humor?" I asked her.

  She climbed down and stood facing me. "Do me a favor," she said. "Let's not have any of these nun generalizations."

  I shrugged. "OK, as long as you tell me why you don't believe in refrigeration."

  She rolled her eyes. "Because that's the way they do it here, all right? Now stop asking me questions."

  "Suit yourself," I said. "We don't have to talk. We can just stand here in the sun and contemplate the ways of the world."

  "Fine," she said and climbed back up into the cab.

  I stood by the side of the road for a couple of minutes. Then I started to walk to the back of the truck. I could see her eyes following me in the rear view mirror. We were stopped next to a stand of tall palm trees. I walked over to the palm trees and looked up at the coconuts silhouetted against the sunlight and wondered if you could drink the milk.

  As I headed back to the front of the truck, I saw something glint for a second under the carcasses. Shiny cows, were they? Not bloody likely. There was a tarpaulin under the carcasses. I reached over and grabbed the metal rings and lifted one edge. The stink was enough to knock me back on my heels.

  It wasn't an arsenal, but it came pretty damn close. There was a real smorgasbord of firearms from Uzis to AK47s to MAC 10s to M-16s. I went to the other side of the truck and lifted the tarp there. Some of the pieces looked new and others looked pretty beat up. Some of the pieces were wrapped in waterproof covering, some were slathered with grease and some were left exposed.

  I was still inspecting our cargo when Sister Angela walked up slowly behind me. She looked scared. The color had drained out of her face.

  "Planning to shoot some more cows?" I said.

  She shook her head but didn't say anything. She knew the consequences. Nuns had been raped and killed for less.

  She looked up at me. Her eyes weren't half as defiant as they were before.

  "What are you going to do?" she said in a soft voice. She sounded like a little girl who'd been caught with her hand in the cookie jar. But before I started to feel too sorry for her I thought about the people who'd buy the farm because of these weapons. Maybe most of them wouldn't be lily white and innocent of any crimes, but some of them would be, given the nature of fratricidal war.

  "That was exactly the question I was going to ask you, sister." She knew I was addressing her with a lower-case "s." Her gaze went down to the ground.

  "We were going to deliver this to the people of the village," she said.

  I shook my head. "The people of the village don't use weapons like this."

  "You're right," she said. "This is for the brothers and the husbands and the sons of the people in the village."

  "You're out of your mind to get mixed up in this," I told her. "You're an American. This is a local matter. You should be tending to people's souls."

  The spark returned to her eyes. "Not as long as they're suffering. My work is to make sure the people triumph."

  So young and idealistic. "You're on the losing end, Angela. You're going up against unlimited resources in a battle that's already over."

  She shook her head. "It won't be over until there's justice for the people."

  "There's not going to be justice for the people for another hundred years, if ever," I said. "Give it up. You're not going to get out of this with all your organs in the proper place. These boys play hardball with cleats. You don't know the kind of bastards you're dealing with."

  She stuck out her jaw. "That's my business," she said. "I know what I have to do."

  Obviously the Dutch Uncle lecture wasn't having much effect. She was
one tough little number.

  She squinted up at me. "You didn't answer my question," she said.

  "What question?"

  "What are you going to do?"

  I gave her a noncommittal shrug. "I'm not going to turn you in. This isn't my fight. I frankly couldn't give a damn what you do. I have one job here and it doesn't have anything to do with you."

  She let out a long slow sigh.

  I studied her very closely. "On second thought, maybe it does."

  She caught her breath. Her mouth opened. "What..."

  "I want a favor from you. I'm here to find a man who was kidnapped. A man by the name of Jaime Roderick. Do you know the name?"

  The slightest glimmer passed across her face. "I've heard what happened. It served him right."

  "We're not here to make political judgments, remember?" I looked into her eyes. "My job is to get Roderick back alive."

  She studied me with disbelief. "What are you anyway?"

  "I'm a private detective."

  "You mean like Sherlock Holmes."

  "That's right. He was my father."

  For the first time, she cracked a small smile. "I've never met a detective before. Aren't you supposed to talk out of the side of your mouth."

  "Yeah, well, I did, but then I had corrective surgery.”

  Her smile broadened slightly. "What's your name?" she said.

  "Rogan."

  "Mister Rogan," she said. "What kind of favor do you want from me?"

  "I want you to ask around your old boy network of pinkos and find me a guy with the nom de guerre of El Ciego."

  "That's not a nom de guerre," she blurted out. "He is blind." She was worse than a feather merchant when it came to keeping information to herself. You could see she'd come apart like a cheap suit under torture.

  "I know that. I was told he has information on Roderick's whereabouts."

  The truck gave off some puffs of smoke and a cough that sounded like a death rattle. Then it gave off a hiss and was silent.

  She eyed me skeptically. "I don't believe that," she said. "The Left doesn't take foreigners for money. It's your friends in the military that you should investigate."

  "You're naive, sister. I'll bet you a Glock against your Habit that the guerrillas have Roderick."

  "What's a Glock?" she said.

  "Never mind," I said. "Give me your carnet."

  She didn't protest. She reached into her front pants pocket and took out a small cloth bag with a drawstring. The cloth was that woven Guatemalan fabric with the little birds on it. She stuck her thumb and forefinger into the bag and handed me her identity card. The photo showed a shiny-faced girl under flat lighting. Her hair was longer and her skin was whiter. The mouth was a grim line. You couldn't tell if she was frightened or determined. The name read Angela Paolella. Her occupation was, in fact, Nun. She was twenty-one. She'd be twenty-two in another month. She was five-one and weighed a hundred and five pounds. A little slip of a girl, she was. Ready to take on all the injustice in this miserable world.

  "Take my card," I said. I pulled out my wallet and wrote "Camino Real" and my room number on the back of my business card. "If I'm not there, get in touch with a man named Broadbent at the American embassy. He'll know where I am. Don't forget to call me."

  "I won't," she said. Her look was indecipherable. "How could I?"

  "Don't kid me, kid,” I said. "I know who you are, where you are, and what you are."

  CHAPTER XX

  It was almost seven p.m. when I got to the Camino Real. It had taken me the better part of the day to make my way back to San Salvador. There was no news on Luis. I was worried about him. The sad truth was I didn't know if he had a family or where he lived. It made me feel rotten that I hadn't even asked him. Insensitive, was what the feminists would have called it.

  There were four messages. One was from Broadbent, one was from Marta and two were in answer to the ad in La Prensa, looking for the reward.

  I called Broadbent first. He was in his office at the Embassy. "Have you had dinner?" he asked.

  I grunted. I hadn't eaten anything since the bacon and eggs at breakfast and I'd forgotten I was even hungry.

  "Stay put," he said. "I'll swing by and pick you up. I have some interesting news for you."

  "What about?"

  "About that cunt who tried to wax you."

  "Who is she?" I asked.

  He chuckled. "Got your attention, didn't I?"

  "Who is she?"

  "Sit tight. I'll be there in fifteen minutes."

  ***

  Broadbent was true to his word. He showed up fifteen minutes later. That gave me time to wash up, comb my hair and change. I discarded my jacket because I didn't have a gun to cover up any more. So I put on a white Lacoste shirt and a pair of cotton khaki slacks. At least that way I looked more like a tourist.

  "You look like shit," he said.

  "Thanks," I said. "I feel a lot better."

  We went into the hotel dining room and ordered a couple of beers. I asked for Heineken, because the meal was on the CIA's tab. I figured that, since it was used to buying six hundred dollar toilet seats, my government wouldn't mind springing for a premium imported beer.

  "Who's the woman?" I asked.

  He ran his hand over his shaved head. "You're never going to believe this one." He took a long slug of beer. "Remember that American reporter who got killed?"

  "McInerny?" I said.

  "That's the ticket. This babe is his wife. For some strange reason, she took it into her head that you killed her husband and she is hell-bent for revenge."

  "Oh, Christ," I said. "Do I need this?" I took a swallow of beer. It was cold. Cold beer tastes much better than warm beer, especially when you drink it in an air-conditioned hotel dining room.

  "The worst part of it is we don't know where the hell she is."

  "What are you telling me?"

  He finished his beer with a swallow and ordered another one. "On her immigration form she said she was staying at the Hotel El Salvador. But she never checked in there."

  "You're the Man. Now you're saying you can't find her with all your contacts."

  Broadbent frowned. "She's not staying at any of the hotels. She must be hiding out at a pension or a private house. We have to check out a lot of places. That's going to take time."

  "And meanwhile, what am I supposed to do? Sleep with my eyes open?" I finished the Heineken and asked for another. "Will no one rid me of this meddlesome woman?"

  He grunted. "I know how you feel. We're doing all we can as fast as we can. The police are looking for her and our boys are looking for her. But we have to keep a low profile. We can't make too much noise."

  "That does a lot to put my mind at ease," I said. "Now I don't need a weapon."

  He looked at my shirt. "So I noticed," he said. But he didn’t ask me what happened to my gun. Instead he picked up the menu and started to inspect it. "You make any progress on Roderick?"

  "Not much," I said.

  He let it drop. "What do you want to eat?" he asked.

  "Anything but beef," I said.

  CHAPTER XXI

  It was noon the next day when I pulled up at Marta's front gate. Broadbent had asked Lightener to put a car and driver at my disposal since Luis still hadn't shown up. Broadbent promised he'd do whatever he could to locate Luis or his family. I felt I owed Luis that much.

  Lightener's car was a big improvement over Luis's ancient Toyota. It was a late-model black bulletproof Mercedes with a suspension system that was specially designed not to ram my head into the roof of the car with every bump. Plus it was air-conditioned.

  The same little maid in starched whites swung open the massive front door. She showed me down that long corridor past the tropical plants in the glassed-in atrium and seated me in the pit in the large living room. She brought me a Bloody Mary without being asked and then disappeared.

  I looked around. The sun was bright through the large picture windows.
You'd think you would see motes of dust in the shafts of light, but the place was immaculate.

  The phone call with Marta the night before had been short.

  "Mister Rogan, I would like to see you," she had said. "It could be a matter of some interest to you, as well. Please come at noon tomorrow."

  I sat on the sofa and drank the Bloody Mary and wondered how a leftist girl like Marta could live in the middle of all this luxury and not see the dissonance. Did she really give a damn for the poor or was she just a Nieman-Marxist? Someone like Sister Angela put her neck on the line with her actions. Marta could recite the Marxist rhetoric but how far did her commitment go? Did she ever take any active steps to help the Marxist cause? Any steps that could have gotten her father kidnapped?

  A door opened somewhere down the corridor. Marta walked into the room and came up to me. I stood up. She was wearing a white halter top with a bare midsection and a long white skirt. The whiteness of the fabric on her skin made her look even more tanned.

  "I am glad you came," she said. She gave me her hand. Her skin was cool. "Perhaps you wonder why you are here."

  "Yeah, I wonder why, now that you ask."

  She reached down and found my fly and unzipped it. With a smooth motion, she slipped her hand onto my loblolly and started to rub it up and down, up and down, up and down.

  Her meaning was unmistakable.

  "I have a hard and fast rule against having sex with a client," I said.

  She smiled at me. Her eyes were half closed. "How hard is it?" she said. "Your rule, I mean."

  "Pretty hard," I said.

  Some ethnic group has an expression that says: When the prick stands, the mind stops. At that moment, I didn't remember exactly which ethnic group it was. And frankly, I didn't care much.

  "Come to my room," she said.

  I followed her along another corridor that ran parallel to the one I'd walked down. She opened a side door and we were in a room with stuffed animals on a large white bed.

  Then she kissed me and we were off to the races.

  The sex act itself didn't last long. There wasn't much passion. It was sort of like two professional athletes who knew the moves and the form and the allotted time. The rules were fairly standardized, even though one player was from the States and the other followed the European style. The match was well-balanced. We kept pace with each other pretty well.