And Then I Found Out the Truth

by Jennifer Sturman

  “Okay,” I said, which wasn’t technically lying, since I’d have to return to the hotel eventually — my suitcase was there, after all. “If he calls back, would you mind telling him I’m with Quinn, everything’s fine, and he shouldn’t worry?” I asked.

  “Certainly,” she said.

  It was reassuring to have heard from Rafe, but it didn’t make me feel any better about the continued silence from Charley. So after I’d finished thanking Lourdes, I disconnected and tried her directly. The balance on my card was getting low, and I watched the pesos tick down on the phone’s screen as I dialed, hoping I had enough money for the call.

  But it didn’t matter. Charley’s number went straight into voice mail again.

  Not only had Quinn and I entirely escaped injury, we both still had our belongings with us — all except for my hat. And while I couldn’t say I’d miss that specific hat, I did need to find a replacement if I didn’t want to feel totally exposed out on the street. After what had happened with Thad, I preferred a tangible disguise to the intangible power of the masses.

  Quinn’s new guidebook directed us to the Galerías Pacífico, a few blocks away on Avenida Florida. This was a fancy shopping arcade with a high, frescoed ceiling stretching above the tiers of stores. It made the mall in Palo Alto look as if it had been constructed from cardboard boxes, but I guessed the developer there was less concerned about charm than the guy who’d built this place.

  In a small boutique, I found a fedora that just might be worthy of Charley’s approval, and Quinn picked one out, too. I appreciated the gesture of solidarity, but I was starting to think it was useless for him to try to disguise himself — he looked as much like a movie star in the fedora as he had in the knit cap. He also insisted on paying for everything, since in addition to his surveillance equipment, he’d brought a wad of cash, though I knew T.K. or Charley or whichever relative I saw next would be equally insistent about paying him back.

  “Now what?” he said.

  At this point, I’d already reconciled myself to the fact that I wasn’t going to see my mother until Rafe returned to Buenos Aires. We could try to track down Samantha Arquero, but that seemed like asking for trouble when we’d been handed such a golden opportunity to ambush her meeting with Thad the next morning instead. Meanwhile, Quinn had solved the Hunter mystery for himself, so it wasn’t like we needed to pursue it any further, at least not for the time being. “We’re sort of done for the day,” I said.

  “Then let’s make the most of it,” said Quinn.

  He didn’t add “while we can,” though the thought of what tomorrow might hold was there, hovering over us both.

  So we played tourist for the rest of the afternoon, sightseeing our way to the Plaza de Mayo, a large square edged by the Casa Rosada, the pinkish building with the balcony where Madonna sang “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina” in the Evita clip — apparently real politicians made speeches there, too — and the Cabildo, which had housed the government when Argentina was a Spanish colony, more than two hundred years ago. With its double row of white-painted arches and bell tower, it reminded me of mission-style buildings back in California, which made sense since the Spanish had been there, too, way back when. After that, we wandered through San Telmo, one of Buenos Aires’s oldest neighborhoods, with narrow cobblestoned streets and lots of little cafés and antique shops.

  And maybe it was the very foreignness of the city — the centuries-old buildings and the exotic rhythm of the Spanish spoken around us and the slightly tropical feel to the air — but it was like we’d stepped out of our regular lives. I couldn’t forget completely why we were there, but it all felt very far away.

  As the afternoon faded into evening, we found a parrilla for another authentically Argentinean meal. Parrilla means “grilled meat” in Spanish, so this was essentially a steak house. According to the guidebook, Argentina has the highest per capita meat consumption in the world, and it would probably be a really bad place to be a vegetarian. Fortunately, both Quinn and I were omnivores, because the steak we ordered was the best I’d ever had, and the little salads that came beforehand were delicious, too.

  “That was incredible,” I said when I’d finished everything on my plate. I didn’t even have room for ice cream.

  “It was,” Quinn agreed, checking his watch. “But we should get going.“

  I hadn’t realized we had any after-dinner plans. “What did you have in mind?”

  Quinn didn’t answer but just led me out of the restaurant and into a cab, giving the driver an address a short drive away. We pulled up near one of the corners we’d sprinted by that afternoon, only Thad was nowhere in sight this time around.

  Out on the sidewalk, Quinn paused in front of a door set with panes of frosted glass. “Before we go inside, you have to promise me something.”

  “Anything,” I said.

  “I’m serious,” he said, though his tone was actually sort of joking.

  “So am I.”

  “What happens here, stays here.”

  “Okay. What happens here?”

  “You’ll see. But if anyone at school ever finds out, I’ll never hear the end of it. My image will be shot.”

  “Even more than if they find out about your James Bond complex?”

  He laughed. “That might have to stay here, too. So, you promise?”

  “I promise,” I said.

  He pulled the door open, and we stepped into a reception area with dark paneled walls and a marble staircase at the far end. There was a desk to one side, and Quinn went to speak to the attendant. I couldn’t understand what they said — it was all in Spanish — but Quinn handed over some pesos and we checked our hats and bags before heading upstairs.

  The hum of voices grew louder as we climbed to the second floor. I thought maybe we were going to a nightclub, though I didn’t hear the thumping bass of house music, and the faded grandeur of our surroundings was nothing like any club I’d seen in the movies or on TV. Instead we passed through a set of French doors and into an old-fashioned ballroom.

  The chandeliers and deep red of the walls lent a warm glow to the room, mellowing the features of everyone gathered around the dance floor. There must have been more than a hundred people, ranging from our age to a few who might have been in their eighties or even nineties, all chatting and laughing as a small orchestra tuned its instruments on a bandstand. Most of the men were dressed in suits and ties, and a lot of the women wore evening dresses and brightly colored flowers in their hair.

  “What is this?” I asked Quinn.

  “Milonga,” he said.

  And as if on cue, the orchestra’s conductor tapped his baton. The crowd stopped milling about and rearranged itself into ready pairs on the dance floor.

  Then the music started to play, led by a dramatic, melancholy violin, and the room came alive with tango.

  Thirty-one

  I looked up at Quinn in wonder.

  “Argentina’s famous for tango,” he said, trying, not very successfully, to sound like bringing me here wasn’t a big deal when it was actually the most romantic thing that had ever happened to anyone in the history of romance. “I asked the guy at the bookstore, while you were on the phone, and he suggested this place.”

  “Did James Bond tango?”

  Quinn didn’t skip a beat. “In Never Say Never Again.”

  It was gorgeous to watch — some of the dancers could have been professionals, gliding across the floor with fluid grace — but it was also impossible not to join in. Of course, neither of us knew what we were doing, so we blundered along, trying our best to imitate the couples around us without getting in their way.

  We probably looked terrible next to the people who really did know what they were doing, and in my jeans I could never match the elegance of the women in their flowing dresses, but it didn’t seem to matter.

  And somehow, at least for a little while, the messy, disturbing circumstances that had brought us to that ballroom at that momen
t in time melted away, leaving only the music and the dance and the two of us.

  When the orchestra played its last number, I could hardly believe it was already one A.M., or how tired I suddenly was.

  In the confusion of the day, I hadn’t given much thought to where I’d spend the night, but it turned out Quinn did have a room at the Alvear, after all — he just hadn’t checked in under his own name, which was why Graciela hadn’t found him in her computer.

  “So what name did you use?” I asked in the taxi, leaning sleepily against him.

  “That also might fall into the ‘what happens here, stays here’ category,” he said.

  “Did they really let you register as James Bond?”

  “I didn’t even try. But Q. Fleming worked.”

  The lobby was hushed and nearly empty when we arrived, but the night porter retrieved my suitcase from the storage room where Manolo had left it for me. And while I was a bit worried about what all of my new friends at the hotel would think, not to mention various relatives, it seemed perfectly natural as well as a lot more economical to share Quinn’s room. I mean, if he hadn’t earned my trust by now, then nobody ever would.

  And though it could have been awkward, it wasn’t. By two A.M. we were fast asleep on the king-sized bed, both fully clothed. It wasn’t even awkward the next morning, though I did learn that Quinn likes to whistle in the shower. I couldn’t tell what, exactly — not through the door and over the rush of water — but it sounded like something from The Lion King. This probably had more to do with Bea or Oliver than Quinn’s own taste, and mostly I was surprised it wasn’t the double-O seven theme music instead, but I still stashed it away in the “what happens here, stays here” file.

  Just to be safe, we called down to the lobby before we left the room, and Manolo assured us he’d seen Hunter leave half an hour ago, right after he’d come on duty. Of course, he’d also been picked up by a car sent by the Brazilian Embassy, and that fact was a harsh reminder of everything Quinn and I hadn’t discussed since our lunch the previous day. We’d stepped back into our regular lives again, and though that was a lot more problematic for Quinn than it was for me, he was every bit as determined to forge ahead with the plan we’d laid out. We checked and double-checked to make sure we had everything we needed and then headed out.

  It was another beautiful day, sunny and mild and completely out of sync with our actual agenda — a hailstorm or typhoon would have been a more suitable backdrop for entrapping Thad and Samantha Arquero. Manolo had said the subway was the most efficient way to travel during rush hour, so we followed his directions to the nearest Subte station and took the train to Avenida de Mayo. This was another broad, almost monumental boulevard, stretching from the Plaza de Mayo at one end to the Plaza del Congreso at the other, where the Argentinean parliament met in the Congreso Nacional.

  We found Café Tortoni easily, with its name spelled out in stylized red letters on a white sign at the door and a tango academy above — I was quickly learning that there were as many tango places in Buenos Aires as there were hot dog carts in Manhattan. Inside, the space had the same old-world feel as the ballroom from the previous night, with a lot of dark wood and marble columns. The ceiling overhead was set with stained glass, and framed portraits and carved busts lined the walls.

  According to both Manolo and our guidebook, Café Tortoni had been a meeting place for writers and artists and intellectuals for more than one hundred and fifty years. Now it was mostly for tourists, but that suited our purposes fine. It would make it easier for us to blend in when the evildoers arrived.

  The room was beginning to fill, but we managed to find a table off to the side, where we’d be almost entirely hidden by a column. A convenient mirror on the wall let us watch the other tables and the entrance without facing directly into the room. And though I had the feeling that wearing one’s hat indoors was an etiquette don’t, Quinn kept his fedora on, as did I, with my hair pinned up securely underneath.

  Now that we were back to reality, neither of us was particularly hungry, but we asked the waitress for café con leche and croissants so we wouldn’t look out of place. And once she’d delivered our order, Quinn set his backpack on the table and began rummaging through it. He pulled out the pen that was actually a video recorder, and the bionic ear that looked like his own Bluetooth headset, and his iPod, and he fiddled around with them all for several minutes. Then, when he was satisfied that everything was ready to go, we settled in to wait.

  Of course, it was still only half past ten — but we’d wanted to have everything set up in advance. And while that was probably wise, it left us with excess time on our hands to worry about how things could go wrong. I jiggled my foot in nervous anticipation. An hour from now, it was possible we’d have everything we needed to vanquish the evildoers for good. But I didn’t even want to consider what might happen if our plan backfired.

  “What if they don’t show up?” I asked Quinn. “Maybe after yesterday afternoon they decided to change the time or go somewhere else.”

  “They have no way of knowing we heard they were meeting here this morning,” said Quinn. “It should be fine.” But I could tell he was anxious, too.

  And all we could do was sit there and wait.

  Except we didn’t have to wait very long.

  I don’t know why we were surprised when we saw who walked in, just fifteen minutes after we did. But my breath caught, and Quinn visibly flinched.

  “Great,” said Quinn. “Just great.”

  Because it wasn’t Thad, or Samantha Arquero.

  It was Hunter Riley.

  Thirty-two

  I guess we’d thought Hunter would be busy all morning bribing Brazilian officials, but apparently not. And judging by the way he held up three fingers to the hostess, even though he was alone now, he planned on being joined by two others, and it seemed reasonable to assume his companions would be Samantha Arquero and Thad.

  The hostess seated him several tables away, in a spot we couldn’t have chosen better ourselves — that is, if we’d been choosing for Hunter to show up and thus dig himself further into his guilty hole. We were completely obscured by the column, but the mirror beside us provided a perfect view of his profile and the two empty seats at his table.

  “Are you going to be okay?” I asked Quinn. He was holding his coffee cup so tightly his knuckles were white.

  He shrugged, his expression even more grim than when he’d seen me kissing Manolo. “At least this should get rid of any final uncertainty.”

  Hunter hoisted his briefcase onto the seat next to him and unlatched it. I didn’t see him take anything out or put anything in, though, and a moment later he closed it again and set it on the floor. Then he took a phone from his jacket pocket.

  “Unbelievable,” said Quinn. “Usually he’s on a BlackBerry, and that’s a Pre. He must have a different phone for each identity.”

  Hunter didn’t call anyone; he only scrolled through whatever messages had accumulated on the screen, occasionally taking a sip of his own café con leche or a bite of croissant. It was almost eerie to watch him. He was a lefty, like Quinn, and he was just as much of a fan of strawberry jam. The two of them looked so much alike and their mannerisms were so similar that, if it weren’t for the gray in Hunter’s hair and the lines around his eyes and mouth, it would be easy to mistake him for his son.

  Either way, we now had the opportunity to check that everything worked. Quinn made some minor adjustments to his various gadgets and handed me one of the earbuds from his iPod, taking the other for himself.

  And while Quinn might have issues with math, if Prescott offered a course in surveillance he would have passed with flying colors. The screen of his iPod displayed live video of his father and his table. The image was tiny, but the resolution was amazing, right down to the flake of croissant Hunter had dropped on one lapel. And though at first the sound from my single earbud was indistinct, as Quinn made another adjustment to one of his gadgets it
zeroed in on Hunter’s table, and I could hear every noise he made, from the clink of his cup against his saucer to the rustle of his napkin.

  “This is amazing,” I said. “And it’s really all recording?”

  “It’s all recording,” he confirmed.

  A clock on the wall ticked on, and I felt myself growing increasingly tense as the hour hand approached eleven. It was strange to think that five thousand miles away, I was missing physics class. I wondered if Dr. Penske had handed back the results from Friday’s quiz.

  Then the hour hand was firmly at eleven, and the minute hand began creeping past twelve. Several tables away, Hunter glanced at his watch, and so did his image on Quinn’s iPod.

  A moment later, though, Samantha Arquero strolled through the door. Her driver from the airport was with her, but he lingered by the entrance as she consulted with the hostess and then followed her to Hunter’s table. Today she was dressed in another crisp pantsuit — she must have had a person on staff whose only job was to press her clothing.

  Hunter rose to greet her, and they did the New York double air kiss I’d learned from Patience. Even though it was twice as much kissing as the porteño version, it didn’t have nearly as much warmth, and Thad walked in while they were finishing up. Actually, it would be more accurate to say he hobbled as he made his way to join them. Despite everything, I had to smile. He must have forgotten to stretch after yesterday’s chase.

  “What happened to you?” Samantha asked. There was a familiarity to her tone, as if they’d known each other for a while. And when Thad leaned in to kiss her, he went for the lips, though she quickly averted her head and he got the corner of one high cheekbone instead. He scowled, which did nothing to improve his appearance.

  “Just a little stiff from my run yesterday,” he said, and he sounded extra weasel-like, either because he was sore or because Samantha was giving him the cold shoulder. “Which you would have known if you’d bothered to return my calls.”