by James Lepore
Jay did not answer immediately, but neither did he look inward or drum his fingers. When he turned to face her, Isabel saw the pain in his eyes, and regretted asking her initial question.
“I was dating her. When my parents died I married her because I was afraid of being alone. She wanted children. I immediately had a vasectomy.”
“That must have hurt her very much.”
“It did. She left.”
“Did you love her?”
“No.”
“Now you have lost your friend.”
“Yes.”
“Were there other women?”
“Yes, a few.”
“Did you love any of them?”
“No.”
The whole conversation had taken on a life of its own, the reins, Isabel realized with a start, held by her heart, not her head. There was a precipice ahead, but she knew somehow that it was too late. She would not be able to wrestle the reins back in time. Perhaps she did not want to.
“What about you?” Jay asked. “Have you loved anyone, besides Bryce Powers?”
“I loved a young man once, a politician.”
“What happened?”
“The Ferias killed him. On Herman’s orders.”
Now it was Jay’s turn to stare hard at Isabel. Yes, she said to herself, there it is, a small piece of my puzzle.
“Is that why you want to stay and help me kill them?”
“No. It’s Herman I want to kill.”
“Is there any way we can get him here?”
“No. He will stay in Mexico City and send his panthers.”
“Can I ask you a question?”
“Yes.”
“What is it you did for Herman Santaria starting at the age of fourteen?”
Isabel gripped the arms of her chair for a second, then let go and reached into the neck of her shirt, where she found the Mary scapular that Sister Josefina had given her when she left the convent in Polanco. She had kept it with Sister’s letters all these years, but had started wearing it when she promised to help Jay and they fled to Puerto Angel. Fingering it, she remembered Sister’s words. It is not magic. It is a sign of your commitment, of your faith. Do not lose either, no matter what the future brings.
“I will tell you tonight,” she said. “We will drink your scotch, and I will answer your question.”
46.
8:00 PM, December 23, 2004, Puerto Angel
“Until I was fourteen, I lived in an orphanage in Mexico City, in Polanco, run by the Dominican Sisters. They also ran a home for unwed mothers, and a clinic where they gave birth, where I was born. I was lucky. I had a relative, Tio Hermano , who visited me occasionally, and brought small gifts. When I was fourteen, he took me away, and trained me to be a whore.”
It was eight p.m. They had eaten dinner, and were sitting on the veranda on old wooden chairs facing each other. The scotch and a pack of cigarettes were on the small table between them. The night was very warm, and humid, and the full moon shone from behind a checkerboard of gathering clouds.
“Herman never touched me; Rafael did. He fucked me several times in the beginning. He was the first, actually. He was the governor of the State of Mexico at the time. Herman was out of government by then; he was doing other things. They were both rich, but greedy for more.”
Watching her face in the intermittent moonlight as she spoke, Jay thought something had changed, but he could not say what. Did she look younger? Or older? Sadder? Happier? What? He had a scotch over ice in his hand. The glass, a fading Mickey Mouse juice glass, was sweating profusely in the humid night air. He put it down, and then reached over and touched the back of Isabel’s hand, and said, “Isabel, you don’t have to tell me any more.”
“I thought you wanted to know?” Isabel replied. “To see me hurt as part of your revenge for Danny.” With her mask removed, her eyes, staring straight at him, were, despite the hardness of her voice, even more beautiful, or perhaps beautiful for the first time.
Jay remained silent.
“I’m sorry,” said Isabel, “that wasn’t fair. There’s not much more.”
“How old was Rafael at the time?”
“Fifty. Around there.”
“And you were fourteen.”
“Yes.”
“Go on.”
“In the beginning, they used me as a reward, or to set men up—police chiefs, prosecutors, judges—so they could have protection for their activities. Sometimes they took pictures, to blackmail men into cooperating, or backing off. For ten years, I was their prize whore. I had to pretend it was fun. Sometimes it was, if I could get to know a man a little bit, but that was rare. I must have fucked a hundred men whose faces I can’t remember, whose touch repulsed me.”
Jay finished his drink and poured himself another. He had spent close to two hours that afternoon listening to conversations involving Powers, Herman Santaria, and occasionally Rafael de Leon, recorded surreptitiously by Powers between 1970 and 2004. The voices of the Mexicans—confident, mocking, contemptuous—were still echoing in his head.
“Last summer,” Isabel continued, “they sent me to the States to work in their money laundering operation. The man that had been doing it previously had been stealing from them. The Ferias killed him. They showed me his head, which they were carrying around in a suitcase.”
“So you became the new courier.”
“Yes. And I seduced Bryce, which was Herman’s suggestion. He thought Bryce was stealing. He wanted me to confirm it, and to get close to him, to make it easy to kill him, if that became necessary.”
“But you fell in love with him.”
“Yes.”
“And you helped him steal, and were planning to run away when he was killed.”
“Yes.”
“Is that it?”
“No. There is one more thing.”
A wind had come up, which Jay hadn’t noticed until the sound of the house’s side door slamming shut startled them. Large drops of rain were beginning to fall on the awning above their heads, and on the flagstone floor of the veranda. Jay looked around. They would be dry for the time being.
“What is it?” he said.
“Bryce Powers was my father. Rafael is my grandfather.”
At first Jay was not sure he had heard right. Then he saw Isabel’s face, and he knew what the change he had puzzled over earlier was. She was a girl again, fourteen, confessing to sins she could hardly believe she had committed, stunned by their scope.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
Isabel had leaned back in her chair, and was shaking her head, breathing softly, her eyes vacant. Jay poured her a drink, which she took from his hand, and sipped. The rain was beating down now, but they were oblivious.
“Talk to me,” he said.
“This house washed away,” Isabel said, “in the first year it was built. The local people rebuilt it for the Sisters. That was a hundred years ago.”
She looked around at the falling rain.
“I thought I would be a missionary, a teacher, a nurse . . . a wife, a mother . . . Until Herman took me away to a better life. My sin, I think, is that I convinced myself that it was a better life.”
“How could that be a sin?”
“I was proud, my heart was cold.”
Jay said nothing. He had indeed wanted to see Isabel suffer, but now, having gotten what he wanted, he was learning, perhaps for the first time in his life, how bitter was the taste of self-recrimination.
“Herman flew to Miami in August, last year,” Isabel continued. “He came to my apartment—Bryce’s condo. There was money missing, he said. Who was taking it? The local collectors? Me? Bryce Powers? He asked me if I was happy in my love affair with Bryce. He showed me my birth certificate, naming Christiana de Leon as the mother, and Bryce Powers as the father. He showed me the pictures of Bryce and Christiana. He pointed out how much I looked like my parents. He said that Bryce knew I was his daughter. He wanted me to set Bryce up to be kill
ed, but first he wanted his money back. I was to convince Bryce to give it to me, or let me know where it was.”
“Maybe he was lying, trying to trick you with phony papers.”
“I have a birthmark on my right side, a light patch of skin in the shape of a crescent moon. Bryce had the same birthmark.”
The rain was coming through the battered awning in spots, and the wind, stronger now, was driving it sideways at them. The two candles Jay had lit and placed on the coffee table were out. The storm had blotted out the moonlight. The darkness around them was complete. Jay poured them both more scotch, thanking God for Sam’s survival kit.
“Did Bryce know?” Isabel said. “I don’t think so,” she answered herself. “I met him in Aspen the following weekend and confronted him. He cried, and said he had no idea. I think his life was over then, and he knew it. When we were leaving, he said it would soon be time to use the stuff in the suitcase. He said if he called and said that his life was in danger, I should run, drop everything and run. A week later, he called, and I ran. And here I am.”
Here we both are, Jay thought. Out loud, he said, “Isabel.”
“Yes,” she replied.
“Forgive me.”
“Forgive you?”
“Yes.”
“For what?”
“For wanting to hurt you.”
“You are forgiven.”
“But who will forgive me?” Isabel said.
That question hung in the wet night air.
For an answer Jay knelt in front of Isabel’s chair and put his arms around her. He could feel her hot tears mingling with the cold raindrops on his neck and face. Fifteen years he had wasted in self-absorption and self-pity. Fifteen years.
47.
9:00 AM, December 24, 2004, Puerto Angel
Jay stood at the stone wall, looking down at the bay and the two small beaches that straddled the mouth of the Arroyo River. Local children were playing on one of them, while nearby a group of men were hauling in a net by a long rope that was the thickness of a man’s arm. The storm had thrashed itself out in the night, and in doing so washed away the torpid heat that had been pressing down on Mexico’s southeastern Pacific coast for the last week. The morning sun brought with it the promise of a hot but brilliantly clear day.
Up early, Jay had spent an hour drinking coffee and reading the last of Bryce Powers’s paperwork, which contained, among other things, notes of all of the bribes paid to de Leon in the seventies, and which meticulously tracked all of the drug cash that had passed through his company’s accounts over the past ten years. In addition, Powers had somehow managed to acquire copies of the contracts between Herman and Rafael and the various overseas banks, which named them, along with Lazaro Santaria, as the owners of the accounts where much of the cash ended up. If he had the contents of Bryce’s old leather suitcase, Chris Markey would not need Isabel to put Herman, Rafael, and Lazaro in jail for many years.
There was another contract in the Banque de Geneve folder, an original that Jay had pulled out and put in his knapsack. Now, hearing the cottage’s back door open, he turned and saw Isabel coming out, carrying a tray of buttered bread and another pot of coffee.
“Buenos días,” she said, as she set the tray on the wall.
“Buenos días. You look beautiful.”
“Thank you.”
“Did you sleep well?”
“Yes, the Valium worked. And you?”
“Yes, I was up early, but I slept.”
“How long have you been awake?”
“An hour or so.”
“Reading?”
“Yes.”
“Will Rafael go to jail?”
“Yes. And Herman and Lazaro.”
Isabel looked down at the sea, shimmering in the morning sunlight, then across at Jay.
“I am sorry about last night,” she said.
“Sorry?”
“It is an awful thing to know.”
She poured coffee for both of them, but they did not pick up their cups. They were sitting on the stone wall, the breakfast tray between them. Jay reached across and took her hand.
“What is the name ‘Jay’?” Isabel asked. “Is that your proper name?”
“Do you know the story of the golden fleece?”
“Yes.”
“My mother foresaw great things for me.”
“Did she tell you that?”
“Many times.”
“Do you miss her?”
“Yes, I miss her, and my father. They spoiled me.” But expected me to grow into a man, thought Jay. It’s a good thing they’re not around to see what I’ve made of my life.
“You deserve to be spoiled.”
Jay said nothing.
“I don’t want to call Herman,” Isabel said.
“You gave me your word.”
“We can leave together, drive into Guatemala, or fly someplace safe. I have lost my desire for revenge.”
“I haven’t.”
“If I call,” Isabel said, “I will stay with you. You cannot force me to leave.”
Jay reflected on this. The logistics of killing the Feria brothers were not complicated. He had Frank Dunn’s service revolver, the one he had practiced with on Big Pine Key. The road up the hill was visible for its entire length from the veranda. The cottage was inaccessible from behind, where a thick, rock-strewn forest covered the mountain as it ascended in abrupt stages another two hundred feet or so to its crest. He would watch them approach, then step behind the cottage. When they emerged from their car, he would step out and shoot them both. If something went wrong—and he did not doubt that it could—he would try to kill himself before the Ferias could torture him as they had Danny. There were forty ten-milligram tablets of Valium left. He could keep half with him, and Isabel half with her. There were worse ways to die.
“If you stay,” he said, “one of us would have to keep watch at all times.”
“Yes.”
“I have Sam’s amphetamines to keep us up, if necessary.”
“Bueno.”
“Let’s go make the call, then I would like to swim before we settle to our watch.”
48.
12:00 PM, December 24, 2004, Miami
“Chris, Phil Gatti.”
“Phil. Talk to me.”
“My guys missed their call in.”
“By how much?”
“They’re twenty-four hours overdue.”
Markey looked at his watch. It was noon on Friday.
“Where were they?”
“Zipolite.”
“Where the hell is that?”
“It’s a little town on the coast. Hippies and surfers live there on the beach. It’s a shit hole.”
“Where are you?”
“I’m in Puerto Escondido, about fifty miles away. I thought I’d better get there.”
“To do what?”
“The Ferias stopped in two houses owned by the Dominican Sisters. Maybe they’ve got a place around Zipolite, or the next town, Puerto Angel. I’ll ask around.”
“You’re on your own, Phil.”
“I’m not complaining.”
“I’m worried about your people. If they’re dead, I may have to do something about our friends personally. I’ve had enough.”
“If I find the Ferias, Chris, I’m taking them out.”
“Like I said, you’re on your own. Do whatever you have to do.”
Markey was at his desk in downtown Miami. He hung up and swiveled his chair around to look out the window behind him, where he had a view, across Biscayne Bay, to South Beach, the flanks of its row of high-rise hotels glowing a golden yellow in the late afternoon sun. The US Attorney had agreed to impanel a grand jury, and would start taking testimony in a few days. The Pernas and Gary Shaw would be the first witnesses, but unless they folded, or turned on one another, both of which were highly improbable, not much would result from it except to set them all up for later perjury charges, assuming the phone taps
—in place the last two days—yielded a smoking gun or two. So far they had yielded nothing. He had come very close to arresting both Isabel Perez and the Feria brothers, but they had slipped away, and it was looking more and more like a year’s work had come to naught.
The FBI agent swung back to face his desk, picked up the phone, and dialed Ted Stevens’s extension, to ask him to get Lazaro Santaria’s official schedule and itinerary for the next two weeks. Then he put a call in to Don Sullivan, a friend from his CIA days, now working as a consultant to the Colombian military. Markey, divorced for fifteen years, had spent many Christmases alone since his daughter died; this one would be no different, except that, if things worked out the way he planned, it would probably be his last as an employee of the United States government.
49.
12:00 PM, December 24, 2004, Puerto Angel
Instead of going to the beach to swim, Jay and Isabel took a path that led from the back of the cottage, winding and ascending for about a half mile through broad-leafed tropical thorn trees, to a place where the Arroyo River was naturally dammed. There, a small waterfall splashed into a calm, clear pool that shone brightly in the midday sun—a lovely, quiet spot that remained, Isabel said, upon reaching it, much the same as it was when she last saw it as a girl. They splashed and swam for a few minutes, and then sat on a flat rock at the pool’s edge in the sun. Jay had on his khaki shorts and Isabel a T-shirt over her underwear.
“Are you afraid?” Jay asked.
“Yes. I could hear Herman’s mind spinning as we talked.”
“He will fear a trap.”
“Yes. But there is no doubt he will send the Ferias.”
Jay had been afraid that Herman would send someone else to deal with Isabel, or ignore her, but Isabel had reassured him. As planned, she had asked Herman for his forgiveness, and his help. Most important, she had told him about Bryce Powers’s papers. Isabel knew Herman. He looked for simple solutions first. Killing Isabel and retrieving the papers was the perfect assignment for his panthers, involving, as it did, stealth, bloodshed, the possibility of torture, and a triumphant return to their master.
“It would be nice if he came, too.”