Bitter Truth

by William Lashner

  “He took a shine to you, all right. But he’s out. The organizational chart has been changed. You should be reporting to me from now on.”

  “I don’t report,” I said. “That’s not what I do. I represent my clients to the best of my ability, that is all.”

  “That’s never all.”

  “With me, that is all.”

  “You find out anything you’ll be smart and report to me, see?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Dante started sucking his teeth. His mouth opened with a slick leeching sound. “Want to hear a story?”

  “Not particularly.”

  “Out of high school I enlisted,” said Dante, ignoring my protest. “Want to know why? My father was an animal, that’s why. I was willing to shave my head and take orders like a dog for two years because my father was an animal. But I was also patriotic, see? Still am. I hear the anthem at a ball game and tears spring. I still love my country, even after they sent me to that shithole. See, there was nothing out there that was tougher than my father. I love my goddamn country, but over there I learned there is something beyond patriotism. Do you know what that is?”

  “No.”

  “It’s called survival. I didn’t survive by volunteering for every crappy mission some promotion-happy lieutenant dreamed up before we could frag him. And I didn’t survive by taking one step beyond the step I had to take. I survived by remembering that I couldn’t love my country if I was dead, see? Loyalty, it only goes so far. After that it doesn’t go no more. Things are changing fast, Victor. Calvi’s not the only one that’s going, there are others. You make the right choice and you come to me first, understand?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I heard you visited our friend Jimmy Dubinsky yesterday, so I thought you might like to know. He died this morning. Right there on the operating table.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “They had that wire up his heart and he had himself a massive. That’s the funny thing about Jimmy, everything about him was massive, even his death. Just thought you might like to know. Funeral’s Friday. Your people, Victor, they don’t mess around when it comes to burying their dead. A guy doesn’t even have time to cool before he’s in the ground.”

  “But I just saw him yesterday. He can’t…”

  “Some kids they showed up in our unit, we didn’t even want to know their names. You could see it in their eyes they wouldn’t last. I’m seeing that look right now, Victor.” He sucked his teeth again and chucked me on the shoulder. “See you at the funeral.” Then he turned and started walking away, holding his briefcase, walking off to bail out Cressi once again.

  The weightlifter gave me a nasty wink and followed him down the corridor.

  I watched them go and then fell to the wall, my back against the porous white stone, and covered my eyes with a hand while I shook. Jimmy dead. I had a hard time fathoming it. I actually liked the guy. But the news was worse than that. That tooth-sucking Earl Dante wanted me to pick a side without a scorecard, without a rule book, without even knowing what game we were playing. The way I looked at it, if I picked wrong I would be as dead as Jimmy and if I picked right I would be as dead as Jimmy. All I knew for sure was that I was on the wrong playing field and needed desperately to get out. When I had told Beth I had to flee the law or it would kill me, she didn’t know I was being literal as hell.

  And I couldn’t help but think, as I shook against the corridor wall, that my fate in the coming mob apocalypse and my investigation of the dark secrets of the Reddmans would somehow become entwined. I was right, of course, but in a way I could never then have even vaguely imagined.

  Part 2

  Frogs

  In a rich man’s house there is no place to spit

  but in his face.

  —DIOGENES THE CYNIC

  15

  Belize City, Belize

  LAST NIGHT I DREAMT I went to Veritas again. I woke up sweating and shouting from the dream in my room at the guest house in Belize City. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t force myself back to sleep. It is morning now and I have sat up all night in my underwear examining the contents of my briefcase, reviewing my mission. There are documents relating to bank accounts and bank records and the flow of great sums of money. There are documents from the State Department in Washington to present to the embassy here. There are pages from the diaries of a dead woman and a letter from a dead man and last night, when I read them together, I felt the same shiver roll through me as rolls through me whenever I read them together, which is often. They are the plainest clues I have as to what curse it was that actually afflicted the Reddmans, those and a carton of ancient ledgers that are still in my office in Philadelphia. The full truth will never be learned, but the man I seek in Belize has much of it, along with my share of the Reddman fortune.

  Belize City is a pit, and that is being kind. Antiquated clapboard buildings, unpainted, weathered, streaked with age, line the warrens of narrow streets that stumble off both banks of the rank Belize River. Laundry hangs from lines on listing porches, huge rotting barrels collect rain-water for drinking, the tin roofs citywide are rusted brown. The city is crowded with the poor, it smells of fish and sewage and grease, the drivers are maniacs, the heat is oppressive, the beggars are as relentless as the mosquitoes. It is absolutely Third World and the food is bad. My guest house is right on the Caribbean but there is no beach, only a grubby strip of unpaved road called Marine Parade and then a cement barrier and then the ragged rocks that break the water’s final rush. It is dangerous, I am told, to walk in certain sections at night and those sections seem to change with whomever I talk until the map of danger has encompassed the whole of Belize City. Still, last night I put on my suit and took hold of a map of the town and a photograph from my briefcase and walked west, away from the Caribbean, into the dark heart of the city to see if anyone had seen anything of the man I am stalking.

  The night was hot, the air thick, the streets as unenlightened as poverty. Cars cruised past, slowly, like predators. Pickup trucks veered by, teenagers jammed into the beds, shouting at one another in Creole. Guards stared somberly from behind chained gates. A rat scurried toward me from an open sewer, halted and sniffed, scurried back. I stopped at two nightspots, three hotel bars, a wooden shack of a club that overlooked the Caribbean, black as fear in the night except for the relentless lines of iridescent froth dying on the rocks. I had been told the shack club was habituated by lobstermen and sailors and I had wanted especially to visit it, wondering if my prey was sailing on a luxury yacht somewhere off the Belizean cayes. In each joint I bought for myself and whoever was nearby a bottled beer with a Mayan temple on the label, a Belikin, and made what conversation I could. When I showed the picture I tried to see if I could detect anything beneath the denials and the shaking heads, but there was nothing, a whole night of nothing, though I had known from the start that I was trawling bait more than anything else.

  Back in my room, I took off my clothes and turned the fan to high and lay on my back, staring up at the ceiling, waiting for the moving air to cool my sweat. I closed my eyes and fell into a deep sleep only to awake with a shout a few hours later when I dreamt of Veritas.

  Now the dawn is just starting to ignite. I lie down again and try to sleep but it is impossible. I watch the sun rise yellow and hot out of the ocean and feel its burgeoning heat. I shower in cold water and think of cool Alaskan glaciers but am already in a sweat by the time I tighten my tie.

  When I reach the Belize Bank on Regent Street I am exhausted from the heat and my lack of sleep. I have already visited the quaint white clapboard American Embassy, like a Southern manse dropped in the middle of the Third World, and had a long talk with a junior official named Jeremy Bartlett about my problem. He was freshly scrubbed and amiable enough as he listened to my story and examined my documents but there is something about State Department personnel that leaves my teeth hurting. T
here must be hundreds of English majors hidden in the basements of embassies all over the world, toiling away at ingenious, long-winded ways of saying, “There’s nothing I can do.” I took his card and asked for one tiny favor and he looked at me awhile and I left before he could find a new way to say no.

  After the embassy, I crossed the swing bridge to the southern part of the city and visited a Belizean lawyer with whom I had been in contact. His office was across the street from the Supreme Court building and above a tee shirt shop. He gave me a long explanation of Belize’s robust asset protection laws, which left me feeling doubtful, but then he told me of his uncle, who was a clerk of the Supreme Court and who could manage anything with proper incentive. I wrote out a check and signed certain documents and paid certain fees and picked up certain other documents. Then it was on to the bank.

  The Belize Bank building on Regent and Orange streets is almost modern, with a bright jade-green sign. It presides at the head of a rather ragged business district, its white cement and dark marble facade standing out like a shiny penny against the general disrepair of the rest of the city. In the bank I ask to speak to the assistant manager and am taken to a desk on the second floor. The man I talk to is older and distinguished, with gray hair and a proper British accent. His suit is pale beige and perfectly pressed. His face is powder dry; mine glistens, I am sure, with my sweat.

  “I need information about a bank account,” I say.

  He smiles officiously as I explain my situation and show him the judgment and the documents I have evidencing the flow of money. He reminds me of a State Department employee as he spends five minutes explaining to me that there is nothing he can do. “We must respect the privacy of our customers,” he explains rather patiently. “Our country’s asset protection laws give us no other choice.”

  “So I have heard,” I say, “but the man I’m seeking is a murderer.”

  “Well, I suppose murderers have their rights, too,” he says.

  “There is a warrant for his arrest in America.”

  “But this isn’t America, sir. I am truly sorry but our hands are tied.”

  I look at him and his bland smile and I sigh. “My government is very interested in finding this man,” I say. “We know you are cooperating on a number of money-laundering issues with our people and we would be very grateful, and it would go a long way to easing the pressure you must now be feeling, if you’ll cooperate on this matter too.”

  He nods, his polite smile intact. “We are always willing to cooperate with legitimate requests from your government’s law enforcement agencies.” His emphasis on the word legitimate is very precise.

  “Not every request can go through official channels,” I say. “Not all officials can be trusted. Discretion here is of the utmost importance.”

  “If I could review your credentials.”

  “Credentials can be dangerous,” I say.

  “But you can understand, sir, how certain we must be that all requests are legitimate.”

  “Yes,” I say. “I understand completely.” I reach into my jacket and pull out Jeremy Bartlett’s card. “Why don’t you phone Mr. Bartlett at the American Embassy and ask him discreetly about whether or not cooperation with my request might be advantageous to your situation?”

  He takes the card and looks at it for a moment and then excuses himself and leaves for a private office, closing the door behind him. That morning I had asked Bartlett that if anyone called hinting about my status not to dissuade him of his misconceptions. Bartlett in all likelihood will tell the assistant manager he has no idea who the hell I am and I will be sent packing, as I would have been sent packing anyway, but there is always the chance.

  The assistant manager returns and gives me a tight smile. He leans over the desk and says softly, “I have talked to Mr. Bartlett at the embassy.”

  I stare up at him impassively.

  “You understand that disclosure to us of the beneficial owner of any account is not required under Belizean law, so the information is most probably of no use.”

  I purse my lips and nod, while continuing to stare.

  He turns his head to the side for a moment and then back to me. His voice now is even softer. “The account in which you are interested is in the name of a Mr. Wergeld. The listed address is a post office box in Switzerland. The money was withdrawn last month from our branch in San Ignacio, on Burns Avenue. That’s all I can tell from our records.”

  I nod and pull the photograph from my jacket pocket. He looks at it for a moment and then shakes his head.

  I stand and thank him for his service.

  “We hope this will take care of the Carlos Santera matter your people have been giving us so much difficulty about.”

  “I’m sure it will,” I say, before turning and walking out of the bank. I shouldn’t really have doubted Bartlett. I had merely asked a State Department employee to obfuscate with innuendo, which is sort of like dropping a bloody leg of mutton in front of a shark and asking it to chew.

  On my way back to the guest house I walk past Battlefield Park, where a mess of locals sit on benches and spit. A droopy-eyed man leaves the park and jogs to catch up with me. He hectors me about how I should get to know the Belizean people. I stop and look at him. He gives me a yellow-eyed smile and offers me drugs. I shake my head and ignore his shouts and curses as I continue up Regent Street to the swing bridge that will take me over the Belize River and into the north side. I loosen my tie, I take off my jacket and trail it over my shoulder. Men on bikes too small for them circle around me. I feel slow and tired in the heat. On the bridge, the sun reflects off the water in an oppressive strip of light. The heat has a presence, it feels dangerous. Sweat drips into my eye and burns. I wipe it away but it keeps flowing. I turn right at the ramshackle yellow post office, pass a Texaco, and take a turn to where I think lies the sea. I am not sure exactly where I am but once I reach the sea I can follow the water’s edge back to my guest house. I find myself in a narrow alleyway behind a row of warehouses fronting the river. I walk alongside a low wall of red-washed rusted tin, with a sign that reads “QUEENS BONDED WAREHOUSE NO. 1.” I think I am alone in the alley when a man suddenly steps in front of me. He is wearing filthy loose pants and a flowered shirt.

  “You want some coke, amigo?” he says, his voice thick with accent.

  I shake my head. “Thank you but I’m not thirsty.” I move to my left to step around him. He steps to his right and blocks my way.

  “You make joke.”

  “Oh. I didn’t mean to, I’m sorry. No thank you.”

  “Maybe you want some ganj?” He puts two fingers to his lips and pretends to inhale deeply. “Finest ganj in Belize. Or girls even, we got girls. I have sweeter than you’ll find at Raoul’s.”

  “No, no thank you.” I step to my right and he steps to his left, blocking me again.

  “Then maybe you just give me some money, amigo? Just that? For an American that is nothing.”

  I step back and swing my jacket under my arm holding the briefcase. I reach into my rear pocket for my wallet when I feel another hand grabbing for it. I spin around and find a second man there, in cutoff shorts and a Michael Jackson tee shirt, grinning at me. “Drugs?” he says, his accent thicker than the first. “You American, no? You must want drugs.”

  “I don’t want anything,” I say loudly as I back away from both men. I feel confused in the heat. My mind has slowed beneath the press of the sun. The second man grasps my arm and yanks me back. My jacket spills to the ground. The man holding onto me starts grabbing again for my wallet.

  “How much you want to give us, amigo?” asks the first man. “How generous are you today?”

  I try to shrug my arm loose but it stays in the second man’s grip. He reaches for my wallet and I spin, avoiding his grasp. My briefcase slams into him. I spin the other way and my briefcase hits him solidly on the opposite side. I had not intended to hit him with my briefcase but I’m glad that I did. I begin to spin o
nce again, to hit him with my briefcase once again, when I see something flash shiny in the first man’s hand and I stop. The second man reaches into my rear pocket and slips out my wallet and I let him, stilled into paralysis by the heat and the sight of that shining in the first man’s hand. The second man lets go of me and begins to go through my wallet and I wish for him to take what he wants, to take it and leave and leave me alone, that’s what I am wishing for when I hear a voice from behind.

  It is loud and in Spanish and I don’t understand it but the two men attacking me do and they immediately halt. The three of us turn to see who is speaking.

  It is a young man with dark blue pants and a red Chicago Bulls cap. His tee shirt is printed with the words “LAS VEGAS.” He has short black hair and a silver earring and a round dark face, a peasant’s face, his cheekbones broad and sharp. He says something again in Spanish and the first man replies harshly.

  The young man in the Las Vegas shirt says something else, says it calmly, this time in Creole, and there is a wild silence for a moment. The young man cocks his head to the left and suddenly the two men run, past the young man, back up the alley, the way I had come, and are gone. The young man walks right up to me, reaches down, picks my jacket and wallet off the street, and hands them to me.

  “I am sorry for how they behaved,” says the young man in slightly accented English. “Some in this city are too lazy to find honest work.”

  “Thank you,” I say. I’m still shaking from the sight of that blade in the first man’s hand, shivering and sweating at the same time. With trembling fingers I rifle through my wallet and pull out a twenty and hand it to the man.

  He looks up at me and for an instant there is something hard and disappointed in his face. “Don’t do that. I am not a beggar.”

  “I am just grateful,” I stammer. “I didn’t mean…”