The Mastermind

by David Unger

  Guillermo tries to get closer to the car. He sees the passenger door held to the chassis by one little hinge. He touches the door and notices that the metal handle is still hot. One of the detectives stops him.

  “This is a crime scene, sir. You cannot touch the evidence.”

  “Evidence? What kind of evidence do you need? I mean, don’t you see what’s happened? The passengers have been vaporized. They’re gone. My Maryam is dead!” he hears himself saying, shocked at his own words, seeing an image of her in her tennis outfit with the little pink balls on the heels of her sneakers; and then her voluptuous body stretched out on the Stofella bed. Guillermo tries a second time to touch the handle, open the door maybe, but the hinge has soldered it in place.

  “My darling is dead. She’s dead. Oh my God, my love is dead.”

  The detective grabs Guillermo by the waist and tries pulling him away. He signals to the policeman who brought him to the scene for help. The cop tosses his oversized cap into his car and scampers over. Both of them pull the grieving lawyer away and sit him down on a curb in front of the half-constructed buildings. The policeman explains to the detective why he brought Guillermo over, that he had just driven to the factory. He adds in a sly whisper that obviously he is the lover of Ibrahim Khalil’s daughter, since the husband has already been there and has left to make the funeral arrangements.

  “But he knows nothing,” Guillermo hears.

  Filled with thick cumulonimbus clouds that funnel up, the sky has darkened but nobody really notices or cares. It starts to rain, a soft, steady, and enduring patter that douses the burnt cinders and creates new chemical reactions releasing vinegary clouds of smoke into the air. The whole area seems lifeless, like a battlefield filled with stinky corpses.

  Guillermo buries his face in his crossed arms and feels the policeman’s hand on his shoulder. He again sees Maryam lying naked on her stomach in the bed at the Stofella, her head resting against her folded arms, her ample breasts, the flatness of her feet, the broad curve of her ankles, her toes hanging over the bed and wiggling, the tattoo of a smiling red bat above the dimple on her left butt cheek. He can hear her slightly husky voice talking to him as he stands by her feet, ready to massage or lick her toes, with their green nail polish. In a dreamlike trance, she is telling him that he can do anything he wants to her body; hurt her even, hurt her more than a bit. She likes pain, as long as he stops when she asks him to stop. She wants to hurt but only a little, perhaps enough to know she is alive, not dreaming, not in a state of unfeeling. Hair pulled back, hard bites on the neck.

  “What am I going to do now?” Guillermo says aloud. His nose is no longer dripping, he suspects. He can’t be sure because the rain is splattering his face and his suit is damp. He feels he will never again be sure of anything in his life, now that Maryam is dead.

  “You have nothing to do here, Mr. Rosensweig. You should go home. We may want to interview you later this afternoon or evening since you obviously knew the victims well.”

  “There must be something I can do,” says Guillermo, wondering if he can help shovel the cinders on the seats into separate urns. He has always believed there are things to be done, that nothing in life is final, save for the death of his parents. “What am I going to do at home, alone?” He thinks of his children and Rosa Esther in Mexico City enjoying their lives. He feels nothing. The memory of them stirs no feeling in him.

  “Samir Mounier was just here,” the detective repeats. “He’s the husband. The next of kin. He identified the car, since there are no bodies to speak of. Maybe he could use your help.”

  “Fucking Samir,” Guillermo cries. “How do you know he isn’t the one behind all this?”

  The detective smiles. Nothing is more absurd. The grieving husband is so decrepit he could hardly pick up a broomstick.

  The policeman starts talking: “You’re a man in mourning, Don Guillermo. You will do what grieving men do. Be a man, a decent man, and go home.”

  Guillermo turns to look at him without his cap. He notices more clearly that he has a pointed head and, yes, cabbage ears. Then he glances at the detective, who may as well have been talking to him in Urdu or Tagalog.

  “But I don’t want to go home. Isn’t there anything I can do?”

  “You are going to let the husband handle the details. And like a good lover, you are going to cry. And then you are going to cry some more. And when you are done mourning the death of your lover, you are going to join with us and get the bastards responsible for this crime.”

  The words la petite mort come to Guillermo’s mind. This is anything but la petite mort, something he will never again experience with Maryam. This, he realizes, is the real thing. Pure and simple murder.

  And cry he does, realizing that one of Guatemala’s most common mistakes has happened to him. Through a crazy turn of events, his love Maryam Khalil has been killed when the target had to be her father.

  Unless, of course, Samir—

  It cannot be.

  He wouldn’t be such a bastard. Would he?

  chapter seventeen

  tying up loose ends

  Samir Mounier is the only person who knows what has happened. And because nothing of what has happened has managed to betray his strategy, he proceeds on course.

  He had invited his niece to visit him so she would bear witness to his grief at his wife’s infidelity, to help give him some solace, and to get under Maryam’s skin, since she disliked her immensely. And if she had minded her business and not offered to accompany Maryam, she would still be alive today to help him plan his father-in-law and wife’s funeral. That she has also gone up in flames doesn’t really change anything.

  She will not be missed. With her parents Saleh and Hamsa in a nursing home in Tegucigalpa, and Verónica a spinster living alone, her disappearance from Honduras—the country with the highest homicide rate in the world—is sure to raise no suspicion. Tegucigalpa is a city where bridges lead to nowhere. Her incineration is only a minor occurrence—dozens of people vanish in Honduras every week and nobody cares.

  The most Samir will be required to do is fly to Tegucigalpa and close up his niece’s apartment. If he were decent and had the time, he would also stop by and see his brother and his brother’s wife in their nursing home one last time. But what would be the point? They’d have no idea who he is, and if they end up being wards of the state in a hideous urine-infested facility, then so be it.

  No one will miss Verónica. The thought makes him smile. The Guatemalan police have no idea what actually happened. They suspect absolutely no foul play. The only danger is if they discover any evidence pointing to a third person in the car. In truth, no one gives a damn about my niece. Certainly not me, Uncle Samir. And even Ibrahim and Maryam Khalil: they are today’s news and tomorrow’s old papers.

  He had seen the mass of twisted metal that remained of Maryam’s Mercedes at the crime scene. He is no scientist, but he suspects there will be no forensic evidence to cull from, no DNA that could possibly prove three people had died. Guatemala is years away from genetic testing, but DNA cannot be recovered from cremated remains anyway. All the pieces of jewelry, the few chips of gold from fillings, will be traced back to Maryam because the truth of what happened is too complicated to investigate.

  It was wise of him to give Hiba the morning off and ask her to come in at twelve thirty to make lunch. For some reason, he had assumed that Hiba’s presence would have inhibited conversation between Verónica and Maryam in the morning, thereby delaying his wife’s departure to pick up her father.

  The fact that Hiba came in later in the day would awaken no suspicion.

  Samir has no trouble faking his grief. He has lost his wife, his beautiful young wife, and the texture of his life will have to change in the eyes of the world. He can fabricate real tears just thinking of his dead mother or father, but to look at him, no one would know that he is feeling absolutely no grief as he cries. He doesn’t need to plaster gloom all over his face,
it is naturally disfigured by a lifetime of disappointment and the distortions of age. Adding a heap more sorrow will not change things at all.

  He calls home and tells Hiba matter-of-factly that the madam is dead, and to please go home. He is surprised by the maid’s display of sorrow over the phone. “There is nothing else you can do,” he snaps at her. “I will call you when I need you again.”

  When he arrives back to his apartment, he unlocks Verónica’s door and gathers together her few belongings. He examines each piece for a label or marking that might identify them as hers, and finding none, he puts her clothes back into her suitcase. As he drives to the San Francisco Church downtown to make funeral arrangements with Father Reboleda, he stops by the edge of the small park bordering the Simón Bolivar Plaza on Las Américas Boulevard and places the suitcase on the sidewalk. Poor Indians are taking down their food stands for the day, and the contents of the luggage will easily find their way into a needy family’s hands.

  The beauty of living in a country as corrupt as Guatemala is that evidence can vanish as easily as smoke. Scarcity creates a society in which the truth of any situation can be variable or even paradoxical, and very few people will care. It happens all the time.

  Samir has a mordant smile on his face as he drives downtown. Everything has gone smoothly enough. The killers seem to have been as discreet as they were paid to be. He can’t imagine the explosion traced back to him. The detectives, God bless their souls, will come up with enough believable theories of who was behind the killings.

  He is well aware that Ibrahim has at least three or four enemies who would want him dead. Crooked textile suppliers, fellow members of that idiotic presidential oversight committee he was on, and even Guillermo Rosensweig, if he felt the man was an obstacle to his plan to steal away his daughter.

  No one will suspect Samir. As a former leader of the Lebanese community, his reputation is sterling. He is an ideal citizen. Yes, he knows he will have to get rid of his jovial smile before he meets the priest. It is, in the end, a small price to pay.

  They are all such fools.

  And he knows that with Khalil and Maryam gone, he may soon inherit another bundle of money, enough to keep him, his children, and his relatives in Lebanon going for many years. The money will come just in time, as he is planning to leave Guatemala and return to Sidon.

  Everything is falling perfectly into place.

  chapter eighteen

  the dog chases its own tail

  Ibrahim and Maryam’s ashes—or rather what is assumed are their ashes—are placed in two ceramic urns for burial. If the remains had been found in a mass grave in the Ixil Triangle, international forensic anthropologists would have been called in to lend their expertise to the prosecution of, for example, a former Guatemalan president for the genocide he undoubtedly committed. But this is just the explosion of a car on an abandoned street in a worthless neighborhood. If there had been remains beyond the small splinters of bones and a few chips of teeth, a postmortem might have been required, but the detectives on the case feel it is unnecessary to examine the ashes for organic matter; Fulgencio, the guard at Ibrahim’s factory, told detectives that he saw his boss get into his daughter’s Mercedes. Forensic testing would have proven that the ashes held human remains, but no proof as to who the victims were. And what would a chemical toxicology report reveal? The ashes were so contaminated by oil, gasoline, and burning hydrocarbons that the existence of drugs or poisons would never be found.

  There is no reason to extend the investigation. The dead are the dead. It is an open-and-shut case.

  The police know that Ibrahim is dead because they have found vestiges of his pacemaker. Guillermo knows that Maryam is dead because he phones her every day and his call now goes directly to voice mail. Still, he wonders why the police department or federal officials are unwilling to do a thorough investigation. Since Samir is the closest living survivor, he is the only one who can authorize an inquiry into their causes of death. For his part, Samir has told the authorities that he is consumed by such overwhelming misery that he wants the matter closed as soon as possible. He insists that sending the remains for examination and analysis in the United States would not bring his wife and father-in-law back to life. The only thing he claims to want is to be at peace, and to forget these horrid killings. In fact, Samir says that as soon as he can, he will travel to Honduras to see his ailing brother and sister-in-law. He is seriously thinking of returning to Beirut or Sidon, to spend the rest of his days with his children, surrounded by the only family he has left. In sum, he wants nothing to do with any further investigation. There are over 6,400 killings in Guatemala in 2009, and the few viable forensic teams are routinely sent all over the country by the president to examine the dozens of newly discovered mass graves, dating back to the early eighties. Confirming who perished in a car explosion is of little national interest.

  A bigger issue is whether the municipal police will ask the federal government to convene a grand jury to investigate why Ibrahim and his daughter were killed. Indeed, as soon as their murder is made public, there is substantial speculation as to why they were killed. When Guillermo is interviewed by the detectives, he suggests that there has to be a formal inquest to determine who killed them, and to bring the guilty parties to justice.

  He knows he cannot cast a shadow on Samir.

  * * *

  Four days after the murders, Samir organizes a small memorial service for his wife and father-in-law at the San Francisco Church in downtown Guatemala City. Guillermo knows that his presence is not wanted, but there is no way he will not attend. He is consumed with sorrow and feels entitled to grieve as if his own wife has died.

  He drives downtown alone. He sits in the back of the church and stares in disbelief at the two urns placed side by side on a table by the altar. Guillermo is stunned that Samir has chosen to collect their ashes in urns and entomb them in a wall at the Verbena Cemetery, rather than pony up for two stately coffins and a decent Christian burial.

  Father Robeleda barely knew the deceased and his comments are of a generic nature, commending the good souls of Ibrahim Khalil and Maryam Khalil Mounier to the kingdom of God. There are perhaps a total of sixty people in attendance: a handful of Lebanese friends; former associates of Samir and some girlfriends of Maryam; the cook Hiba; about a dozen illustrious leaders of the Lebanese community; Maryam’s tennis instructor; some high school friends who have read the obituary in Prensa Libre and El Periódico; a couple of government officials who seem nervous and impatient, including a representative from the presidency who keeps looking down at his watch. Guillermo guesses that he has another three funerals to attend that day and simply wants to get away.

  There are also four men—plainclothes detectives?—sitting near Guillermo in the back, off to the side, constantly checking their cell phones.

  After the priest delivers the funeral oration and says a few words about the deceased, Samir gets up and begins to speak to the guests from a lectern surrounded by glass vases with sparse flowers.

  “We are gathered here today to pay homage to two wonderful people, Ibrahim Khalil and his lovely daughter Maryam, my wife, who were prematurely and unjustly murdered for reasons we may never know. For those of you who didn’t know this extraordinary little family, Ibrahim came from the Levant to Guatemala in 1956 with his brother Leo to seek their fortunes in their adoptive country. They arrived with no money in their twenties, but with the desire to make their mark in the new world. Leo started a photography studio on Sixth Avenue while Ibrahim opened a fabric store in the downtown area, on Fifth. The business began modestly but continued to grow as Guatemalans realized Ibrahim was honest and reliable and worked incredibly hard. A few years later Ibrahim went to Cobán to look at a small café finca he considered purchasing and met Imelda Beltrán, the pretty daughter of a papaya grower. They married in 1965. Their first child died in childbirth, but two years later, in 1970, Imelda gave birth to a lovely daughter. Maryam, wh
ose name means beloved, and was also the name of Moses’s sister, came into this world when Ibrahim was already thirty-six years old, and she became his pride and joy.

  “When Ibrahim decided to open a textile factory, he practically gave the old store to Leo, which Leo continued to manage in Ibrahim’s style until—well, you all know what happened to this lovely downtown area. He was forced to abandon the store and moved back to Tripoli, in Lebanon. Now the whole area on Fifth Avenue is a series of cheap Chinese stores and cantinas. It breaks my heart—” Samir gasps for breath and brings tears to the eyes of many of the attendees.

  “Imelda died of cancer in 1980, when Maryam was only ten years old. Ibrahim loved his daughter—he doted on her the way any proud father would, and gave her whatever she needed to grow up a loving girl, one without a mother.

  “I don’t need to tell you that Maryam was completely devoted to her father and, in fact, had lunch with him every week, especially when Ibrahim began to suffer from vertigo, which made it impossible for him to drive. She would pick him up at the office in the factory by Roosevelt Hospital every Wednesday and bring him to our apartment for lunch. The devotion she showed to Ibrahim was beyond dispute.

  “And it was during one of these lunchtime pickups that I lost my wife and my father-in-law in a cowardly attack. As I said earlier, we may never know the motives for their murder, but we do know we have lost two remarkable human beings—” Samir becomes overwhelmed with tears again, and the priest holds him, then escorts him down to his seat in the front row.

  It is clear to Guillermo that the priest is in a rush to finish the service. He now knows why. One of the government officials is circling a finger in the air, as if to tell him to wrap it up. Glancing across the pews, Father Reboleda asks the mourners if anyone else wants to say something.