The Mastermind

by David Unger

  Guillermo changes his cell phone number and for two days he does not receive any mystery calls. But then suddenly the hang-ups return.

  He takes an Ambien to sleep every night and thirty milligrams of Cymbalta each morning when he wakes up. Sometimes he takes two of the latter, with a shot of rum, even though it makes him groggy and a bit nauseous in the morning. When the medicine is working he feels invincible: he wants to live and bring the guilty to justice. But it is a momentary high. He is unable to conquer the inertia that keeps him from shaking off Maryam’s death and remaking his life. He is stunned by this, never having depended upon anyone to survive, not even when he was aimlessly walking the streets of Europe. Certainly he never had to rely on tiny colored pills.

  And he has lost all sexual desire. He hasn’t had an erection in weeks.

  The medicine makes him less anxious, even jacks up his mind so that he sometimes has a clear will to live, but his heart is like a mechanical toy from which all the coils and gears have fallen.

  One night he almost calls Rosa Esther to ask her if she will take him back. He is ready to move to Mexico. He is willing to chuck his lucrative law practice, all his clients and connections, to go back to his wife and children and get a decent night’s sleep.

  But is a good night’s sleep enough reason to try to remake your life with a woman you no longer love? He nixes the idea of calling her and doubles down on another shot of rum.

  * * *

  Guillermo goes to see his accountant one day to see if he can get a better idea of his net worth, to see if he could possibly sell his law practice.

  The accountant is not encouraging: he tells him that his firm is worth next to nothing, especially since it has continued to lose clients. Guillermo is incapable of returning phone calls whenever he finds himself in a fit of panic. He confesses to his accountant that he is sure there are people planning his demise, and perhaps even plotting to kill him. He has drafted a new will, which he asks the accountant and his secretary to witness and notarize. It is a simple will that bequeaths his total estate to his children. He wants to have everything squared away, just in case something happens to him.

  Guillermo leaves his accountant feeling there’s nothing that can bring him back from the brink. He has become the mastermind of nothing.

  chapter twenty-three

  it’s not over till it’s over, or the fat lady . . .

  Guillermo learns from Rosa Esther that his children, though happy to be living in Mexico, are having problems. Ilán worries he is not masculine enough and is teased by his classmates for not being aggressive or daring. He might be gay. Once when he was around eight and saw a particular boy’s muscular chest, he told his mother that he felt excited, and that he wanted to caress the hair on the boy’s arms. The feelings have continued with other boys. Andrea is treated like a social outcast; she worries that she has an untreatable case of halitosis and that her underarms reek. She wonders why none of the boys seem to like her. Both are having difficulty fitting in with kids who have known each other since nursery school.

  But one thing is certain: they do not want to return to Guatemala City.

  Guillermo listens to Rosa Esther’s complaints and blames her for their children’s indifference to him. Why did she have to tell them he had fallen in love with another woman, a married woman, a younger, more beautiful woman? A slut, in her words, who worships a god who encourages men to take on multiple wives. As teenagers, Ilán and Andrea think their mother is the most perfect woman on earth, even if she constantly spars with them over their laziness and slovenly habits. They don’t care that Rosa Esther’s once-thin figure, so gorgeous and svelte at Jones Beach in New York, has sagged, nor that the once-cute freckles on her white face have widened so much that they’ve become splotches.

  Guillermo is bottled up in mourning and feels a whistling pain flitting constantly through his porous body. He can’t believe Maryam will never come back to him, that she is gone, killed by a slew of bullets before blowing up with her car. It makes no sense, none of it does. Half the time he is drunk, reeking of booze and slurring words that he often only whispers to himself. His eyes are puffy: they look, but do not focus. They are bottomless murky wells. His tongue is a soap pad in his mouth. He has swollen cheeks and constantly itching ears.

  One night he takes a flashlight and his gym bag to the roof of his building, climbing up the circular staircase to the upstairs terrace, where the maids hang laundry on poles between the huge gray containers of bottled gas. Guillermo brings a yellow legal pad, parks himself against one of these containers, and starts going through Ibrahim’s papers. Lines referring to interest-free loans and worthless collateral spring up at him. Advances for projects that will never be built assault him, but he is unable to concentrate. Maybe it is the quivering of the light, the shuffling of the wind, the batting of his eyelashes, but Guillermo is not able to form a single cogent thought. And of course he has forgotten to bring a pen or pencil.

  He puts everything down and stares up at the sky. There is a high crescent moon and the lightest smattering of stars. He sees a compact trail of smoke off in the distance and wonders if the Pacaya volcano is active once again. He should read the newspapers and find out what’s going on in the world. He seems to remember something about a build-up of troops in Afghanistan, more chaos in Iraq, Daniel Ortega hunkering closer to Hugo Chavez and talking about building a transoceanic canal through Lake Managua with Chinese funding, Putin flexing his muscles in a challenge to Russia’s oil barons.

  Why the fuck should he care?

  He is looking at a beautiful night sky which could make him cry, but all he can think about is that he has to find someone to pay for Maryam’s death. Miguel keeps insisting that the government was behind the murders, and it is easy for Guillermo to agree. He hates the skinny president, with his horn-rimmed glasses, his mole-infested skin making his face resemble a large conical chocolate chip cookie. He looks like a ghoulish funeral parlor director with his gray suits and white shirts and blue ties, constantly rubbing his hands to express sympathy even as he convinces relatives of the deceased to purchase more expensive coffins. He is a self-proclaimed patriot who is constantly paying tribute to the Guatemalan flag in public while using it as toilet paper at home. Whenever he is filmed sitting at his desk, stroking his hands, he speaks with so much conviction—despite his speech impediment—that Guillermo thinks he might actually believe what he says. With his thin lips and his high, unmanly voice, he is a dead ringer for a chompipe, a turkey, clucking his way through an argument, a man whose discourses are so absurd that only fools would believe them.

  Guillermo cannot accept that Guatemalans elected him their president—a hideous wild turkey killing off his enemies each time he gobbles or bats his flightless wings. Miguel has now completely convinced him that the president killed Ibrahim and Maryam. Guillermo is also sure that the president has signed agreements with the leaders of the main drug cartels not to pursue them, as long as they don’t interfere with his looting of the treasury. He can easily imagine the president and his wife hobnobbing with the leading drug dealers in Guatemala, serving them delicious canapés and French champagne. The president is a talented manipulator who hides his backroom dealings perfectly.

  Guillermo hates the First Lady even more. He is certain that she models herself in the tradition of Corazon Aquino and Lady Thatcher, a powerful woman who wants the poor to consider her another Mother Teresa. To him she is just a duplicitous chimpanzee: when she smiles and reveals her crooked teeth there is no way the people can believe what she says. Just because she has a social work degree from the Landívar she professes to know how to solve the ills of the country, and thinks that people more skilled than she should follow her lead. She definitely sees herself as another Cristina Fernández de Kirchner; as soon as her husband’s term is over, Guillermo suspects, she too will announce her candidacy for the presidency of Guatepeor o Guatebalas, even though the constitution does not allow the spouses of
sitting presidents to run for office. What will she do to accomplish her goals? Divorce her husband, just so that she can become a candidate all on her own? Is she that cold-blooded?

  Guillermo’s hatred of her has nothing to do with her being a woman. He admires Michelle Bachalet and Angela Merkel for reaching the presidency of their respective countries on their own, not using their husbands as stepladders to the podium. It is her hypocrisy that rankles him. Guatemala has become Guatemess.

  Guillermo prays every day that no one assassinates the president; if that happened, his wife would make a convincing case for being allowed to finish his term. After all, she is one of his most trusted advisors. If someone tries to kill him, his wife would be sure to escape; she might even be behind it. Somehow she would be sitting two rows in back of him at the National Theater, or, at the moment of the assault, in a bathroom stall, rehearsing her inaugural speech. Under no circumstances would she allow herself to die with him.

  It is unclear to Guillermo how corruption this deep developed so quickly in Guatemala. When he looks at his country’s history, he is convinced it all began with the overthrow of Ubico, the end of the rule of law—yes, no matter how harsh it was. Most Guatemalan sociologists and historians blame the overthrow of the constitutionally elected Arbenz in 1954 for turning the tide.

  He wishes he could wake up one day and feel good about being a Guatemalan, without thinking about soldiers, narcos, maras, cartels, whatever. Maybe no single event was the cause of it, but instead decades of horrible luck and corruption. He thinks back to how Guatemala changed during the two years that he and Rosa Esther were in New York: he left a country at relative peace and returned to mass murders and killings.

  In his drunken stupor he has crazy dreams. One night he dreams he’s attending a beauty pageant in which the wrong girl gets crowned Miss Guatemala simply because one of the judges didn’t know how to add up his own points. When he gets up to decry the mistake, he is arrested and thrown into a prison without any clothes.

  He knows that all Central Americans complain about their own countries. He remembers the time a pilot on a flight from Guatemala to Nicaragua landed at Comalapa Airport in San Salvador. The passengers had to disembark and wait two hours for another flight to Managua, their original destination. No apology, no explanation, no reimbursement. Just another screw-up.

  And in the hospitals? Patients are given each other’s medicine and both die. There is no foul play, just incompetence, plain and simple.

  There must be something in the Popol Vuh that set the whole thing off like this.

  * * *

  All of Guillermo’s dark thoughts are accompanied by rivers of liquor. He can’t control himself anymore. He has stopped exercising, stopped eating correctly. His diet consists of fast food, potato chips, and soft drinks. He doesn’t recall when he gave up riding his bicycle; his ankles and feet are swollen, red as beets.

  Guillermo buys a new cell phone every couple of days and shares the number only with his secretary, his ex-wife, and Miguel. Within hours of each purchase he begins receiving more garbled messages and dropped calls. His anxiety is out of control. Someone wants him dead.

  A month after Ibrahim and Maryam’s funeral, he asks Miguel if he knows anyone he can hire to be his bodyguard and chauffeur now that he is afraid to drive. Someone who can take him to work and back, who can fill the car with gas. Someone who can make sure he doesn’t become another statistic. Miguel instantly suggests that he hire Braulio Perdomo. Braulio was the driver of the blue Hyundai at the Centro Vasco, but Guillermo is too far gone to notice or care.

  In addition to the hang-ups, Guillermo sometimes receives typed letters at the office saying things like, We are watching you, stop drinking cheap rum. Or, You were reading quite late last night (when in fact he had passed out with the night light on).

  On rare occasions something nice and unexpected happens.

  Ilán and Andrea call him for his forty-ninth birthday and sing “Las Mañanitas”—they are already so Mexican! For the first time in a while, Guillermo feels connected to them. He cries on the phone. The kids cry with him. Andrea blurts out that she misses him. Guillermo blows them each a kiss and tells them he wishes he could make things right for them. For the first time ever, they say that he has been a great father. He knows it’s not true, but still he feels embraced, even if their warmth is only related to his birthday.

  * * *

  During Braulio’s first morning on the job, he brings his new boss to his office. Before going down to meet him, Guillermo rinses his mouth with mouthwash. He has shaved his face for the first time in days. He is wearing a pressed suit, a clean shirt.

  No one is in his office since he furloughed his secretary. He opens his mailbox and finds lots of bills and thick envelopes. He has stopped paying his office rent and is merely weeks away from being evicted. Does he care?

  Less each day.

  Among all the annoying mail he finds a plain white envelope with no return address. It is postmarked May 20.

  Guillermo goes to the cabinet across from his desk where he stashes bottles of liquor and pours himself a big whiskey. He is sure this is another threat. He has half a mind not to open the envelope, but curiosity gets the better of him. Inside is a gorgeous color postcard of a beautiful beach with white sand, palm trees, a palapa, mostly blue skies, a couple of white cirrus clouds. Gold lettering on the bottom reads, Playa del Carmen, A Golden Beach on Mexico’s Riviera Maya. When Guillermo turns the card over, he sees that it is blank.

  He looks back at the envelope. It has a cancelled Guatemalan stamp from the town of Chiquimula overlaid with the date. Why a card displaying a beach in Mexico?

  He thinks maybe it’s a coded message from Maryam, announcing that she’s still alive, staying somewhere between Mexico and Guatemala. But he knows he’s just grasping at straws.

  chapter twenty-four

  chronicle of a death foretold

  The night after his last big bender and Braulio’s arrogant phone call about the Monday morning pickup, Miguel calls Guillermo and says he needs to talk to him immediately.

  “In private.”

  “Here I am.”

  “No phones. I’ll pick you up at six at your apartment and we’ll go to the usual watering hole downtown.”

  * * *

  They chitchat on the drive along Las Américas Boulevard and Reforma to Zone 1. The streets are empty of people and cars, not surprising for a Sunday night.

  “What’s on your mind?” Guillermo asks as soon as they are seated at Café Europa.

  “I want to know how you are.”

  “To be honest, I wish I were dead.” He confesses to Miguel that he has thought long and hard about it and wants to take his life: he simply doesn’t want to live anymore. He knows that the cocktail of antidepressants, mood stabilizers, and sleeping pills, plus all the booze, are not helping him to think clearly, but he has nothing to keep him alive. Not even his children—the birthday call was, after all, an exception.

  “My life is over,” Guillermo says, without much emotion. He has just downed three straight shots of Flor de Caña rum. When his eyes meet the waiter’s, he orders two more shots.

  Miguel is sipping Ron Zacapa, to give his friend company. It is his first and only drink of the night. “But you must consider your children—”

  “They would be better off without me.”

  “How can you say that?”

  “I know. They are doing well in Mexico City. Rosa Esther is a marvelous mother. When I call to talk to them, I get the feeling that I am pulling them away from something they would rather be doing.”

  “But this is natural. They are angry at you.” Miguel is not only a self-proclaimed facilitator and the head of his own private spying network, but also a bit of a psychologist. “They would never recover if you were to simply kill yourself.”

  Guillermo nods. He remembers their voices on his birthday. Sweet. They were concerned. He looks back at Miguel and nearly forg
ets why they are there. “I don’t know anything about you. Are you married? Do you have children?”

  “None of that matters. You know you can trust me.”

  Guillermo answers this comment with a blink.

  Miguel pats him on the shoulders. “My private life is so boring. I’ve been married to Inés Argueta for thirty-eight years. We have four children, all in their thirties. Two of them, the girls, are living in the States, married. The boys are in Europe. One is studying theater and working part-time in a restaurant in Seville. The other works for a Scottish bank in London.”

  The waiter arrives with more drinks and a basket of potato chips. He looks at Miguel before putting them down. Miguel nods, making Guillermo laugh.

  “And to think that I have someone I don’t really know, a father of four children, watching over me,” he says, gulping down more rum.

  “You’re drinking a lot these days. I wonder if the depression you feel is related to it. You should cut down on your alcohol intake, if you don’t mind me saying.”

  Guillermo runs his hand through his hair. Drinking is the least of his problems. He needs to sleep peacefully, but his mind has become a feeding trough for nightmares and sudden fears. “And what would you have me do? Drink milk? Become a choir boy? Study for the priesthood?”

  “You can’t let your life deteriorate like this. You need to sober up a bit. You have to get control of yourself. The liquor is poisoning your system.”

  Guillermo has read such poppycock in popular magazines. As befuddled as he is, he is not brain-dead just yet. You can’t control your life as if it were a steering wheel. He knows why he doesn’t want to sober up. “So what do you advise, Mr. Freud?”

  “Well, if you want to die, make sure your death has meaning.”