Blood of Paradise (6 page)

Jude said, “It's okay.”

“But let's say you—not me, you—had work for Phil. You brought him down here, lined it all up, got him something that paid him back for all he's gone through. In the final analysis, given who's who down here, you couldn't guarantee that whatever he did—or you did to help him—wouldn't have a taint to it, could you?”

“No, I couldn't.”

“Would that stop you?”

Malvasio stared long and hard. Jude found himself wanting to look away.

“I didn't mean to—”

“Maybe it would. And there's no blame in that.” Malvasio stood up. “Look, let's drop it. I'm gonna go down, get another beer. Want one?”

“Yeah. Sure.”

Malvasio vanished and, in his absence, the excruciating silence returned. It felt worse than before, a punishment. And, in a way, a dare. For whatever reason, Jude flashed on something his father once said, near the end, during a particularly fierce bout of pre-shift drinking: “Guts and loyalty, that's what divides the great from the not-so-great.” He threw back a shot for drama, then: “Which pretty much explains why nine tenths of humanity ain't so great.”

Malvasio came back carrying two bottles of Pilsener and a greasy basket of
papas fritas
. “Still hungry, I guess.” He dropped the fries onto the table and sat back down.

Jude glanced out again at the glassy ink-blue ocean, veins of amber and scarlet marbling the darkened sky. “Look, Bill. This thing with Strock. I can't make any promises. But let me see what I can do.”

5

By the time Jude reached La Libertad and turned east toward the Costa del Bálsamo, night had fallen. He decreased speed, anticipating the switchbacks along the steep cliffs above the shoreline, Malvasio's five thousand dollars stuffed in his pocket. It wasn't the only thing he'd carried away.
The people who run the show have one thing on their minds.…
The phrase kept tracking in his brain, resonating in a way Malvasio couldn't have predicted.

In a perfect world, Jude supposed, everyone would be kind and selfless, abundance would be abundant, the snotty would share their toys, and the shepherd would lie down with the lamb or whatever. But in the here and now it was just a rule of the cosmos that more often than not the people who made things happen, the kind he was hired to protect, were rip-roaring assholes.

It was something that had been building over time. He'd taken the job on a lark, figuring if it didn't suit him he could always walk. But he'd liked the work, the demands on his mind, the calm required, the focus, the breadth of knowledge. And every now and then he got assigned a man like Axel, some hard-nosed pragmatist with not just his head on straight but a conscience in tow, which made things seem okay. But other times he felt like he'd taken a wrong turn somewhere and bungled his way into a kind of maze where around every corner there waited another prancing, self-infatuated gasbag who didn't give a rat's ass about anyone but himself—and came factory-equipped with a million excuses for why his smug little schemes were in fact the cornerstone of his virtue.

So tidy, the belief that everyone made out best if you slit their throats and raped their wives and sold their children into slavery on your way to the top. They'd do the same to you, or would if they had the spine, which made it all fair.

And stand back if some unthinking soul dared mention the tenant farmers evicted from their homes at gunpoint, their villages flooded by the latest pointless dam; the fisheries wiped out by a tourist haven slapped up on the beach; the teenagers hired for a
maquila
at a couple dollars a day, going home to their brothers and sisters in dirt-floor shacks for a dinner of cornmeal and bean paste and putrid water, while the men in charge made off like, well, bandits. You want the brass ring, you have to take risks, they'd tell you, though he'd never seen any of them risk so much as a bad tan. Poverty's a state of mind, they said, a victim mentality, a culture of blame—it's your own fucking fault if you're penniless, uneducated, screwed. Get some initiative. In the end, over time, beyond the rainbow, the system works. Look at me.

How many times had Jude sat in a car or at a restaurant table, listening to crap like that? And boy, those characters liked to talk. But over time, as he endured more and more monologues, he began to detect something else, something he felt sure they wanted kept hidden, if they even knew it was there. Basically, he saw a put-upon boy lingering behind the eyes, the kind of snot whose favorite phrase was “I don't care.” Who grew up wanting nothing more than what he could get away with. Who only felt his manhood come to life when the one thing on his mind was himself.

And in the end, Jude knew, that's what it got down to—what kind of man you meant to be. Despite Malvasio's excellent point that anything you do, regardless how pure the motive, can be messed with, stolen from you, Jude had to admit he'd been happy in the army, building clinics and schools and bridges in the mountains, digging wells through granite and volcanic rock for people who had nothing. Not because he was making a bundle doing it, obviously, and not because he didn't recognize the military for what it was: a bureaucracy of roughnecks and good ol' boys beholden to men in suits. He'd just felt insanely gratified, even lucky, when at the end of each day the nearest villagers would gather around, offer gifts and food, then step back and applaud him and the other filthy, sweaty Americans like they were movie stars.

Not that it wasn't tricky, feeding off the thanks of others. That, too, was a kind of self-congratulation. Like money.

And there, of course, was the problem. Nothing bears up under scrutiny in the end. Every point of view has its blind spot. Every good deed has its rancid little secret.

And so the question became not
why
but
why not
. Why not do this thing, take the money, head back to Chicago? He could help Malvasio atone, give Strock back the life he'd thrown away, maybe even redeem his father's ghost. Could he honestly say for a fact that anything else he'd been part of the past few years had turned out better?

But there was something else too, something more personal. A lot more. These men he'd once looked up to so hard, his models for manhood, who'd sculpted his ambitions and taught him so much, then fallen so far—now, he thought, ten years later, disgraced and lost, they come to me. Me. The kid in the corner. Out of need, apparently. Guilt, perhaps. And? The world was an unforgiving place, living in it a rough business. Maybe happiness was virtue like the nuns had said, but survival required a little venom in the blood. Too much, you turned malicious. Too little, you were a sucker. It was why the cutthroats so often got the upper hand, he thought, because they could disguise themselves as practical, whereas their do-good naysayers came across as maudlin and shrill.

So here's your test, he realized. To fine-tune the poison in your heart, see if you're truly fit to walk the walk. Measure yourself against these misfits, these heroes gone wrong. These men.

And who knew, it might be fun. Mix it up a little, dog around on the wild side. Call it a good deed in a world fucked sideways. Call it an odd job during your week off. Call it whatever—it was the thing to do.

He pulled off the highway into the driveway of El Dorado Mar, the gated hillside community on the beach just west of Playa El Sunzal where he, his Trenton coworkers, and their principals bivouacked on weekends. A high chain-link fence marked off the compound near the highway, coiled with razor wire, over which sprawling thorny tendrils of
veranera
cascaded with their white and purple blossoms.

He waved to the guard on duty who carried a pistol grip shotgun slung from his shoulder. Recognizing Jude's pickup, the man rose from his stool and shuffled out to open the gate, fanning himself with his hat. Jude pulled through with a grateful wave, then drove down the winding lane toward Horizon House, as everyone called it, the darkness vaulted by white-barked eucalyptus trees and towering palms, illumined here and there by a lamplit window glowing beyond the feathery crown of a
mariscargo
tree.

Inside Horizon House, Axel sat hunched over the edge of the dining room table, engaged in an after-dinner round of euchre with two other Horizon consultants, Dillahunt and Pahlavi. A ceiling fan spun lazily overhead, but it only managed to push the heat around, so their skin shimmered from sweat in the lamplight.

The other EPs were outside in the back garden, downing beers and trading war stories from the sound of things, as they cleaned their weapons. Fitz—Mike Fitzhugh, the team's advance man—sat in his room, working the phones and Internet, tracking recent kidnaps, carjackings, murders, protests, so everyone could avoid the trouble spots in the coming days. In the kitchen, the only woman on the premises—Jolanda, the
servienta
—hummed to herself as she cleaned up the last of the dinner dishes, listening to an evangelical church service on her radio.

Spotting Jude, Axel threw down his cards with feigned disgust. “The prodigal!” He had a lanky, muscular build, searing blue eyes, a full head of blond hair blanching silvery white. He pulled up an empty chair. “Take a seat, my boy. Help me turn this god-awful luck around.”

“Actually, I thought I'd head down to the beach for a swim.” Jude tented his shirt, which clung to his damp skin. “Then I need to pack. I'm heading home for a few days. Check in on my mom.”

He glanced around the table to see how the lie played. Pahlavi collected cards for the reshuffle. Dillahunt tallied points. Axel screwed up his face. “Nothing wrong, I hope. At home, I mean.”

Remembering the bulge of cash in his pocket, Jude reached down, felt to make sure his shirt hung low enough to cover it. “No, Mom's fine. Just, you know, family.”

Dillahunt glanced up at that. Lifting his froggish face with its wobble of chins to the ceiling, he intoned:

I do not like the family Stein
.

Not Gert, not Ep, or even Ein
.

Gert's writings are bunk
.

Ep's statues are junk
.

And no one can understand Ein
.

Everyone stared at him as though he'd let rip with a honking belch.

“You have a dog act for a mind, Dilly.” Axel picked up the beginnings of his new hand. He winced, then said to Jude, “Fine. Go. Swim. Leave me here with these insulting cards.” To the dealer, he added, “You're a shameless cheat, Muldoon.”

He meant Pahlavi. They called him Muldoon.

“Cheating is the last refuge of the unlucky,” the man said, a hint of Oxford in his accent. He was plump, graying, Pakistani. He smiled, organizing his own hand.

Regaining Jude's eye, Axel nodded toward the kitchen. “There's leftovers from dinner, if you're hungry. Jolanda will fix you up a plate. Just ask.”

“I'm fine,” Jude said, rankling a little at the attention. Guilt, he realized. He liked Axel, the fondness was mutual, and lying felt cheap. But it would be insane even mentioning Malvasio. “Shouldn't eat right before a swim, anyway. Might get cramps.”

Axel grinned. “That's superstition, you realize.”

“‘Fear is the main source of superstition!'” Dillahunt slapped down his first card. “‘And one of the main sources of cruelty.'” He had a talent for stopping things cold. Glancing up: “I quote Bertrand Russell.”

Axel rubbed the heels of his hands in his eye sockets. “Dilly, please. Rein it in.” He blinked away some grit, then turned to Jude. “You're still here? Go on. Abandon me. Have a nice dip while these jackals rip me to pieces.”

6

Jude changed into his trunks and a T-shirt and buried Malvasio's cash in his duffel. The money felt strange in his hands, like it had a life of its own, stories to tell—but whose money didn't? He grabbed a towel and rushed out the door, thinking: All the more reason I do this thing, not someone else. I know the lay of the land, I can see these characters for who they are. More to the point, when the chore's done, I can cut the cord and walk away. Watch me.

He headed down the dark, winding path of volcanic sand that led through a grove of broad-leafed almond trees to the water. As he came close to the beach, he picked out the voice—husky, womanly—struggling to be heard among several others amid the roar of the wind and surf.

Eileen.

He pulled up, thinking: Search up and down the whole Costa del Bálsamo, spend six days doing it—she turns up right here, under your nose.

As he broke into the clearing, his spirits dropped when he saw the crowd she was sitting with. He'd crossed paths with them before, a close-knit bunch, guests of an
efemelenista
professor with a vacation house here at El Dorado Mar. He hadn't realized they were friends with Eileen, and wasn't sure what to make of the fact that they were. Though there wasn't blatant ill will on either side, they weren't exactly Jude's kind, or vice versa. Don't read too much into things, he told himself. Wait and see.

They all sat gathered around a wood-plank table inside a thatched
glorieta
, the open hut lit by a single bare bulb. There was Waxman, an American reporter for a left-leaning Net zine, burly and freckled with thinning red hair. He was all right, Jude thought, but a little too earnest and wedded to the radical line. Beside him sat his photographer with the sneaky wit and sad eyes and impossible Italian name. He was an ex-con, the story went, a reformed pot smuggler, which made him the most interesting of the bunch for Jude's money. On Waxman's other side sat a young, slight Guatemalan woman named Aleris with waist-length hair and a badly scarred throat. According to the reporter, she'd been seventeen, trying to reach the States through Mexico, when the man she'd hired as a coyote raped and strangled her and left her for dead. Missionaries found her and nursed her back to health. She was connected now with the Stone Flower Association, an NGO doing outreach for prostitutes, and took every opportunity, whenever her path crossed Jude's, to make it as obvious as possible that she had no use for him or the men he worked for.