No wonder Gonzales wanted this cave.
I moved over, found pottery shards, and was digging them out when Niro appeared at my side with his cigarette. “What you got there?”
“Water jug. Would you please go outside to smoke?”
I waited for him to leave, then collected the shards in a bag, tossed all the coins back in except one, and filled the hole. Thank you, I said to the old couple.
Each day, I expected Rosario to show up. She didn’t. Each evening, I expected Nacho to catch Niro and Leocadia frolicking beneath the mango tree. He didn’t. I also hoped to make sense of all the pictographic, abstract, and celestial images on the wall. I couldn’t. So we continued our work for five days, uninterrupted, until the plates were camera-ready. Then we borrowed mirrors from the cabin, jury-rigged them as reflectors to catch the outside light, and took our photos.
“Take nothing but pictures,” Niro said, “leave nothing but footprints.”
Clouds hung low in the sky, steady rain, thunder and lightning, and by the time we finished, rain was blowing sideways. We disassembled the scaffold, threw the pieces into the swamp and gathered our belongings. A careful readjustment of creepers at the cave entrance, a moment of admiration at how undisturbed the place appeared, and we made our final trek down to the boat, straightening foliage and pulling creepers over the trail behind us.
Niro pulled a hood over his head. “Fucking monsoon.”
“This ain’t no monsoon,” Tan said. “It’s called rainy season.”
“So now you gonna give me another lesson in Louisiana coon-ass English?”
“If I spoke to you in coon-ass English you wouldn’t understand.”
“I can’t even understand you when you speak English.
“Stop it,” I said. “We’ve still got work to do.”
Again we barricaded the inlet to the lagoon with tree limbs, waited for the storm to calm, and sped into the lake, putting Zapateras behind us.
Visibility was poor, with sheets of rain here, dark clouds there, choppy water all around. It wasn’t likely anyone would venture into the lake in this weather, but I had an uneasy feeling. So as we approached the Isle of Thieves, I throttled down to idle.
“What’s wrong?” Niro asked.
“I don’t want to sound alarmist, but…”
“But what?”
“Leocadia and Nacho. They know we’re leaving tomorrow.”
“So what? They’re not gonna steal our stuff.”
“That’s not what worries me. They could tell someone.”
“Like who?”
“Like treasure hunters.”
Niro scoffed at the idea. Tan didn’t seem worried. But they didn’t know about the gold. Didn’t know about Gonzales, either. Or Fuentes. So I drove us around the island and took a long look with the binoculars. Seeing nothing suspicious, I idled into the landing instead of the boathouse, keeping the mango tree between us and the cabin.
“Why you taking us here?” Tan asked. “Don’t we need to tank up?”
“We should have a look first.”
“Christ,” Tan said. “Gimme that damn pistol.”
“You got experience with this sort of thing?” Niro asked.
“Ever hear of Nam? Ever hear of Green Berets? No, because you were probably claiming medical disability while I was getting my ass shot off.” He lumbered out with cabin keys in one hand, Beretta in the other. “Wait here. If I ain’t back in one minute, shove off without me.”
He crunched away, waving the pistol side to side.
“All clear,” he yelled back. “Take her into the boathouse.”
I idled the boat in, and while Tan and Niro were pumping gasoline for our trip to Granada, I jumped in the shower to wash off the muck. My muscles ached, my nails were broken and dirty, and my hair had that lifeless look I associated with German tourists and Peace Corps Volunteers. I could hardly wait to get back home. What I needed was a long weekend in a spa.
Tan knocked on the window. “Boat!” he yelled. “We might have company.”
I yanked on jeans and pullover in a fury, my hair still wet, and dashed outside. The boat was beyond Ana Maria, coming down from the direction of Granada, roaring toward the island like a ghost from the past, loud and still louder.
“They’re coming in,” Tan said.
We scrambled into the foliage of the mango tree. The drone of the engine died.
Please, dear God, let it be Rosario and her crew.
No one called out as was customary. “The hell,” Tan said. “They’re just sitting there.”
I parted the branches and peered out. The boat sat dead in the water no more than ten meters from the landing, rolling and pitching in the swells. Only two passengers.
Leocadia and Captain Gonzales.
Chapter 53
The calmness I’d felt earlier turned to terror. Gonzales was probably waiting for his men. There’d be no escape in our little outboard. God, what I’d give for an AK-47. Or a bazooka.
I peeked out again. They were staring as if trying to decide if anyone was home—Gonzales in sunglasses, white T-shirt and baseball cap; Leocadia with her shorts caught up in her crack. Birds hung in alarm over their boat, cawing and circling.
Gonzales shoved back his cap and gestured toward the cabin. I couldn’t make out his words, but Leocadia’s voice, annoying as always, reached my hiding place.
“No, they don’t get back until almost dark.”
Bitch. No wonder she’d taken her panties off for Niro.
Thunder rumbled and shook the ground. Gonzales was saying something I couldn’t understand. The engine roared to life. The boat idled around the island, pitching and rolling. The cabin came between us, and when I saw the boat again, it was veering away at high speed.
“Let’s go!” I yelled. “Move it!”
We were ready in seconds, dirty clothes and clean thrown together, all my valuables in a shoulder bag. “Damn you,” Tan said to Niro, “I told you to keep your mouth shut with that girl, but no, you smelled pussy…fell right into her trap.”
We hurried into the boat house and were loading when the sound of the boat came back. I dashed out with the pistol in time to see Gonzales coming back, alone. He made a half-circle around the island and headed for the landing.
Tan took the Beretta. “Go, girl. Get out there and talk to him. Get him away from his boat.”
“And do what?”
“Just go, I’ll take care of it.”
Before I could protest, he dashed into a patch of palmettos. I trudged down the path, trying to breathe normally. Far out on the lake it was raining, with black clouds and streaks of lightning.
Gonzales landed, climbed out, and tied his boat to a coconut tree. He yanked on the knot to test it, looked at me over the top of his sunglasses, and smiled like an old friend dropping in for a visit. A holstered pistol was strapped to his belt. “Well, hello, Señorita McMullen.”
“It’s señora. Do I know you?”
“Of course. I’m Captain Gonzales.”
“What do you want, Captain?”
The smile faded, and he answered in the roundabout way of speaking that sounded natural only in Spanish. “I’ve come to your beautiful island to present you with a few questions if you don’t mind the inconvenience of an unannounced visit on a day so rainy.”
“Not now. We’re expecting friends from the embassy.”
“This won’t take long.”
He tugged on the rope, pulling the stern of his boat against the landing. Then he reached back and picked up a large manila envelope, which he held up like a royal edict. “Photographs.”
“Can you show me up there? It’s starting to rain.”
He snatched up his assault rifle.
“What’s that for?”
“Precaution. Don’t they call this place the Isle of Thieves?” He laughed as if he’d said something funny, then followed me up the path and around the mango tree. By then my pulse was throbbing in my temples.
A headache was coming on, and I had to suppress a desire to run.
“Where are the others?” he asked behind me.
“In the cabin.”
“Doing what?”
“Dressing, getting ready for guests.”
As we neared the outdoor table, I called out to Niro in Spanish. “Honey, call the embassy and tell them what’s happening. Be sure to mention the name of Capitán Gonzales.”
“Sí, mi amor. I’ll call right now.”
Gonzales muttered a curse and then wiped the bench with his handkerchief.
“I’m in a hurry, Captain. Let’s see your photos.”
He took his time unwinding the string that secured the flap to the folder. Out came the photographs. He selected one, glanced at it a moment, and slid it across the table.
It was the lieutenant in dress uniform, young and handsome with medals on his chest.
“Name’s Fuentes,” Gonzales said. “Lieutenant Napoleon Fuentes. You met him at the hotel. Remember? When did you last see him?”
Raindrops spattered on the table. The panic inside me was like a fire alarm. Gonzales whipped off his sunglasses. “I asked you a question, señora.”
“You’re asking me to remember someone I don’t even recognize. You’re the only one I remember from that night at the hotel. Everything else was a blur.”
He sighed in frustration. “Fine, you don’t want to answer, so I’ll tell you. It was a Tuesday morning, approximately o-four-hundred hours, and you were in a boat.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, yes you do. Fuentes called me on his cell. He was following you, said you were taking your little boat past the Island of the Dead.”
I said nothing. Gonzales went on, his face turning dark with anger. “Phones don’t work well on the lake, so that’s the last I heard from him. The people at the hotel said you came back looking like you’d been caught up in a meat grinder. Why? What happened?”
“Chichicaste.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“I don’t care what you believe, Lieutenant.”
“It’s Capitán. Why did you kill Lieutenant Fuentes?”
“That’s crazy. I haven’t seen your Lieutenant Fuentes.”
He reached into his folder, pulled out another photo, and thrust it in my face.
“Are you saying you know nothing about this?”
I thought I could handle it—like coming back to Nicaragua—but when I saw the decaying body, the empty eye sockets, the rope still tied to his leg, the breath went right out of me.
“Murdered in cold blood. Dumped in the lake like a dead cow.” He paused and went on. “You know what I think? I think you found the cave. There was an altercation and you shot him.”
“No, Captain, that’s not—”
A heavy engine sound came across the lake from the south, like a patrol boat. Gonzales glanced at his watch and smiled.
“Let’s see who gets here first, your friends from the embassy or my troops.”
The words were scarcely out of his mouth when the engine of his boat sputtered and came to life. “Mierda! Qué es eso?”
He jumped up with his rifle and made a furious dash for the landing, trampling the impatiens in the path, crashing through the limbs of the mango tree.
There was a shriek, an awful thud, and for one horrible moment I had the premonition of a body chopped in two. The bell dinged behind me. Niro burst out of the house with his machete. I loped down the path behind him, dreading what I’d find. Now there’d be another burial at sea. More nightmares. More explanations for St. Pete.
The limbs parted. Tan stepped into the open, grinning, holding up the AK-47.
“He ain’t going nowhere in a hurry.”
“You didn’t…”
“Nah, just whacked him with my fist. He’s in his boat.”
The drone of the patrol boat was getting louder. Niro said we’d better make a run for it, and we were hurrying back toward the boat house when I stopped, “Wait, hold on. We can’t leave the captain’s boat. It’s bigger than ours. More powerful. They’ll use it to catch us.”
“Good thinking for a woman,” said Tan. “I’ll scuttle it.”
“No, let’s take it.”
Chapter 54
Lake Nicaragua
We transferred our things and raced into the rain, putting the Isle of Thieves behind us. Tan rode shotgun. Gonzales lay face down behind us, Niro guarding him with the AK-47.
“How’d you do it?” I asked Tan. “I saw him take the keys from the ignition.”
He rubbed his thumb and index finger together. “Some things you never forget.”
We sped past the Island of the Dead and were approaching the place where I’d sank the lieutenant’s body when Gonzales’ cell phone rang.
Tan yanked the phone off the bracket and flung it into the water. Then he twisted around and looked down at Gonzales. “Mighty good move you made, Cap, coming out here to bust us, only to get busted yourself. Lose your boat, lose your phone, lose your aka. Hell, now you gonna lose your ass.” He turned to me. “Stop the boat, Jen.”
I throttled down. Tan lumbered into the back, pulled out a K-bar that had been hanging from his belt, and yanked Gonzales to his feet. “Take down your pants, motherfucker.”
“No,” Gonzales said, looking at me with pleading eyes. “What do you want?”
“Catherine Cohen,” I said. “What did you do with her?”
“Nothing. All I know is what I read in the papers.”
I turned to Tan, “Make him pull down his pants.”
“No,” Gonzales cried again. “Please.”
“I’ll give you one more chance. What did you do with Catherine?”
“It wasn’t me. It was Prudencia and Fuentes.”
“What did they do with her?”
“Dumped her in the lake.”
“What about Blanca? Did she help?”
He nodded.
“What did you do to that old Indian couple?”
He gazed out at the lake as if thinking to plunge in, but going into the lake here, in this weather, at least ten miles from the nearest island, was certain death. He turned back to me, eyes pleading. “All I know is what Blanca told me, that she took care of them…with her machete.”
Tan punched me on the arm. “Translation?”
I told him. He nodded and said, “I say we smoke the motherfucker.”
“I agree,” Niro said. “There’s no witnesses.”
“No,” I said. “There’s been enough killing.”
Tan shook his head in disgust. “You saying you wanna turn his sorry ass loose?”
“I’m saying we maroon him. Leave him on a little island.”
We fell into a heated dispute, and I was losing the argument until the sky turned black. The wind picked up. Spray began washing over us. Then a bolt of lightning almost blinded me, followed by an instant clap of thunder. Tan holstered his knife.
“Go girl, find us an island.”
On we went, fighting swells and blowing spray, trying to keep an even course, lightning streaking the sky. There were fewer islands in the south, but I finally found one that was tiny and secluded, a small jungle in the midst of a vast lake. I idled in on the leeward side, staying away from rocks, snags, overhanging branches, and the tentacles of mangroves. By then the gale had passed, leaving us with a cloudy sky and light mist.
“Hotel Tro-pical,” Tan announced with a laugh. “You’ll love it here.”
“Wait,” Niro said. He took Gonzales’ wallet and extracted his army identification card. “See this,” he said in bastard Spanish. “Home address. Phone number. You ever so much as come near any of us, I’m sending down my friends from Jersey. Capiche?”
Gonzales nodded and climbed over the side, settling into water that was about waist deep. He sloshed through the water, grumbling and cursing. “I could die out here,” he yelled.
“Hey, count yourself lucky,” N
iro sneered. “Fortunato.”
Gonzales grew louder and more defiant at each step. At the edge of the mangroves, amid the tentacles, he yelled, “I’ll find all of you! Make you pay for what you did to Fuentes.”
“Fuentes was a pig!” I shouted.
“Puta!”
“What an ingrate little bastard,” Niro said.
Tan reached into a locker and pulled out a hand grenade. “Sweet Jesus, look at this, a whole box of pineapples. Want me to lob one over?”
“No, Tan, put that thing away before you blow us all up.”
By then, Gonzales was yelling like a mad man, calling us every dirty name in the Spanish language. “What’s he saying?” Tan asked.
“Just thanking us for being so kind. Says he’d have been rougher with us.”
“Whore!” Gonzales yelled again. “I bet he fucked you, didn’t he?”
I grabbed the Beretta, clicked off the safety, and fired into the mangroves.
“Missed me, bitch.”
I kept firing until the clip was empty. Then I reached for the AK-47. Tan yanked the gun away. “The hell you doing? This ain’t no gun for a girl.”
He twisted sideways, clicked off the safety, and sprayed the mangroves with burst after burst, blowing away bark, bromeliads and entire limbs, sending tracers into the clouds, filling the boat and the water around it with a deafening noise and acrid smells.
Silence fell over the island. “Hey, motherfucker, you still alive?”
“Fuck you!”
“Spunky little bastard,” said Tan. “Now he’s speaking English.” He reached back into the box of hand grenades, picked one out, pulled the pin and lobbed it into the mangroves.
It exploded with a roar, blowing spray back over us.
“Hey, Captain, had enough? Want another one?”
No answer.
“Think he’s dead?” I asked Tan, suddenly alarmed.
“Playing possum. He knows when to shut up.”
It was dark and rain was still falling when we approached Rivas, near the Costa Rican border. We scuttled what we couldn’t take with us—the Beretta, the captain’s pistol and AK-47, suitcases with dirty clothing, even Niro’s portable tripod—keeping only valuables.
The Girl in the Glyphs Page 17