Blood of Paradise

by David Corbett

  “What understanding? Who did you talk to?”

  “I’m losing my patience, Mr. McManus.”

  The others wouldn’t look at him but Jude knew none of their prospects would improve if he didn’t do as he was told. He walked to his truck at a pace to satisfy the captain and climbed behind the wheel. Checking his passport, he found it intact, then turned the key in the ignition and released the emergency brake. As he drove away, he saw Captain Dominguez shaking his head as he stepped toward Waxman.

  Traffic remained slow along the highway past the airport turnoff, then picked up speed as Jude turned onto the coastal highway toward the Costa del Bálsamo. When he came to El Dorado Mar he just kept driving, through the rough-hewn tunnels and around the cliff-side switchbacks till he passed the white stone church where he slowed for the turnoff into La Perla.

  Barefoot children, slick with sweat, chased chickens around the central pen as adults looked on from makeshift chairs of lashed wood, fanning themselves. Stray dogs lazed in the chalky dust, and a teenage girl led a swaybacked goat down a narrow lane between crumbling houses crowned with barbed wire. Jude dodged the larger stones in the sandy road, following the parallel ruts toward the beach. He needed to see Eileen now more than ever, tell her what had happened, explain it his way before anyone else could poison it. Like you didn’t have enough to apologize for already, he thought.

  He found her house empty, locked up. He pounded on the door regardless, peered in through the barred windows, then went around back and put his shoulder to the wood door till the old, rusted lock hasp gave way.

  Her belongings were gone, the blouses, scarves, skirts, handwoven mats. Everything. The place smelled stale from being closed up and felt hot as an oven.

  As he made one last look around, he spotted a crumpled sheet of notepad paper tossed into a corner. Picking it up, spreading it out flat, he discovered a handwritten poem:

  Walls with broken glass on top

  protect the caudillo’s garden.

  You don’t belong in there.

  But handsome bruiser who guards the place?

  The mug who looks at you

  like you’re his favorite problem?

  You took a chance, invited

  him over to your place and

  he came—you know—then vanished like a punk

  to crawl back to his paymasters,

  stifling the little ditty in his heart,

  the tune he sang for you when

  you were alone together.

  The one that goes: I didn’t want this

  I didn’t want

  I didn’t—

  But here I am.

  21

  Jude climbed back in his truck and fled La Perla, turning east on the Carretera del Litoral. The prospect of twenty straight days on the job suddenly felt like a perverse stroke of luck, and not a bad way to fend off the epithets ticking through his brain: Mug. Punk. Bruiser. Quite a kick down the stair, he thought, from You’re the best-looking guy I’ve ever done the deed with.

  He told himself he’d see this current assignment through, make sure Axel finished up his work in one piece, but after that some time off was in order. He needed to screw his head back on straight and he’d always wanted to travel the subcontinent—Rio de Janeiro, Montevideo, Buenos Aires, the Punta del Este—maybe he’d even take the train south through Patagonia to Tierra del Fuego, the end of the world. It might help put recent events and their sad little indignities in perspective. Then he’d circle back here because, yes, he loved the place. Who knew, maybe he’d extend the sabbatical for a while, sign on with an NGO—Habitat for Humanity, Engineers Without Borders—they could use a good carpenter, roofer, driver, anything. He was rethinking the whole protection racket, and that ambivalence seemed at the heart of a whole stew of misgivings. The macho pretensions had worn thin. I’m good with my hands, he thought, always have been. I take pride in what I build. Not that construction wouldn’t have the same old tedium to it or wouldn’t bring with it moral conundrums all its own; it just seemed a better fit with his gifts, his wants. He knew it might make him sound like Miss America to the guys he worked with, let alone Malvasio and Strock, but he wanted to help people, wanted his life to matter. Wanted the voices in his head to be happy for a change. He wondered what might be different if he’d seen that more clearly or admitted it sooner—opened up, told Eileen about it. Maybe nothing. Maybe everything.

  When he arrived finally at El Dorado Mar, the doldrums had given way to an offshore breeze. Even with its charge of sunbaked heat the wind felt good on his skin as he unloaded his bags from the truck, and it seemed like forever since anything much had felt good.

  Once inside Horizon House, though, he found three men waiting. Two were FBI agents, men he’d met briefly before, the third he didn’t recognize. It seemed clear now why his roadside interlude with Captain Dominguez had been so brief. The locals had deferred to these three.

  The lead agent was a man named Ed McGuire—olive-skinned and black-haired, with the kind of fluency in Spanish the bureau wasn’t known for. Jude had made his acquaintance during a liaison visit to the embassy by the Trenton crew, and he’d puzzled over the ill fit of the man’s name, until he’d learned Ed was short for Eduardo. He came from L.A., had a task force background battling sureño street gangs, and was uptight, unhelpful, arrogant, and dull as a sock—but scary smart, too, something Jude made a point to remember at that moment.

  The other agent was Jimmy Sanborn—pinched blue eyes, a flaming red crew cut, and eyebrows so wispily fair they all but disappeared, making him look a little like a burn victim. The story on him was he’d been a bank robbery specialist of some renown, stationed in Saint Louis, till a poisonous divorce had him begging for transfer to a place as far from his ex as possible.

  McGuire and Sanborn had been sent to El Salvador through the LEGAT in Panama City to liaise with the PNC regarding the recent terrorist threats and to haggle for intel on gang matters. Jude could halfway understand why they might want to talk to him, given Truco’s performance along the Río Jiboa. The last man, though, was troubling.

  Normally, when the agents traveled outside the embassy, they were plagued by the Regional Security Officer or the Chief of Mission or their State Department pixies, to be sure the host country remained unembarrassed by the bureau’s work. But Jude knew those folks, and this man wasn’t one of them. He had the brushed, well-tanned cut Jude associated with the military, which seemed like overkill but so had the army’s presence at the Río Jiboa. The Peace Accords had tried to end such arrangements, but the Salvadoran armed forces had begun nosing in on routine police work again, doing so at SOUTHCOM’s urging, in the name of combating terror. Then there was the Juventud Sana program, through which the Pentagon, rather than the Justice Department, was training PNC officers now. Maybe that’s the connection, Jude thought, eyeing the man a little more mindfully.

  He wore a gray cotton shirt and black linen slacks with a crease straight as a plumb line, despite the heat. It was his face, though, that jumped out at you: angular, hard-bitten, pockmarked, and unavailing, framed with impeccable short-cut hair. His eyes were heavy-lidded, small, and gray.

  The three men sat in the living room area with Axel, near the balcony with its view of the sparkling beach in the distance. Everyone else—taciturn Pahlavi and froggish Dillahunt plus the EP crew—sat eating supper in awkward silence at the opposite end of the common area, beyond earshot. Jude could smell the food—gallo en chicha, a chicken stew made with corn liquor—as he set his bags down and said to McGuire, “I’m guessing you’re here to see me.”

  McGuire rose from his chair, and his shirt peeled away from the leather with a sound like tape being stripped from a dispenser. “We can talk outside, if you like.”

  Axel got up too, leading with a smile that seemed both valiant and false. “They say it’s just routine.” Then, lowering his voice: “Something about a woman found beheaded under a bridge.”

  Jude gestur
ed for them both to sit back down. “No need to go anywhere. Here’s good.”

  He pulled up a chair and sat facing McGuire, with Axel on one side, Mr. Gray Eyes and Sanborn on the other. Shortly, Fitz got up from the table and crossed the large open room to join them, wiping his lips with a napkin. “Mind if I …?” There was no point protesting: He was the advance man, it was his job to know all. And the fact the agents seemed open to a group chat boded well, Jude supposed. Even so, his pulse throbbed. He told himself: Get ready.

  McGuire started it off. “A Captain Dominguez from the BESM contacted us at the embassy. He mentioned you’d been detained.”

  “Detained and released,” Jude said.

  “Fair enough, detained and released. In any event—”

  “Look, let me tell you what happened. How’s that?” Jude glanced around, face-to-face, more for stage business than to register anyone’s permission. “Just be shorter that way. I was driving over the Río Jiboa bridge—”

  “Which direction?” McGuire asked.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Where were you coming from?”

  Jude worked up an innocent smile. “What difference does it make?”

  The smile went unreturned. McGuire said, “You landed this morning in Comalapa and went through Immigration with a man named Phil Strock. He used to be a cop in Chicago, with your father. Went down with your father, as a matter of fact.”

  “And a guy named Bill Malvasio.” Sanborn’s contribution.

  In the corner of his eye, Jude spotted a shimmering cloud of blue-green dragonflies hovering in a ball of sunlight near the balcony railing. It distracted him long enough for Axel to step in, saying with a shake of his head, “Excuse me. I’m a little—”

  “Same here,” Fitz said, less pleasantly.

  McGuire just waited—like he already knew everything, oldest cop trick in the world.

  Jude took a deep breath, inhaling someone’s sour cologne. “Yeah. I flew down with Phil Strock. He was a friend of my dad’s. What’s the question?”

  McGuire studied him. “What’s he down here for?”

  “Vacation. That’s what he told me, anyway.”

  “Alone?”

  “Anything wrong with that?”

  “Not wrong.” McGuire looked like he’d just remembered a so-so joke. “Just odd.”

  “Spend some time with Phil. You get way beyond odd real quick.”

  Sanborn puckered up his face. He’d been pulling his freckled ear as he listened. “He just happens to be on the same plane as you, coming down here for vacation?”

  “I didn’t say that. We came together. I hooked up with him back home because my mother asked me to.” The lie rolled out naturally and Jude felt glad for that. He’d practiced for this mentally on the flight down, figuring the questions might come up sooner or later. If anyone from the bureau bothered to follow up with his mother, she’d just slam down the phone. “Mom heard from Phil over the holidays, said he didn’t sound so good, asked me to check in on him. I did, we had a beer, talked shop. I told him how much I like it down here and he got interested. Said he’d like to see for himself.”

  “Just like that.” Sanborn tented his shirt. Out came another jolt of rank cologne.

  “He’s not leaving a whole lot behind, trust me. Look—”

  “You drive him someplace from the airport?” McGuire again.

  “Yeah. I took him to the Costa del Sol.”

  “Why there?”

  “He read about it in a brochure, I guess.”

  “Where’d he get the brochure?”

  “Oh, come on.”

  McGuire smiled, giving it up. “Where’d you drop him?”

  “All the way at the end, La Puntilla, this pupusería overlooking the estuary. He said he wanted some local fare then he’d walk around, see if he could book a room in a boarder house.”

  “He didn’t have reservations anywhere?”

  “I get the feeling Phil’s pretty much a spur-of-the-moment kinda guy.”

  “He gave Immigration your name and number for contact information.”

  They’re thorough, Jude thought. And quick. He shrugged. “I’m the only person he knows down here.”

  “Except Bill Malvasio.”

  Okay, Jude thought. Here we go. “Bill Malvasio’s down here—you know that for a fact?”

  “No.” McGuire wiped at a shimmer of sweat pooling in the hollow of his temple. “But you do.”

  Jude caught his reaction too late, which was unfortunate because McGuire was bluffing. The tip-off was the “No.”

  “I haven’t seen Bill Malvasio in ten years, at least. That was back in Chicago.”

  McGuire leaned in a little bit more. “You sure about that?”

  “Oh, yeah.” Jude’s heart thumped. “Real sure.”

  Sanborn said, “I wonder if Strock would back you up.”

  “Oh, get serious. What, you think I dropped Strock off with Malvasio? Listen to me—Phil made it real clear, if he saw Malvasio down here or anywhere else, he’d kill him.”

  Axel blanched at that, then traded glances with Fitz.

  Sanborn said, “Some vacation. A little surf, a little sun, kill Bill.”

  “Regardless,” Jude said, “it’s got nothing to do with me.”

  “Strock brought Malvasio up,” McGuire said. “That’s interesting. What else did he say?”

  “He told me my dad saved his life once, he’s grateful.”

  “Here’s an idea,” Sanborn said. “Let’s drive over to La Puntilla. Maybe this Strock guy’s checked in somewhere and we can sit down with a beer and straighten all this out.”

  “What’s to straighten out?”

  “If you don’t mind …” Axel sat forward in his chair and stuck out his hand, as though venturing into a verbal cross fire. “I have to interject here that I was under the impression this was entirely routine. It’s grown adversarial for reasons which escape me since this all seems like a lot of fret and fume—over what? A man’s vacation. Or something that happened ages ago.” He turned to Jude. “Am I getting that right?”

  Jude nodded. “Ten years.”

  Axel turned to McGuire. “You told me this had to do with a woman found dead—today—along the Río Jiboa.”

  In the corner of his eye, Jude caught Mr. Gray Eyes staring. Sensing a little more diversion might be wise, he said, “You know, I’m sorry, maybe you said your name, but I’m having trouble remembering it right now.”

  The man said nothing. McGuire spoke for him. “This is Al Lazarek. He works at the embassy.” Like it was one of life’s misfortunes. “Back to Malvasio—”

  “Works at the embassy,” Jude said. “What, he’s the astrologer?”

  “He works for ODIC. How—”

  “So you’re the elusive Alan Lazarek.” Axel swung toward the man. “I was beginning to think you were a myth. Weren’t you and I supposed to connect at some point?”

  “He’s not here to answer questions,” Sanborn said, trying to keep things on track.

  “From appearances,” Axel sniffed, “he’s not here to do much of anything.”

  Jude felt, finally, enough smoke was in the air. “Look. Let’s get this over with. I have no idea where Malvasio is. As for Strock, go to La Puntilla, track him down, be my guest. But don’t be surprised if he’s hard to find, because I get the sense he wants to get lost for a while.”

  Sanborn wasn’t having it. “Explain that.”

  “He’s crippled and out of work, lives in a hellhole and has a little girl he adores but can’t see because the mother won’t let him. Maybe there’s more, I don’t know—he didn’t share, I didn’t probe, but one glance tells you a vacation’s long overdue. Anything else about him or Malvasio are secrets to me, and I hope they stay that way. I’ve done my good deed, I’m back on duty tomorrow, and my business is here.” Jude looked from face to face, checking in. “As for this other thing, the dead woman, I was on my way back from dropping Strock off when I saw Bert
Waxman near the Río Jiboa bridge. I know him, Waxman, we’ve chatted now and again, nothing deep, and though I don’t get along with the Guatemalan woman he hangs around with—”

  “What about his photographer?” Sanborn was tugging at his ear again. “The ex-con.”

  “More importantly,” McGuire said, “what about Truco Valdez?” From his shirt pocket he withdrew a sheet of paper folded into squares. He shook it open and handed it to Jude. “That face look familiar?”

  It was an article under Waxman’s byline, printed off the Internet, titled, Double Bind: Salvadoran Gang Members Learn Leaving the Life Links Them to Terrorists. A head shot of Truco led off the piece, with Abatangelo getting the photo attribution.

  “I doubt I’ve said five words to either guy,” Jude said. “Him or the photographer, I mean.” He went to hand the article back.

  Fitz said, “I’d like to see that,” and took it from Jude’s hand.

  “But you recognize him,” McGuire said to Jude.

  “Sure.”

  “He was the man who ran away with the camera at the Río Jiboa.”

  “I think so. Yeah. The only thing I know about him is that he left the life behind. Or so I was told.”

  McGuire steepled his hands. “We hear his group, La Tregua, is just a front. The mareros join so they can tell the judges they’re dropping the flag, try to beat the two-to-five they’re looking at under La Mano Dura. But they’re banged up bad as ever.”

  Jude vaguely remembered hearing something along those lines, but saw little point in sharing that with McGuire. “News to me.”

  “You sure? What does Waxman say about it?”

  “Ask him. Only person I’ve spoken with about this Truco guy is an anthropologist who meets up with that crowd from time to time. Her name’s Eileen Browning. We didn’t say much but, yeah, we talked.” Emphasis past tense, Jude thought. Because, you know, I’m a punk.

  McGuire said, “How, exactly, did the discussion turn to Truco Valdez?”