Blood of Paradise

by David Corbett

  But now she’s met an American, he thought. Her hay’s made. Barring any unforeseen calamities.

  Malvasio had considered bugging the house, an RF transmitter for each room, planted inside a light socket, but Jude was smart enough to sweep the house and the radio frequencies would be impossible to miss. It would be great to know what they all were saying here, thinking themselves safe, but not at the cost of having them bag up and go elsewhere. The front of the house was a perfect kill zone, better than anything he’d expected when he’d first decided to enlist Strock in the plan. No point getting greedy.

  He looked out the rear bedroom window to confirm that the setup outside resembled Osorio’s. If anything, it was even more confined. The houses on either side and to the rear shared a high cinder block wall draped with thorny veranera.

  He came away from the window, thinking all in all the house would be hard to escape but easy to defend. It would be important to lure people outside, he thought, if it came to that.

  31

  Consuela leaned forward over the dinner table, her face marbled with shadow from the guttering candlelight, her pearls chiming against her plate. “They killed an American.”

  “And arrests were made,” Carlos shot back, “within twenty-four hours.”

  “Arrests are hardly a problem—unless, of course, you want the real killers.”

  “Go ahead and mock. People trust the police.”

  “The suspects were taken away in hoods, tortured. One was raped.”

  The four of them—Carlos, Consuela, Axel, and Jude—were seated in the corner of a small, tony restaurant in the Paseo General Escalón, not far from the hotel. The neighborhood had held secret torture chambers for the counterinsurgency during the war, now it featured embassies. In the background, dated American music burbled gently—Peggy Lee, Nancy Wilson, Vic Damone.

  “You sound like the efemelenistas,” Carlos said. “It’s obscene the way they’re making this political. Death squads—what a load of crap. It was a family affair. End of story.”

  “If it’s a family affair,” Consuela responded, “how do you explain the break-in at the Center for Labor Rights? Why won’t the PNC disclose their sources?”

  “If it’s a political hit, explain the hatred between this guy and his wife’s family. Explain the life insurance.”

  “The life insurance named the children as beneficiaries, not the wife. They were divorced, she has nothing to gain. No one in the family believes her mother hired the killers.”

  News of arrests in the killing of the American Teamster had broken just before dinner, generating controversy instantly. The suspects were the dead man’s mother-in-law and two mareros. The mother-in-law, paraded before television cameras, wept openly and begged for help, claiming she was innocent and had no idea who her two so-called accomplices were.

  Carlos said, “The family’s lying for her. They’re all ashamed.”

  “It’s a cover-up. Everybody says so—the Teamsters, the unions here, even the Human Rights Ombudsman.”

  “How would they know?”

  “It’s obvious!”

  Carlos grimaced and shook his head. “You only see the bad.”

  “I see what’s staring me in the face. Meanwhile, how convenient, they find two gang members to share the blame.”

  “The mareros are terrorists.”

  “Everyone’s a terrorist! The gangs, the priests, teachers, unions. Same as it was during the war. Ask the men who had the American killed.”

  “He was killed by his family!”

  Axel, a look on his face like a ref who’s lost control of his fight, finally saw the wisdom of breaking in. “Anyone like to join me in an Armagnac?”

  One table over, a trio of Americans from a pharmacy chain dined with their Salvadoran associates. They’d been glancing this direction now and again as voices swelled. In a little reverse eavesdropping of his own, Jude had overheard some curious observations: The drugstore has become the female convenience store …. You have to nail down the corner of Main and Main.… It was astonishing, Jude thought, how bland their voices were and how much they looked alike—same oxford shirts, same pleated slacks, same mama’s-boy hair.

  Elsewhere, a Salvadoran businessman, elegant and bald, dined with his two bodyguards. Jude had watched them throughout the meal just as he’d watched everyone who came or went—not many, slow Friday, the week’s upheaval to blame. He’d even scrutinized the servers marching to and from the kitchen, to make sure no new faces suddenly appeared. They looked like clerks here. All was staid. All was calm.

  The waiter appeared, and the table ordered coffee. Hoping to lighten the mood, Axel also requested a ginger flan; then, remembering his mention of Armagnac, he asked the waiter to bring along a snifter of that too, adding to no one in particular as he handed back his dessert menu, “What the hell, since I brought it up.”

  As it turned out, only he showed any interest in either indulgence, listlessly picking at the one, halfheartedly sipping the other, while everyone else lingered over their coffee. Carlos fumed with stoic pride. Consuela smiled valiantly, wringing her napkin in her lap. Then, at last, la cuenta. Jude paid, as was his custom—it was his job to leave Axel with as little to manage vis-à-vis strangers as possible—while Carlos went out to bring up the car.

  Mortified, Consuela dropped her cheek into her palm and sighed. She was an attractive morena with soft dark eyes and wavy shoulder-length hair, and she wore a simple but elegant sleeveless black dress, set off by her pearls. Jude could see how Axel had fallen so hard, so fast. And any concerns he’d had about her wanting to extort, manipulate, or otherwise influence Axel had melted away almost instantly—she seemed honorable, guileless, and unabashedly enamored.

  “That was wrong of me,” she said. “I should have kept quiet. I’m sorry.”

  Axel reached across the table. “Don’t be silly.”

  “It reflects badly on you, Axel.” She pronounced his name “ox ale.”

  “Carlos is an adult. We all are.” He squeezed her hand. “Disagreements aren’t fatal.”

  They took the Alameda Roosevelt past the Plaza de las Américas, Axel sitting in back with his arm around Consuela, the two of them discreet but tender. Outside, street vendors waited at every corner, hawking papayas, bananas, dolls, thread, even the two-liter cans of olive oil that the relief agencies, for whatever reason, doled out to people who had no use for it. Carlos, in an excess of caution, kept the car moving without a single stop all the way to the hotel.

  Fire trees thick with their distinctive, fleshy red blossoms lined the drive to the lobby entrance. Uniformed guards bearing shotguns strolled the parking area.

  As Carlos pulled up to the entrance, Jude told Axel and Consuela, “Give me a moment,” then got out. Carlos immediately re-locked the doors as Jude checked the area. Three taxis waited at the cab stand. The doorman chatted over smokes with the parking valet. Seeing nothing amiss, Jude signaled for Carlos to unlock the doors, then helped Consuela out, followed by Axel, and accompanied them both inside past massive urns brimming with flowering izote. Carlos waited, the Mercedes idling, in case a sudden getaway became necessary.

  Jude led the way across the lobby to the elevators and up to the second floor. He tried never to book a room higher than that, in case a fire or other emergency dictated jumping from the balcony.

  He entered Axel’s room first and ensured that it and the balcony were clear, then checked the bedside kit—two smoke masks, a panic alarm linked to Jude’s cell phone, and a fire bag containing a flashlight and directions out of the building—then let the couple in to resume their evening together. Once they were safe and locked tight, Jude went to his own room, called down to Carlos on his cell, thanked him—deciding not to mention his disagreement with Consuela over dinner—and told him they’d call in the morning when the car was needed.

  Jude stripped to his shorts and sat with his laptop on the bed, reviewing his security brief for the next day and checking e-m
ail for updates from Fitz. House Party 2, in English with Spanish subtitles, played quietly on TV in the background, amusing if only for the hip-hop translations: “motherfucker” became puta madre, “bro” morphed into chero. According to Fitz, the PNC had reasserted control not just throughout the capital but in the smaller cities too. The unrest had settled down, the highways were safe. This wasn’t, and wouldn’t become, Haiti. The trip east to San Bartolo Oriente on Sunday was cleared.

  Come midnight Jude put his laptop aside, turned off the TV, and settled back on his pillow, staring at the shadows flickering across the ceiling. He couldn’t sleep. He pictured Axel and Consuela naked in bed, even imagined once or twice a giddy little moan from beyond the door that connected the two rooms.

  From his briefcase he removed the poem Eileen had written, reading it for the thousandth time—handsome bruiser … vanished like a punk—stung by her mockery all over again but telling himself he’d roused some feeling in her. Wounded her. That meant something, right?

  He went out to the balcony and, scratching his hindquarters, gazed out across the city, vast and sprawling—a million lights, none of them beckoning to him. He nudged that miserable little despair aside with thoughts of how Strock might be faring. He’d felt backhandedly grateful for the week’s tumult, the anger in the streets, the violence, the minute-by-minute need to stay focused on Axel’s safety. It had proved a welcome distraction from that other bit of business. And yet, on a handful of occasions, he’d snuck a call to the cell numbers he had for Malvasio and Clara, only to reach dead air or, finally, recordings that the numbers were no longer in service. He told himself that there was nothing so strange about that, an excess of caution on Malvasio’s end. Predictable, really. Maybe he’d found out about the FBI’s visit and was playing it safe. But that was just so much whistling past the graveyard. What have you been part of, he wondered. What kind of luck will it take to never find out?

  32

  “Get your clothes,” Malvasio said, “whatever else you have. It’s moving day.”

  Strock glanced up from the table where he sat in morning diagonals of shadow and light, a dripping hunk of pan dulce suspended over his coffee. “Moving where?”

  “Time to get you into place.”

  Strock smiled, set the pastry down, and licked his fingers. “And I was just getting into the swing of things here.”

  From the tone of the quip, Malvasio wondered what had developed between the Candyman and Clara the past few nights. It wasn’t sexual, that seemed obvious—and odd, given Strock’s appetite on that end—but there was something. “Vacation’s over. Sorry.”

  Strock mugged a pout then got up, grabbed his cane, and thumped toward the hallway back to his room. As Malvasio went to the stove to pour himself coffee, Clara passed behind him with the baby, hurrying outside. She did everything in her power to avoid eye contact, and he was struck again by the sense that something was going on between her and Strock. Then it dawned on him—it wasn’t about Strock at all. It was the girl.

  Malvasio knew Clara’s story: a war orphan from San Francisco Gotera, brought to the judge’s plantation at ten with a noxious dose of clap—bad enough to make her sterile—sent to the nuns in Santiago de María, kept at the orphanage till she was fifteen, then farmed out as a servienta and ultimately enlisted into the operation. She’d been kept in the dark about its uglier aspects but she wasn’t stupid. Children are commodities, they change hands. She knew that better than anyone. But she’d given the little girl a name—Constancia—and it tumbled from her lips nonstop as she carried the little one everywhere, doting on her, singing to her. Now, though, with Strock leaving, Clara’s little game of house was ending. Malvasio guessed she knew that. He had to come up with something to tell her.

  He’d yet to think through the how or when of the baby’s return to her real mother. Maybe once Jude’s hydrologist was out of the picture. Maybe never. So what was the harm in standing pat just a little longer?

  He went outside and crouched before Clara who sat in a sandy patch of palm shade, bouncing the infant gently in her lap. The brine from the ocean, ripe with heat, thickened the air, the surf a rumbling hush beyond the high wall. Malvasio smiled, tugged on one of the little girl’s heels, then told Clara he had nowhere to send them just yet and needed her to stay here, with Constancia, until something developed. She and the baby would be all alone. Would she mind that?

  Clara looked puzzled, unsure she’d understood. Then she shook her head—no, she wouldn’t mind. The tiniest of smiles appeared, as though she’d gotten away with something.

  They reached San Bartolo Oriente just before noon, turning onto an overgrown dirt road near the edge of town and following it through shabby woods to a deserted construction yard. As they pulled up, Sleeper’s pal Chucho jumped from the shade of a ragged-barked amate tree to undo the padlock, pull back the wire gate, and let them in. He looked ill, with rheumy, bloodshot eyes and a fidgety case of the sniffles—all of which earned him a mad dog stare from Strock.

  The yard was half an acre in size, with windblown trash stuck to the fence around the perimeter. Any usable vehicles, tools, or lumber had long ago been carted off by thieves. All that remained were drifting piles of sand and gravel, a Dynapac roller with a burnt-up engine, and the rusted carcass of a dump truck stripped of its motor, tires, and seats.

  At one end of the yard stood a high wood-frame garage, built to hold four trucks. On top of the garage, the old owners had erected a set of offices from two-by-four framing and plywood sheets, and on top of that two rooms sat by themselves, sharing a common wall and roofed with tar paper. Sleeper, wearing a bandana but no shirt, called down from one of the topmost rooms.

  “Got you fixed, Duende. Hustle on up, check it out.”

  Wood-plank stairs led from the garage to the first floor of offices, the cedar rotting away in places. Malvasio could see from the look on Strock’s face that the arrangement brought back infuriating memories. Strock didn’t say anything, though, and Malvasio took that as a good sign.

  From atop the garage, a wood ladder led the rest of the way. Malvasio steadied it as Strock struggled up. Chucho scrambled up after, taking Strock’s bag. Malvasio brought up the rear, carrying the rifle and cane.

  The two rooms were small, connected by an open doorway. The windows, if there’d ever been any, had been stripped away with the doors, and that helped with the heat. Later in the afternoon the shade from the amate and a pair of even taller ceiba trees would help cool things down some more. The plywood walls bore water stains and a taint of mildew soured the air.

  Sleeper had cut away a jagged hole in the outer wall, just this side of which lay a thin mattress. Must’ve been a clown act getting that thing up the ladder, Malvasio thought, especially with Mr. Jittery Sniffles involved. Candles and matches lay atop a makeshift table made from an upturned crate. A bucket sat in the corner of the other room—the toilet.

  “Welcome to your sniper hide,” Malvasio said.

  Strock looked bereft. “Bit of a switch from where I’ve been.”

  “You’ll only be up here through Wednesday. Friday at the latest. Good news is, there are things going on that may render this whole exercise pointless. If that’s the case, we’ll bag up quietly and go our merry way. But if that falls through, I want to be ready.”

  Taking that as a cue, Strock flipped down the bipod legs on the AR-15 and lifted its scope caps front and back, then eased down into a prone position on the mattress, sighting the weapon through the hole in the wall. Malvasio knelt behind him, peering down the line of the rifle barrel beyond the feathery green crest of several mariscargo trees. A couple hundred yards away lay the wall surrounding Villas de Miramonte, and beyond that the cul-de-sac down which the hydrologist’s woman lived. It was that sight line, from here to Consuela’s door, that had crystallized the plan in Malvasio’s mind. No need to rent a room across from the man’s hotel, be seen, leave a paper trail. Sooner or later he’d come by to visit his lady f
riend. With patience, it would all fall together.

  “I’ll go down tomorrow,” he told Strock, “point out the target house. Nobody’s around this weekend. Meanwhile, make yourself as comfortable as you can. I’ll send Sleeper or Chucho back with some water and food, soap and towels. They’ll check in every morning and night.”

  “I’m gonna want a bag of kitty litter,” Strock said.

  Malvasio took a second to process that. “Do I need to hear this?”

  Strock slapped his left elbow with his right hand. “Prop it under my arm, brace my shot.”

  Malvasio checked to make sure Sleeper caught that. The kid looked like he was ready to bust. “Duende, that other thing you had me working on. I got news.”

  Malvasio assumed he meant Truco Valdez. “Tell me at the bottom.” He added a head nod to suggest he and his buddy start down now. “I’ll be right there.”

  Strock waited till Sleeper and Chucho were on the ground, then said, “Where’d you find the two grease spots?”

  “Around. More just like them everywhere you look.”

  “The tall one, guy who speaks English?”

  “Sleeper.”

  “Looks like the Crocodile Man, all those tats. But he’s normal compared to this sidekick.”

  “Chucho.”

  “Kid acts like he eats Sterno.”

  “Lot of crank and chemicals down here. He’s not always that bad.”

  “Keep him away from me. Can you do that?”

  Now he’s dictating, Malvasio thought. “Sure. I’ll try. Him and Sleeper are like Cisco and Pancho lately, but I’ll try.”

  “I don’t mean to second-guess your judgment. I’m just saying, given the way things might have to go down—”

  “No problem. Consider it done. You’ll only have to deal with Sleeper.”

  Strock nodded absently, then yawned. “Appreciate it.”

  “Just so you know—you’ll be seeing more of him than me the next few days.”

  “Oh, this just gets better.”