Shadows Across America

by Guillermo Valcarcel

  “He couldn’t find her?”

  “Oh, she turned up on her own when the stoner she’d fallen in love with got tired of fucking her. He left her for a menopausal German woman who promised to take him home with her, and the girl called her daddy in tears.”

  “Well, a happy ending.”

  “Not for the detective. No one was going to pay a ransom for him. He was a tall white guy, very sure of himself, and he’d definitely seen a lot of movies. I won’t bore you with the whole story, but we offered to help. He, however, thought he was better off on his own. He went straight for the narcos like he was Bruce Willis. We never heard from him again. It’s a good life here if you avoid the dangerous areas—wonderful beaches, virgin jungle, friendly country folk always willing to help—but in the war zones . . . gringos disappear there too. When you’re in a foreign country, you’re never the smartest guy in the room.”

  “Thanks for the warning.”

  “I don’t think you needed it.” Calvo sipped his coffee before continuing. “Now that we understand each other, let me ask again before we get into the details of the case. Is there anything I can do to help you during your stay here? Between professionals.”

  As Ethan drank his coffee, he decided to trust this man, who brandished his sincerity like a weapon. “I need a gun.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, we got a warning yesterday. I think I’m living in Mara territory. I’m not planning on getting into any fights, but from what I’ve seen, it’s sensible to have protection.”

  “You’re staying with the grandmother?”

  “Yes, Doña Maria.”

  “The Matapatria. I don’t know if that area belongs to them yet, but they’re close. The cantons are theirs. Have you seen much graffiti saying ‘MP’ or ‘MP12’ around? That’s their symbol. Mara Matapatria Zone 12. What happened?”

  Ethan gave them a brief account of his experience the night before.

  “What a mess. I’ll get you a clean gun without a serial number. But be careful—an illegal ferro is an illegal ferro here and everywhere else. But that doesn’t mean that they’ve necessarily come for you. The Mara are always walking over roofs around there. And the window was meant to scare you because they know a stranger has moved in, but I don’t think it’s about the girl. I don’t think the Doce does that kind of thing.”

  “I don’t understand. We shouldn’t start with the Mara?”

  “Well . . . they could have riddled you full of bullets instead of breaking a window. Take it as a good sign. It would be best for us if the Mara weren’t involved. The fact they haven’t killed you means we’re off to a good start.”

  “That’s a relief. But if it isn’t the Mara, where do we start the search?”

  “I’ll tell you what I think. Firstly, and I’m asking in confidence because the mother isn’t here, and she might get upset by the question: Are we sure that it is a kidnapping?”

  Ethan hesitated. He looked at Andrés, who stared gravely at the ground. “I don’t know. I really have no idea.”

  “Look, lots of kids run off with a coyote for the north, for the States. Some mothers even encourage them, set them up with the smugglers, pay them to go away . . .”

  “No, that’s not what happened here.”

  “From what I understand, the girl lived in a poor neighborhood, the mother works in a call center, and her uncle is a little . . . I understand you’ve met him.”

  Now Calvo looked for help from Andrés, but he remained stubbornly silent. It was the reverential silence of a peasant in the presence of a landowner. Ethan remained true to his convictions without feeling the need to explain himself.

  “Yes, I’ve met him, but I don’t think that’s what happened. She was taken off the street, shoved into a car.”

  “Yes, I know the story. But it came from the other girl, you understand? A girl the same age. There’s no note, no remains; she just disappeared. I’m forced to consider other possibilities.”

  “That seems reasonable, but for now let’s concentrate on the kidnapping hypothesis.”

  “However you wish,” Calvo said. “Look, to cut a long story short, the Mara don’t do kidnappings, but you can’t do anything on their territory without their permission, which means that if someone kidnapped the girl, they paid for the right to do it. As Don Andrés must have told you, I’ve had some dealings with them in the past, but that’s not necessarily going to help us. Contacts are one thing, and power is another. It would be very risky to show an interest in the girl without knowing more. They’d probably ask for a lot of money, and we wouldn’t know whether they really have her or whether we’d be picking her up in a box without our ever finding out what happened. Do you see my point? We can’t go to the Mara because in my opinion it would be counterproductive, and at best they’d be intermediaries. That’s what has worried me since the beginning. In all this time, why haven’t we received a ransom demand?”

  “This might be a stupid question, but aren’t there any other reasons someone might want to kidnap her?”

  “This is a business. No one organizes an operation like this if there isn’t profit to be had. They spy on families they think might be able to pay, but there’s no guarantee. Their informants come from the same neighborhood. Kidnappings have happened based on errors, mistakes, and envy. They tend to end badly. When they find out that there’s no money to be had, they have no reason to keep the victim alive and especially not to risk being caught. Those hostages don’t come back. With a little luck they’re found in a river some time later. But this girl didn’t live in a private condo; she didn’t travel around in a chauffeur-driven car. No one would want her for her money.”

  Andrés grew even more pensive. Ethan got up, stretched his legs, and maintained a tense silence until he finally said what they were all thinking.

  “The problem is finding out the motive.”

  The detective coughed before replying. “In this country, sadly, girls disappear all the time. It’s not safe for them to be walking the streets alone. I imagine you’re familiar with the situation—it’s like an epidemic. It’s awful.”

  “I’ve read something about it.”

  “If you ask me, the main motive for a disappearance like this would be rape, not a kidnapping. If a group of Mara decided to have some fun with her . . .”

  “Fun seems a rather casual way to describe rape.”

  “Well, you’ll get used to it. If they attacked her and the girl fought back, or even if she didn’t fight and one of them got rough, a crackhead maybe, she’s probably lying in a ditch somewhere. Other motives might be private vengeance, abuse by a relative . . . but they all end the same way.”

  “She’s dead, and we won’t find her.”

  “That’s right.”

  “But none of that fits with what her friend said.”

  “That’s true. Hence my suspicion: when one detail doesn’t seem to fit with everything else we know, it’s the first thing I begin to doubt.”

  “But it’s not a detail. It’s the only eyewitness account. We have no other evidence. Did you speak to her?”

  “As soon as I was hired.”

  “And what did she say?”

  “Here’s the recording, but you know already. A car, some men who called her by name . . . it’s a professional kidnapping, the kind where they’ve been watching the target and planned everything. And also the kind that you see on TV. It’s an easy story for the girl to make up. If they’d asked for a ransom, I might believe it, but they haven’t. And that’s the first thing they’d do—they’d call right away.”

  “I’m sticking with the kidnapping theory. What options does that leave us with?”

  “The obvious move is to wait for the call and negotiate. It’s the safest way to get her back. Now that the call hasn’t come, we can try to find the group that might have done it, but they know how to hide. They’re hard to track down. It might be just three or four guys, and all they need is a cellar to loc
k her in. It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack, and on top of that it’s often cops, and if they’ve paid off the Mara, they’re under their protection. That doesn’t mean that we can’t take action against them—the Mara can be bought off like anyone else. But their demands might be too high. If you can tell me why someone would invest all that time and money in the girl, I can move things forward.”

  “I thought you were going to give me answers, not ask me questions.”

  “Avatar. You’re asking me to believe in a crazy story, and then you complain that I can’t explain it.”

  “Try to see things from my point of view. I’ve come all this way because I need to believe that she’s alive.”

  The detective’s smile returned. “You win. That’s the best argument I’ve ever heard. I can counter anything but that. Fine, you win: I’ll play along. Look, I’ve considered every possible option. If you want my opinion, I’d say that it was a relative or someone close to her, but again, that would be the end of her, and I know that you won’t accept that. If I accept that she’s still alive, after all this time, she must have changed hands. In similar cases, they don’t hold on to them for longer than twenty-four hours. If we concentrate on the client, we’ll avoid upsetting the Mara and confronting a band of kidnappers.”

  “So who could pay for something like that?”

  “If we discard the people close to her, we’re left with human traffickers. I’m thinking of pedophiles or illegal adoptions, but she’s too old for that. Then there’s organ theft or prostitution, and that kind of thing’s easier in rural areas.”

  “Fine. So where should we begin the investigation?”

  “My boys have been on it for a week. If it is a smuggling network, she’ll be valuable to them, and we may be able to get her back. But then they’d take her across the border, and she’d be gone. It’s been too long. That’s not what happened. You can’t do that without the help of corrupt officials who charge their cut, and my contacts with the immigration authorities are solid. I’ve paid what’s necessary to ask my questions, and there’s been no movement.”

  “Isn’t there a chance they could have moved her without them knowing?”

  “Why? This isn’t just one trip we’re talking about here; it’s a business. They have too much at stake. The other way is safer and cheaper.”

  “What about an individual?”

  Calvo thought about it for a few moments and ended up nodding. “Yeah, an individual in a car, with the girl hidden in the trunk . . . yes, that could be. Then I’d have to refund your money, and we’d all have to go home, because if that’s the case, she’s just as likely to be dead. We’ll never see her again. It’s beyond my reach.”

  “You’re right. Let’s assume that she hasn’t been taken out of the country.”

  “I’ve been thinking it over for the past few days. About who might be willing to pay from inside the country. To our shame, and yours, gringos and Europeans hide out here to find children. Usually they don’t need to use force; wherever they look, there are people short on cash and morals willing to do what they say. I won’t go into details, but if one of them had their eye on her and had enough money . . . I’ve come across cases like that.”

  “And is there any way to get access to that world?”

  “There’s a gringo who’s been coming in and out of Central American countries for five years now. He’s almost been caught twice, but he escaped. He’s been around so long that he’s become a key player in pedophile circles. So you make contact with him, he makes his own inquiries, he talks, and you pay well. That’s how he makes his living. I’ve found him before, but he disappears for months. As soon as this case came to me, the first thing we did was try to track him down, and my boys finally found him yesterday. If you give me another day to confirm my sources and his routine, we can catch him at home.”

  “That sounds great.”

  “So I’ll call you tomorrow with a plan. It’s not the best lead, but it’s the only one I can offer. Finally, I want to reiterate: I know how much it costs to pay for this service, and I consider myself an honest man, so I don’t want to mislead you. We might not be able to find her. If you give me permission to investigate the family and friends, I’m sure that I’ll come up with something, and then I’d only have to find out why the other girl lied, whether she was afraid or wanted to cover up something. It’s almost always an adult who was close to the child, and if it was the Mara, I’d know that too. At least then you can bury her. It might not be consolation, but at least it brings an end to the uncertainty.”

  After the visit, Andrés asked Ethan if he wanted to come along with him as he made a tour of his stores. Ethan was grateful for the offer; it was much better than going back to spend the day with Doña Maria and the lovebirds while Michelle was at work. On the way, he got an answer from Ari: she said hello, told him about the progress she’d made in her research, and asked how he was settling in. The message made him happy but also gave him a pain in the pit of his stomach. Although it was just a couple of phrases, he reread it several times as though he were inspecting it for a hidden message.

  “What did you think of the detective?” Andrés said after a while.

  “He knows his business better than we do. There’s no doubt about that.”

  “How much do you trust him?”

  “Until his fees become too high. Why do you ask? Didn’t you hire him?”

  “I’m not paying for everything. It was Michelle’s idea.”

  “But she can’t pay for everything herself.”

  “Forgive me. You know I don’t like to stick my nose where it’s not wanted, but do you trust my sister?”

  “Do you think she’s hiding something?”

  “I don’t think so. But it’s not just the case; she’s always lived one lie or another. How has she been acting since you arrived?”

  “I don’t know yet. I don’t understand what’s wrong with her. Well, I can imagine, but even so. She seems too calm. We’ve barely spoken.”

  “You don’t know what’s going on inside. No one does. You didn’t see her during the first week—she was wandering around like a zombie. She forgot things, got confused. She didn’t eat for three days. I kept an eye on her. She lived on coffee. I wanted to take her to the hospital, but she was afraid that they’d drug her and she’d forget about Michi. She agreed to eat in return for not going. When you said you were coming, she was a new person. You became her savior.”

  “I tried to tell her how things really are. She seemed to understand.”

  “She’s idealized you. Now that hope is the only thing that’s keeping her going. It’s as though she thinks because you’re here, everything’s going to work out. Listen, I think contacting you was the right thing to do, but I’m worried about what might happen if this all ends how we know it might, God forbid.”

  Andrés hesitated before going on. “Tell me if I’m out of line, but do you really love her so much? Forgive me; it’s so strange . . . to have you with me, investigating . . .”

  “Don’t worry. I’m glad you asked. I haven’t come for Michelle—I’m looking for Michi. It’s my duty. There’s no other reason. And I won’t stop until I find her.”

  Andrés indulged in a rare show of emotion for such a reserved man. “I’m so grateful to have you here. I . . . I’m moved by your charity. There’s nothing that obliges you to be here. The girl, you haven’t seen her for years. She has a gift. She’s different from the rest of the family, better than any of us. She has a talent for helping people. She’s special, like my grandmother.”

  “Michelle told me about her. Your family was from . . . Hungary, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes. My grandmother was an angel, but my mother . . . it doesn’t matter. The Lord has blessed the girl, and I’m not going to forget my responsibilities as an uncle. They think she’s dead—they’d prefer her to be so as not to shake things up. They live in fear. I’m not afraid. Nothing’s more important to me than gett
ing her back, to be at peace with the Lord and myself. If they have to kill me, then I’ll die happy in the knowledge that I wasn’t a coward.”

  The journey ended at a café with flaking walls and a scarlet-and-cream checkerboard floor: early twentieth-century architecture that had all but disappeared, not unlike the customers—all male and older than Andrés, who was willing to break his church’s rigid rules by entering the premises even though he didn’t drink alcohol. Ethan felt forced to join him although he was beginning to feel the accumulated exhaustion of the past twenty-four hours. The visit stretched on for hours amid conversations about soccer and chess, to which a couple of the old men seemed particularly addicted, and the notable absence of any mention of women or sex, topics that were not to their taste. Andrés’s traditional, austere, and somewhat solemn worldview appeared to be shared by his fellow regulars, but Ethan found them a little dull. Game after game of chess was played, and time appeared to be defined by what was happening on the board. When the last game was over, they gathered up the pieces, and Ethan, the only one who was drinking beer, yawned in relief.

  The noise from the school had died down. He could still hear children’s voices in the distance, but the area appeared to be safe from unwelcome intruders. Finally, after a string of bad luck, fortune was smiling on him. He forced himself to be patient and kept watch, staying still and out of sight. He was very good at his job. He was precise and never made mistakes. That was why they had hired him. He’d never been visited by the police, no one had ever linked him to the disappearances, and he continued to cross Latin America without a criminal record, but that was because of the precautions he took. Recently, he’d grown a little lax. To make sure that he rested easier in the future, he decided to reintroduce his security protocols. The hours of waiting bore fruit, and the girl appeared with the groceries, but, as though fate were trying to test him, she was accompanied by a friend she must have met at the store. He considered waiting until the following night but decided to go ahead so as not to risk any further exposure in the village. It wasn’t the first time he’d had to deal with a situation like this. In fact, he didn’t mind the idea of a second package for his own personal enjoyment.