Blood of Paradise (44 page)

“My dad had a Remington pump,” she said, lowering the weapon from her shoulder.

“So you know how to handle it.”

She sighed morosely, as though it were a curse. “Don't ask me to hit a duck.”

He took the shotgun back, set it aside, then handed her the .22. “I'm going to take my Sig with me just in case, but I won't be needing this.” Her hands were almost too big for the thing and she fumbled with the safety and magazine release. “Just a heads-up,” he said, “Oscar's had his eyes on these. I wouldn't leave them out of your sight.”

“You really think all this is necessary?”

“I've got this theory. Well, superstition actually. The more you plan for something, the less likely it is to happen. But don't open the door for anybody, I don't care who it is. I mean that. I'll explain later.”

“I want to know where you're going.”

“Let me borrow your car, I'll answer all your questions when I get back. I promise.”

He got Axel and Eileen to trade places, and now it was Axel's turn in the small sunlit garden. Jude said, “It's time to do this.”

Shading his eyes, Axel furrowed his brow and pursed his lips. “I'll go get ready.”

“No. You stay here. I'll handle it.”

“I'm more than willing—”

“I know that. It isn't the point. I had a lot of time last night to think it through. What have we got to trade for that little girl? You. What's in your head, anyway. Be stupid to lose it in the first face-to-face, wouldn't you say?”

Axel blanched. “You're taking too much of this on your own shoulders.”

“No,” Jude said. “I'm not.”

The gravel parking lot for El Arriero was bordered with towering, shaggy
conacaste
trees and packed with dusty cars. It was Holy Week and the shrinking Salvadoran middle class was on holiday. A limp white banner strung above the restaurant's brick archway announced:

¡SEMANA SANTA! ¡ESPECIAL! ¡LANGOSTA!

Jude lingered in Eileen's VW wagon, looking things over. Two guards manned the entrance, bulging out of their uniforms, sporting wraparounds and armed with MP5s. He tucked his Sig Sauer into the glove box, realizing he'd never get past the door with it anyway. And if Hector Torres meant to do anything truly serious, he wouldn't do it here. He'd send somebody along afterward, cut Jude off on the street and hustle him out of the car, drag him off to somewhere remote, where it wouldn't interfere with lunch.

He locked up and headed across the gravel lot beneath the wilted trees. In the shadow of the brick archway, the two guards patted him down, more like they were hoping for cigarettes than searching for a weapon, then they waved him on—that quick, he bored them.

Inside it was hot and deafening—a hundred wood mallets slamming against tabletops, the tang of steamy brine.The open central courtyard and a large dining room beyond were both jammed, the locals having turned out in force—men in swim trunks and T-shirts, boys in tank tops and ball caps, women in culottes with their hair pinned up, ponytailed girls in halters—everyone bedecked in sloppy white bibs. Those not hammering away or sucking meat from splintered red claws fanned themselves with their menus or threw back tumblers of cold beer or soda—Estrella, Jude noticed, wonder of wonders.

Amazingly, despite the noise, the lobster feed came with entertainment. At the far end of the courtyard, a guitarist sat perched on a tall wood stool, slumping toward a gooseneck microphone, struggling to be heard—a throwback to a lost trend, Jude thought, long hair and wire glasses, denim shirt and jeans. Glancing up, the musician spotted Jude—an American!—and hastily abandoned the
bachata
ballad he'd been torturing, fiddled with his keyboard drum machine, slowed the beat to a mushy
Boom-bapbap-Boom-bap
and started in at the top with “Yesterday,” butchering the English so farcically Jude couldn't tell if he was being welcomed or mocked.

Love was up and he's ashamed to pay
.

The shapely
morena
hostess at her podium smiled coquettishly, revealing a gold tooth, and asked if Jude was dining alone. He smiled back and told her in Spanish he'd come to see Señor Torres. “I'm a friend of Bill Malvasio.”

Like that, her face clouded over. The gold tooth vanished.

“Please.” Jude said. “Let Señor Torres know. It's very important.”

The hostess fussed with some papers, excused herself, then stepped primly in her flowing slacks and backless sandals along the edges of the thronged courtyard, disappearing behind a thick wood door. The pounding racket continued. Jude could feel his irritation ticking upward, and the singer wasn't helping. After a second listless verse, crooned above the din, he bailed on “Yesterday” and switched to “Black Magic Woman.”

Got a black plastic woman …

Finally, the hostess stuck her head out and waved for Jude. He followed the same path she had, skirting the crowd, garnering stares from various tables. As he approached, she stood aside in the doorway, eyes down. Once Jude passed, she fled, unable to vanish fast enough.

Put a smell on me, baby
.

Jude closed the door and it clicked shut. A grainy haze filtered in from a dirty skylight, revealing a small, strong, gnomic man with a singularly ugly head counting money from a register drawer as he sat beneath a slowly turning fan. He wore a lot of gold, a pair of cheaters, and a bracelet of rubber bands, his arms matted with thick black hair.

Jude stepped forward. “Señor Torres.”

The man did not glance up. “Adriana said you wished to speak to me.”

“Yes. I'm a friend, I guess you'd say, of Bill Malvasio.”

Torres licked his thumb. “I don't know who that is.”

The sound of a glass shattering came from beyond a side door leading to the bar. Torres looked up.

“Strange. Bill told me he worked in your security detail.”

“I know the men who work for me.” Torres returned to his counting. “I know them each by name. Most, I know their wives and children. The name you gave is not familiar.”

“Perhaps I misunderstood him. It may be Wenceslao Sola he works for.”

Torres stopped, lifted the reading glasses off his nose, and set them down on his ledger. He had quick dark eyes, a man with a temper. Jude realized, then, this wouldn't take long.

“You want something, Mr.—”

“McManus. I work for Axel Odelberg.”

Torres considered that, then let go with a plaintive sigh. “Mr. McManus, I have two hundred lobsters on ice. Ever smell two hundred lobsters go bad? I need to sell them. To do that I need to make change.” He held up the bills remaining in his hand. “And for that I need to count this out, so I beg you—”

“Some pictures have shown up.”

Torres froze, almost despite himself. Then, recovering: “I don't understand.”

“A woman's body—her body and her head—got found under the bridge over the Río Jiboa. The PNC claims she was a prostitute, but her name's Marta Valdez. That's been confirmed through a photograph taken at the scene. She complained about salt in the wells south of town.”

Torres still said nothing, but his gaze hardened.

“A boy saw the men who abducted her. Later, Bill Malvasio came around but the boy escaped. Malvasio took the boy's infant sister hostage instead, telling the mother if her son told what he saw, the little girl would be killed.”

For the first time, Torres showed a genuine reaction. Nothing much, a deepening groove in his brow, an idle twitch at the edge of his mouth. Surprise, perhaps. Jude didn't know what to make of that. Regardless, Torres regrouped quickly.

“Let me say this again. I do not know who or what you are talking about or why you came here—”

“Axel wanted me to let Señor Sola know that despite all the effort that's been made to make it impossible for him to do his job—ruining his wells, sabotaging data—he's actually ready to provide a full analysis. A favorable one, in fact. Depending.”

Another twitch—Torres recognized the cue but refused to jump in. He sat, waiting.

“Axel will do that, sign off on the aquifer's drawdown and recharge levels. What he asks for in exchange is the safe return of this little girl.” Jude reached for a pen resting beside the ledger at Torres's elbow. “I'll leave you my number.”

“Enough.” Torres ripped the pen from Jude's hand and slammed it back down on the table. “I don't mean to be rude, Mr. McManus, but get out. I have food and drinks to sell. That is who I am. That is what I do. I cannot help you.”

Just then a woman burst in from the bar in a panic of muttered curses. She wore heels, pedal pushers, a scandalous blouse, her hair a lacquered swarm of black curls. She carried a fan of bills tucked between her fingers—a cocktail waitress—threw her hands up in despair, and was about to let loose with a full-blown cry when, seeing Jude, she caught herself. That fast, she buried her indignation and nodded a silent, apologetic hello. Approaching Torres, she leaned down and whispered feverishly, almost tearfully into his ear. He patted her arm as he listened, then twisted his head around, whispered something back. She smiled, took his face in her hands, and kissed his hair.
“Gracias, gracias, amorcito.”
Turning to Jude, she whispered,
“Lo siento, señor,”
then minced in her high heels back to the bar.

That's how easy it ought to be, Jude thought, to beg for a little girl's life. The folly of the whole business hit home then. He felt ridiculous, the butt of a cosmic joke: The devil feeds the multitude. The devil comforts Mary Magdalene. The devil suffers the little children.

Torres turned back. “If there's nothing more—”

“Just this,” Jude said, determined to see it through. “The pictures, the ID of Marta Valdez, even the child labor on Judge Regalado's cane plantations—we know he's the source for the bottling plant's sugar—nothing will be said. That silence plus a favorable report on the water issues. All we ask in return is for the mother to get her little girl back.”

A fleeting shadow crossed Torres's face, as though he were tallying the cost of dropping the pretense. Dealing. Encouraged by that, Jude added, “It's a generous concession. All things considered.”

Torres said, “Please. I'm trying to be polite. Don't make me call my men.”

Jude pictured that, pictured as well making short work of Torres in the meantime. To what end, though? “Fine,” he said. “But I think Señor Sola will be disappointed if he learns I tried to get this information to him, through you, and you refused to pass it on.” Jude reached down again, took the pen, and, fending off Torres's hand this time, jotted his cell number in the margin of the ledger. “In case Bill's misplaced my information.” He dropped the pen and turned to go, glad at least he'd gotten through the thing without gnawing a hole in his lip.

As he reached the door, Torres said from behind, “I foresee a day, Mr. McManus, when you realize how badly you have misjudged me.”

Malvasio had traveled all the way out to the
rancho
the night before. He should have stayed in town, but he'd figured the numbing monotony of the surf and the ocean breeze would help with sleep. The last few days of crank excess had taken a jittery, mind-hissing toll, but he'd crashed into a dead black stupor and dozed till noon, then gone out to the beach for a drop-dead run, miles and miles of empty beach. He was sitting in the garden now, eyes closed, back against the trunk of a shading palm, sucking wind and drenched in toxic sweat. His legs and lungs were on fire. Behind his eyelids, neural flashes shimmered. The pain felt cleansing. Not bad for middle age, he thought, then his cell phone trilled. Checking the display, he saw it was Hector. Save me a lobster, he thought, flipping it open. “Go ahead.”

“What's this about an abducted girl?”

Looking in through the glass doors, Malvasio saw Constancia clasping her little hands tight around Clara's thumbs as the two of them marched around the dining room table—Clara bent over like a puppeteer, the little girl bow-legged, pudgy feet slapping pavers, happy as a peach.

“Excuse me?”

“I've just been visited by the hydrologist's bodyguard, the one you told me about, the son of your old friend? He used your name with the hostess, said he knew you worked for me. Said you told him so, actually.”

“That's a lie.” Then: “He showed up at the restaurant?”

“Those pictures you've been looking for? Don't bother. He has them. And, like I said, he claims you kidnapped a girl.”

Malvasio looked in through the glass doors again. With Clara still guiding her, little Constancia wobbled on her feet, about to peal with glee. Jumping up, he moved as far away from the door as he could. If she makes a noise, he thought, say it's a parrot.

“I don't know what you're talking about,” he said. It seemed absurd now, one of those thoughtless little blunders that turns out to be a cancer. Why hadn't he told Hector about the girl? He couldn't say exactly. He'd been improvising when he'd taken her, improvising when he'd brought her here, and the problem with improvisation, of course, is predicting how it will end. He'd trusted his instincts, though, and they'd said keep quiet, just as they told him now it was out of the question, if not insane, to own up. Hector Torres wasn't a man to indulge mistakes, let alone confessions. “What girl?”

Static on the line echoed the wind scouring the beach. “The little sister of this boy you've been looking for. The mother says you took the girl as a hostage, to keep the boy from talking.”

“No. That's … It's nuts, frankly.”

“Why would she claim such a thing?”

“Hector, how would I know? She had a kid, a baby, yeah, I saw it when I was there. If the kid's gone now, I'd bet she hid it, made up the story of a kidnap to keep it safe. Now she's trapped in her own lie. Other than that, you tell me.”