Latitude Zero

by Diana Renn

  I shielded my eyes from the sun and scanned the surrounding hilly streets. “Is he up there somewhere? Where do we find him?” I whispered so Emma and Aussie Guy wouldn’t hear.

  “I’ll take care of our friends,” Santiago said in a low voice. “You and Mari start walking up the hill. There is the starting gate.” He pointed. I could see a rider in a blue jumpsuit up there, adjusting a helmet. Awaiting his turn. “They race one at a time, not all together. It is a time trial race, like skiing. El Ratón is the big finish—all these people are here to see him—so he will go last. I’ll leave our friends in a few minutes and follow you partway, and keep the eye in.”

  “Keep an eye out,” I corrected. “And thank you!”

  “De nada. Good luck up there! I believe in you!” He gave me a thumbs-up sign and a grin so wide I noticed, for the first time, dimples.

  I caught up to Mari, who had already started sprinting up the staircases on a side street.

  “There he is,” she said, pointing to a small figure on top of the hill.

  He looked just like he did in the poster, wearing a red jumpsuit and helmet. His handlers, a group of three men in identical red jackets, waved us away as we approached. “He will sign autographs at the bottom, after his descent,” one man explained to us in Spanish. “Right now, el Ratón needs to focus completely.”

  “I’m with a TV show in the U.S.,” I explained, also in Spanish. “I would like to interview him, very briefly, before his ride.” I tipped my head and flashed him my most winning KidVision smile.

  “Who is this?” he asked, frowning at Mari now.

  “My assistant.”

  He studied both of us warily, then consulted with another handler standing nearby. Finally he nodded. “Okay. Five minutes only.” He introduced us to el Ratón, who was standing with his back to us, doing some leg stretches. The handler then walked a few feet away to smoke a cigarette with his team.

  “This show, it is real, yes?” el Ratón asked in halting English, looking uncertainly at the ten-year-old camcorder that Mari had slung over her shoulder. He sounded not nearly as fluent as Juan Carlos. He also sounded suspicious of us. Of me.

  “Of course it is real,” said Mari, in Spanish. She began fussing over me as if readying me for the camera, fluffing my hair and wiping an imaginary lipstick smear off my cheek.

  “It’s real,” I echoed in English. I’m just not on it anymore. I’m the one who’s not real.

  I stared at el Ratón, taking in his narrow eyes, his long nose. He took off his helmet and scratched at his head. His large ears, I noticed, stuck out like a mouse’s. I doubted I’d be seeing him on an EcuaBar billboard. But I stared at him, memorizing him, because he was a link to Juan Carlos. I could imagine these two talking, hanging out, riding bikes together in those lush green hills. I could imagine, for an instant, Juan Carlos alive.

  I glanced at the handlers. They were all lighting up cigarettes now, talking among themselves. One of them looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place where I’d seen him. Maybe in something I’d seen about el Ratón or el Cóndor online. I didn’t have time to waste figuring that out now.

  “We knew your friend Juan Carlos,” I said in a low voice to el Ratón.

  “What?” He exclaimed. Then he narrowed his eyes at me. “What did you say your name was?”

  “Tessa. Tessa Taylor, from KidVision. And this is Mari Vargas, from Compass Bikes.”

  El Ratón took a step back. “What is this about?” He glanced at his handlers, as if to signal to them to escort us away.

  “No. Please don’t. This is important,” I said in Spanish. “Juan Carlos wanted to give me a flash drive a couple of weeks ago, after a race in Massachusetts. But I never got the flash drive. Now some scary people are looking for it. Did Juan Carlos ever email you some files? Or send you a flash drive in the mail?”

  El Ratón looked startled. Then pained. “Juan Carlos was like my brother,” he said, putting one hand to his heart. “I do not talk about this subject, his death. It is extremely difficult for me. I would like you to leave.”

  I froze. I hadn’t expected that response. No one in all my five years at KidVision had ever reacted so negatively to me as an interviewer.

  I wouldn’t quit, though. “Isn’t it more painful not knowing exactly why he died?” I said as he turned his back to us to resume his stretching exercises.

  He stopped mid-stretch.

  “If you can share any information, it will help us figure out what really happened at Chain Reaction,” I persisted.

  “Turn the camera off,” he commanded.

  Mari looked at me questioningly, and I nodded, remembering Bianca Slade’s advice about protecting your sources. She sighed and did as he asked.

  “Did he call you that morning and tell you I was the media contact he’d chosen?” I asked.

  El Ratón hesitated. Without looking at me he nodded, barely, once.

  “We need the information Juan Carlos was hoping to share with the media,” I said, talking faster. “And we need it now. Did Juan Carlos send you a copy of anything? A hard copy or a digital file?”

  “No, but he told me what the flash drive contained,” said el Ratón. His eyes flicked to the handlers. “But this is not a safe situation here. Please. You must go. Immediately.”

  The handlers were walking toward us now, and the MC was announcing the next rider, now in position at the top of the hill. My eyes widened as I realized where I’d seen one of the handlers.

  He was the bouncer at Salsoteca Mundial. The man in the Panama hat. He was wearing it now.

  I could hardly breathe. Rage filled me. Darwin had promised to give me some space, but obviously he didn’t trust me. I was so close to finding out what information Juan Carlos wanted to leak, and yet I was still being monitored.

  Or maybe el Ratón was being monitored. My eyes flicked from the handler to the cyclist, noticing a look pass between them.

  Mari nudged me and pulled me aside. “That guy in the Panama hat. He looks familiar. He was at the nightclub, right?” she whispered.

  I nodded. “He works for Darwin.”

  “I’ll go distract him,” she muttered. “You talk.”

  “Mari, wait! No!”

  Too late. Mari went sauntering up to the bouncer/handler in the Panama hat, with a twitch in her hips and a toss of her hair—totally unlike herself—and started talking to him. I couldn’t hear what she was saying, but he looked both annoyed and confused.

  “I need to know about that flash drive,” I said to el Ratón. “I want to help your friend. What was he trying to expose?”

  “I cannot tell you that.” He raised his hands above his head and stretched out his shoulders.

  “Why not?” I demanded.

  He bent over in a forward stretch, touching his toes. “Because I cannot take the risk,” he whispered on an exhale. “I told him not to do it, not to throw away his career because of this. Nothing is going to change because of what one guy on a bike happens to say. I wish that Juan Carlos had listened to me.”

  I touched my toes, too, so we’d be at the same level. “Please. We need your help. Some guys think Mari and I have the information, and we don’t. And we think the information might help explain his death.”

  El Ratón stood up so fast I could feel a breeze. I stood up, too. When he faced me again, he looked fearful. “It is not safe for me to have this information,” he whispered. “It is not safe for you to have it. It was not safe for Juan Carlos to have it, and you know what happened to him. Now go.”

  The handler from the nightclub brushed past Mari, striding toward me now and tapping his watch. “¡Oye! El Ratón is about to race. He needs to prepare himself mentally. This interview must end,” he said brusquely.

  “Thank you for interviewing me. Good-bye,” el Ratón said curtly.

  The han
dlers moved in close to separate us from el Ratón, and two of them escorted Mari and me back to the staircase that led down the hill. The man from the nightclub gave me a little push when we got to the staircase, throwing off my balance. I clutched the railing and caught myself from falling.

  I wanted to scream. To punch and kick someone, or something. Why wasn’t el Ratón talking? Why was he so quiet and sullen? Then I remembered one more thing I wanted to ask. I might never get another chance. Maybe he’d talk about this one thing that might shed light—or dark—on Juan Carlos’s past. I broke free of the handler and jogged back to el Ratón.

  “Hey. How’d Juan Carlos get that scar on his neck? Was he in a fight with someone?” I pictured Pizarro’s gleaming knife, his razor-sharp smile. Maybe they’d had an encounter before.

  I expected el Ratón to ignore me, but he turned around. “The scar? Window factory.”

  “Where his father works?”

  He nodded. “Juan Carlos spent time there, when he was a boy after his mother died and there was nobody to watch him at home. One day a big windowpane fell off the factory line and broke right beside him. A shard of glass pierced his neck. It was years ago, but the hospital stitched it up badly, and he never got over that. I am sure if that happened in your country, the scar would be invisible by now.” He smiled, wistful. “But I always told him the scar made him look tough. It is probably why people left him alone. They assumed he was a fighter, and not a guy you should mess with. For skinny bike-riding guys like us, a scar is not such a bad thing.”

  “Come to the U.S. embassy with us,” I whispered. “Speak up. For the sake of your friend.”

  “I’m sorry,” said el Ratón in a low voice. “I wish I could help. But I made my choice. My family depends on me.”

  His handlers closed in again—the nightclub bouncer guy casting me a look of disgust—and they led him away.

  I made my choice. My family depends on me. What did he mean?

  “Great job distracting Mr. Panama Hat. What did you talk to him about?” I asked Mari as we jogged down the hill to meet Santiago and the others.

  Mari smiled mysteriously. “I just tried to act like a starstruck fan of el Ratón and asked him to set us up on a date.”

  “No way! That’s so not you!”

  She looked a little hurt. “I have some feminine wiles. They’re just a little rusty.”

  “I’m sorry. Of course. What’d he say?”

  “Nothing. I wouldn’t let him get a word in. I just kept on talking so you could talk, until he swatted me aside like a fly. But at least it bought you some time, right?”

  “It did. Thanks. I just wish el Ratón was as talkative as you were.”

  “Success?” Santiago whispered with an anxious look when we rejoined them at a lookout point halfway down the hill.

  I shook my head. “El Ratón knows what Juan Carlos had on that flash drive,” I informed both him and Mari. “Juan Carlos told him what it was all about. But el Ratón’s not going to talk. He seems really scared of something.”

  “Or someone,” Mari said darkly.

  An MC speaking into a microphone introduced el Ratón, trilling the r, drawing the name out long.

  El Ratón, a small red dot atop the hill, raised his arms in greeting.

  Then he placed his hands on the handlebars and began his descent with a dazzling leap that sent his tires spinning. The sun caught the spokes and made them gleam.

  The crowds cheered as el Ratón slipped into tight spaces. He darted. He dodged. He skittered and slid.

  “A new victory for el Ratón! He has completed the course with record-breaking time on his death-defying descent!” the MC shouted in Spanish, as the crowd went wild. “We hope this is the start of many more victories to come, as he turns to road racing and leads Equipo Diablo!”

  Loud merengue music pulsed through the speakers. The cloud went wild as el Ratón took a victory lap around the Plaza de la Independencia, pumping his fists in the air, then holding his arms up in a V as he pedaled, just like his friend Juan Carlos used to do.

  Mari, Santiago, and I were the only people in the crowd not cheering or clapping. We watched his victory laps in morose silence. His victory was our failure. El Ratón wasn’t talking about that flash drive, that was clear. Unless we found it ourselves, Darwin was going to start the wrecking ball on my family members’ lives. And we’d never be able to finish Juan Carlos’s job.

  51

  MARI STAYED another night with my host family, even though her laundry had finished. We all talked about the urban downhill race at dinner with them, marveling at el Ratón’s record-breaking time and his heart-pumping, thrill-a-minute downhill ride. But when the conversation unexpectedly changed to religion, I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. The Ruizes were curious about my religious background—which was fairly nonexistent. We were talking in Spanish—part of the homestay experience, to improve my language skills—but it was exhausting to explain my school’s Quaker values, and the history of the Quaker people, in another language.

  “And yet you wear the crucifix,” said Lucia, pointing at my chest. I’d taken off my usual necklace-concealing cotton scarf. “Surely this is not just for fashion?”

  “Not just fashion,” I admitted, my hand instinctively reaching up to cover the crucifix. “It was a gift. From a friend.”

  “Your boyfriend?” Amparo asked, wide-eyed and curious.

  I felt Mari’s eyes on me. “No,” I said. “Just a friend.”

  As usual, the after-dinner Spanish went into warp speed. My head began to throb. I just wanted to crawl away. Besides, the Ruizes all seemed more interested in Mari and her family background, trying to understand where her various cousins had grown up in Ecuador and why they had moved to the States.

  I retreated to the patio to brainstorm new fake reports to stave off Darwin. I’d just started listing some on my computer when Mari’s figure suddenly appeared in the doorway, hands on her hips.

  Her eyes traveled to just below my collarbone. “Tell me about that necklace,” she said.

  I looked down. The moonlight bathing the patio made the gold—or gold paint—on Juan Carlos’s necklace gleam.

  “I wear it all the time. I usually tuck it under a shirt or a scarf, here in Ecuador. Since it’s gold. I don’t want to be a target for muggers. Being a target for international spies is enough. Right?” I laughed.

  Mari didn’t. She knelt down beside me, frowning, and held the crucifix part in her hand. “Was this from Juan Carlos?” she demanded. “Did he give this to you?”

  Her tone—a mix of hurt and angry—caught me off guard. “Uh, yeah. He did.”

  “When?”

  “Right before the Chain Reaction race. He said to take care of it for him.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Honestly? I didn’t see what it had to do with the case. I thought it was sentimental.”

  “It was sentimental. And it was supposed to be mine.”

  “What?”

  “He tried to give this to me when he came to see me at the shop, the day before the race. I told him it always brought him luck, and I was afraid to take it. He said it wasn’t the necklace he usually wears, it was new, and it was heavier than USA Cycling rules would allow. I told him to wear it anyway, that he needed all the help from God he could get at Chain Reaction.”

  “Look, I’m sorry he changed his mind. But he gave it to me, for safekeeping.” And he’d guided me to stand behind a tree while he put it on me. As if he hadn’t wanted to be seen.

  As if he knew people were looking for him.

  “Let me at least wear it tonight,” said Mari, pulling at it a little.

  “Ouch. You’re pulling too hard.”

  SNAP.

  “Oh my God,” said Mari, as she looked down at the piece of the cross now separated from the res
t of it, pinched between her thumb and forefinger, with a small black chip sticking out of the gold.

  A flash drive.

  52

  THE MOMENTS dragged on as Mari and I sat in the moonlit patio in stunned silence, each of us staring at the piece of the cross we held. I had most of it—with the entire figure of Jesus—and Mari held the bottom quarter inch, the base with a USB port nested inside.

  I heard a whooshing sound in my ears. The “valuable information” Juan Carlos wanted to leak had been right under my nose the whole time. Literally!

  Darwin and his crew hadn’t even noticed the necklace. Or if they had, they must not have figured out that the crucifix was actually an elaborate storage case for the flash drive.

  “This has to be the data Darwin’s looking for!” I exclaimed. “Juan Carlos must have wanted to show me what’s on it after he finished the race. That’s why he asked me if I had a laptop.”

  Mari handed me the drive. “Let’s see what we’ve got here.”

  I plugged the drive into the USB port on my laptop.

  A folder appeared, labeled BELIZE VACATION PICS.

  Mari’s face fell. “Vacation pictures?” She shook her head in disbelief. “Is that it? Must have been some vacation, if Juan Carlos had to carry those pictures around his neck. I can’t think when he would have gone to Belize, though. I mean, there’s no bike event there.”

  I kept staring at that label. “Juan Carlos didn’t go to Belize,” I said. “And Darwin said Juan Carlos stole his client’s information. Whoever is in these vacation pictures should be Darwin’s client.”

  “Oh, that’s right!” Mari said.

  “Unless, of course,” I added, “these aren’t really vacation pictures.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “People can deliberately mislabel their files and folders. My dad does that for his clients.”

  “What are you waiting for? Open this up!” Mari urged.

  I clicked on the folder.

  I was right. There were no JPEGs, no photos. Just a list of files labeled SX CORRESPONDENCE BACKUP, and ranges of dates between March and May.