Body of Truth

by David L Lindsey

  There was a moment of awkwardness, and then Janet blurted out that Haydon should have a seat, how about a drink. He declined the latter. He sat in an armchair and began to explain. He left out his observation of Jim Fossler’s unusual behavior and said only that he had come to interview Lena to satisfy the requirements for closing the case. He told Janet that Fossler had given him her name and that he had just arrived in the city. He left out his discovery of Fossler’s bloody room and did not mention Taylor Cage or the fact that he knew Lena was, once again, missing.

  “So,” he said in conclusion, “If I could talk with her I would appreciate it. I could close the case and go home.”

  Pittner had returned to his place on the sofa, one leg crossed nonchalantly over the other, but Janet had not sat down and was standing a little ways from both men with folded arms, occasionally stroking her upper left arm with her right hand in a gesture of agitation. There was a brief silence during which Bennett Pittner simply looked at Haydon as though he expected him to continue.

  But Haydon had said all he was going to say. He looked at both of them.

  “Well,” Janet said with a huge sigh, twitching her upper torso nervously and taking a few steps toward them. “I…really, it’s not convenient for you to talk to Lena just now. Not tonight. Actually…it’s, well, I’m not sure she’d want to talk to you.”

  “Really? Jim Fossler said he had talked to her twice and he didn’t see that she would have any problem with it.”

  “It’s not that easy,” Janet said. She was flustered, and Bennett Pittner wasn’t helping her, letting her sputter stupidly until she finally simply stopped and stared at her ex-husband.

  He was looking at his drink, sensed she was transfixed on him in frustration, looked up at her in mild surprise, kind of shrugged with his eyebrows, and turned to Haydon.

  “Actually,” he said in a modulated tone. “Lena’s gone missing.”

  The British phrasing was interesting. Pittner certainly wasn’t British, of course, in fact Haydon had thought he had detected a slight Georgia drawl in his voice. But the British phrasing hung in the air politely, an embarrassed admission.

  “Jesus H. Christ,” Janet blurted, flinging her arms up in the air and pacing across to the windows that looked out into the courtyard. There were mellow lights in the shrubbery out in the courtyard, and Haydon could see a fountain burbling in its center and could hear it through the tall open windows. Janet came back to them.

  “She’s goddamned disappeared,” Janet said to Pittner who regarded her with a mild expression of unexcited patience. She wheeled around to Haydon. “She’s gone, Mr. Haydon,” she said dramatically. Her hazel eyes were dancing with emotion. In a burst of staccato monologue she quickly told Haydon what Cage already had related, and when she had brought him up to the present, she turned abruptly and walked over to a small table covered with liquor bottles and poured herself a drink, without ice, straight.

  Pittner had been sitting back on the sofa. Now he leaned forward, his forearms on his knees, his drink in his hands, and looked at Haydon.

  “Janet thinks Lena has met with some misfortune,” he said, without hurry. “The crime rate is bad here right now. People have to watch themselves.”

  “Oh, shit,” Janet rolled her head and groaned. “The ‘crime rate.’” She came over and fixed her eyes on Haydon. “You traveled down here before?”

  Haydon nodded. “Some,” he said.

  Janet sat down on the sofa, at the opposite end from Pittner, closer to Haydon. “Then you know about the ‘crime rate’ down here. If you’re aware at all, then you know that the ‘crime rate’”—she said the two words as if they were an insult—“is institutional. It’s the National Police’s Department for Criminal Investigation, the DIG It’s the G-2, military intelligence. It’s the Guardia de Hacienda, the border police. It’s the goon squads that every political party keeps on its payroll so they can knock off their rivals a la mafia. All of these fall under the general rubric of ‘death squads’…a.k.a., ‘the crime rate.’”

  She jerked her head around to Pittner. “Isn’t that right, Pitt?” Back to Haydon. “Somebody gets killed down here, all these organizations blame it on the ‘common criminal element,’ but in reality everyone knows it’s the work of the death squads, which everyone knows could be anybody. The only way you know who did it is to know something about the victims. Who’d they piss off? Whose way were they in? Who would benefit from the victims’ death? What were the victims’ politics?” She looked around at Pittner again. “‘Common crime’ my little American ass.”

  Pittner let his heavy-lidded eyes rest on her a moment while she took a strong hit of her straight drink. He turned to Haydon.

  “I doubt if anything like that happened,” he drawled. Pittner had the raw complexion of a heavy drinker. Haydon wondered if his slow-motion deportment was his manner or his condition. “It’s rare—rare—that United States citizens fall victim to the ‘death squad’ kind of thing. That stuff…it’s internal.” He closed his eyes and slowly shook his head. “I just can’t see it.”

  “That’s for goddamned sure,” Janet snapped.

  CHAPTER 12

  There was a silent moment while each of them turned to their drinks, as though the bell had rung and each had retreated to a neutral corner. Haydon glanced around the room. It was expensively appointed, a grand piano, dark antiques against the dun-colored stucco walls, a massive, well-used fireplace at one end of the room, over which hung an enormous oil painting of a Guatemalan landscape whose focal point was one of the country’s numerous volcanoes. And there were books, a lot of them, scattered around and obviously read, a pile of them stacked on the floor at Janet’s end of the creamy leather sofa. On a perch at the far end of the room was a majestic scarlet macaw, his scarlet and lemon and sapphire feathers as startlingly brilliant as if he had been made of richly dyed silk. He was as motionless as an artifact, but Haydon had seen him blink.

  “What about John Baine?” Haydon asked, thinking he ought to break the silence, give them some relief.

  “What about him?” Pittner asked.

  “No one’s heard from him either?”

  “Oh, hell no,” Janet said. Haydon couldn’t tell whether her sarcasm was directed at her ex-husband’s skeptical attitude or reflected her opinion of Baine.

  Haydon looked at Pittner. “You don’t think anything serious has happened to her?”

  “Let’s just say I really wouldn’t expect to find her picture in the Gabinete de Identificación’s book of unidentified bodies. We just don’t have any reason to think like that.” He regarded Haydon. “I mean, look at you. She disappeared on you, didn’t she? That’s why you’re down here, isn’t it? She seems to have this habit…” He gestured vaguely with his glass, which was empty, and the little bit of remaining ice zinged around in the bottom, attracting his attention to the fact that it was empty. He got up and went to the liquor table. Haydon noticed that he drank good American bourbon.

  “What about it, Haydon?” Pittner asked, straightening up from the little table and turning around. “Why did she run away from up there?”

  “She didn’t talk any of that over with you?” Haydon asked, addressing Janet, not Pittner.

  “No, she didn’t,” Janet said. “I didn’t even know she was having trouble at home, if she was…whatever it was. Didn’t have an idea until that investigator showed up here asking for her.”

  “When I talked to Jim Fossler on the telephone yesterday,” Haydon continued, turning back to Pittner, “he told me that he thought Lena might be in some kind of trouble, and he thought Baine was involved too.”

  “Trouble?” Pittner was poker faced. He raised his eyebrows in innocent perplexity and looked at Janet.

  “What?” she said.

  “You hear her say anything about something like that?” Pittner asked.

  “No. No, I didn’t.”

  She had, of course. Her denial was as transparent as glass. Janet Pit
tner was incapable of hiding her emotions. She was the kind of woman who showed you her emotions first, right up front. There was a kind of honesty in it, and a kind of instability as well.

  “You don’t remember anything?” Haydon asked needlessly.

  “No.” Janet shook her head emphatically.

  “Maybe she was pregnant,” Pittner said helpfully.

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake, Pitt.” Janet looked at him as if he was an imbecile.

  “Fossler mentioned that she seemed frightened.”

  Janet’s face reacted to this.

  “Well, Mr. Fossler seems to have been particularly perceptive,” Pittner said, walking back to the sofa and sitting down again. His drink was pure amber. A double. No water. He pursed his lips. “Have you already gone over this with him since you’ve arrived?”

  Haydon looked at Pittner closely. “I haven’t had time.”

  “But you must’ve come in on, what, that eight-forty flight?” He looked at his watch. “You’ve…well, I guess you’ve had things to do.”

  “What kind of work do you do at the embassy?” Haydon asked. If Pittner was going to be impertinent…

  “Oh. Well, Political Section. Been doing Political Section for years. But not here always. Other Latin American countries too.”

  Janet was not listening. She had tucked one leg up under her on the sofa and was tapping her fingers on her glass, which she cradled in her lap. She was lost in thought. There was another moment of silence, and Pittner’s eyes floated over to the scarlet macaw and then drifted back to Haydon.

  “I’d like to know what happens now,” Haydon said, straight to Pittner.

  “Mmmmmmm,” Pittner nodded. “I’m going to the Consular Section tomorrow and have them begin looking into it. I guess they’ll poke around. I’m not sure how they’ll do that. Anyway, I promised Janet I’d get something started.”

  “Are you planning to notify the girl’s family?”

  “Consular will tend to that,” Pittner said. “And, of course, I’m sure they’ll want to consult with the alert Mr. Fossler. And you. You could be helpful. You ought to check in with them tomorrow.”

  “What has Fossler said about this?”

  “I guess he doesn’t know,” Janet said distractedly. She was massaging her right temple with the ends of her fingers. “We haven’t seen him since…”

  “Since Janet decided to get excited,” Pittner said.

  “You mentioned the Gabinete de Identificación,” Haydon said to him. “Has anyone gone to the National Police Headquarters and checked the book?”

  Haydon didn’t know how long “the book of the dead,” as it was commonly called, had been a part of modern Guatemalan life, but the eerie thing to him was that it had been around long enough for everyone to take it for granted, to act as if it was something that ought properly to exist in a civilized society. Most Guatemalans were so grateful not to be in it themselves, and so frightfully aware of how easily they could be, that they kept their mouths shut about it and didn’t remark on its existence at all. With a few rash and desperate exceptions, the people of Guatemala were governed by fear. Fear had deafened them and blinded them and cauterized their hearts. It had created a suspicious and furtive society.

  The grim book was kept in the National Police Headquarters, an old stone, fortresslike structure wedged into the narrow corridor of 6 avenida, Zona 1, on the northeast corner of Enrique Gomez Park. The book contained photographs, regularly collected from every morgue in the country, of unidentified bodies that had been discovered along roadsides, in garbage dumps, washed up on riverbanks and lakeshores and the shores of the Gulf of Honduras and the South Coast, found among the crushed cornstalks of small milpas, in the stagnant cisterns of old fincas, and against curbsides and in gutters, in plazoletas and in empty soccer fields. They were ubiquitous, these bodies. Fifty or sixty a month. Seventy. More in an election year, many more. And Guatemala had just been through a national election.

  “No,” Pittner said. “But Janet wants to. That’s what we were talking about just before you came. But there have been some changes, with the book, I mean. It’s not at the National Police Headquarters anymore. In fact, there’s not just one book now. Some time back there were some administrative changes. Now each departamento keeps its own book in the police offices of the departmental seat of government. This way all those people don’t have to trek to the capital if they want to look for a missing person. Saves them those damned long bus rides. Saves them money. Saves them the time off from work. Their own departmental police headquarters is so much closer.”

  “Oh, great, the beneficent Guatemalan democracy,” Janet said, looking at Pittner. “Always think of the poor campesino.” She shook her head and turned to Haydon. “He’s giving you the official government line. Think of it. Twenty-three departments. Twenty-three books of the dead. When these death-squad goons pick up people, more often than not they drag them off to some clandestine prison, take them far away from where they kidnapped them, to do their jobs on them. Hell, they find these people’s bodies hundreds of kilometers from where they were abducted. So if you’re looking for someone who was disappeared, it’s likely they were dragged off to another departamento. But which one, which direction? Now these poor people searching for missing family members, missing friends who have been disappeared, have their difficulties multiplied by twenty-two. Another grim triumph—through official decree—for the death squads.”

  Pittner was looking at her, his face emotionless, letting her have her say. When she finished, he kept his eyes on her and sipped his bourbon. He turned to Haydon.

  “Janet has problems with the way the Guatemalan government conducts itself.”

  “Pardon me?” Janet said. “I have problems with reigns of terror,” she clarified. She looked at Haydon. “The thing about embassy people is they have to be diplomatic. Even when they know they’re dancing in shit they keep their eyes on the colored lights, never look down. What nice music, what nice lights, what a grand time. The State Department’s great for looking at rhinestones and seeing diamonds. It’s an unreal way to live. The ones who have scruples, it eats at them, this duplicity. But others”—she turned to Pittner—“they’ve sucked up so much they don’t even smell the shit anymore.”

  “Anyway,” Pittner drawled, unfazed, “I’m going to get the consular people on it.”

  Janet looked at Haydon and shook her head.

  “Well, look,” Haydon said, standing, “I’d better go. I apologize again for just walking in here like this, but I wanted to get on with it.”

  “What are you going to do now?” Janet asked, standing too. It was the first time her voice hadn’t been charged with strong feeling since he had entered the room.

  “I’m not sure. I’ll think it over tonight.”

  “I’ll get you a cab,” she said, stepping over to a secretary near the windows that overlooked the courtyard and picking up the telephone.

  “Where are you staying?” Pittner asked, remaining seated. It was an innocent question, a natural one, but to Haydon it seemed particularly sinister. But it was stupid not to tell him. He could know within half an hour.

  “Residencial Reforma.”

  “Oh, close by,” Pittner said mildly. “It’s a good place.”

  Janet spoke briefly on the telephone and hung up.

  “Well, look,” she said, smoothing the front of her dress and setting down her glass, “why don’t you check back tomorrow. Maybe she’ll call in…or something. And if you find out anything, would you let me know? I’m…really…concerned about this.”

  “I’ll be glad to.” He stepped over to Pittner, who still hadn’t gotten up, and shook hands, Pittner nodding once, closing his eyes as he did so, like a doll of a middle-aged man.

  “See you,” Pittner said.

  “I’ll walk out with you,” Janet said.

  They went out the living room door to the breezeway and then out through the first wrought-iron gate and through the
front courtyard, where they stopped to wait.

  “The cab was close by, down at the Camino Real. It’ll only be a couple of minutes,” she said, folding her arms again. “Honestly, get back to me, okay?”

  “Sure, I will,” Haydon said.

  “Look,” she said hesitantly, “I don’t want to be an alarmist, but I really, really do think this is not good. Pitt disregards me. Fine. We had a shitty marriage. I wasn’t diplomatic material. Too blunt. But anyway, I don’t think I’m going to wait for his diplomatic shtick. I’m going to wade into this.”

  She was right, the taxi was there immediately. She reached out and touched his arm with the flat of her hand.

  “I couldn’t say everything in front of him,” she said. “Call me.”

  The driver was impatient on the other side of the wrought-iron gate and beeped his horn.

  Haydon looked at her. “Okay, tomorrow,” he said, and she took away her hand and stood with her arms folded, watching him, as he walked out the gate and got into the car.

  CHAPTER 13

  On the way back to the hotel, Haydon stared out the window, the smoky haze and damp night air mingling in a ghostly way to make the avenidas sinister to the imagination. Bennett Pittner was everything an intelligence officer ought to be. He was bland, unexciting, and in a social setting he virtually would be invisible. Even his manner, which Haydon did not at all attribute solely to American bourbon, betrayed a man whose habit it was to assess everything thoroughly as it came to him. He did not find it necessary to act as quickly as he thought. Knowledge, not action, was power. Taylor Cage seemed to have learned that well enough from his former superior.

  Janet Pittner was her ex-husband’s emotional opposite, and Haydon guessed she was often underestimated because of it. He guessed, too, that they were the kind of couple who couldn’t live with, or without, each other. Haydon’s arrival seemed to have interrupted an already heated discussion about what action should be taken about Lena’s disappearance, and from what Janet had just now said to Haydon at the gate, Pittner hadn’t made too much progress with her. It was the story of their relationship.