The Painted Gun

by Bradley Spinelli

  I just looked at her, dumbfounded. Her hand was cool in mine and calming.

  “Kiss me,” she said.

  Her face was serene, with its own gravitational pull. I leaned in for a kiss that would make every other kiss I’d ever had in my life seem paltry and pale, a kiss that would cut to my bones and make me blissful, calm—stupid.

  And then the room erupted in chaos. Half a dozen FBI agents in blue windbreakers stormed the room, brandishing guns and yelling. I saw Siegel’s face and stood up. Two agents grabbed me and I saw Ash being forced out of the room. “The Old Man!” she was yelling at me. “The Old Man!”

  And my angel, my demon, the source of all my troubles and the source of my salvation, was gone like the last tendril of smoke from a stamped-out cigarette.

  32

  “So are you boys staying at the Holiday Inn Chinatown?” I asked. “You know that’s the one with the pool on the roof from Dirty Harry.”

  “Don’t hate me, Crane, I’m just doing my job,” Siegel said, not taking any bait. I was back in an interrogation room.

  “And a hell of a job, Siegel. Can’t even find a little girl without tailing a washed-up journalist.” I hated him, all right. Finally being in a room with Ashley had burned her image into my retinas—every time I opened my eyes I expected to see her, and this prick was in my way.

  “We knew you weren’t telling us everything.”

  “I told you what I knew, what I thought was relevant. What do you want with Ashley anyway?”

  “She’s our only connection to McCaffrey and the organization he collaborated with. We need to debrief her, and keep her in protective custody.”

  “Protective custody? You didn’t even know where she was until I led you to her. Come to think of it, no one’s been able to find her except me. Not McCaffrey, not Balam, not the FBI. What is this bullshit?”

  Siegel tapped a pen on the table impatiently. “What is it you want, Crane?”

  “I want to see her.”

  “Can’t allow it. I have to know what she knows, and I can’t have you influencing her.”

  “So you’re keeping her sequestered.” I was ready to knock him out. “It’s funny, Siegel, you say you’re protecting her, but you don’t seem too bothered about me walking around, living in the same house, driving the same car—what makes you think no one’s coming to kill me?”

  “Nothing in your statement indicated that anyone was ever trying to kill you. But Ashley—”

  “And the shot I took in the chest? If it weren’t for Kevlar I wouldn’t be here.”

  “I understand your frustration, Mr. Crane, but you explicitly stated that McCaffrey’s people wanted Ashley dead. We don’t want that to happen.”

  “Bullshit. You want to pick her brain.”

  “If we had McCaffrey in custody it would be a different story.”

  “Don’t put that on me. If you had met me outside the police station he wouldn’t have had the time to eat cyanide.”

  Siegel made a face like he smelled something foul. “McCaffrey didn’t take cyanide. That’s just the official report.”

  “What?”

  “Small pimple-like entry wound at the back of his neck. They’re still isolating the toxin.”

  “What, ricin? You’re telling me they gave him the Georgi Markov umbrella gun while he was sitting in front of a Johnny station?”

  Siegel nodded. “The outside cameras were switched off the minute you pulled up. We’ve got no record of what happened outside. It wasn’t ricin, it wouldn’t have acted that fast, but yes. We believe McCaffrey was murdered.”

  “Shit.” I didn’t know what else to say. The Old Man’s people must have improvised. “So when can I see her?”

  “When she’s finished telling us what she knows, and we’re reasonably certain no one else is coming for her—”

  “How would you know?”

  He let that go. “We can’t keep her against her will unless she’s charged, and I can’t imagine she’ll be charged with anything. Eventually, she’ll be released on her own recognizance.” He cleared his throat. He was leaving something out.

  “Eventually?”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “Siegel, tell me what I’m missing.”

  He gave me a long, steely look and didn’t seem to breathe for what felt like a full minute. Finally he blinked. “She’s not cooperating.”

  I laughed, long and hard. “I love it. Did she say why?”

  “Because of you.”

  I was still laughing and it obviously irritated the hell out of him. “But you won’t let me see her.”

  “It’s against protocol. Crane, she thinks you’re still in danger. She doesn’t want to give us anything until she knows you’re safe.”

  “Maybe she’s right—maybe I am still in danger.”

  “What was the threat to you other than Balam?”

  “Do I need another threat? No one knows where he is.”

  Siegel’s poker face went awry.

  “You know.”

  “No,” he said firmly. “But we know where he’s not. I—this is classified, Mr. Crane.”

  “Everything is classified. I can fix Ashley’s cooperation problem if you cooperate with me.”

  He sighed and tapped his pen a few more times. “Balam met his CIA handler at SFO. She was waiting for him with a ticket out of the country.”

  “So you know where he went.”

  “No.” He didn’t say anything else.

  I was losing what little patience I had left. “I have all day, Siegel. You?”

  He put his pen down. “He killed his handler. Shot her dead in the long-term parking lot. He never got on the plane.”

  “So he could be anywhere.”

  “Not anywhere. Based on our intelligence, and what little the CIA has shared with us, he likely crossed the border into Tijuana, and will turn up in either Mexico City or Guatemala City.”

  “And your boys will pick him up.”

  “Ours, or the CIA’s. Their agents are working in cooperation with ours.”

  “You believe that?”

  “No. I think they want him dead.”

  “No shit. I guess you want him alive.”

  “We’d like to talk to him. But your point is valid—if he gets killed by his own people we can close the books on Ashley. We can wrap up this tentacle of their operation. Obviously, if we get Balam alive there are more possibilities.”

  It was all bullshit. These guys wouldn’t find Balam, and even if they did, it wouldn’t help anyone. McCaffrey had known he’d never get away from the organization—Balam would know that too. He’d never be taken alive. It was naïve to think they had forgotten about me and Ashley. The job wasn’t done, it was blown, and someone would want the mess cleaned up.

  I remembered what Ashley had screamed while they were dragging her away from me, and how agonizingly close we’d been just moments before.

  “You with us, Crane?” Siegel prompted me.

  “Yeah,” I said. There was only one place to go, and it wasn’t Mexico or Guatemala City; it was an address on a mailing tube for a painting of Ashley’s that never got delivered. “If I can find Balam, will the Bureau leave us both alone?”

  “Of course. Don’t expect a congressional medal of honor.”

  “Promise me that if Ashley tells you everything she knows, you’ll let her go.”

  “We can’t keep her.”

  “Let me talk to her.”

  He stroked his chin, blinked, and picked up the phone. “Put her on.” He cupped his hand over the phone and handed it to me. “There are people listening.”

  “There always are.” I took the phone. “Hello?”

  “Hi, David.” I’d recognize that honeyed voice anywhere. It almost took my breath away.

  “Hi.” I felt suddenly awkward with Siegel watching me. “Listen, Ashley, do you trust me?”

  “I do.”

  “Just tell the feds whatever they want to know, a
nd they’ll let you go.”

  “And then I will see you.”

  “Of course.”

  “You know where to go?”

  “I do.”

  “You can leave messages for me in Chinatown, David. I’ll find you.”

  “I have to go.”

  “I love you.”

  “Right back atcha, kiddo.”

  I hung up, and noticed Siegel glaring at me. “That’s it?” The phone rang and he picked it up. “Siegel. Okay, I’ll be right there.” He hung up. “She’s talking.”

  “Can I go?”

  “Yes.”

  “Should I expect the FBI to keep following me everywhere I go?”

  “No. And we won’t be looking after you, either, so watch your step.”

  I got up to leave.

  “Thanks for your help, Mr. Crane.”

  “Fuck you, Siegel.”

  GUATEMALA

  I booked a flight to Guatemala City via Houston and bought a couple of books to read on the way. Filling in the holes of what Sobczyk had told me about Guatemala didn’t make me any more comfortable.

  Since the early 1900s, United Fruit owned the town of Puerto Barrios and all of its port facilities—it was the only Atlantic port in the country—as well as the rail lines, giving the company almost complete control over Guatemala’s international commerce. It paid no taxes until Árbenz came into power. It was no wonder he had to go. When Armas was instated, he gave United Fruit all its land back and abolished the tax on interest and dividends to foreign investors. He also jailed thousands of political critics.

  But his honeymoon didn’t last, either. After barely three years he was implicated in bribery scandals and, ultimately, shot dead in the street. His assassin was found dead too—an apparent suicide. Rumors abounded that the hit was called by one military officer or another, or by American mobsters, since Armas had been harassing casinos—shades of JFK and Havana—or by Dominican Republic dictator Rafael Trujillo. The truth never came out.

  Nobody won. Almost as soon as Árbenz resigned, the Justice Department sued United Fruit for violation of American antitrust laws. It lost ownership of the railroads, sold off its land holdings to Del Monte, and merged with a conglomerate called United Brands. By the seventies, the empire was disintegrating and the corporate president, Eli Black, smashed a hole in the quarter-inch-thick window of his New York Pan Am Building office and jumped. After his death, investigations concluded that during his presidency, United Brands had bribed European officials as well as the president of Honduras. With the company now facing charges from a federal grand jury, whatever was left of United Fruit’s legacy passed on to Chiquita Banana and Dole.

  It seemed that everyone touched by the CIA’s Guatemalan coup met strange ends. John Peurifoy, the US ambassador to Guatemala during the coup, was killed in a car crash in 1955. Frank Wisner, one of the CIA’s deputy directors and a Black Ops expert who had helped engineer the coup, committed suicide. Jacobo Árbenz, the deposed president himself, drowned in a bathtub in Mexico in 1971. His favorite daughter, Arabella, shot herself in Bogota in front of her boyfriend at the age of twenty-five.

  I knew I had to be crazy. I would probably get myself killed. But fuck the feds, fuck the CIA, I was bringing Balam back and I was going to make a life with this girl.

  The stewardess tapped me and asked me to raise my seat for landing. I put my books away and realized that the snack we’d been served was still on my tray table—a plastic tub of yogurt and a fresh yellow banana. It was funny to think that no one in the United States had ever eaten a banana before 1870. Bananas, I thought, as we flew low over the outskirts of Guatemala City and green foliage passed under us, filling in the gaps between low buildings crowded together. All for the sake of bananas.

  * * *

  On the ground. Off the plane. Through passport control, through customs, cashed a traveler’s check for a wad of quetzales. I stepped outside into the broiling Guatemala City sun, a fierce hello accompanied by bustling activity—dazed travelers searching for a ride, locals gathered in anticipation of greeting family members, taxi drivers hustling for a fare.

  I walked upstairs, across the parking lot to the street, and waited for the number 83 city bus. I rode in silence, buffeted by activity as people got on and off, chattering in Spanish. I barely looked at the map in my Lonely Planet book, La Ruta Maya, the Belize and Yucatán sections dog-eared, the Guatemala pages fresh as pan Bimbo. The bus took us by the zoo, through Zone 8, riding down the long, nightmarish, slow-moving thoroughfare of Avenida Bolívar, eventually turning off into Zone 1. The rampant dilapidation of Guatemala City . . . on the brink of absolute devastation, a destruction in progress, everything dirty, smog-stained, cluttered. A massive, sprawling experiment in confusion, a contusion of modern Western amenities—fast food and auto service stations—and the ancient, tried traditions of a former Central American empire.

  I got off the bus, threw my satchel over my shoulder, and started walking in the stultifying heat and oppressive pollution. I was relieved to find that Guatemala City has a grid system, with numbered avenidas and calles, and I easily found my way to the Transportes Litegua bus station and bought a ticket for the five-hour ride to Puerto Barrios. Not that there was an option—the railroad had long since stopped running. It was a nice bus by local standards, like a Greyhound, with a smelly bathroom on board and little TV screens to show American movies dubbed in Spanish. I slept most of the way.

  I woke up just outside Puerto Barrios at a quick stop in front of a mirrored building, like something from the cityscape of Dallas, completely out of place. Next door was a Pollo Campero—a fast-food chicken joint—advertising itself with the image of a cartoon chicken serving up a plate of fried chicken. The scene struck me as slightly ridiculous. Mirrored buildings, chickens serving chicken, and me, the only gringo on a bus bound for a coastal town without a single resort.

  I got off at the bus terminal as the sun threatened to sink, making it the hottest part of the day. Two words for Puerto Barrios: hot and dusty. I half-expected to see a tumbleweed sweep through the center of town. I walked, sweating, until I found a posada on a side street littered with sparse trees. Anything for a little shade, I thought, and inquired about a room. A middle-aged woman showed me to a tall concrete bunker with a tiny twin bed, a three-pronged ceiling fan with ten years of dust hanging off it, and a private bathroom with a flush toilet but no seat. There were towels that looked almost clean. I dropped my satchel and told the dueña that it would do. She nodded and said I could pay later.

  “Hace calor,” I said, as if it weren’t obvious.

  She laughed, showing silver teeth.

  I switched the fan on, swirling with a monotonous rhythm, and remembered Ashley, her voice . . . Kiss me . . . the selenography of her face. I fell asleep, dreaming of guns and violence.

  * * *

  I walked out into the evening. The piercing heat had barely faded; my skin felt sticky in the ambient glare of streetlights, and my eyes chafed in their sockets, so full of dust they gave out an almost audible rasp when I blinked. I found a comedor and ordered a bistec, and sat on a cheap plastic patio chair at an outdoor table nursing a lukewarm orange Fanta. The steak was cut thin, but was tough as a leather belt and salty. As I ate, the señora wiped down the plastic tablecloths at the adjoining tables with bleach. Somehow the searing aroma only added to the flavor of the experience. I was a long way from home.

  I wandered aimlessly. The streets were not exactly empty, but sparsely populated, giving off the anticipatory feeling that anything could happen. This was a place that time had forgotten. The glory that United Fruit built had been lost to the synapses of history. On an otherwise empty block, behind chain-link fencing, a stable of white Dole tractor trailers sat more innocuous than foreboding. The railroad tracks were empty—cold bones to be jumped over playfully by small children and emaciated dogs with sad eyes. The bay itself was a dead-end lagoon, lending a brackish background scent to the town a
nd little more.

  I passed a loud roadhouse and ignored the catcalls of the prostitutes standing at the door. “Hola, guapo, qué pasa?” I wasn’t handsome, I was white. White means money.

  I found a bar that clearly catered to tourists and ex-pats and stumbled in for a whiskey. I tried the local—Old Friend—which was slightly more palatable than nail-polish remover. An American tried to make friends by telling me a story about getting robbed in the bar, shouting, “Ayúdame!” to the proprietor. Midway through his follow-up tale of contracting dengue fever and being tended to by a local girl, a friend of his came in and he excused himself. I moved from the bar to a back corner and sat alone until an aging black man sat down next to me.

  “You are looking for something?”

  I wasn’t, but we chatted anyway. He was from Livingston, the Garifuna town up the coast, accessible only by boat, on the border of Belize. I told him I was a journalist, working on a story about United Fruit.

  “Be careful what you write, my friend,” he cautioned, a Caribbean lilt in his voice. “They have long tentacles.” He was, of course, referring to El Pulpo, The Octopus, the nefarious company’s time-honored nickname.

  “You’re joking,” I said. “United Fruit has been defunct for decades.”

  “No, no,” he wagged a finger at me, “not defunct. They want you to believe it, that is true. But not defunct. They control the land, still. They stop farmers from working their ancestral land—beat them up, drive them away from their farms. Or they put them in jail. And if they give land to the Indians, they give land that is not usable. Land that will not grow a banana, not grow anything. And not just land . . . it is more now.”

  “More what?”

  He looked up into the ceiling. “This is the modern time. There is more money. Not in fruit, in other things. El Pulpo, now they have other businesses. Fruit, yes. And drugs. And cars. And tourism. Where they can find money, they make money. I tell you, wherever you find bad conditions, you will find United Fruit.”