by Rowley, M C
I got in to the back seat. They were wide leather gray luxury ones and I leaned back and tried to relax, but all I thought of was Eleanor, and Jason´s news. Esteban. We pulled away and began speeding through the industrial park.
I said it again and again in my mind. A web of invisible seams hung unsupported by hard evidence, but somehow it made sense. Matias Esteban had the money and the reasons to hire people like me and get us to do the things we did.
But it was weird in a different way.
Betraying myself, I felt proud that my employer was someone of that stature. Even if the son of a bitch controlled my life and threatened it. I felt a tingle of pride that I worked for one of the most powerful men in the world.
After half an hour, we arrived to a tower block of luxury apartments in the south of Lujano City, tucked into a small hill, next to the Central Bus Station.
We walked from the parking lot to the entrance of the South tower and a security guard helped me configure the fingerprint ID module that opened the main door. It took five minutes and we entered.
My floor was 68, and when we got there the extra elevator trip seemed worthwhile. The driver left my bags at the doorway and bid me a good day.
I walked into a clean, white space polished to a steely shine. All the counter tops were metallic and the whole space was open. There were two walls forming a corner into the building, and two walls of sheer glass facing outward. I could see the whole city from here and it was impressive. A sprawl of at least 3 million souls scattered around gray lines on cement and concrete.
A 15 foot long grey sofa sat in front of a 50 inch LED TV on the wall. There was a short coffee table with some magazines about ranching and horses, and nothing else.
There was a telephone on the kitchen counter and I walked to it and dialed Eleanor at the house.
No one answered so I tried her cell but it was off.
I went in to the bedroom and checked the closets. There was a safe in one of them.
The cash Salvatierra had mentioned lay inside in an envelope with a two inch thick wedge of 500 peso notes. I left them there and closed the safe.
I walked back to the kitchen counter and tried the house again. Nothing. Eleanor´s cell. Nothing again.
I paced the room.
So far Lena had been right. This job was different.
And I didn´t like it one bit.
Chapter Twelve
I called our house and Eleanor´s cell phone twenty times before the afternoon heat subsided a little.
I had drawn the huge blinds to shade the sun and now opened them again. Lujano was a picture of clarity. Low rise colonial buildings red nestled in the telegraph poles forming the “centro historico”, and around it thousands of hectares of modern city. I wondered how I could get Eleanor here. Impossible with my employer´s people watching her so closely. And besides that, I needed to speak to her first.
I went back to the phone. Tried again and got nothing so I opened the laptop on the kitchen counter.
I felt Jason´s card and the cheap telephone in my chest pocket and took them out and placed them on the counter with the loading laptop. While it loaded, I went for a shower, got changed into another shirt and pants, and found some coffee in the kitchen cupboards, along with some chocolate energy bars, and a small drip brew machine. I prepared the coffee, and sat back down at the screen and ate the bars.
I googled Matias Esteban. Nothing much besides the usual Wikipedia entries, and his own company websites. There were a few events at which he was speaking, all here in Lujano, but that was it.
I opened another window, and the president scandal popped up again. This time, the headline proclaimed that half of his cabinet had been involved in the trafficking and that “heads would roll” in the normal dramatic fashion. I clicked off the home page in the search bar again and typed Salvatierra, Lujano. I got nothing. I then typed Governor Pep Augusta and read a few profile pieces but there was nothing else. No news stories, no hint as to what the hell this was all about.
All I had was a date, and the fact a package would arrive.
That was it.
There must be money loaded up inside the empty buildings of Polysol, I thought. Maybe Esteban needed Gov. Pep´s help getting monies into Mexico from China, where Pep had said the Polysol owners lived. That made sense. Perhaps the package I was to collect was some kind of communication. But why did I need a truck? Why was the pick up point forty KMs deep into the Sierra Mountains?
Tired of it all, I got up and tried Eleanor again but she didn´t answer.
I paced the lounge area. Eleanor had to be safe. They wouldn´t do anything to her until I´d done the job. I was pretty sure of that. But it was weird she hadn´t answered. I was pretty sure of that too.
I went back to the bedroom and took the cash from the safe. I counted it on the bed, four hundred $500 peso notes. About 10,000 US dollars. I needed to hide it. My employer had stepped over a line his messengers had always insisted would be respected. I had, in turn, respected their rules. Now was different.
I pocketed the cash, put a jacket on and left the apartment, walking down the main corridor to the stairwell. I opened the fire exit and felt the cold wind whipping up the concrete column. I climbed the floors until I reached the very top. The fire escape was a push down mechanism that had no wires, or electricity source running into it. No alarm. I shoved it down and stepped onto a large flat roof full of 2000 liter water tanks with pipes snaking out of them and down into the abodes below. I took off my jacket and left it wedging the door open on the step.
I stepped through the first two tanks out of the wind, which was fierce at this height.
I looked for a hiding place and found something after a minute. Below one of the tanks was a small plastic fuse box which connected to one of the pumps. I opened it and squeezed the notes inside.
Once I was happy the box was secure and wouldn´t fly open on its own, I grabbed my jacket back and left the roof and returned to the apartment.
It was getting dark outside and I switched on the main lights. I sat down at the counter and stared at the phone. I knew I would need to take action if Eleanor didn´t answer tonight.
I punched the 12 digits slowly into the cheap Panasonic analog phone. The state code. The local code, then the number. The tone sounded in my ear. One ring. Two rings. Three…just pick up, I thought. Five rings, six, seven…and then, her voice.
“Bueno?”
“God, Eleanor, you´re there. Where were you?” I said, a little more fervently than I´d have liked.
“Scotty?”
I waited for more, but she didn´t say anything. I heard her breathing though. Her breaths rasped against the static of our connection. It was quickened. No doubt about it.
“What´s wrong?”
She was still there. Her breathing remained constant.
“Eleanor?”
I was whispering, kind of. I felt her need for support. Calm support.
“I don´t know,” she said. “Something´s up.”
I swallowed hard before I spoke. And although the muscles around my mouth quaked, I kept my voice at the same rhythm, the same tempo, “tell me,” I said.
“I went out,” she said. “To the usual mall. I left my cell here. I don´t know. I had to get out of here.”
“Why?”
“This morning,” she said. “The door bell rang. I was upstairs, and I went down, and I opened the door, and…”
She fell silent. Even the heavy breathing had gone.
“What, darling?” I said.
“It was a guy. A young guy. He was Mexican. He was kinda scary. Tattoos, on his neck, his arms. He asked if I needed any odd jobs doing. I said no. And he…”
She stopped once more. I waited. I heard her sniffing. Composing herself.
“He…I don’t know. He just stared at me.”
My brain had already made the logical connections, and were speedily sending the messages to my ever faster beating heart.
<
br /> Our son. Back from the dead.
“He looked like you, Scotty. And I—”
But her voice disintegrated into a deep, held back sob. My head fell into my fist. My other hand gripped the handset.
It was my chance. To tell her that he was still alive. That it was him. That she had to get out of there, fast. That she wasn´t safe around him. That he wanted us dead.
But I knew I couldn´t do that. The coward part of my brain reminded me of Salvatierra´s threat. She was safer there in the house. One more week.
“Eleanor,” I said. “Stay there. I´ll come for you soon. A week. This job will be done then and that´s it. They´ve told me it´ll be over.”
“I´m done, Scotty. Your goddamn job. All this shit. What´s the point? Maybe I´m going crazy. Maybe I´m looking for something that doesn´t exist. But I know for sure, I want out. I´m flying down there as soon as I can,”
“No! Don´t!” I shouted. “You can´t. You have to stay there.”
I remembered Jason´s offer for help.
“Look,” I said. “I´ll get you out of there. Give me a day. I´ll fix it.”
“I´m tired, Scotty. You´ve said this before.”
“It´s different this time,” I said. “Will you give me a day?”
There was silence for 30 seconds.
“Ok.” Then she hung up on me.
I got up from the counter stool, dazed.
I had written Jason off as an unnecessary pain. A complete long shot. Now it seemed my only card to play. I looked at his business card and picked up the cell phone.
Hiding the cash had been a step of rebellion against my employer. This step was all out war.
I hit “contacts” and found a single number. A local one. I hit dial.
Chapter Thirteen
Jason and I were sat in a dingy cantina on the outskirts of Lujano. He had told me to come straight away. The walls loomed over us, dark red and strewn with pictures of bullfighting from the eighties. The place smelt of floor cleaner and we weren´t the only customers. Jason had said it would be safe. I´d had to sneak out of the apartment block and walk. I´d found the bar easy enough, “El Oeste” it was called. Hidden in a cobbled back street of an ugly neighborhood on the wrong side of town. Two-story cement walls. No adornments, or frills.
Our table was at the back of the rectangular layout. Behind us a wall, in front the whole cantina with three other occupied tables. There were only two empty ones. An old guy dressed in a shabby white shirt and a waiter´s apron walked between the customers serving cold beers and botanas. Jason sipped his americano coffee. My drink was a cuba libre.
“I know Esteban has some pretty decent leverage on you people to get you to do the things you do,” said Jason.
I looked down.
“I want to help you,” said Jason. “We want to help you.”
“Who is Mr Reynolds?” I asked.
“I don´t even know that,” said Jason. “Not exactly. It´s obviously a codename. But his organization is powerful. Got in contact with me a year back. Told me about you. Told me where to look. Which stones to turn over.”
I took a sip of my drink as Jason continued,
“Mr Reynolds´ people told me a bit about your son. We know he´s still alive.”
I looked down. It was do or die. Trust Jason or not.
“I need my wife safe,” I said. “That’s the only reason I came to you. She´ll stay one more day where she is but that’s it. She´s desperate. And she—”
I was unsure on whether to continue. Jason was watching me intently.
“She what?” asked Jason.
“She doesn´t know our son is alive. She doesn´t know what happened to him.”
“Which is?”
“I need her safe. I can´t trust you until I have that.”
“Look,” he said. “ I don´t mean this to sound like it does, but you don´t have much choice. Do you?”
I rubbed my temples, massaging the pain around in a tiny circle. “Jesus,” I said. I rolled my options around but Jason was right. I had nothing.
“Tell me,” said Jason. “What happened with your son.”
“He was abducted. When he was a baby. He was born in Guatemala City. I was working there, at a company. It´s what I´ve done since my early twenties. Our insurance screwed us and we had to go to a public hospital. He was taken from the incubator ward in the hospital.”
“What did you do?” asked Jason.
I couldn´t muster the energy to go back there. To those following hours. The desperation, the sheer panic in my chest. I had blocked it for decades now. Especially since I learned of his being alive. But going back there flooded my body with ill feeling once more. The look on Eleanor´s face as I told her our baby had disappeared. The look of indifference on the faces of the hospital staff. My fury. I had thought it would never subside. I was ready to kill to find him. To do anything. Eleanor screaming at me, falling off her bed and reopening the stitches a doctor had barely put on her a few hours before.
“We searched for him for twelve years,” I said. “Before the authorities made us announce him as officially dead. But Eleanor never gave up. She told me we needed to stay in the region. I took jobs in companies in Guatemala, and later, Mexico. But we never found anything. Not a lead, not a hope. Until one day.”
“It was nine months ago. I received an anonymous call from a new supplier for some business telling me our son was still alive. They told me to go to Oaxaca City and they told me to tell no-one. I kept the promise and headed down there without telling Eleanor. I didn´t want to build her up. So I travelled alone and I met a man in a hotel room. He was some sort of gangster. He was street smart but uneducated. Went on about the Cartel. He told me his employer required my services. Wanted me to steal stuff from companies, to do sabotage jobs. That type of thing. I told them to go to hell. I asked them about my son. Then he showed me two videos.”
“The first video was of a group of men, beating another man. In the middle of them was a teenager, covered in tattoos. He looked 25 but when he moved you could see the bouncy limbs of youth. The way his head waggled. This kid killed the man they were beating, then butchered him, with a machete. Up into bits. I tried to turn away, but the man made me watch. The kid was our son. I knew it.”
“How could you possibly know that?” asked Jason.
I smiled. “Because he looks identical to me. I knew no one would go to the trouble of threatening me with this, using some kid who happened to resemble me. No. It was him. Our son. And he´d become a monster. I screamed at the guy, and said I wanted him. Said I wanted to speak to him. I asked if he was in prison. But they showed me another video.”
“What did it show?”
“It was our boy again. Maybe a year later than the butchering video. He was making a statement. It was some kind on initiation video. Blank background, low lighting, just him speaking into the camera.”
“What was he saying?”
“That he would kill us, Eleanor and I, his biological parents, as soon as he found us. To avenge someone.”
Jason nodded. “I heard of that kind of thing.”
“It worked. I believed it. Our son has become an animal. I begged to know where he was located but they said I would never find out alone. They told me the only way to keep safe and eventually meet him safely was to do what they ordered.”
“They told me the job would be a year, and if I did it, they’d let me meet my son. Let me explain to him who we were. That there was no vengeance to take. But it didn´t work out. As I was finishing the job, they sent me here to Lujano.”
“So what happened? What changed today?”
“I spoke to Eleanor. I know they are watching her. My employer´s people here showed me a video of her at home. But when I spoke to her, she told me a young man came to see her, asking for odd jobs, and it freaked her out.”
“Why?”
“Because she said he was scary looking.”
“So?”
/> “And that he looked just like me.”
“And you´re sure it´s your son.”
“Yes,” I said. “No doubt.”
“What have they asked you to do here?”
“They told me to get this job done. One week. And she´ll be okay.”
“So tell her to sit tight,” said Jason.
“No. I need her to come here. I don´t know if you can help me. But you and your Mr Reynolds seem to know more about me than anyone, well, since my boss.”
“Mr Esteban,” corrected Jason.
“Yes. Mr Esteban.” It still felt weird to say it aloud.
Jason drew a long breath through his nose. His face was still but under the surface, somewhere, was victory.
“Esteban is a bad guy,” said Jason, breaking my thoughts up. “I mean, like in the evil league of villains bad.”
I took a long lug of my cuba libre. It was too sweet. I felt sick from it. Jason continued,
“Not only has he ripped off this country and Latin America for thirty years, he´s mixed up in all types of dirty trades. Drugs, child trafficking, slave labor. You name it. His sons drive Ferraris around Mexico City while some of his employees are locked inside factories and made to work 16 hour shifts. I´ve been investigating him for years. And it´s a mafia. It is the mafia. He´s untouchable. Nothing links him to any of the dirty work. And of course, politicians are in his pocket. It took me a long time to find a crack in his operation, until I found Kristine Lancaster.”
“Who is she?” I asked.
“Was she,” said Jason. “She was a spy like you. I caught her at one of Esteban´s conventions talking to some heavy types. I pushed her buttons and she confessed. Similar situation to you. We put together a plan to get her out, and get me some info on the big man. And three weeks in, her headless body is washed up on the Oaxaca coastline and a bunch of stories about her drug dealing exploits hit the papers. I mean local, national and even gringo. The papers did a piece. Total smear job.”
He stopped suddenly and looked at me, realizing what he was implying to me.
“So how do I come into this?”