Truco coughed, spattering a foam of saliva threaded with blood across his lap. Struggling hard against Malvasio’s grip, he managed to lift and turn his head till their eyes met. Drool lathered his chin, then a grimacing smile creased his lips as he worked himself up to hiss, “He was my friend.” He laughed miserably, closing his eyes. “Adios, chingados.” So long, fuckers.
Malvasio let go of Truco’s hair. The dampness left on his hand felt slimy so he wiped it on his pant leg. To Sleeper, he said, “Wrap this up.” Then he leaned down, whispered into Truco’s ear, “I don’t loathe myself,” and walked out.
Two hours later, Malvasio was back in San Bartolo Oriente, eyes lifted toward the blanching sky as Strock stood on the roof of the garage, dressed in nothing but his shorts, shiny with sweat and leaning on his cane. He looked tanner, more fit, healthier than when he’d first arrived. Not that he’ll thank me, Malvasio thought.
Strock shouted, “Where the fuck your little helpers run to? Been on my own up here all goddamn day.”
Malvasio shaded his eyes. “They were doing a favor, out of town, for me.”
“Then you owe me a favor, Buckwheat.”
Malvasio lifted the bag of tamalitos and beer he’d bought on the trip back. “I’m way ahead of you.”
He climbed up the tricky wood stairs to the roof. When he got there, Strock grabbed the bag, looked inside. “Smells good. Looks greasy. Let’s eat.”
“Help yourself. I’ll go down, spot the house for you so you can set your zero point.”
“I wouldn’t.” Strock unwrapped the oily napkin folded around one of the tamalitos. “They’re already there.”
“Who?”
“Jude. The guy he protects.”
“The hydrologist?”
“Him.”
Malvasio turned, looked out past the wire fence and beyond the scraggly treetops toward Villas de Miramonte as Strock stuffed half the tamalito into his mouth. Heat shimmered off the cul-de-sac’s blacktop till the air seemed to vibrate. “They weren’t due till later. A lot later.”
“Showed up about midnight. Mercedes dropped them off then left.”
“Dropped them off?”
“Yeah. They spent the night. Given the way they unpacked, I’d say they’re staying a couple days at least.”
Malvasio thought that through. It seemed an unwarranted stroke of luck and he didn’t want to make too much of it until he was sure it was true. Then he remembered the scene inside the house in Puerto El Triunfo, the chaos, the gagging smell of blood and chicha. No, he thought, don’t trust your luck just yet.
“The car came back again this morning,” Strock said. “Jude and his guy got in, drove off, then reappeared a little while ago. Would’ve told you all that already, but you said stay off the cell.”
“Smart.” Malvasio took out a handkerchief, wiped his neck.
“For a minute last night,” Strock said, “I thought Jude made me, or made the sniper hide. He stood there, staring this direction.” He lifted what was left of the tamalito and nibbled at the gooey edge. A slimy thread of cheese leaked out. “But then he turned away. I watched them unload the car, but it was too dark to see much. Think he brought along a shotgun, though.”
Malvasio stopped wiping his neck. “Oh, fuck me.”
“Yeah. Maybe he got wind of your gig, because he seems ready for some whoop-ass.”
Malvasio tried to think how that might have happened. The only weak link was Strock. “Wait. If it was dark, how did you see that, the shotgun I mean?”
“Caught him through the scope in the doorway.” Strock stuffed the rest of the tamalito into his mouth and wiped his fingers on the paper bag as he chewed. “The light in the door gave me my zero point. Two hundred thirty yards, in case you’re curious.”
Malvasio stuffed his handkerchief back into his pocket. “That’s a chunk of real estate.”
“It’s nothing. Got a straight lane, hardly any wind. We were hitting targets at two hundred in the mangroves, needling shots through the trees. This is a duck shoot.” Strock rummaged in the bag for another tamalito. “They’ve got visitors now, by the way.”
This wasn’t getting better. “Who?”
“How the fuck should I know? Man and a woman.”
“Describe them for me.”
“Americans, I think. Guy’s chunky, reddish hair, glasses.” He started his second tamalito, unwrapping the napkin daintily, then digging in. “Girl’s tall, nice looking. Not great, but nice.”
Malvasio turned back toward Villas de Miramonte. From the description, the man sounded like the reporter everyone was moaning about. He couldn’t place the woman. “I almost put a bug in there. Now I wish I had.”
“Jude woulda made that. He’s not that dumb.”
“That’s why I didn’t do it.”
Strock twisted open one of the beers and drank, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he chugged it back. Malvasio settled against the ladder, using a rung for a seat. The sun was dipping beneath the tree line. The leaves of the ceiba, amate, and mariscargo trees hung limp in the heat.
Fed, Strock looked transformed, content. He leaned on his cane. “Checked in on Clara out at the beach since yesterday?”
Malvasio found the question odd. “No. Should I?”
“You tell me. I was just curious how her and little Constancia were doing.”
Inwardly, Malvasio cringed at the name, thinking it was bad luck. And it hinted again at something deeper between Strock and Clara. “What exactly went on between you two?”
That quick, Strock’s humor turned. “That some kind of crack?”
“Not at all. It just seemed like you two connected somehow.”
“I liked her,” Strock said. “She had a way with that little girl. That a problem?”
“No, Phil. Look, let’s drop it. I didn’t mean anything.”
Strock reached out with the cane and rapped the tip against the side of the ladder. “Don’t presume you know what’s going through my head.”
Oh for fuck’s sake, Malvasio thought. “I won’t, Phil. I’m sorry. Can we change the subject?”
Strock looked off for a moment, leaning on his cane again as he mulled something over. The whiteness of the sky beyond him looked infinite, empty. “I’m assuming the plan’s still the same.”
Malvasio wasn’t sure he liked where this was headed any better. “More or less. How do you mean?”
“You want me to pick off your own guys. When they pop out of their van, I take them down before they can so much as cross the street.”
A zanate cawed from somewhere in the nearby branches. “Something like that.”
“It’s risky.”
“I know. I’m not thrilled with it either, but I’m not the evil genius I used to be.”
Strock grinned. “I doubt that.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve got a pretty good idea, the first way you figured this? I’d be the guy to take out the hydrologist. And Jude, well now. He kinda comes out looking like a sucker, don’t he?”
Malvasio wanted no part of this. “Phil—”
“I mean, all in all, it’s the perfect scheme. Jude never has to step in front of a bullet. He never sees it coming. Boom, his guy’s down. Your crew rushes up but they’re just for show, they shoot high, whatever, make it look good. Happens real fast, their weapons match mine, no one’s the wiser. And the sabot rounds? Impossible to prove where the kill shot comes from. Your guys are safe because Jude’s not going to fire back, it’s not his job, he’ll be focusing on his guy, who won’t be getting up.” Strock looked proud, the puzzle solved. “Tell me I’m wrong.”
“That’s not—”
“I won’t go for it.”
Malvasio took out his handkerchief again, this time wiping his throat. “Yeah. I know.”
“Don’t get me wrong. You wanna waste Sleepy and Dumbo—”
“Sleeper and Chucho.”
“—I’ll whistle while I work. But I draw the line
there.”
“Fine,” Malvasio said. “If it comes to that. I wouldn’t ask otherwise.”
Strock laughed. “Yeah. Sure.”
“Look, Phil, think what you want but a lot of this is academic at this point, okay? Like I said, the people I work for have done everything in their power to make it so this doesn’t have to happen. The company honcho flies in tomorrow, he’s due to meet with the hydrologist sometime early this week, and we’ve squirreled his work so bad he can’t say anything to hurt anybody. That makes my guys happy, no harm no foul, life goes on.”
“But if he kicks up a fuss?”
“If he launches into stuff he’s got no business talking about, yeah, absolutely, we may get the good-to-go.” That was the wild card, Malvasio thought. The woman.
Strock lifted his cane and planted the tip against Malvasio’s chest. “I won’t kill him.”
Malvasio chose to let the cane tip sit. “Even if it saves Ray’s kid’s life?”
“There’s another way.”
“It’s not foolproof.”
“We gotta make it foolproof. If it comes to that.”
“Okay. I’m with you.” Get this fucking thing off my chest, Malvasio thought. “Good.”
Strock worked up a satisfied smile, then pulled the cane away. “The guys who hired you, what’ll they say when your little troop of cat turds doesn’t come home?”
“I don’t know. Not sure I care.”
“They’ll just slip you the envelope, give you a shrug and a wink. Better luck next time.”
“What can they say? Trust me, the PNC’s not gonna waste time on a ballistics trace for a gunfight where all the bad guys go down.”
“Even if the shots come out of nowhere?”
“What difference will it make?”
“Ray’s kid’ll figure it out. He kinda knows I’m down here.”
“So what? His guy’s alive, the shooters are dead—you really think he’s gonna open that can of worms? He brought you down here. He’s screwed, he brings that up.”
“What about your end? Your target’s still standing.”
“Think about how it’ll look. He survives, then bad-mouths my people, who are gonna be the ones who crow loudest about the shooters. Trust me, my guys are gonna stomp and fume, demand a crackdown—and that old bird’s gonna crap in their faces? Let him. He’ll sound like a whiny flake, which is as good as shutting him up. I’m thinking, he reads between the lines, realizes what a lucky schmuck he is, and goes home, never to be heard from again.”
Strock frowned and shook his head. “Sounds like wishful thinking.”
“Yeah? What doesn’t.”
A scant breeze rustled the nearby branches. Strock lifted the beer bottle to his lips again, drained it, then tossed the empty onto a growing mess on the sandy ground, scattering a cluster of zanates picking through the trash. “Just so you know. Something goes wrong, Jude takes a bullet or I get the feeling the whole thing’s sliding sideways and I don’t like where I sit, I’m gonna make the call: 9-1-1 works the same here as back home. I know. I tried it.”
Malvasio suffered a sudden flood of wrath so intense he could feel it pricking his skin. “I hear you, Phil.”
37
“I’m not frustrated,” Waxman said. “I’m confused.”
They sat around the dining room table drinking thin, tepid coffee—the reporter, Axel, Jude, Eileen—each of them sagging. The heat of late afternoon turned liquid against the blank white walls. Consuela was upstairs, consoling Oscar’s inconsolable mother. “The last time we met,” Axel said, “I was very off-the-cuff in my speculations and probably spoke out of school.” He looked spent, eyes glazed, shoulders rolled forward. He tugged at his shirt and fluttered the fabric to cool his skin. “There are a great many variables and complex calculations that go into analyzing water table variation.”
“On the other hand,” Waxman said, “it could be as simple as this: The bottling plant is depleting the aquifer.”
“I don’t know that for a fact.”
“A woman died, trying to get people to notice.”
Axel glanced over his shoulder. Oscar sat perched on the stairs, chin pressed into the fold of his arm, gazing with an otherworldly calm at the strange adults below, yammering in their meaningless language. “I realize that,” Axel said, turning back again. “And it’s a terrible turn of events. But many of the wells the villagers use are dug by hand and very shallow, five to ten meters, and they routinely go dry by the middle of April every year.”
“The ones downstream from the bottling plant have been drawing up muck since January.”
“Mr. Waxman, it’s easy to assume the worst about these things. But trust me, analyzing water involves a little more than parading around with a dowsing rod. Aquifers are inaccessible. The only way you can venture a guess how vast they might be, or how exhausted, is through tracking very specific data.” He ticked them off on his fingers: “Transmissivity, hydraulic conductivity, porosity, specific capacity, specific yield, specific retention. You have to track head loss versus change of gradient across the well field, then cross-check it against regional water level trends, precipitation, evapotranspiration. Then you have to load all that data into a computer modeling program, and I’m sure I won’t shock you by confiding that computer models can be inaccurate. And on top of all that, you have to microscopically analyze the rock samples obtained when you drill your test wells. You have to measure the total dissolved solids in any water you draw, to check for organic and inorganic contaminants. And all those factors have to be logged over lengthy periods.”
“You’re saying you haven’t had enough time to draw a sound conclusion.”
“I’ve not completed my work yet. Normally, a full climate cycle should be enough to make reasonable evaluations.”
“But not enough to make a simple, honest statement about whether the bottling plant’s water usage is negatively impacting the domestic wells nearby.”
Axel slumped back in his chair. “Mr. Waxman, pardon me if what I’m about to say begins to sound a little like a game of snow-the-reporter—”
“In contrast to everything else you’ve been saying?”
“—but I’d like to at least briefly sketch a few things it appears you imperfectly understand. Now, as it has been explained to me—”
“Marta Valdez said the water in the well near her village started going bad when the bottling plant was built a few years back, and it’s steadily been getting worse. First there’s poor draw from the pump, then what water does come up tastes wretched. Like most people down here, poor people in particular, she tried to get along as best she could and not make waves. This year it got so bad she decided she couldn’t keep quiet any longer. She meant to be heard. Her courage cost her. But that’s a lesson everybody understands down here: You interfere, look what happens.”
Axel blanched. He’d heard all this from Consuela, of course. And Waxman probably guessed that.
“If you’ll just permit me—”
“You think it’s all just a coincidence, the bottling plant’s drawdown and the wells going bad.”
“I’m saying assumptions aren’t facts. The problems you’re describing can be caused by a great many things. First, all over the country, alluvial aquifers outside the coastal areas are often only thirty meters deep, and shallow aquifers disproportionately suffer from high contamination, especially ones close to populated areas. Second, the villagers here aren’t terribly sophisticated when it comes to understanding how underground water moves, and many times you find they’ve built latrines too close to the wells. It’s a surprisingly common problem, and the major reason why so much drinking water is contaminated. Third, a great many smaller wells are poorly constructed and badly maintained. Most last less than five years. They go bad for any number of reasons. Fourth, the well for this village is not terribly far from the alluvial plain for the river leading from the Laguna de San Juan, which feeds off a geothermal spring and is notoriously bra
ckish. The well’s drawdown may have been enough to cause hydrothermal intrusion, which would lend a very foul mineral taste to the water, rendering it undrinkable.”
Waxman shook his head. “That’s nonsense and you know it. The well’s too shallow, the drawdown’s nothing. But if you throw in the cone of depression created by an industrial well field, like the bottling plant’s, sure, I could see that happening.” Waxman tip-and-tailed his pen against the tabletop and a coldness settled in his eyes, as though he meant to say: Snow the reporter? Go ahead. Try.
“But you could still get heavy sediment or mineral intrusion,” Axel countered, “if whoever drilled the well inadvertently struck a perched aquifer. That’s a reservoir suspended above the water table—”
“I know what a perched aquifer is.”
“Then you know they’re often limited in capacity and tap out quickly.”
Waxman reached up beneath his sweat-streaked glasses to pinch the bridge of his nose. “You realize that you’re speaking almost entirely in hypotheticals.”
“Granted, most of what I’m saying is speculative. By necessity.”
“But what you intend to tell Estrella or your client, Torkland Overby, that won’t be speculative, will it?”
“I’ve not been authorized to discuss that with you.”
Almost desperately, Waxman leaned forward, saying quietly, “This really is beneath you.”
“Suppose we leave considerations of that sort—”
“If you really—”
“Even if the plant were, in fact, causing significant exhaustion of the aquifer, it wouldn’t mean the end of the world.”
“Not for you.”
Axel bristled, his blue eyes flared. “Look. First of all, you’ve got SOUTHCOM and USAID and God knows how many NGOs stumbling all over each other trying to help with this issue. The Salvadoran government has a plan to drill wells throughout the country, with one hand pump well for every five families.”
“A plan. How noble. What’s the funding? And what difference will it make if the aquifer’s depleted?”
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