January Justice

by Athol Dickson

  I kept thinking about Olivia’s tearful reaction when I had called her mother a murderer and a monster. I had begun to wonder if maybe Olivia’s reason for getting hired as Doña Elena’s personal assistant was simply to make contact with her mother. After all, the usual avenues for contacting Alejandra Delarosa would be closed to Olivia. She couldn’t expect help from the police. She couldn’t take out an advertisement. She couldn’t even hire someone like me without the risk that her mother would be turned in to the authorities. How would you look for someone under those conditions? Where would you begin?

  I supposed it made some kind of sense to start with Doña Elena, because she was the last person known to have seen Olivia’s mother. But Olivia couldn’t very well expect Doña Elena to help. So maybe Olivia had adopted her alias and gotten herself hired as Doña Elena’s personal assistant simply to be nearby in case Delarosa was still interested in Doña Elena. Maybe Olivia was hoping her mother would see her at Doña Elena’s side. Maybe she was just that desperate to find a mother who had hidden herself far too well.

  But although I wanted to believe the best about Olivia, there was still the fact that Medallion and his partner had tried to beat something out of her. Although I had given Olivia several chances to come clean about that, she had refused to do it. She was obviously hiding something more than just her identity, something a couple of very bad guys wanted. Whatever that thing was, if it was innocent, why wouldn’t Olivia tell me about it?

  I watched the lights out on the ocean, and thought and thought, but in the end I just didn’t have enough information. Instead, I had two choices, neither of which had much appeal. I could hang around and watch while Olivia kept doing whatever it was she was doing and very possibly got herself killed. Or I could go back to the plan I’d had before. Tell her I knew her real identity and hope she reacted by admitting the real reason for her actions, whatever that might be.

  The first strategy was probably the smartest, since the second required me to give up the only strategic advantage I seemed to have at the moment—knowing a little more about Olivia than she realized. But what if Olivia was innocent, and I let her get herself killed while the two of us played this game of cat and mouse? After Haley, I didn’t think I would survive that. Instead, it seemed I was probably going to give up the one thing I had going for me and let Olivia know I was onto her. Then at least there was a chance she’d tell me what she was really up against, and I could use that information to protect her.

  I sighed, laid my head back against the seat, crossed my arms over my chest, and shut my eyes. I slept fitfully, fading in and out of consciousness. I dreamed of trailers teetering on cliff tops and Haley walking in midair and the deathly stench of millions of bloated fish floating on the ocean from horizon to horizon. The sunset’s afterglow was long gone when my cell phone’s ringtone roused me from the nightmare. It was Sid Gold calling for his pickup.

  Sid was waiting on the sidewalk when I pulled up to the curb. He was alone. I started to get out to open the door for him, but he waved me away and got into the back on his own. I merged into the PCH traffic, heading toward El Nido.

  “So,” he said, slurring the “s” a little bit. “That was a disaster.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I go in, and there’s no room at the bar and only one high top available, so I sit there and I order a manhattan, and I’m drinking it and looking around, watching all the action. There’s some pros in there, if you want my opinion, wearing nothing but shirts and calling them dresses, but I saw a couple of girls who looked like they were maybe normal people from the neighborhood. So I call the waitress over and tell her I want to buy their next round. Which they seem to appreciate, giving me nice smiles and all, but I can’t tell if they want me to come over, you know? I mean, it’s been a real long time, Malcolm. I can’t remember all the signals. So I’m sitting there, trying to decide, and I guess I waited too long, because they stopped looking my way, and then it was kind of like they were avoiding eye contact. So I order another manhattan, and I’m drinking it alone and feeling pretty stupid, and who should come up to the table but Morty Stern, you know, the agent? Represents Tom Selleck and Julia Dreyfus? And he’s all ‘What are you doing here alone?’ And ‘Hey, everybody, you know who this is?’

  “So Morty sort of shouts my filmography to the whole room—he’s drunk see—and he’s rattling off all my pictures, and suddenly I notice those two girls are watching me again, only this time they get up and come over to my table and they thank me for the drinks, the drinks I bought them what, half an hour earlier? Naturally I know what’s on their mind, but at this point I don’t care. I just don’t want to sit there like a wallflower anymore, so I pretend I like Morty just fine, which I do not, and I pretend I don’t know what these women want, which I do, and I order another round for everyone. And after that I start to kind of forget about these people’s motivation, and there’s another round, and I don’t know, but I think maybe another round after that, and this one girl, she’s maybe thirty and frankly pretty hot, she’s rubbing up against me accidentally on purpose and talking about how much she admires my work, and I’m actually starting to think maybe we’re connecting on some kind of level. And then she puts her face right there in front of mine, I mean right there, and she looks deep into my eyes, and I’m thinking this is a very soulful moment, and she says to me, with these luscious pouty lips, she says, ‘Could you introduce me to Brad Pitt?’ So I say ‘Excuse me,’ and I go to the men’s room and call you.”

  “I’m sorry, Sid.”

  “Well, hey, at least I tried.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Yeah, at least I got that out of my system. Now I know what I’ve been missing, and it’s not much, let me tell you. So, change the subject. Seen any good films lately?”

  “I don’t go to the movies much.”

  “No? But you drive for people in the business. That’s funny. You drive for people like me and Haley Lane, but you’re not a movie fan. Pretty perfect, actually. Now that I think about it. Very interesting.”

  “I’m glad you think so.”

  “I do think it’s interesting, and I should know. I’m up to my eyeballs in boredom, Malcolm. You know how I spend my days? I sit around reading boring treatments, that’s how. People send us these yawners, these homages to monotony, and they expect to get a picture made.”

  “This is why I don’t watch movies. Mostly they just put me to sleep.”

  “Yeah, well, don’t quote me, but lately I’ve been feeling the same. It’s hard to find a script worth filming. Give you an example. Just this morning my assistant brings me this script somebody sent us. It’s about money laundering, okay? Money laundering. People love pictures about stealing money or spending money or losing money. They do not want to watch a film about making fake investments, which is basically what money laundering is.”

  “Making fake investments. Is that really all there is to it?”

  “Sure. Say you have a pile of dough, which you stole from somebody’s granny or whoever, and everybody knows you have no excuse to be holding so much money, so what do you do? You have to find a reason for the money, right? Something that makes sense out of you getting rich all of a sudden. So you get yourself a little coin-operated Laundromat, just to mention the example in this boring screenplay I read. Seriously, most of the scenes take place in a Laundromat. Guy must be an accountant writing on the side.”

  I said, “I must be missing something. What does a Laundromat have to do with money laundering?”

  “Oh. Well, say you take in five hundred dollars a week legitimately. You add some of your ill-gotten gains, pay taxes on five thousand, and keep thirty-five hundred. Then you spend that any way you want. Who’s going to argue? The cops would have to sit there for a month and count the quarters.”

  As I turned off the PCH, getting close to El Nido, an idea came to me, something I hadn’t considered before.

  I said, “How about selling som
ething over the Internet? Something like a book? You could just invent orders and pay yourself, and nobody would ever know, right.”

  “I guess that could work. But it’s even more boring than the Laundromat.”

  I wasn’t so sure.

  As I turned into the driveway at El Nido and waited for the gates to part and admit us, I pondered the way you can look at something for so long, you start to think you’re seeing it the only way it can be seen. Then one little idea comes along that shifts your point of view just slightly, and suddenly everything you thought you knew for sure becomes a question, or else everything you didn’t understand before is crystal clear.

  I dropped Sid at the mansion, drove over to the garage, parked the Mercedes, and walked across the grounds to the guesthouse. When I entered, Simon, Teru, and Olivia were sitting at the small table in the kitchen, playing cards.

  Simon looked up at me with a startled expression. “Oh, I say, you don’t mean Mr. Gold has already returned?”

  “Afraid so. I just dropped him at the big house.”

  He put down his cards and rose to his feet to look down at Olivia and Teru. “Miss Soto and Mr. Fujimoto, thank you for a lovely evening. My apologies for this hasty departure, but duty calls.” Seconds later he was out the door.

  Teru said, “A likely excuse. He was just tired of losing.”

  I saw that most of the chips on the table were in front of Olivia. I said, “Looks like Simon isn’t the only loser.”

  “Malcolm,” said Teru, “sitting across the table from me is a poker-playing machine disguised as a woman. Do not ever try to bluff her or read her mind. It isn’t possible.”

  “Yes,” I said, “I’ve come to the same conclusion.”

  Olivia glanced up at me and then back down at her cards.

  I went into the bedroom and changed out of the suit into a polo shirt and a pair of khaki cargo shorts. When I returned to the kitchen, Teru was gone and Olivia was washing some plates and glasses at the sink.

  I said, “You already ate?”

  “Simon brought over some lamb and asparagus and a Caesar salad.”

  “Sounds good.” I opened a can of chili, poured it in a bowl, and put the bowl in the microwave. While it heated, I got a Heineken out of the refrigerator. “Want one of these?”

  “No, thank you.”

  I took the chili out of the microwave and leaned against the counter, eating it while she got the dishes squared away. It would have been a cozy little domestic scene, except for all the secrets we were hiding from each other.

  With her back to me, she said, “They told me about the bomb.”

  “Oh, that.”

  “Yes, that. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “It happened before we met.”

  “You should have told me.”

  “I don’t see why.”

  She dried a glass. “They said it was probably the same men who tried to kill you in the mountains.”

  “That’s possible.”

  “Teru thinks it could be the same men who broke into my apartment.”

  I said nothing.

  She turned to face me across the kitchen. “Teru thinks it’s all part of the same thing. He says they would have killed me the way they tried to kill you.”

  “So he’s convinced you they weren’t rapists after all?”

  Olivia looked down. She stood with her arms crossed over her chest and clutched her elbows close. She looked smaller somehow, and clearly frightened.

  I said, “They’d have to get through me to hurt you, Olivia. And I can be very hard to kill when I want to be.”

  “When you want to be? What does that mean?”

  The best chance of getting her to come clean to go beyond just telling her I knew her secret. Trust inspires trust. I had to trust her with as much of my own secret as I could.

  I said, “Things have been hard for me. I’m good in a firefight and I’m good hand-to-hand, but sometimes I wonder if it’s worth the effort.”

  “You’re not talking about those two men.”

  “No.”

  “You’re talking about the reason why you and I can’t be together.”

  I nodded. “You told me once I was brokenhearted, and you’re right. There was a woman. She gone forever, and I feel awful all the time. The pain is unrelenting, and it’s very tempting to give in, to allow myself to go crazy, or to allow someone to kill me.”

  She crossed the kitchen to stand in front of me. She took my hand in hers. “I wish I could do more than say I’m sorry.”

  “You can. But not the way you mean. Tell me what those men want. Let me help you. Give me something I can fight for.”

  “I…I want to do that, Malcolm. I want to trust you. I know I need help. I mean, obviously, I do need help. And I feel alone all the time. I’m so tired of feeling alone. But there are things I…I just…it’s just very hard to know what I should do.”

  I drew in a deep breath. I let it out and said, “I know who you are, Olivia. I know you’re Alejandra’s daughter.”

  She removed her hand from mine.

  I said, “I went to Guatemala. I met your father. I know how he’s living, and I know he doesn’t have to live that way. He has money in the bank, and it’s the same amount of money your mother took as ransom for Doña Elena. It’s obvious that’s where he got it, and it’s obvious he’s a good man, because he won’t spend it.”

  “No,” she said, crossing her arms back over her chest. “I sent him most of that money. Doña Elena is very generous with my salary, and I don’t spend much on myself. I’ve been sending him money every month.”

  “Okay. Good. You’re opening up a little. Now tell me the rest.”

  She stared at me. She looked down at the floor. “All right.”

  44

  We went into the living room. I settled onto the sofa, thinking she would want to sit beside me, but she chose the upholstered chair. There was no need for me to ask her questions. Once she started talking, it poured out like a flood over a broken dam.

  “I was a senior at Belmont High School in LA when my mother kidnapped Doña Elena. My father came and took me out of class that day, and we went to the apartment and watched it on the television set. Even when they showed the video of my mother standing behind Doña Elena with the gun, Papa wouldn’t believe it. I remember he kept saying ‘No’ over and over to the television, and a couple of times, he said, ‘That’s not her,’ but anyone could that see it was her.

  “When the police came, they took Papa into a bedroom and left me out in the living room. They asked me all kinds of things about my mother. Did she talk about politics a lot? Did she talk about her job? What did she say about Doña Elena and Arturo Toledo? Was she angry with them for some reason? Did my parents have some special need for money? Was I sick? Was my father or my mother sick? The questions went on and on. They asked me where I was born and when, and I knew they were asking that because they wanted to know if I was an American citizen. I remember my father started shouting in the next room, telling them to get out of his house. Papa made them leave, and I was proud of him for that, but I was also scared. I knew they would make my parents leave the country, no matter what else happened.

  “After the murder, all those videos and what my mother did to Toledo, Papa still wouldn’t believe it. He never once admitted that my mother had gone crazy. When Doña Elena told the police she heard my mother talking to some men at that place where they held her, Papa said the URNG must have forced my mother to do it. Papa wouldn’t go to work. He said he had to be there when she came home. He sat in the living room for weeks and waited. He checked the telephone sometimes. He picked it up and listened to make sure there was a dial tone. But she never called and she never came. My mother was done with us. The only ones who came were immigration.

  “Papa was a wreck. When we got to Guatemala, his sister and her husband took us in at first, and then we moved to an apartment. The one where he is now. He didn’t try to find work. He har
dly ever went outside. He just sat there by the phone all day, waiting for a call. Then he started drinking.

  “He had some money saved, I guess, because he said I had to go to college. He said when my mother came home, she would be angry with him if he let me stay there. They had always planned for me to get a college education, like he did. Papa’s a civil engineer. Or he was. But he wouldn’t let me go to school in America. He hates America now. He made plans to send me to a university in Valencia.”

  I interrupted her. “That’s where you met the Formula One racing team?”

  “Yes. But before I went to Spain, I had a lot of time to think about what my mother had done. My father told me about Arturo Toledo, how he had been the mayor of Cobán during the bad time in Guatemala, how he had made a lot of people disappear and gotten rich from bribes and ransoms. My father told me how Toledo used to go to families after their loved ones had been disappeared. Toledo promised to return them if their families gave him enough money. Papa said Toledo did that to my mother’s family. After my grandfather was disappeared, Toledo took all of my grandmother’s money and promised to return my grandfather, but he never did.

  “I thought a lot about how that would have made me feel if someone had done that to my father. I began to understand what my mother did. It was wrong, I know, but it was understandable. I tried to say that to Papa, but he accused me of betraying her, simply because I had faced the fact of what she did. He said she would never choose to leave us. Not for revenge, and certainly not for money. He said she had only taken the job with Toledo to try to find a way to expose him. She would never do the things to him they said she had done. She was innocent of everything. She was only waiting until it was safe to come back to us, and then she would explain what really happened, and I would be sorry I had ever believed that she was capable of such horrible things.”