Jungle of Glass

by Gerald J. Davis

I said to Broadbent. "OK, you brought me into the game. It's your call. How do I contact him?"

  CHAPTER XII

  The next day I put a small advertisement in La Prensa Grafica asking for information on Roderick's kidnapping. There were two phone numbers in the ad — one was Broadbent's private line at the American embassy and the other was my room at the Camino Real. Who knew what would turn up? The ad promised a generous reward which, given local standards, could be anything upward of twenty bucks American.

  Then I had Luis drive me to the country club which wasn't in the country, but was in the upper-class Escalon section of town. It was called the Campestre. Marta had said she was going to be there all afternoon if I wanted to talk to her. She wasn't about to disrupt her daily schedule for something as trivial as the kidnapping of her father.

  The day was even hotter than the previous ones had been. I reluctantly gave up the quaint custom of strangling myself with a tie and wore my white oxford Brooks Brothers shirt with the neck open. But I kept my suit jacket on with the piece under it, after what had happened last night. The only problem was I didn't pack a sports jacket on this trip so I felt like a goddam geek the way I was dressed.

  Marta was just climbing out of the pool when I got there. Aphrodite rising from the foam. She was wearing a string bikini made out of some kind of shiny gold fabric that looked like it would take a long time to dry. There wasn't much fabric in those three small pieces, and the fabric was pretty flimsy, so the bikini couldn't have cost much.

  Her body was taut. It looked the way a female body does when it plays tennis and swims laps and gets a massage every day. She must have had some augmentation from Dow, because Mother Nature doesn't hand out a pair like that to many girls. Poor corporation, I thought. First, all those anti-war demonstrations for making napalm, then all those pesky lawsuits for breast implants. Seems you can never satisfy all the people.

  Her skin was very pale, very smooth, considering that she spent a good deal of time following the sun. You could guess her migratory patterns. El Salvador in the winter, then Marbella in the spring and the Hamptons in the summer.

  "Please hand me that towel, Mister Rogan," she said. She shook her head the way a puppy does.

  I grabbed a towel from the back of a white metal chair and tossed it over to her. She caught it with one easy movement and started drying her body and her full head of red hair. Then she puffed her hair out with a brush from her bag. It was a vision of two metals. Her hair and her bathing suit. Copper and gold. Base and precious.

  "You should put on a bathing suit and come into the pool," she said. "The water is very refreshing."

  She was right. The sun was white hot and there wasn't a cloud in the sky. The water in the oversized pool was so clear you could see all the way to the bottom of the deep end. It was tempting.

  "I'm working," I said.

  She nodded. "Still, it is a shame you can't enjoy your trip."

  There weren't many people around the pool. There were two couples at a table under a colored umbrella at the far side and some children in the shallow end. Their cries carried over to where we were standing. There was a fragrance that smelled like cotton candy in the air.

  "Come over here," Marta said. "We can have a drink and talk."

  She led me to a shady area under an awning next to the clubhouse and we started to sit down at a white table. Before we could get seated, a little man in a white suit carrying a tray walked up to us.

  "Allow me to serve you," he said.

  I turned to Marta. "What will you have?"

  "A banana daiquiri," she said.

  I must have made a face because she said, "It doesn't meet with your approval?"

  "No, no. It's fine," I said. "Give me a beer."

  "Si, senor," the waiter said. "Pilsener or Suprema?"

  "Suprema, please."

  "Very good, senor." He nodded and edged away from us without being so impolite as to turn his back to us.

  I surveyed the pool area. "Nice Marxist environment," I said. “Too bad the proletariat can’t enjoy it.”

  Marta looked around the country club, then back at me. She chose to ignore my comment. "Now that you have interrupted my swim, how can I be of assistance to you?"

  "That's very cute," I said. "I wonder if you really care as little as you say you do."

  She shrugged by way of an answer and said, "Do you have a cigarette?"

  "I don't smoke," I said. "Anymore."

  "Then would you please hand me my purse?"

  I guessed she meant her handbag. I reached over and gave it to her. It was one of those Hermes bags, like her mother's, only larger. She reached in and rooted around for a minute and came up with a pack of Gaulois. She lit up with a gold Dunhill lighter and blew the smoke out slowly. Then she coughed.

  "How many laps do you do?" I asked.

  She smiled. "Fewer than I could do if I didn't smoke, if that is what you mean."

  I looked into her eyes. "If you wanted to find your father, where would you start looking?"

  She hesitated. I truly hoped she was thinking. Finally she said, "I really don't know."

  She sounded like she was telling the truth. I tried another approach. "Who was the closest person to your father? Who was the person he confided in?"

  Her mouth opened then closed. She took another drag from her cigarette. This time she didn't cough. "You should speak to his concubine."

  I wasn't sure I heard her right. "What?"

  "His concubine."

  "I thought only Chinese emperors had concubines," I said.

  She gave me a blank look. "You know, his mistress. How do you say it?"

  "That's right. His mistress, his concubine. And who might she be?"

  "Her name is Caridad," she said. She waved her hand in a gesture of dismissal. "She is a woman of no importance. Of no social standing. She simply managed to wiggle her female parts in front of my father and...you know how men are...."

  "No, I don't. Tell me."

  Her smile teased. "All men are like high school boys. No matter how old they are. They want one thing only. And they will do anything to get that one thing. Don't pretend to me that you don't know."

  "Well, I've heard some men might feel that way from time to time. I think it has something to do with their diet."

  She laughed out loud. "Mister Rogan, you are playing with me. I thought you were so serious. I thought nothing would stop you from finding my father."

  "Who told you that?"

  "Mister Broadbent."

  "And what else did he tell you?" I said.

  She stubbed out her cigarette with a quick jabbing movement. "He said I should cooperate with you. Although I don't know why I should."

  "Why do you hate your father so much?"

  The waiter came back with the drinks. She waited until he had served them and left. "My father never did anything for me. He never loved me or my mother. He was too selfish

  for his own desires. All he wanted was more money, more power and more women."

  She took a sip of her banana daiquiri. She looked like a little lost girl sipping on a vanilla milk shake. She wasn't wearing make-up and her freckles showed against her clear complexion.

  "Do you think the Leftists could have kidnapped him?"

  Her eyes flashed. "All you capitalists think the Left are responsible for all the problems of the world. Why don't you look inside your own greedy hearts?"

  There was no use getting into a discussion of dialectical materialism at this point. I was about to ask her about the concubine Caridad when a tall thin man in a very skimpy blue bathing suit walked over to us and slouched down in a chair without even being invited.

  Very forward of him, I thought. "Why don't you join us?" I said.

  "As you can see, I have already," he said.

  "This is Antonio," Marta said.

  "Your boyfriend?" I asked.

  She giggled. "Heavens, no. Antonio is my brother." She corrected herself. "My half-brothe
r."

  "Of course you are." I felt like a jackass. I should've asked how many children Roderick had or, at least, Broadbent should've told me. The man looked terribly wasted, to put it as charitably as possible. Neurasthenic was a word they would've used to describe him in the nineteenth century. Nervous was probably the best twentieth century word. He was so frail he looked almost like a cadaver. His complexion was a sickly white. You could see the bones of his rib cage. His kinky reddish-brown hair was cut short and thinning. His face was unremarkable except for his long thin nose.

  Marta started to explain the family relationship. "Antonio was the child of my father and his first wife.

  He is seven years older than me. We are very close, you see, because there are just the two of us."

  "Are you a Marxist too?" I asked Antonio.

  He shook his head. "Oh, good heavens, no. I'm a capitalist, unlike my sister. I work in the business with my father." His voice choked up. "I'm sorry. Please forgive me."

  Marta gave him a dirty look. "He cares about our father. He's very upset about the disappearance of this great man."

  "Please don't make fun," Antonio said. His voice cracked again. "He doesn’t have his heart medicine. He may be very sick or even dead by now, thanks to your communist friends." He turned to me. "My father was good to me, very generous. He has given me many opportunities and many advancements in the company."

  "It is not my communist friends who have kidnapped him,” Marta said. “It is your fascist friends in the military who are greedy for our family's money."

  "You are loco," Antonio said. "It is the Marxists that have no money who are hungry for it. They have killed many of our friends and classmates." He turned to me. "Many of our classmates are widows because of the Marxists."

  "This is all very enlightening," I said. "But do you have any specific information that'll help me to find your father?"

  Antonio shook his head. "I'm sorry. I wish I could help, but I know nothing more than the other members of our family." He started to cry. "I still think it was the Leftists."

  "Stop crying like a child," Marta said. "You are a grown man."

  "That has nothing to do with it. Men can cry also," Antonio said. "I am worried about him."

  I put my hand on Antonio's shoulder. "Don't worry," I said. "I'll find your father."

  I hoped he couldn't see the look in my eyes that said I felt as lost as he did.

  CHAPTER XIII

  "The only reason I see you, Senor Rogan, is because my sister begged me to do so."

  "That's mighty generous of you," I said.

  The man seated across the table drinking a tall iced decaf latte was Mayorga's brother-in-law, the professor of theology. Evidently Marxist orthodoxy didn't forbid the imbibing of bourgeois beverages.

  We were sitting in an outdoor cafe in the Zona Rosa section of San Benito. It was a rich neighborhood of boutiques and restaurants. I'd left Marta and Antonio about a half hour before. It was early evening and the sun was starting to set but it was as hot as ever and there was no breeze. Marta was right. I was sweating like a stuck pig.

  "I'm here to investigate the kidnapping of Don Jaime Roderick," I said.

  He frowned. "I know why you are here. It is obvious by your appearance. You are with the Central Intelligence Agency."

  He looked just like a professor of theology. He had longish black hair and a full-face beard, all carefully trimmed. He was wearing a white short sleeve Lacoste shirt with the crocodile, that symbol of Leftist protest.

  I shook my head. "You have it all wrong, Senor Lacayo. I'm a private investigator. I never worked for the CIA." That was technically true, although sometimes the truth has shadings of gray. I didn't feel like delving into the metaphysics of truth right now, so I let it go at that.

  "You may make that claim, Senor Rogan, but according to information I have, you are here in an official capacity representing your government."

  I shook my head. "Your information is wrong. I'm here as a private citizen, whatever you think of my government. Senora Roderick came to my office in New York to ask for my help."

  Lacayo squinted at me. "Then what is your connection with the station chief, Mr. Broadbent?"

  Needless to say, it made me kind of uncomfortable to know he had that information. The Left must have had a very good intelligence capability in the country.

  "Broadbent is a personal friend of mine," I said. "We go back a long way. He asked me as a personal favor to help Senora Roderick."

  I took a swallow of my coffee. Black, no sugar. "I don't know anything about a CIA connection," I lied. The coffee wasn't very good. It had a bitter aftertaste. Here was a country with coffee as its principal export and you couldn't get a decent cup to drink. I suspected it was probably because they exported all the best beans for the highest price.

  Lacayo didn't say anything. He looked away from me and

  shifted his gaze out onto the street. I looked in the same direction. From where we sat, it didn't look very much like an underdeveloped country. The boulevard was broad and clean. The cars that went by were mostly luxury models, Mercedes and BMW. The pedestrians were middle class and well-dressed. Occasionally a peasant or two walked by. The evening was quiet.

  "Let me ask you a question," I said. "What is Atlacatl?"

  "A fiction, a myth," Lacayo said, without missing a beat. "There was never such a person. He was created in this century to give rise to false feelings of nationalism. According to the legend, he led his people in the struggle against the Spaniards which, of course, the natives of Cuscatlan lost."

  "Cuscatlan?" I said.

  "The ancient name for El Salvador."

  "I see," I said, even though I didn't. It was becoming increasingly more and more difficult to get a clear picture. "What do you know about Roderick's kidnapping?" I asked him.

  "Very little. Only what I read in the local newspapers. And I care very little also. Senor Roderick was an evil man. He was an exploiter of the people. This act is divine retribution for his foul deeds."

  "Hardly divine," I said. "It’s more like some sweaty crooks out to make a quick buck. The only question is whether these lowlifes are from the left or the right,"

  He raised an eyebrow. It was the first display of emotion from him. "A plague on both your houses, eh?"

  I shrugged. "It's immaterial to me who did it. My job is to find Roderick, and to find him alive." I took another swallow of coffee. "Who do you think took him?"

  He sipped his iced latte, then unzipped his hand bag and pulled out a pack of Benson & Hedges. The bag was one of those small leather pouches with a wrist strap that Latin men sometimes carry. "Do you mind if I smoke?"

  "Suit yourself," I said.

  He lit up and took a deep puff. "Of course, I would have to say the military did it, but that is just from force of habit. I have a reflex response to automatically blame the rightists for everything. However, as I said, I have no specific information on the kidnapping itself."

  I nodded. Maybe if I got him talking... "Tell me, what kind of theology do you teach?"

  He looked hard at me. "I teach liberation theology."

  "Is that a new religion?"

  His look became colder. "You may joke, but it is one of the oldest religions. You may recall that Jesus preached against the ruling classes. I am simply updating Jesus' teachings and bringing them into the twentieth century."

  "Does that updating include violence?"

  "I am a non-violent man," he said. "However, in your case I might be tempted."

  "Is that a try at humor?"

  He shook his head. "I have no sense of humor. I am a theologian."

  "I know some theologians who are pretty funny." I said.

  "You are a cynical man, Senor Rogan. Perhaps in your country, theologians are funny. But here in Central America life is hard. I think you know Thomas Hobbes."

  "Yeah," I said. "Nasty, short and brutish."

  "Exactly. Your comments are too facile becaus
e your life has been too easy. Try to understand how the exploited masses live here under the most intolerable conditions while your friends enjoy a leisurely existence built on the toil of the workers."

  "They're not my friends," I said.

  "Then you are a fool because you are being exploited also."

  "Yeah, that's me. Capitalist tool."

  Lacayo looked at me. "Permit me to be frank, Senor Rogan. I don't like you and I don't believe you."

  "I'm sorry you don't like me. I'm a lot of fun at a party. In addition, I'm an outstanding tango dancer, if you ever feel like going out."

  Lacayo stood up. There was an expression of distaste on his face. "You are a fool," he repeated. "You will forgive me if I leave you to pay the bill."

  CHAPTER XIV

  She didn't look like a concubine. A concubine was soft, yielding, compliant. She was fortyish, but on the hard side of forty. Her skin was good in spite of the deep worry lines around her mouth and eyes. There was a lot of black makeup on her eyes and she wore fake eyelashes. Her teeth and voice showed the effect of too many cigarettes.

  She had been crying.

  "You must save him," she sobbed. "My God, you must bring him back to me."

  She didn't speak English, so I had to use my rough Spanish. "Do not worry, Dona Caridad. You can depend on me. Do not cry."

  She nodded and tried to stop the tears. "Yes, Senor Rogan. I will stop crying." She dabbed at her eyes with a large handkerchief.

  I waited until she composed herself. Meanwhile I checked out the boutique, trying not to look at all the female undergarments. There were a lot of different kinds of bras, panties, teddies or peignoirs, or whatever the hell you called them. I never knew there were so many varieties or brands. Olga, Bali, Maidenform, Playtex, Vanity Fair, Wonderbra. Evidently she worked the shop alone.

  The boutique was just across the boulevard from the Camino Real, in a large modern indoor mall called Metro Centro. I'd had a breakfast of fried eggs with frijoles and salsa and tortillas by myself in the hotel dining room first thing in the morning and then walked across the street to her store.