22

Dillahunt, Pahlavi, and the other EPs were wrapping up their dinners as Jude, Axel, and Fitz finally sat down to theirs, Jolanda appearing promptly with her tureen of gallo en chicha to ladle out portions. Despite the almost hallucinatory aroma steaming up from the broth of corn brew, an uneasy silence lingered over the table, remaining even as the others peeled away to pursue their evenings. Axel tried once or twice to enliven the table with a little diversionary chat between spoonfuls, but Jude could muster little more than one-word responses and compulsory nods, at one point staring into his bowl with an eerie sense of comradery with his meal—he felt like he’d barely fended off something that thought he was food. Meanwhile, across the table, Fitz brooded, lost in thought.

In between his mindless assents to Axel’s chatter, Jude tried to piece together the most likely sequence of events: his getting identified with Waxman and the others at the Río Jiboa; a call to the embassy, routed to McGuire, the on-site American whose brief was gangs; discussion of possible links between Jude and Truco Valdez; a little background, including a call to the Delegado de Inmigración; discovery of Jude’s entry this morning with Strock; a little more background; discovery of the Laugh Master connection. Bingo. Something to pry Jude open—a bluff, basically—a wedge to get him to say all he knew about the mareros in his life. Which, of course, was next to nothing. And that meant if they’d known anything more about his contacts with Malvasio, up to and including today, the scene at the restaurant in San Marcelino, they would have brought it up. Why hold it back? Why hold back anything on that front—Malvasio’s life here the past ten years, the people he was in with, the things he did for them? If there was anything damning in all that, they’d hardly keep it to themselves—they would have used it to impress him with their knowledge, embarrass him in front of Axel and Fitz, shame him into talking. But none of that happened. They had nothing more to say about Malvasio than I did about Truco, he thought, and that’s why they bagged it up so quickly at the end. He told himself to relax. About everything.

Finally, Jolanda came to collect dishes. Getting up from the table, Fitz said, “I’d like both of you to join me in my room for a moment, if you would.”

Fitz’s bedroom doubled as his office and epitomized order—his desktop a shrine, his bed a tomb. Even the ceiling fan hummed with unnerving perfection. Closing the door, he turned to Jude. “The thing McGuire brought up about your father—what was all that about?”

Jude had hoped they were done with this. “It’s ancient history, Fitz.”

“There’s nothing in your personnel file about it.”

“Why should there be? The man’s dead. Has been for ten years.”

Fitz tucked his hands in his armpits—to hide their shaking, Jude supposed.

“He was a crooked cop?”

“Fitz, whoa. This is wrong.”

“That’s a material omission. Plus this new thing with his old pals, accomplices, cellies for all I know. Not to mention these people your girlfriend bangs around with—”

“Excuse me—bangs?”

“Girlfriend?” Axel’s first contribution. He seemed oddly pleased.

“I haven’t seen her, Fitz, since the night you gave me crap about it. I’ve been gone, right? Just got back, right? What’s this about?”

Fitz looked off, thinking. Behind him, the screen saver on his laptop showed a pixilated sunrise morphing into a fetus dissolving into the Milky Way. “You’ve made some interesting acquaintances.”

“Well, Fitz, your company, it’s riveting, no argument there. But variety, the spice of life—you following me here?”

“You think this is all some kind of joke, it’ll all blow over. But I’ve gotta call Jim.”

He meant Jim Leonhard, the man who’d first recruited Jude at Los Rinconcitos in the Zona Rosa. He supervised the region now.

“Look, Fitz, the gas pressure on this is kinda needling into the red for no good reason, don’t you think?”

Axel reached out and touched Fitz’s arm. “I have to agree with Jude on this, Michael. Your reaction seems a little out of proportion for such small beer. He hasn’t done anything to jeopardize me, that’s for sure, and that’s the only consideration I can see meaning much of anything.”

“It’s not about that.”

“Yes, I realize.” Axel’s blue eyes warmed. “That’s the troubling part. Whatever it’s ‘about’ seems oddly personal, if I may be so blunt, and I think you should stop for a moment and consider that.” He let go of Fitz’s arm. “Beyond which, I’ve just spent ten days with Jude’s replacement and God save me from another stretch of time outside an alligator farm in such company.”

It was astonishing, the transformation—like that, Fitz was groveling. “Look, I realize Bauserman’s got some rough edges—”

Axel turned to Jude. “Do you know what this imbecile who replaced you did? We have, in Jolanda, quite possibly the best cook I’ve ever known outside my Swedish grandmother. Then this moron shows up with a ten-pound bag of grits. He tells her he wants a bowl for breakfast every day, plus three eggs over easy—‘runny as cum,’ he says. I wish I was making that up. Of course, Jolanda indulged the idiot, and you should have seen her, mixing that slop. She said it looked like something she’d feed her parrot.” Axel turned back to Fitz. “The man doesn’t know the difference between an honest-to-God thought and raw mental sewage. Nor does he know when—or perhaps even how—to shut up. He ought to be running a Ferris wheel. So he can die a happy man, peering up girls’ skirts.”

Fitz was backpedaling mentally, looking for something to say but apparently finding only empty space where the words should have been.

“I have been looking forward to Jude’s return,” Axel continued, “because he’s conscientious and smart. I feel safe with him and, when we get the opportunity to drop our guard at day’s end, he’s a pleasure to visit with. And, since I’d say my opinion on this matter should carry some weight, I’m going to ask that you let go of whatever it is that’s got you feeling so shirty and we’ll all get back to our day-to-day routines. Jude, welcome back. Michael, I appreciate your hearing me out.” Axel reached out for the shoulders of both younger men and gave them a fatherly squeeze, then a glint of mischief twinkled in his eye. He smiled like the best part had finally come. “Now, Jude, let’s hear a little more about this anthropologist of yours.”

Jude blushed before he could catch himself.

“I mean,” Axel prompted, “I’m assuming from the way you looked when you talked about her that you’re somewhat fond of her?”

Fitz cut in. “Maybe you guys can double-date. How swell.”

The scorn in Fitz’s voice caught Jude off guard, then something occurred to him, a sudden insight long overdue—about Fitz, his work in the Kuwaiti minefields. All that carnage, not just humans but animals, too—dogs, camels, sheep, ripped into pieces alongside the Iraqi war dead, rotting black under the desert sun. The flies, the stench, the sweaty tedium—then a coworker blown to screaming meat before your eyes. All that lying in wait whenever you touched someone. And Fitz resented it, resented the world’s indifference and his pitiless, disgusting thoughts, resented the women he’d never love and the men who would love them instead.

Beyond that, though, Jude was lost. “I’m not following.”

“No, of course you’re not,” Axel said, avoiding Fitz’s gaze and apparently immune to his derision. “There’s been no time to tell you. It happened while you were away.” He looked suddenly years younger. “I’ve met someone.”

Strock had discovered there was, indeed, beer in the fridge. A mere six-pack, though—he’d rationed himself. With sundown, he popped open his third. It was a brand called Bahía, bright and yeasty with a gassy head. One must make do, he thought, hobbling into the dining room.

A soft light lingered along the dingy walls, shadows swelling in the corners. Clara sat in one of the rough wood chairs, wearing a distant smile. Shoes on the floor, hands in her lap—she looked like a daydreaming nun.

Turning her glance toward Strock in the doorway, she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “Hola, Señor Feel.”

She’d made him two meals so far, a lunch of thick pancake-like tortillas filled with cheese that she called pupusas, served with warm salsa and a kind of pickled slaw, and a dinner of grilled shrimp with peppers and fresh-squeezed lime, followed by slices of a tart pinkmeated fruit she called guanabana. A man could get used to this, he thought, except the isolation was taking a toll. He was used to solitude—how often had he holed up alone in his apartment, days at a time, ignoring Dixie’s knock?—but this was different. So far from anything familiar to anchor him, no one to talk to beyond the clumsiest Spanglish, no TV to fake companionship, only three more beers. If somebody didn’t show up first thing the next morning, he’d get on the horn to Jude just to milk him for conversation.

He ventured outside to flex his knee. It throbbed a little but the milky heat had limbered it up some, good news on that front at least. Overhead, the blue of the sky had mellowed with dusk. The wind rustled through the palm fronds, the sun-salt tang of the ocean riding the heat, and the surf thundered gently beyond the wall, modulating strong and soft in endless random surges. It made him think of Florida. Like anybody who’d endured a Chicago winter, he’d often dreamed of retiring near a beach.

Suddenly, he felt Clara at his side. In that soft, birdlike voice of hers, she said, “Camino contigo.”

What’s it going to take for her to realize I haven’t a clue what she’s saying, Strock wondered, but she gestured for him to follow her toward the gate. We’re walking somewhere, he realized. Well, fine. Something to do.

They headed toward the windswept beach and turned east, walking with the surf to their right. Crimson swirls of feathery cloud lingered above the glassy ocean. Clara kept a modest gait, pausing so Strock could catch up every now and then, their progress slow, the sand deep and soft. She walked with her arms folded, her chin high, the wind fanning her black hair in every direction at once. She looked less homely in the fading light.

Suddenly, it dawned on him that this was a trap. She was leading him out of the house, away from where he had a weapon. She’d step away suddenly, the men would appear from beyond the trees.

He stopped, to see if she stopped with him or just kept walking. That would tell him, he thought, just as she paused and turned back. Her eyes in the blustery twilight seemed so guileless and free of menace he felt ashamed—and yet he’d suffered morbid fantasies all day. It was hard, alone in a strange place, not to feel the paranoia worming away. I’m sorry, he thought, smiling apologetically. She smiled back. They resumed walking.

Finally, about a hundred yards along, she stopped and faced a break in the line of palms. In the dimness, Strock saw within a clearing the ruins of a large, plain house—the roof gone now, walls crumbling, windows shattered. Clara stared at it for several seconds, gripping her hair in a fist, then began to speak. Her words came out in a soft plaintive drone and she gestured along with her story, so Strock could try to follow. From what he could tell, the house had been full of people once, children perhaps, a lot of activity, coming and going, good and bad—opposites, of some kind, or turmoil. No. A storm—Strock remembered Jude mentioning Hurricane Mitch, pointing out the destruction as they’d boated deeper into the mangroves. The winds tore the big house to shreds, Clara seemed to be saying, miraculously leaving the smaller house down the beach untouched. Many of the children had died. That, at least, was what Strock made of the pantomime. He realized she could just as readily be telling him that one night a horde of banshees had howled down from the sky to ransack the house and drive out the merry band of circus midgets who’d taken shelter there. He liked that version, actually.

Clara turned away from the house, finally, with a shy look of heartbreak, and silently headed back the way they’d come. Strock took one last look at the ruins, gripped his cane, and followed behind.

By the time they were back inside, he was wringing wet from the exertion. Strange, he thought, how even sunset and the ocean wind didn’t cool things much. He thumped back to his room, gripped by a sudden need to lie down. His thoughts squalled, he felt dizzy and weak and closed his eyes.

When he opened them again, he saw Clara’s silhouette in the doorway. At last, he thought, here comes that good thing. She was holding a bowl, though, and from clear across the room he could smell the rough tang of wood alcohol. She padded forward and knelt beside his bed. First soaking a cloth in the spiked water, then wringing it out, she began a sponge bath—gently mopping his brow, wiping his face and neck and throat, his arms and hands, his feet. Her touch was intimate but not erotic and she avoided his glance, removing any hint of seduction—on top of which the smell of the alcohol gave the procedure a distinctly medicinal taint. More peculiar than that, though, was his own lack of arousal. The heat, maybe, or his spinning head. He considered testing it, removing his shirt to see where that might lead. When he reached for the first button, though, she rose, whispered something that sounded prim, and turned to go, leaving the bowl and cloth behind so he could finish by himself.