by Mike Bond
He reached slowly for the truss between the side girder and the ledge above; it was too far. Wind came up, rocking him; against his fingertips the concrete was smooth, cold and damp.
There was a rush of air out the window of Lupe’s room, the curtains wavering. Through them he saw Lupe come into the room and speak quickly with Pablo. She crossed to the window and leaned out. “He’s coming up! Stay here!” She ducked back into the room, checked the Uzi under the pillow, went to the door unzipping the side of her dress as Pablo slipped out the window and crouched beside Murphy on the ledge.
“Ready, amigo?” Pablo smiled, patting Murphy’s arm. Murphy’s heart went out to him for caring about another’s fear more than his own.
“We’re going to do fine,” Murphy said.
“We’ve got one chance in ten,” Pablo said. “If we watch it.”
ARENA leaned over Lyman and the others, jiggling the table. “Making a couple calls,” he said. “Be right back.”
Newbury was waving for the waiter. “Order you another round?”
Arena shook his head. Ugly as a bulldog, Lyman thought. “I’ll get a fresh one when I come down,” Arena said.
“I’m serious about this deal, General,” Newbury said. “I’d like to wrap it up.”
“Put some money on the table,” Arena said. “You don’t expect me to pay?”
“The guerrillas are your problem.”
“No, Mr. Newbury. The guerrillas are your problem.”
“She’s a nice little piece,” Lyman said.
When Arena winked it seemed to Lyman like an anus closing. “We’ll see if she can fuck,” Arena said. He motioned to two of his bodyguards and they followed him out of the room.
THROUGH the wavering curtains they saw Lupe move to the door. She stood by it speaking, then opened it. A tall broad-shouldered man in a greenish suit came in, then a second in blue slacks and gray windbreaker. They spoke with her and she waved behind her at the room. They looked under the beds, in the bathroom, the closets. The tall one stopped at the door, feeling her up. She backed away tossing her head. They went out; Arena came in. She closed the door and slid the chain across. He tossed his jacket on the coffee table and opened the minibar and took out two glasses, ice, a bottle of gin and a bottle of tonic. She went to the bed, turned round with the Uzi in her hands. He was busy making the drinks and looked up suddenly. His hands flattened on the bar, he glanced at the door; she shook her head, speaking fast. Pablo slipped through the window and checked Arena for weapons while she held the Uzi on him. Pablo took a small silver pistol from Arena’s coat and made him put the coat on. Lupe put her high heels in her handbag. They came to the window, Lupe speaking gently to Arena as if counseling him. “You’re going to be just fine, mi General. Just do what we say. We intend to trade you. You’ll go free, so don’t worry.”
“They’ll give you nothing for me.” He shook his bearish head. “You’re lost.”
“Please listen. You’re going with us out this window and down one flight to another room. There’s a rope so you can’t fall. If you try anything silly, or breathe a sound, we instantly kill you.”
Lupe came first out of the window, over the girder and down. Arena stuck his head through the window, drew back. “You’re going to push me,” he whispered.
“If we were going to kill you,” Pablo said, “you’d already be dead.”
Lupe reached the seventh-floor girder, grasped the rope, leaned out and looked up. Arena squeezed through the window, flinched when he saw Murphy and twisted himself against the wall, away from the edge. “No.”
Murphy single-cocked the .357. “Quick!”
Like a seal sinking back into the water, Arena slid over the edge, rope clenched in his great paws. Pablo then Murphy followed him down. Murphy climbed back up to untie the rope round the eighth-floor girder, slid the door shut and went back down after Arena and Pablo along the ledge and into his room, 708. He shouldered his backpack and took a last glance round the room, strangely anxious to stay.
“We’ll have three guns on you all the time, mi General,” Lupe said, “plus others on the stairs and in the lobby and outside. At the slightest wrong move, even with your eyes, it’s over.”
Pablo draped his tuxedo jacket over his arm, holding his Colt inside it. He went out and came back. “It’s clear.” They walked Arena down the corridor. At the elevator an old woman waited, her head perched like an ancient bird over a nest of diamonds. They went past her to the service stairs, a bellboy coming up with a tray of drinks. “Too long to wait, the elevator,” Pablo said to him.
Windblown grit scurried in the stair corners. They entered the gleaming lobby, other bellboys advancing then turning away with fixed smiles when they saw there was no luggage. They went out of the staff door into the parking lot, the .357 sweat-slippery in Murphy’s grasp under his jacket, Arena’s arms hanging straight at his sides.
It was the Nissan, shiny with polish. Lupe drove, Murphy in front, Pablo with Arena in back. In a dark street Lupe stopped and made Arena change into a brown suit and hat. With a tube of glue she fixed a broad mustache to his face. “Remove this and you’re dead,” she said.
She drove east toward La Ermita. “You have a wallet with two hundred and twenty quetzales in your left coat pocket,” Pablo told Arena. “There’s a driver’s license that says you are Arturo Valdes Moraga; you’re fifty-four, born 21 January. Your wife’s Jazmín Elena de Sevilla, you have two boys, Arturo and Alejandro. You have an insurance office in Jalapa, 2-47 Calle Doce. You specialize in life insurance. You live with your family in an apartment over the office. Now let’s go over it, fact at a time, till you get it right.”
Arena’s lips smacked as he talked. Beyond La Ermita the traffic was thin, feeding out into the dark of the hills.
A string of lanterns blocked the road. Lupe geared down, clamping the Uzi between her legs. “Pretend you’re asleep, Señor Valdes,” Pablo said. “Wake up slowly, just act natural. If there has to be any killing you’re the first to die.”
“Four guys on the right,” Lupe said. “Pablo takes them. One in the middle of the gate. Murphy takes him, then helps Pablo with the ones on the right. Two on the left by the guardhouse and two beyond. They’re mine. Make sure, Pablo, that Arena gets it first.”
“No one’s going to get it,” Pablo said.
A soldier yanked open Lupe’s door. “Where to?”
“Solo Zacapa.”
“Better hurry!” He slammed the door. “Or you’ll miss curfew.”
Beside the road the Río Motagua coiled and uncoiled in the starlight. Cactus on the hills seemed to be waving their arms like furtive compañeros. The moon rose, bigger than two nights earlier at the beach, Murphy thought, the Night of the Dead, when we too should have set out a share of our sustenance for our dead.
Lupe turned up a goat road into the hills. It was the same one they’d come down, Dona and he and Lupe and Pablo, and now it was Arena instead of Dona, and to Murphy it seemed a hideous barter he’d somehow deserved, and knew he’d never know why.
58
“WHERE were you going with this American?”
Breathe deeply, steadily. Don’t look what they’re doing. Steadily. Don’t look. She was ready but it made no difference, the electric agony darted up her arm crushing her lungs, seared into her skull. The air afire; tears boiling in her eyes, every last cell begging it to stop.
“I’m no torturer, compañera. But I need to know...”
The current burned faster, a white atomic flash eating through her at the speed of light; air exploded in her cells, her bones screamed. The words were in her throat but she couldn’t choke them out.
“I’m trying to save you. Once DTI gets you it’s over, compañera. They’ll really hurt you. Just give me something, dear, please? So I can keep you out of their hands?”
The G-2 man sighed. His chair legs banged down in front of her face. “Drop the juice, Hermanito. She’
s cooked.”
His boot came down on her neck as he reached for an instrument on the table. By the sounds of the instruments against the table she could tell them all apart, the electric probe with its soft thump, the knife that rattled, the bigger one that didn’t, the long needle that tinkled, the other long needle with the wires attached, the other wires, their clamps, the drill, its different bits, the cigarette lighter − just a little butane lighter, anybody’d have one.
The G-2 man handed the instrument to Hermano. “Index left, Hermanito. Come come, compañera, don’t ball your little fists! That’s it, Hermano, get a good hold, twist! Twist! Side to side, do you like that, compañera? Gently, Hermano, not too fast! Now, compañera – who’s the American?”
Cyclone of pain, jaws of agony crushing her arm, a train wheel riding into her body as Hermano in his big white uniform took a better grip on her fingernail with the yellow needle-nosed pliers that said “Case” on one side, agony exploding inside her, and she must have deprived them terribly, these men, for them to do this, just block the synapse, you can do it, it’s only integument separating from the lunule, membranes splitting, cells ripping down their walls, electric cries up the ganglia, my brain converting them like a speaker does electric signals, Oh Jesus please help me Oh Dear Father.
“Harder now, Hermanito! You should see her face...”
The fingernail was coming out now and she begged it to hurry, realized she was choking and made her neck relax against the chain clamping it to the metal frame on which she lay, felt the warm relief of blood welling down her knuckles.
“This grieves me, compañera. I’m sick. I hate a world that’s forced to do this. Please help me − please?”
The boot that smelled so sickly strong of cordovan polish lurched back from her sight and came zooming forward but she’d made allowances, told herself stop screaming the cheekbone’s not broken, her stupid nose pouring its weakness on the ground − stop pulling your arms back, it chokes the chain. His boot crunched again into her jaw, and she begged Dear God let me die please do it quickly.
HILLS jumped up startled from the Nissan’s headlights, a sawmill’s dark windows flickered past, a white goat gleamed red eyes in a town named Matanzas – Massacres. The road climbed north into fog then rain, pines teetering out of the black. Even with the windows open the car smelled of Arena.
A man and burro shied from the lights. A few huts, flash of dog’s eyes, then jungle, frenzy of tree frogs, thunder of rain pelting billions of leaves, water chanting in ditches, pines moaning in the wind. Another town leaped from the mist – Niño Perdido – Lost Child, a few huts miserably ragged in the rain, brown runoff sluicing between them.
Beyond Cobán, Lupe turned east away from the Army Base and picked up the road to San Pedro Carchá, up and down through cutover jungle, skunks and raccoons scuttling from the lights, down a long hill and left over a bridge, a river and banana trees below, through the main square where topiary shrubs threw leaping shadows across the façade of the ruined cathedral, down a soggy alley of shuttered shops and rats loping for cover, two men arm-in-arm shielding their eyes from the lights, then a weedy track past bedraggled huts and into a stone shed with a tin roof and a rusty garage door.
Lupe shut the door and lit a candle on an upended engine block. She and Pablo gagged Arena with her pink silk scarf and took him outside to piss. They tied his wrists behind him and Lupe blew out the candle.
Outside the stars were afire. Lupe walked uphill and Pablo led Arena and Murphy down to the chilled mushy riverbank. The Río churned round a half-sunk trunk cab, in its lee a tethered canoe, river chill up their thighs as they climbed in, Arena in the middle, Pablo poling downriver, the stars bobbing on the current, black sandbars sparkling, a chain of cormorants scattering white wakes ahead, occasionally the smell of drying fish, humans and ordure where a hut stood by the bank.
The smoke of morning’s first fires came upriver, the river dropping into a deep cañon, the jungle cut to raw slopes, lights scattered among huts.
Pablo poled ashore and ran them up a slippery steep trail to a tin-roofed shack and unlocked the padlock. Murphy pushed Arena ahead of him into the room and shut the door. Holding a flashlight in his teeth Pablo dragged bundled banana clumps from the middle of the floor, under them a trapdoor with a rope ladder down to a pit hollowed from the earth, rootlets like white earthworms down its walls, on one side a mat and red blanket and a white plastic pail.
Pablo lit a kerosene lantern. He made Arena sit on the rush mat then tied his wrists behind him to a thick root. Cross-legged on fat thighs, Arena rubbed his chin against his shoulder, hunched forward, straining his bonds. Pablo loosened the pink scarf and held a bottle of water for him to suck.
Arena drank some water and spat the last on Pablo’s leg. “Kill me now,” he said. He ran his tongue over his upper front teeth, grimaced. “They’ll give you nothing for me.”
Pablo retied the gag. “If he does anything, shoot him in the head.” He climbed the rope ladder, opened the trapdoor, stepped out and shut it.
Arena hunched over his fat legs, trickling sweat, eyes prowling, trouser knees stretched tight, feet big in muddy river-soaked shoes.
He jerked his chin: come here. Murphy went closer. Arena mumbled through his gag, nodding his chin down, pointing with it. Murphy moved back, shook his head. Arena growled louder, eyes wide.
The .357’s grooved trigger felt nice against the inside of Murphy’s finger. “Just give me a reason,” he said.
There were footsteps and the door lifted, daylight dropping in. Lupe came down the rope ladder. “Go up,” she told Murphy, ignoring his eyes.
59
PABLO was not upstairs. Through cracks in the walls Murphy watched the daylight grow between the mountain avocados contorted like frozen dancers round the shack, torn garments of silver sphagnum hanging from their arms. From one side of the shack he could see the gray sparkle where the river rounded a brown abutment of cliffs. Below were the glossy crowns of riparian trees, uphill a red-muddy slope, and beyond it a few huts trailing thin smoke, a woman with a burro going down to the river.
White sun flamed through the boughs. From below a rooster called; another answered from above. A mule brayed disconsolately. The air grew hot. A huge black beetle rattled in cornhusks in the corner of the hut. Flies sparkled through shafts of sunlight. Blackbirds chattered, toucans croaked. The tin roof creaked as the sun bore down. Acaris called, “Fe-liz, fe-liz”; the incessant wail of tree frogs like the river’s steady rustle faded in and out of mind.
Lupe came up and Murphy went down. Arena squatted like an apostate buddha on his mat. The floor above creaked as Lupe paced it. The air stank of kerosene; the dirt walls sweated in the lantern’s light.
There was motion upstairs and Lupe came down. Murphy went up and Pablo was there. “We’ll see,” he said.
“They have her?”
“Don’t know. She’s on our list − the ones they have to give us.”
“Will they?”
“If they don’t find us first. Dona didn’t know this place. She didn’t know this part.”
“You mean they can’t torture it out of her.”
“That’s what I said.”
Lupe came up. “He wants to use the bucket.”
Murphy and Pablo went down. Murphy loosened Arena from the wall and he stood suddenly and jerked off his gag, rubbing his face and mouth with his big flat hands, swinging his head from side to side. He bent to untie his ankles. “No,” Pablo said. “Use it like that.”
Arena pulled the bucket to him, unbuckled his trousers and squatted down on the bucket, his urine spattering in, then great soft plops. Murphy held his breath. “You have no hygienic paper?” Arena said.
“No.”
“Pigs!” Arena stood and hitched his trousers, smacked out the lantern and knocked Pablo into the wall and Murphy slugged him with the Magnum and Arena punched him in the crotch and the gun boomed,
smashing his ears, flames darting up from the spilt kerosene. Daylight leaped down as Lupe jumped into the pit and whacked the Uzi on Arena’s head and he fell grabbing at her, and she hit his temple and he eased down onto his face, blood pumping from his thigh.
“We’re cooked,” Lupe said. Pablo threw Arena’s blanket over the spilled kerosene, relit the wick. He retied Arena’s wrists behind him; he and Murphy turned Arena over and Murphy cut off Arena’s powder-burned trouser leg and slit it for a compress, wrap and tourniquet. Arena’s thigh was thick as a man’s waist, mottled brown. His broken femur crunched.
“He hit the gun,” Murphy said.
“We should go now,” Lupe said.
“Not till night,” Pablo answered. “How you going to move him?”
Lupe went up. Arena’s head hammered the floor, his other leg quivering, teeth grinding. “That was very foolish, General,” Pablo said. “Now you will probably die.”
With two planks from the trapdoor Murphy splinted the thigh. He wrapped it tighter. “Can you hear, pig?”
Arena gasped, nodded. Murphy loosened the wrapping. “That better?”
Arena nodded. Murphy wrenched it tighter, Arena’s teeth bared. “No!”
“San Tomás − up on the Río de la Pasión − who attacked it?”
“N’not mine − General Blandia’s −”
Pablo stood over them. “General Blandia’s in Santa Cruz.”
Murphy clenched his hand to keep it from punching the wound. “I’ll twist this leg right off...”
“Go easy,” Pablo whispered.
Murphy waved him away. “Tell me quick, San Tomás −”
“I don’t know. I didn’t oh please God stop this pain. You have anything, please anything, stop it?”
“The Americans with your units − who are they?”
“No − oh God Jesus − no Americans!”
