Guardian of Lies

by Steve Martini

  He edged toward the top of the stairs and peeked over. He could see all the way to the end of the hall. The long corridor was clear, no one was there. Quickly he ascended to the top of the landing, then moved silently toward what he knew from the floor plan was the old man’s study. This was the nerve center of the house, the place of business. He assumed it was where the voices he’d heard earlier had come from. The lights were still on inside the study. Unless they left the lights on all night, and he had never seen this before, they had not gone to bed.

  He approached the study door nearest the stairs. At a distance, perhaps ten feet, he silently darted across the opening. As he did this he gained a quick visual scan inside the study. There was no one at the desk at the far end. Of that he was certain. It was only a fleeting glimpse, but he saw neither the old man nor the woman. If the angel of death was with him, the two would now be in different rooms and he would be able to take them separately and in virtual silence. He made his way to the study door and stole a quick glance inside. The room appeared to be empty, at least from this angle. There were portions of the study’s interior he could not see.

  He scanned the catwalk above, the part he could see from the open doorway. Again, there was no one there. He ventured down the hall toward the other study door, the one closer to the bedrooms farther down the corridor. From here he could see the rest of the study and the remaining section of catwalk on the study’s second level.

  Katia had long since opted to use the bath near one of the guest rooms down the hall as her private sanctuary for preparation before sleep. So Emerson wasn’t surprised when he stepped from the shower and found himself alone in the master bath. He toweled himself dry and put on his robe, then stood in front of the mirror over the vanity while he ran a comb through his still damp hair. He couldn’t believe how tired he was this evening; the guests for dinner, the tension of dealing with Katia, and the heavy meal, none of which he was used to, had taken their toll.

  He examined his face and an ingrown hair in his beard, then turned off the light and headed for the bedroom.

  He was half-expecting to see Katia already curled up under the covers. So when he didn’t, it took a second before the image that confronted him registered. She was taking longer than usual to get ready. The room didn’t look any different than it had ten minutes earlier, except for his pants at the bottom of the bed.

  Emerson turned and opened the top dresser drawer. He pulled out a pair of boxer shorts while glancing in the mirror over the dresser.

  His pants were still there on the end of the bed but were now crumpled in a heap. None of this alarmed him. He seemed groggy until he saw the other item in the mirror, his empty wallet lying open on the bed next to the pants. It was like a shot of adrenaline. Instantly he was awake.

  SIX

  Once in the garage, Katia quietly opened the driver’s side door of Emerson’s big Suburban. She had to stand on the running board to reach the visor over the steering wheel so that she could pull one of the remote controls from where it was clipped. It was the control for the gate out in front. She had seen Emerson use it many times, coming and going.

  Suddenly she heard creaking footsteps on the floor overhead. Emerson was in the master bedroom. She reached up and grabbed the remote from the visor. She glanced quickly at the other remote. She didn’t dare use it. If she opened the overhead garage door, Emerson would hear it upstairs. She climbed down from the running board. Katia left the driver’s side door open to avoid the noise of closing it.

  She exited the garage by the side door. Suddenly she was out in the crisp night air, running as fast as her legs could carry her. There was a vapor of low fog over the ground. Now for the first time fear gripped her. In less than a minute, Katia was beyond the gate and out on the street, closing the mechanical barricade behind her, praying that this would not be heard back down the driveway in the big house.

  She ran headlong up the street and tossed the remote into the brush in a deep ravine off to the side of the road. She ran, not down the hill toward the lights of Del Mar, but up the hill, in the other direction, into the darkness. Katia was scared, driven by fear, but her mind was clear. She knew exactly what she was doing.

  When Emerson came out of the shower and saw the note in the study, he would get into his car immediately and start looking for her. The missing remote would only slow him down for a few seconds, just long enough for him to punch in the code on the keypad at the gate.

  What she was counting on was that he would then turn in the wrong direction, to the right, toward Del Mar and the old coast highway, the obvious avenue of escape.

  By then Katia would be standing in front of one of the other houses up the hill, using that address to call a taxi on Emerson’s cell phone. Before he could sort it out, she would be in San Diego, and he would be looking in all the wrong places, trying to find her.

  It registered immediately. Emerson didn’t have to pick up the wallet and look. He knew. The way it lay limp, pitched up like a collapsed tent; the cash that had fattened his wallet that afternoon was gone.

  He didn’t bother to put on his slippers. Instead he ran barefoot out of the room, down the hall toward the study.

  “Katia! Katia!” There was an ugly, angry edge to his voice. There was nothing paternal in it. Emerson was mad, mostly at himself for being so stupid. He should have locked her up, and now he knew it. He slammed through the door into the guest room next to the master bedroom. This was the place Katia used to get ready at night, but the lights were out, the room was empty.

  He rocketed back out into the hallway. He raced down the corridor toward the study and the stairs in the direction of the front door. He called out her name, glanced into the study as he ran by the first door. He didn’t see her, but something else, out of the corner of one eye, a shadow moving quickly toward the other door, near the head of the stairs. Instantly it dawned on him. Katia would need more than the cash in his wallet to get back to Costa Rica.

  In less than two strides, he slowed to a walk and then came to an abrupt stop, planting himself between the stairwell and the study. The confident, thin smile spread across Emerson’s face. He took a deep breath, regained some composure, drew the bathrobe around himself, retying it with the belt, and walked calmly into the study. “Where’s the money from my wallet?”

  The last syllable had barely rattled from his larynx as the mind-numbing agony fired the cells of Emerson’s brain. The needle-sharp point of the chef’s knife penetrated half of its length, into Emerson’s left kidney. With a quick twist the blade sliced the organ open, paralyzing him in a paroxysm of pain. An arm came around at the level of his throat, too tall for Katia. But by then his brain was filled with other things.

  The shock enflamed every nerve in his body. The involuntary contraction of his own muscles arched his back as he heard the sound of his own snapped vertebrae. More excruciating than any pain the human brain could imagine, it made it impossible for Emerson Pike to suck in a thimbleful of air, enough to emit even a single sound. It seemed to last forever. He stood suspended in that place where the tortured mind pleads for death. Relief from the agony came only as the darkening empty void of death rolled over and enveloped him.

  SEVEN

  Sometimes it’s how you back into things in life that is most unsettling. It was how I met her, over the bananas in the produce section of a small market on the main drag up in Del Mar, not far from the racetrack. It was a Saturday morning and I was headed to the races to hook up with some friends. A cup of coffee in one hand and a bag with a muffin trapped under my arm, I was busy trying to separate a single banana from three others when she caught me in the act.

  “Could you help me, seńor? Por favor?” She stood there looking at me, maybe five foot six in heels, shimmering dark hair past her shoulders, dimples, and a smile that could start a war.

  “Ahhh…” She looked down for a moment, collecting her thoughts, translating in her head. “Do you know umm…do they have plant
ains? You know plantains?”

  I must have given her a kind of dull look. It wasn’t because I didn’t understand the question.

  “Plantains.” The way she emphasized the word with the fingers of each hand at the corners of her mouth, full lips, a dark-eyed beauty, visions of Catherine Zeta-Jones descending from the big screen to haggle with me over bunches of bananas. She could read the stupidity of it all in my face, and she laughed.

  “Ahh. I don’t know.”

  I wasn’t sure if I had a clue as to what a plantain was, but if I could have invented one in that moment I would have done it.

  She had that shiny, well-scrubbed look, the girl you dreamed about when you were twenty, the one you didn’t even try and date because you knew it was all a vaporous wet dream. The only place you could truly hold her was in your delusions. She would vanish the moment you touched her, tapped to go to Hollywood or hustled off on a modeling contract somewhere. Why bother to break your own heart?

  She picked up one of the bananas and held it up. “Similar but larger.” She spread her hands about eighteen inches apart.

  “Habla espańol?”

  “Un poco. Only enough to get in trouble,” I told her.

  She laughed. There was something magical in it. I sensed by the way she smiled and instantly sized me up that it was not the first time she had seen this kind of confusion from men. It was in the air, surrounding her, atoms of volatile ether. It should have been a warning. To her, it was nothing unique, just part of nature, another fly in the trap.

  “I need plantains to practice some recipes for a dinner party in two weeks. I am cooking for friends,” she said.

  “Am I invited?”

  She looked at me, a kind of twinkle in her eyes. “Nooo. Well, maybe. But only if you can help me find plantains.”

  We talked about what she was cooking.

  She called it a typical Costa Rican dinner. She asked me if I understood, but I didn’t.

  “You know, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen any of those—plantains—here in such a small market. You might find them in one of the larger grocery stores in San Diego.”

  “Oh, no, es too far.” Her face fell but only for an instant, a momentary and put-on pout, until her facile mind seized on another thought. She sniffed a little toward the large paper cup in my hand. “Café? Umm, smells good. What is your name?”

  “Paul. Paul Madriani.”

  “Ah, very nice name. Madriani.” The d and the r tripped off her Latin tongue with a musical quality I had not heard in a while. “Italiano, no?”

  “Sí. And this Italian is about to have breakfast.” I held up the banana and grabbed the bag from under my arm. “Would you like to join me?”

  She looked over her shoulder, toward the door. “My friend is doing business at an office down the street. He will be a while. And your coffee smells very good. I suppose it would be okay.”

  “If you’re sure he won’t mind.” Looking at her, I was suddenly getting visions of a jealous guy holding a loaded pistol to my face.

  “Who cares?” She gave me a kind of indifferent smile and grabbed a banana.

  Breakfast it was. She picked out a muffin and we headed for the checkout. Outside at the kiosk, I bought her coffee and we planted ourselves at one of the umbrella-shaded tables.

  “You know es difficult to find good coffee here. My friend. Sometimes I think he is loco. He has only instant coffee in his house. Es poison.” The seriousness with which she said this made me laugh.

  “Es true. I tell him. No good. He has casa grande, a big house, and a cook. Mexican.” She glanced over and rolled her eyes a little. “And instant coffee. I tol him it’s going to make me sick. I ask the cook about plantains. She looked at me like I’m crazy. She says ‘bananas on steroids.’ She will not cook them. Doesn’t know how, she says. Very stubborn woman. I doan think she likes me.”

  I gave her the name of two or three larger grocery stores in the area and told her she might not have to go all the way to San Diego to find them. She didn’t have anything to write on.

  I found one of my business cards in my wallet.

  Then she couldn’t find a pen in her purse.

  I reached into the inside pocket of my sports coat and pulled out a pen. I handed it to her and she wrote the names of the markets in tiny script on the back of the card.

  “So you’re not from Mexico?” I’m making small talk. The answer is obvious if she’s making a typical Costa Rican meal.

  “Oh, no. Costa Rica. San José. Before that, Puriscal. In the mountains. Have you ever been to Costa Rica?” She took her eyes off her writing for a second to look at me.

  “No, but I’ve heard good things. It’s supposed to be very beautiful.”

  “Oh, sí. Es beautiful. I love my country,” she said. “I cannot wait to go back.”

  “How long are you here?”

  “I don’t know. I thought thirty days. But now it looks like it’s going to be longer.”

  She finished writing, picked the business card up, and turned it over. “What is this Madriani and Heens?”

  “Hinds. Madriani and Hinds is a law firm.”

  “You?” she said.

  “I’m Paul Madriani,” I told her.

  “You’re abogado?”

  “If abogado is a lawyer the answer is yes. I’m one of the partners.”

  “I am impressed. Very good.” She looked at the card and thanked me for it. “Ah, and I see your name is on the pen as well.”

  “We have the pens printed with the firm name and address for clients.”

  “Very nice. You don’t mind if I keep it?”

  “Of course not.”

  She clicked the point of the pen closed, dropped it in her purse and continued to look at the business card as she felt the embossed letters with the tip of her finger.

  We talked for a while. She told me about her friend and his business selling rare coins, that he often took her shopping. While she enjoyed this, she was getting tired of it now and missed her family. Then she turned the tables and started her own inquisition.

  In ten minutes’ time she learned more about me than some of my friends who have known me for years. She was a Latin litany of questions, where I lived, what I was doing in Del Mar, whether I was married. This as she checked my finger for a ring. When I told her I was widowed, she said she was sorry, and before she could take a breath asked if I had any children.

  She was not shy. Still, there was a kind of charm in the innocence of it, as all these questions seemed to come naturally to her, like water from a fountain.

  “I have one daughter,” I told her.

  “How old?”

  “She’s in college, and if I had to guess, I’d say maybe just a few years younger than you.”

  “So you think I am young?”

  “Like most things in life, age is relative. You are certainly younger than me.”

  “Why are American men all like this?” She cradled the coffee in both hands and shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t understand. Why do they say I am young and they are old?”

  “Maybe because it’s true.”

  “Who cares? Makes no difference,” she said. “How old do you think I am?”

  “No. No. I don’t play that game.”

  “What game?” she said. She looked at me as if she didn’t understand.

  “In this country, guessing a woman’s age is a good way to get in trouble,” I told her.

  She laughed. “Nooo. I won’t be angry. Please.” Before I realize, she’s reached across the table and brushed the back of my hand with the long nails of two fingers. “Tell me.”

  Like a man who has lost a leg, the sensation of her fingernails on the back of my hand seemed to linger long after she had withdrawn her hand from mine.

  “Tell meee.” She smiled and gave me a sideways glance, the full two-dimple show, coquette.

  “How would I know?”

  “Make a guess.”

  “I don’t
know.”

  “Come on.” She put the cup down and grabbed my hand with both of hers. She wasn’t taking no for an answer.

  “Let me see. Twelve.”

  She gave me a look as if she might slap me. So I looked at her closely. She turned her face, first one side and then the other.

  “Hmm. If I have to guess, maybe twenty-two.”

  “Aw, you are not serious.” She pouted a bit.

  “Am I close?”

  “I’m not telling.”

  “No, now you have to tell me.”

  “No.” She looked at me with her big, oval dark eyes. The way she sipped her coffee and looked at me over the top of her cup, the calculating gaze, told me that I had probably underestimated by a few years, but not much.

  “They must have found the fountain of youth in Costa Rica,” I told her.

  She gave me a puzzled look. “Esscuse me?”

  “Never mind.”

  “I know some lawyers in Costa Rica. In San José there are many.” She looked at my business card. “Coronado, where is that?”

  “Down the coast, just a little south of here. It’s across the bay from San Diego.”

  “Ah. And what type of legal work do you do?”

  “Mostly criminal trial work.”

  “Really? That must be interesting. You must be very intelligent to do that.”

  “It has its moments. Sometimes it’s interesting, sometimes it’s stressful, and there are times when it can be boring.”

  “So if I get in trouble, I could call you,” she said.

  “Well, you have my phone number now.”

  “Yes, I do.” She slipped my business card into her purse with the pen.

  We finished our coffee. I had to run to catch my friends. We said good-bye. That was nearly two weeks ago.

  EIGHT

  This morning Katia does not look nearly as young or as innocent. The smile is gone, as is the twinkle in her eyes. But even without makeup, and missing a solid night’s sleep in the women’s lockup of the county jail for the better part of three days, she is still strikingly beautiful.