MAMista

by Len Deighton

  Arturo laughed derisively. ‘You are really dumb.’

  ‘I was framed,’ said Paz. ‘Someone planted the explosives on me. It was political.’

  ‘Why would they do that?’

  ‘Because I collected money and distributed leaflets for the communist party.’

  ‘Listen dummy. Karl Marx snuffed it while you were in the cooler. All that commie shit has been shovelled while you were away. Russia has gone public. They discovered there was no free lunch. Marxism is out of style.’

  ‘We’ll see,’ said Paz.

  ‘You’d better believe it,’ said Arturo.

  ‘I told you, I was framed.’

  ‘Sure you were. It’s the way they keep the prisons full,’ he said as if placating a small child. He moved across to the piano, reached for a mint and popped it into his mouth. On the wall behind Arturo, a contorted Christ writhed silently on a huge golden cross. ‘Tell me, what kind of job are you looking for?’

  ‘I thought you had something in mind.’

  ‘Your father told you that, did he?’ He chewed on the mint as he spoke. ‘Well, that’s right. I need someone to go on a trip for me.’

  ‘Doing what?’

  ‘Doing what I say to do.’

  ‘What kind of thing?’

  ‘What do you care? The pay is good.’

  ‘Drugs?’

  A slow smile. ‘What are you, Angel? Some kind of fink? I’m your flesh and blood, no?’ Until this moment Don Arturo might have been a film producer or a business tycoon, but now the mask had dropped. Arturo wanted his nephew to know that he was a cruel and ruthless man who ruled his world without the restraints imposed by civilized society.

  ‘Yes, you are.’

  ‘How is your Spanish?’ Arturo asked in Spanish.

  ‘I went to college in Spain.’

  Arturo looked at him. ‘Yeah yeah, of course. You are not still mixed up with these terrorist bastards are you? See: the way I heard it, you were deported from Spain because you had too many Basque friends who went wasting cops with home-made firecrackers.’

  ‘I was framed.’

  ‘You’ve been framed more times than Picasso,’ said Don Arturo, switching back into English. ‘Listen to me, kid: only dummies get arrested.’ He smiled and fixed Paz with his cold black eyes.

  ‘Maybe I’m not right for this job,’ Paz said.

  ‘Yeah? I’ll decide if you are right for the job. Me and your father. And if I need a job done, you’ll do it,’ Don Arturo said. ‘And you’ll do it well.’

  ‘Please don’t threaten me.’

  ‘Why not, sonny boy? Have you got the place surrounded or something?’ Arturo moved close to Paz and leaning with his mouth close to him whispered, ‘Think about it. Don’t you owe your Dad a favour or two by now? Isn’t it about time you straightened up and earned a little bread on your own account?’ He stepped back, stared him in the eyes and then turned away to sneak a look at his watch.

  Paz had stared him down. Don Arturo was a bully; Angel Paz had known many such men both here and in Spain. The prison had been full of such men, but there was a malign edge to Arturo that he’d not seen in other men. It was irrational of course but he could not help feeling that there was something evil about the atmosphere here. As a child he’d never noticed it but on this visit he’d detected it the moment he’d come in the front door. The large crucifix on the wall did nothing to exorcize that evil. On the contrary, it emphasized it.

  ‘Cheer up, kid. We are going to be buddies. Like in the old days. You can handle yourself, I know that. Ever been south?’

  ‘I’m not carrying anything for you, Don Arturo.’ He’d wanted to say Arturo but he found he couldn’t.

  ‘I wouldn’t trust you to. I’ve got plenty of guys to do that. You haven’t got the temperament for it. You haven’t got the balls for it.’ He ran a finger up his cheek as if deciding whether to shave a second time that day. ‘And anyway, you are family. Blood is thicker than water, right?’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘And more difficult to get out of the carpet,’ Arturo said and laughed.

  ‘I don’t need a job.’

  ‘Why do you keep talking about a job? I’m offering you a vacation. Take a trip to Spanish Guiana. All expenses paid. First-class hotel. Ever been there?’

  ‘Mexico City once, with Dad.’

  ‘I’m talking about South America. It’s just what you need. Get a little sunshine, get yourself a girl.’

  Paz said nothing.

  ‘They got a whole army of Marxists down there. Go down there and take a look at them before they stuff them and put them into a museum.’

  ‘I’d need visas and stuff.’

  ‘No visas required for US citizens.’

  ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘That’s better.’ Don Arturo smiled. ‘I need someone to go down there and talk to my agent in Tepilo about the way the customs sit on my shipments.’

  ‘Shipments of coca paste?’

  Arturo looked at him contemptuously. ‘You talk to my man down there. He can’t talk freely on the phone. You come back and tell me the score. And while you are there, look round. Tell me what you think he’s spending. I want to know if he’s on the level.’

  ‘Why me?’

  Arturo became exasperated. ‘Questions questions! What are you grilling me about? I’m giving you a free vacation.’ Then his manner became more conciliatory. ‘I want someone down there with an open mind. Someone bright; someone who I know can handle himself and will see what the score is. Someone who can speak real Spanish, not the squawk squawk squawk they speak in Highland Park.’ A sudden thought came to him. ‘You’re not on the habit, are you?’

  Paz rolled up his sleeve to show an arm free of needle marks. Arturo went close and looked at his eyes. ‘Okay okay. I can usually spot a user.’

  The door opened suddenly and a woman came in. She was in her middle thirties but the onset of age had been countered by hairdressers and beauticians. She was dressed in a tight low-cut evening gown of pink satin. Her attractiveness was marred by the peevish ill-humour evident in her downcast features. She waved her hands in front of her in an agitated manner. ‘You’d better start changing,’ she told Arturo. ‘Those damned aerospace workers are staging a protest march downtown. It will take us hours, whichever way we go.’ She stopped suddenly as she caught sight of Paz. Her eyes narrowed. She did not see clearly without glasses but seldom wore them.

  ‘How long since we last saw Angel?’ prompted Arturo.

  ‘Hello, Angel.’ The woman spared him no more than a glance before studying her nails. Deciding that the varnish was not yet dry she resumed waving her hands in the air. ‘How is your father?’ she said dutifully.

  ‘Everyone is just fine.’

  She looked at Paz. Now that she was nearer to him she saw him more clearly. Her nephew had become a young and handsome man. ‘You’re looking just great.’ She gave him a kiss, holding him firmly by the shoulders to be quite sure nothing would happen to smudge her lipstick.

  That done, she turned again to Arturo. ‘Go change. We got to get going.’ She inspected the bowls on the piano. ‘Have you been eating those mints again? No wonder you bulge out of that new tuxedo.’ Tonight they were to attend a charity ball. It was a prestigious social occasion and California’s ostentatious wealth would be on display. It had taken over a million dollars in donations before she’d got a coveted place on the committee.

  Arturo turned to his nephew: ‘One of my boys will take you home. We’ll talk again tomorrow.’ He reached into his hip pocket and peeled some fifties from a roll of notes. ‘Stop off and get yourself some shirts and pants and stuff. Clean up: look normal. Be around in the morning. Maybe I’ll want you to get some shots and leave right away.’

  Angel Paz looked at him. That was the moment when Paz had decided to take the money and the airline ticket and go to Spanish Guiana. He’d decided to make contact with the Marxists and offer his services to the revo
lution.

  ‘And Angel,’ his uncle told him as they said goodbye. ‘You work under the same rules as the rest of my boys. Semper Fi – like they say in the Marine Corps. Know what I mean, Angel?’

  Angel nodded.

  It was at that moment of Angel’s recollections that his cell door opened with a crash. His clothes were given to him. ‘Get moving. You’re going up to see the boss. Hurry! Hurry!’ The guard gave him a punch to get him moving.

  There were special elevators for moving prisoners. Angel dressed in the elevator. He arrived in the office of Cisneros about four minutes after being sent for. It was not a record.

  Cisneros studied Paz with interest. So did Lucas. Obviously he’d been kept awake all night, as was the normal procedure with prisoners who were to be interrogated. His face was yellowish, his eyes sunken and one side of his face was swollen and beginning to discolour in a large bruise. One shoe was missing and his belt had been confiscated so that he had to hold his trousers. It was a way of humiliating him. A guard stood behind him, ready in case he misbehaved.

  Lucas felt sorry for him but he did not doubt that Paz had been provocative: it was a part of his personality. Perhaps Lucas would have abandoned him to his fate – admitted that he didn’t know him – but for his head. They had shaved his head to the bare skin. Careless work, or perhaps the man’s agitation, had resulted in razor nicks on his scalp so that there was a marbling of dried blood upon his absurd bald dome.

  ‘Hello, Angel,’ Lucas said.

  Paz didn’t reply. The interrogator had told him that the Englishman had already given evidence against him. Now everything about this scene confirmed it. But the boy kept his head and said nothing.

  ‘Now let me ask you again,’ Cisneros said to the boy. ‘Where were you the evening before last?’

  ‘He was with me,’ Lucas said.

  ‘You, Colonel, arrived on the República flight from Caracas,’ said Cisneros. ‘It is not intelligent to tell me such transparent lies.’ He looked at the clock. In other circumstances he would have held both of them for ‘hard interrogation’ and let the Yankees scream their heads off. But if the Minister of Finance messed up his Washington talks, he was likely to come roaring back here blaming Papá Cisneros for his failure. The Minister of Finance was no friend to Papá Cisneros, whose job he coveted.

  This was not the right day for adding to the complications of his life. This afternoon they were moving Doctor Guizot from the work-camp to the Number Three Presidio. Even with the armoured convoy – and the secrecy surrounding the move – the danger of an attempt to free the politician was all too real. The municipales hadn’t yet finished probing the dirt roads for mines. Once Guizot was as far as the hardtop road Cisneros would breathe again. Even then there was the chance that they would try an ambush in Santa Ana, for that was a district where Dr Guizot still had many sympathizers. That’s why Cisneros had not yet planned the final details of the route. He must do it right now. He would take the convoy right round the outside of Santa Ana even if that took extra time.

  He put his problems aside for a moment and looked at his two detainees. Were the Americans expecting him to free both of them? He didn’t know. ‘Against my better judgement I’m going to release both of you.’ Cisneros looked at the guard to be sure he understood.

  ‘You won’t regret that, Minister,’ said Lucas. He looked at Paz and nodded almost imperceptibly. ‘I’m speaking for both of us when I say that.’

  Cisneros said, ‘Your passports, money and watches etcetera will be returned to you downstairs. You will have to sign a notice to say you have not been ill-treated.’ He sighed and looked at his desk. These two middle-class idiots posed no threat to the regime.

  The guard took both men down to the floor below. This time they were in the ordinary passenger elevator. They were locked into a small room next door to rooms marked ‘Surgery’ and ‘Personnel Office’. The pattern in the frosted-glass door panel made it possible to see into the corridor. Past it the two men saw a prisoner and two guards going from the surgery to the locked elevator. They both recognized the prisoner as Chori. His face was battered and he was holding a hand to his jaw as if it was hurting.

  Lucas tried to guess whether matters had been so arranged that they would see the injured prisoner, but with a man like Cisneros, who was both devious and callous, one could not be sure.

  Neither man spoke of it, but to break the heavy silence, Paz said, ‘I took your advice.’

  ‘Really?’ Lucas looked at Paz and could not help wondering if it was all part of an elaborate plot to foist a police spy upon him. Paz was wondering the same thing.

  ‘About my hair,’ said Paz. ‘In case of lice.’

  Lucas looked at his bloody bald head and said, ‘And so you did. I hadn’t noticed.’

  7

  TEPILO. ‘That old girl’s not insured.’

  The glass doors of Tepilo’s police headquarters were tinted bronze. As the two men pushed them open the blinding sunlight made them screw up their faces. The humid air assaulted them and made their clothes suddenly clammy. Walking across the forecourt they could feel the heat of the paving stones coming through the soles of their shoes.

  They made their way between the armoured personnel carriers, the water cannon and the four-wheel-drive vehicles with which the Federalistas patrolled the country districts. An armed sentry watched them to be sure they didn’t go too near the vehicles. A boy, about sixteen years old, was brandishing a long roll of lottery tickets, like a toilet roll. He trailed it through the air and shouted to them to buy but Angel Paz pushed him aside. ‘Lucky, day! Lucky day!’ said the boy. Other vendors added to the cries. People were always coming and going here in the Plaza del Ministerio. The two men elbowed their way through children selling chewing-gum and shoe-laces, cigarettes and city maps.

  These were the dying days of Tepilo’s tourist season. On the northern horizon the thunderheads were building up over the distant ocean. Soon they would bring the season of the heavy rains. After the first exhilarating moments, the drains would overfill and the city would stink of excrement and garbage. This was a time when the rich residents of Tepilo departed to their mountain retreats or to Europe.

  Lucas and Paz went across the boulevard to the long shady colonnade where the shoppers strolled even in the midday heat. The windows displayed Chanel, Hermès and Gucci imports as well as rare furs that foreigners smuggled back home. It was just like such shopping arcades the world over except for the guards sitting outside the shops with shotguns on their knees. The first impulse Lucas and Paz had after their release was simply to put distance between themselves and the big Ministry building. When this feeling eased, they stopped at the Café Continental, a large open-fronted café in the colonnade. Its chairs and tables were of wickerwork rather than the metal more usual in this climate. There were starched table-cloths too, and the waiters wore clip-on bow ties.

  ‘How do we contact them?’ Paz said. These were virtually the first words he’d spoken since his release. Paz was severely shaken. He’d endured prisons in Spain and California and had been held in too many police stations for him to remember them all. But one night in the ‘Ramparts’ – as the combined Ministry and police headquarters building was known – had given him a glimpse of justice the Latin American way. He didn’t need anyone to tell him what the older prisons and the labour camps might be like.

  The waiter came. Lucas ordered a beer and Paz an ice-cream sundae. Paz looked very different now, with his head shaved. The face that had seemed long and thin when the hair framed it was now oval-shaped with high cheekbones and a bony nose that was almost as wide as his narrow mouth. His eyes still dominated his whole face, round and limpid with long eyelashes and brows so perfect they might have been shaped for him. His bronzed skin had that curious olive tint common in southern Europe but seldom seen in Latin America, and where his hair had covered it, the skin was uncommonly light for one with such heavy pigmentation. Despite his bruised and swoll
en face he remained a person of unusual beauty, so that as he was sitting outside the café, girls and women passing by would look at him and whisper together.

  ‘I heard someone say that the MAMista have a permanent Press office in town,’ Lucas said.

  ‘And you believe that?’ Paz was weary. He wanted to sleep.

  ‘Of this town I will believe anything.’

  ‘Perhaps they’ll contact us,’ Paz said. ‘Perhaps we’re under observation right now.’

  ‘Yes. By all concerned.’

  ‘Thanks for saying I was with you,’ Paz said. ‘You stuck your neck out. I won’t forget.’

  ‘I wouldn’t leave my worst enemy in the hands of that bastard,’ Lucas said.

  ‘I thought you’d made friends with him,’ said Paz.

  ‘If you are going to make a habit of being run in by these local cops, I’d advise you to be friendly too. An obsequious smile or two will work wonders with a chap like that.’

  Paz looked at him trying to decide if he was serious. ‘Hypocrisy you mean?’

  ‘I call it pragmatism,’ Lucas said. Then his cold beer arrived, together with a towering ice-cream sundae adorned with toasted nuts, butterscotch syrup, chocolate sauce and white domes of whipped cream. Everything was available here for those with cash. They ate and drank in silence. Across the street a cinema front, three storeys high, was entirely covered by a huge painting of a sweaty film star fighting with a sad-eyed dragon.

  When he’d gobbled up the ice-cream, Paz wiped his lips and said, ‘Well, thanks again. Thanks very much. If it wasn’t for you I’d still be in there.’ He looked back. The tall Ministry building was still in sight over the rooftops.

  ‘That’s the spirit,’ Lucas said. ‘Now you’re getting the idea.’

  ‘Now, wait a minute …’ said Paz. Then he smiled.

  They spent a few minutes watching the passers-by and those who were loitering across the street. They tried to decide if any of them were police spies but it was not easy to tell. A streetcar clattered along the boulevard. As it slowed to turn the corner, with a loud screeching of wheels, a man dropped off the rear platform. He held a tourist map in his hands. He stood on the corner for a moment, reading the map and trying to orientate it. Then, picking his way between the cars, he came across the boulevard past a battered old VW Beetle that was waiting in a space reserved for taxicabs. When he got to the Café Continental he took a seat at the table next to them.