She worked only by the light from the computer. She believed any money going into or out of Tarsco belonged to her father. And in her mind, that was in fact like a computer when dealing with all of this, she believed some $14,267,918 were missing that should have been part of her father’s estate. Warren had been mentored by her father, and they had both operated Tarsco—that is why Mary was on the board. So where this money had gone and why no one had tracked it after all of these years, she did not know. But she did have a report from Amigo, that came to Tarsco, by a man named Pedro Senora, who said the mine had never done upgrades. This was the report that made her aware of what Warren might have been doing.
She sat in Warren’s office, which had not changed since the day he had left for New York. He had planned to be back in the office the next day. His favourite jacket hung at the back of the door. One of his favourite fishing rods was leaning against the corner. He had planned to fish the Cains River that late September.
She noticed all of this with a kind of whimsical sadness.
She went through the Tarsco files. The old Tarsco files, which were in an older, desk-model, computer covered in dust. But as slow as it was to come to life, it did show much about Warren’s last days.
A sad note to his wife, Jackie, where he apologized for something unspecific. A note to his oldest boy—eleven years younger than Mary, about the fishing trip they were going to take. Then she found a file called Restoration Accounts.
What she found in this file was both sad and strange—the official transcript and the transaction of the monies sent to Amigo for a complete upgrading of the coal mine in the town of Oathoa in September 2001, on a small banking email sent out from New York and copied to his office that same moment, and then forgotten altogether. Money sent to Amigo that had never been recognized as sent. Forgotten and drifting in cyberspace, and yet received without confirmation that it had been received on the other side. That is, in that turbulent time where everything in the world had stopped, a simple transaction had been missed.
She looked for five hours for some reply from Mexico, from Amigo, some measure of assurance that the money was received and the Code of Conduct, as Warren had written for the mine, was implemented before it was reopened.
But there was nothing at all to indicate that anyone had answered or would answer. The money seemed to have drifted somewhere and disappeared. It was a major amount of money—but if you were part of a company worth billions, it was not impossible to overlook during those terrible weeks. The mine had been operating ever since—closing only for holidays and certain union disputes.
Yet one small banking matter buried in an old address in a defunct computer confirmed the transaction had taken place, and that the Amigo mine had received the money—and the money, she was sure, was now gone from Amigo. It was nowhere.
So as a precaution she sent these transcripts along to the corporate lawyers in Mexico that Warren had retained, asking them if they knew about it, and could they verify not only that the transactions had taken place but that the safety measures were implemented. Frustratingly it took some more months to be acted upon. But finally the lawyers did act.
One of those lawyers was Mr. Xavier Santez. Long before Mary Cyr was on his radar, he had sent all of these questions that he received “from some busybody at Tarsco” to a young prosecutor from Mexico City named Alfonso Bara, asking him to:
“Seguimiento a esta solicitud.”
Follow up on this.
Bara sat on these transcripts for a good long time. But it was:
“Tan claro como la nariz en la cara.”
As plain as the nose on your face.
That people on Amigo’s board had funnelled this money into a shell company run by Hulk Hernández and had divided it up among them. When questioned, they said the upgrades had all been done with their own monies but that monies promised by Tarsco had not come. So it was, as Bara knew, a lie in both directions.
The trouble was Bara did not act when he should have acted, and Mary Cyr was frustrated by the long delay.
Mary finally decided to travel to Oathoa. And she knew she would be putting herself in danger—but she was furious that her family had been cheated.
She arrived actually over a week before the catastrophe. But she carried 1.9 million on her to do something for the people of Oathoa who she suspected Amigo of misusing—the same amount of money Neddy Fillmore had asked for, being as he was concerned for the welfare of the world.
Then came the implosion and then came Victor with his improbable tape.
And then things in the small resort town of Oathoa became very strange.
And just as she was about to fly to the Canadian ambassador, to tell him what she suspected, that she was trying to get Victor Sonora to trust her, she was arrested for the murder of her little friend.
All of this John would come to know, later on.
That is, after it was all over.
PART EIGHT
1.
ONE DAY, A WEEK OR SO AFTER PERLEY SUDDENLY APPEARED ON TV, condemning people saying cruel things about his cousin, Principia took Gabriella to the DeRolfos’ to help her do the work. It was Lent and Gidgit asked them to come early, for there was a lot of work to do to get ready for Easter. Easter was Gidgit’s most important festival, and everyone in town knew this.
For Principia and her daughter, Carlos and Gidgit DeRolfo were the most important people they could ever possibly know. They tiptoed about the house when they cleaned it. They walked by family members with their heads down. They spoke softly when they spoke. They did not in any way betray a confidence about anyone there. They were ghosts that came and went, and had small and simple lives, and treasured the kindnesses of these important people.
On the list of things to do that day was an order to clean the inside of the Mercedes. It was ordered by the impatient Sharon DeRolfo, who wanted to use the car for the weekend.
Gabriella said she would do this. For her it was very special to be in a Mercedes, no matter what the reason.
So Sharon backed it out and left the doors open for her.
“¿Puedes hacerlo? Necesito impecable.”
Can you do it? I need it to be spotless.
“I don’t even want a french fry left under a seat,” Sharon said in English.
She said this warily but did not wait for any answer.
So little Gabriella took wood polish and a damp cloth and a small hand vacuum and went to work, thinking that someday she too might drive a Mercedes. And then she thought that yes, she knew a girl named Mercedes. And then she thought of her father, who had left Principia to go to Los Angeles. And then she thought of the tape. And she thought that yes, she might give it to Sharon DeRolfo, and that would be good because Sharon DeRolfo was a firebrand.
Sometimes young people are so in awe of older, more worldly people that it seems a shame not to live up to their expectation. But very few are able to. And certainly Sharon DeRolfo fit this peculiarity herself.
As Gabriella vacuumed, she was thinking of her father and the tape, when her hand touched something lodged under the seat. She didn’t want to leave anything in the car—it had to be spotless—but the item was caught up under the seat and it did take her a while to get it free.
Then she tossed it behind her into the grass. Then she stopped, turned around and looked at it. Astonished.
It was very strange—Maxwell the truck, the toy she had helped Victor pick out for Florin. It had been under the seat of the Mercedes.
She finished polishing the wood, and the stick shift, and the steering wheel. Then she went back inside. She had Maxwell the truck in her dress’s big front pocket. She was about to show the toy to her mother, when she heard someone come up behind her.
“Who told you to clean the Mercedes?” Mrs. DeRolfo asked.
“Sharon,” she said, turning quickly, the vacuum still in her hand.
Mrs. DeRolfo looked at her, quietly, intently, and then said:
�
�Okay,” and shrugged.
Gabriella was driven home by Mrs. DeRolfo, who gave her twenty-five dollars for her work.
But she could not even say thank you. She had the toy truck in her big pocket. When she examined it, it had blood on the side, near the back wheel.
Gabriella told her mother that night. Showed her the truck, and asked, “What will we do?”
“No podemos hacer nada. Nada en absoluto,” her mother said, frightened.
We can do nothing. Nothing at all.
“Think of Ángel,” her mother said. “And his future.”
For a few days no one at the DeRolfos’ thought anything wrong. Mrs. DeRolfo thought nothing of it—and then one afternoon it hit her, like a hammer in the stomach. She suddenly remembered Florin sitting on her lap holding a toy truck. Where had that toy truck gone?
And suddenly Señora Gidgit said:
“Hijo de puta.”
Son of a bitch.
Too late Mrs. DeRolfo realized the little girl might have found it. So no matter what happened in Oathoa—the truth would come out, and the DeRolfos were doomed.
Unless they themselves did something about it.
2.
IT WAS ALL OVER THE TEXTS AND THE EMAILS AMONG THE KIDS at school that Florin had been thrown into the dump for the rats. That this had been done by the policeman from Canada, and that Ángel Gloton—the young boxer—was going to take care of it all. This was a rumour all over town, so that Ángel Gloton heard it as well.
Young—still filled with childlike hopes and dreams—he did not know how he was supposed to do so.
Ángel went home thinking of his friends DeRolfo and Erappo Pole, the great man and the policeman—both of them were training him for the Golden Gloves. Erappo had taught him to hit with his whole body, his legs moving in time with his right hand. The power in both hands came from his forearms, and he had an unbelievable heavy punch like his father had. He also could move his head, and feint very well.
Both said he had a great career ahead of him—as great as the great Salvador Sánchez—but was that true? Ángel did not know. He could move well—and he could bang; but he had a hard time backing away when pressed. But right now he believed them—and in order to keep this belief in himself, he had to believe them when they spoke about what had happened to Victor and Florin, his friends. DeRolfo said it was that woman Mary Cyr’s fault and Erappo Pole said so too. They told him she had killed her own child, and a little convent girl years ago.
“Una niña en el convent,” they had told him.
He was so sick to his stomach over Victor he had actually vomited. So when DeRolfo asked him to report on John Delano, to follow him, he had been doing it for days. He would report as well as he could. The idea was that John had come down here to free her—and so would use tricks and lies in order to do so. But tonight something bad happened. Ángel was not only kind he was honourable. But tonight Mr. DeRolfo’s wife, Gidgit, asked him if he wanted the gold-plated Beretta. He asked why and she looked at him seriously, studying him for a moment. Then she laughed as if they both knew why—and that he was pretending he didn’t know why. It was obvious in her laugh that they both knew why. Wasn’t there some unspoken trouble between Ángel and the policeman from Canada?
“Between me and the policeman from Canada?”
But Mrs. DeRolfo only shrugged and laughed once more.
“Deberíamos matarlo,” she said, her dark eyes, with false eyelashes, widening as she said it. And she said it again: “Deberíamos matarlo.”
We should kill him.
Then she put the gun in his hand.
“La arma es hermosa,” she said.
The gun is beautiful.
That was her fatal flaw. She was supposed to have destroyed this handgun—but it was just too beautiful to destroy.
3.
HE WENT HOME WITH THE GUN HIDDEN UNDER HIS SHIRT. HIS hands were shaking. His mind was mixed up. In fact he knew he wasn’t even angry at the policeman from Canada. If one wants to know if Catholicism does any good, it did the world of good for Ángel. He could not kill anyone. Yet now he was supposed to.
His apartment stank of dry, dead air and his aunt’s hairspray. His aunt Lucretia was playing casino with two friends, and she was losing and unhappy. There was a poster of Jimi Hendrix on the far wall and a picture of Carlos Santana. There were dirty dishes in the sink, and the night before they had had to kill a scorpion sitting up on the counter.
Lucretia collected money from those boys who sold lotto tickets—it was, as John figured out on the first day he was there—a scam. The tickets were used, and of no value, but the tourists did not know this. Lucretia ran this for Hulk Hernández—but this is not what she ran—that is, the selling of lotto tickets was a way to get to know certain children, and she had transported female children for prostitution into the States. And this is what Principia suspected. That is why Principia’s husband travelled with them across the boarder—and now he had disappeared. Principia did not want to blame her sister, but could not overcome the feeling that something had happened to her husband. Nor did she know that all these elaborate schemes, frauds, cons and thieveries were the domain of those the DeRolfos relied upon.
This was information Constable Fey had but as yet couldn’t use.
So John Delano was in a very strange, dark world—as dark as a coal pitch. He was very bright, but it would take him months to fathom it all—why charges were laid and why they were not. It was all because of a strange coalition of loyalty, which he did not understand as yet.
Ángel brought in money from working digging ditches for the new sewer pipes, and then he would go to night school. His boxing took up most days of the week. He was now training for the Golden Gloves, which were going to happen on Cinco de Mayo.
His mother, Principia, worked for Mr. DeRolfo housecleaning three times a week. So Principia would say nothing about that family. Nada. Lucretia often asked her sister to put in a good word for her—saying that she could be faithful to them too.
Ángel disliked his aunt very much. He disliked the way she bullied her family—gave orders, and teased him. He remembered how she had teased Florin, to distraction, making the little boy cry, and then would walk away, her hips swaying in her tight jeans, a smile on her face. She had done that so often that once he had thrown a jab into the wall beside her head, trying to warn her to be kinder. But it did not work.
He came home one night last weekend and she was passed out on a kitchen chair, naked from the waist down. In fact that was the only time he felt truly sorry for her, for he had heard Hulk Hernández had beaten her.
He covered her gently and went to bed.
She was often drunk.
The only thing good that had happened to Lucretia lately was the fact that Mary Cyr was in jail—every day there was more salacious gossip about her, and every day Lucretia went to the jail to try to get a glimpse of her, and to speak to people about what should be done with her.
“Ella debe ser sacada y batida.”
She should be taken out and whipped.
She said this shaking her head profoundly.
“Asesina,” she would say, and bless herself. She would bless herself and light a cigarette and flick the match into the air. Sometimes out of spite—or some kind of prevocational tendency deep inside her, she went and teased the old donkey that Victor had taken care of. Because the donkey was almost blind, she would poke at it with a stick, and when it tried to run away on its small feet, she would look as if disgusted with it.
Her friends thought Lucretia was out of her mind thinking Mary Cyr would somehow make her famous—but Lucretia did think that.
“Mary Cyr me hará famosa,” is what she said.
Whenever she finished with the donkey her face would be pleased and sweating.
“Asesina,” she would say to Mary. “Prisión del Rayo—” and she would step right up to the bars of the cell. But then she would see Mary Cyr’s face, and she would say:
“Todo el mundo tiene una tía loca,” Gabriella would tell her brother when he got upset with how disgustingly she spoke.
Everyone has a crazy aunt.
“Sí, sí.”
4.
TONIGHT GABRIELLA CAME IN JUST AFTER ÁNGEL. HIS SISTER looked at him and went into her room. A moment later she looked out from the blanket that separated her room from the hallway, and said:
“Ángel, ven aqui un momento.”
So he got up and went in. There was a poster on her wall of Los Angeles, where she still believed their father lived and was almost ready to send for them. There was a poster of Britney Spears and one of Selena. An old crucifix hung near a picture of her grandmother—their grandmother. And beside that picture on the dresser, a statue of Our Lady of Guadalupe.
Ángel sat down and lit a cigarette. (He knew he promised Hernández, who owned his contract with Dr. DeRolfo, not to smoke.)
His body looked as tough as the young boxer he was. His eyes were large yet narrowed like a cat’s. He was a boxer who was considered very unusual—he was completely generous and compassionate. But there were many boxers like that. And there was something that went along with this compassion—he was very vulnerable because he was gullible.
Gabriella’s boyfriend had died in the bump. Everyone was killed instantly, and she had run to the mine. She had only started dating him a week or so before. And all of a sudden she was in mourning for someone she didn’t know very well. So she wore a black skirt to school—and she had to admit it was thrilling to have so many girls surround her and hug her, and keep others away from her.
Then one day early on when she went to the mine (which she had promised to do as long as she lived—but of course she had stopped going there by now), she saw Victor and his little brother. And that is where it happened—that is, he very quickly handed her something and said:
Mary Cyr Page 24
