Body of Truth (40 page)

“Oh, Christ. Then—no—, the answer’s no.” She snatched the letter from Haydon’s hands. “Goddamn it, I trust my source,” she snapped, holding up the paper. “That child. This handwriting. Lena.”

Haydon looked out from the balcony over the courtyard to the cypresses, taller than the surrounding villas, but challenged here and there by some of the more modern glass buildings that had sprung up along the boulevard like odd pieces of colored quartz that had fallen from the sky and were sticking upright out of the earth. A smudgy haze hung among the trees, discoloring the cobalt sky in the distance.

“You familiar with the cemetery?” he asked.

“Of course.”

“You know what she’s talking about, all the way to the end of the main avenue…”

“Yes.”

Haydon looked at his watch. It was now two-fifteen. The note said to be at the cemetery at five-thirty. That was a good time, whether Lena had calculated it or not. The traffic on the way there would be at its worst, the best time to evade surveillants. Haydon was ticking off what he had to do…call Pittner…but he felt Janet’s withering stare.

“You are going to go, aren’t you?” she demanded abruptly. And then without waiting for an answer, “I’m going, by God.”

Haydon had to hand it to Janet, as far as Lena was concerned she had been the only one with a straightforward desire to help her. It seemed that everyone else had ulterior motives: Lena, yes, but also…Janet had never expressed any interest in anything but helping Lena to safety. For all her craziness, she had the cleanest vision and the cleanest intentions: Lena was in trouble and needed Janet’s help. That was it. Nothing to agonize over, nothing to calculate. She just wanted to do it.

Haydon nodded. “Yeah, I think we ought to go, but if you believe the note,” he said, “then you ought to believe all of the note. You need to trust me and do it the way I think it ought to be done. You might not like it, but you need to do it.”

Janet was listening. She looked cool in the shade of the balcony; she looked clean and far removed from the gritty realities of Guatemala. There was something about her that reminded Haydon of those crisp British colonists of another era for whom India and Africa were adventures that properly belonged to them. She had grown up in Guatemala, but she had not grown up Guatemalan. Despite her worldly knowledge of the country, there was no wisdom in it; she could assess the country and its people accurately, but without understanding; she could explain its history, but not its heart. There was a difference.

“I’m waiting,” she said.

Haydon rubbed his face. The sun had moved well past the meridian, and the shade on the balcony had retreated to the edge of their feet and the stone balustrade had already gathered enough heat to begin throwing it off. The stultifying heat of Guatemala’s
verano
had begun in earnest its daily worst.

“I want you to go alone,” he said. “At the time designated in the note.” He looked at his watch. “I’m going to go a couple of hours early.”

“A couple of hours?”

“As soon as possible.”

Her eyes searched his face again, and Haydon could almost see her mind working, catching up with him, anticipating him.

“Have you heard the news today…the car bombing?”

She nodded expectantly.

“That was my car.” He explained briefly, cursorily, enough for her to understand the degree of complexity…and the seriousness of what she would be getting involved in. He wanted the gravity of the situation to dampen her enthusiasm and to sharpen her sixth sense. When he stopped, her eyes had lost their dancing impatience and her petulance had subsided. The more explanation she received, the more relaxed she became, as if the heart of her anger had been founded in what she believed was the patronizing attitude of Haydon and all the others who were keeping her in the dark.

“Assume your home is wired and any conversation there is being monitored,” Haydon said. “Assume the same of the Land-Rover, Now that you’ve come here to meet me, you can also assume you’re being followed. They want Lena; they want the documents. They think I’m going to lead them to her. That’s what this is all about.”

“I’m not sure I can do this,” she said suddenly. She looked down at her hands in her lap where she was folding and unfolding the piece of paper. “It’s…, I’m not afraid,” she said. “I’m really not. But I’m not sure I can avoid being followed. I’d never forgive myself for doing that, for leading them to her…I just…”

“You don’t have to go,” Haydon said. “If you don’t show, I don’t believe they’ll be surprised.”

She didn’t say anything for a moment, then she jerked her head up. “Do you need me to do it?”

“You don’t have to do it.”

“I mean, will the goddamn thing go better if I help, or not?”

Haydon looked at her. “If you don’t lose your nerve, it would be best if you came along. It could make it easier for me. But if you’re not sure of that, if you’re not sure of yourself and you get rattled and lose your head, it could end disastrously.”

Janet rolled her eyes and started to put the note in her bag.

“Wait a minute,” Haydon said. He reached out and took the note from her fingers. There was a book of matches inside an ashtray on the wicker table, and he tore out one of the matches and lighted the piece of paper and held it so that the ashes fell into the ashtray. The flames were almost invisible in the sunlight, and the paper seemed magically to turn brown and then quickly black.

“Okay,” Janet said, watching the paper burn. “Just tell me what in the hell you want me to do.”

CHAPTER 39

T
o get a taxi Haydon walked out onto the boulevard and went several blocks toward the center of town, near the Plazuela Reina Barrios where he stopped by a eucalyptus tree on a corner. There was a monument there and a triangular intersection where another avenue came in perpendicular to the boulevard. Taxis were everywhere, but he had to stop three before he found a driver who wanted his fare. As they zipped up to the curb and stopped, he told each of them the same thing: he was being followed and he wanted to get away from the people who were following him. There was no danger of gunfire. He would pay a month’s wages for the ride.

The first driver swore and roared away into the traffic. The second driver said, “No-no-no-no,” shook his head and raised both hands in a surrendering gesture and pulled away from the curb while Haydon was still talking. The third driver was young, which made a difference. Still he listened to every word Haydon said, the import of it registering on his face. When he heard the amount of money Haydon would pay, he checked his rearview mirror and jerked his head toward the backseat. Haydon crawled in.

They had to wait on the traffic before they could get into the stream of cars.

“I want to go to the Cementerio General,” Haydon said as the young man watched the traffic in his mirror. “But I don’t want anyone following me when I get there. I decide when it’s okay. I don’t care how long it takes.”

The young man never said a word. The break in traffic came, but he still didn’t move, watching his mirror. Haydon said nothing. When the next surge of traffic was bearing down on them, the young man gunned his engine and shot out in front, roared across to the next lane, straight into the approaching traffic that was merging into the angle of the triangle that would take them into the boulevard headed west. His breach into the oncoming traffic caused an accident immediately. Tires screamed, and Haydon heard the fenders crunching as the driver, elbows pumping like pistons as he fought the steering wheel, fought the cab into a whiplashing alignment with the traffic heading west. He pushed the car past traffic, staying to the outside lane until they were near the Parque Centro América, and then he shot across to the inside lane, again causing a long whining scream of tires as cars slid sideways and drivers fought their own steering wheels to avoid collisions. Then they were speeding down beside the park, going south in the inside lane, a last-minute suicidal switch to the outside lane and into the short, poor streets of Zona 8, where the driver pulled into a driveway with a high wall and an open heavy wooden gate. The turn into the drive was reckless, and the left rear fender of the car caught a tree near the curb, but the driver hardly noticed and didn’t seem to care. Despite the mad ride his face never changed. Immediately he was out of the car, running back to the gates, and before the dust drifting into the windows had settled, the gates were closed and the young man was walking back to the car.

The driver’s door was still open, and he sat down behind the wheel, his feet outside on the gravel, and pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket. He lighted the cigarette and ran his fingers through his longish black hair. It was curly, unusual for a Guatemalan.

“Fifteen minutes,” he said, blowing the smoke out into the heat. He looked over the seat back at Haydon. “This is my girlfriend’s house. She works at Le Blé. You know Le Blé?”

Haydon nodded. “Yeah, it’s a good bakery. Good coffee.”

The kid grinned. “Yeah, good coffee.” He smoked. “Where are you from in the States?”

“Texas.”

“What city?”

“Houston.”

“There are many Guatemalans in Houston.” He smoked. “What do you do?”

Haydon would not say he was a policeman. In Central America you did not admit you were a policeman.

“I’m a lawyer.”

“
Abogado?
”

“That’s right.”

The kid looked at him, put his cigarette in his mouth and reached over the back of the seat and extended his hand. “Dolfo,” he said. He was a good-looking, very good-looking, young man and reminded Haydon of a young Hollywood actor who, one day after he became famous, would give interviews to magazines like Vanity Fair and tell how in his early years he supported himself driving cabs. He wore a fake Rolex and exuded the kind of confidence a young man acquired when he had to make his own way in a third world city that stayed alive by feeding on its own body.

“Where’d you learn to drive like that?” Haydon asked.

Dolfo was still looking at him. “I didn’t ‘learn’ to drive like that.” He smoked. “I just did it for the money.” He smoked. “Who are these guys following you?”

Haydon shook his head. “We have a disagreement.”

“Maybe I can help you.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Who knows?”

“I don’t think so,” Haydon said. He looked at his watch. He hadn’t heard a single car go by outside the gates, and they had been in the driveway ten minutes. The kid was right. Another five minutes ought to do it.

“This is my home,” Dolfo said. “Guatemala City. I can help you. You will see how much I can help you.”

“Where’d you learn English?”

The kid shrugged and tossed his cigarette out into the driveway. “I work two years in San Diego, California.”

“What did you do?”

“I wash dishes in a Mexican café.” He looked out into the driveway.

at a cinder-block wall with cactus growing at the base of it. “The immigration, they come to that place.” He waggled his hand with the dangling Rolex and moved it out the door. “Back to Mexico. This is three, no four times they find me, and one of those guys, he take me away to a corner and say if he see me another time he will cut balls. So I go to Mexico City for six months, but there is nothing there, and then I come here to my home.” He looked back to Haydon again. “But I will go to the States again. Not to San Diego. I want to go to college at the University of Texas.” He nodded seriously.

Haydon doubted college was what he had in mind, but the kid probably thought Haydon would find that admirable.

“Let’s go,” Haydon said.

Dolfo looked at his fake Rolex. “We wait some more.”

“No, it’s long enough,” Haydon said.

“This is very important?” Dolfo asked.

“Very. We’ve got to be careful.”

“If these people follow you when you get into my car, then they will be look for this taxi, huh?”

“That’s right.”

The kid thought a moment. “I have a friend, maybe he will give me his car. I will tell him he can have my taxi all day tomorrow and keep the money he makes if he will let me have his car today.” He raised his eyebrows and looked at Haydon to see what he thought of this scheme. “Huh?”

“Sounds good to me.”

“
Bueno
. Wait here. He is two houses that way,” he said, pointing his flattened hand. “Five minutes, okay? You wait here. I will honk”—he made the motion with the heel of his hand—“two times. Okay?”

“Okay,” Haydon said. “Five minutes.”

The kid jumped out of the car and ran back to the gates and was gone. Haydon got out of the taxi. The courtyard was small, bare, a single
pirul
tree providing a wispy shade over the hard-packed dirt yard. The house was a cinder-block cube like all the others, and there were two chickens on the other side of the crumbling sidewalk that led to the front door. Now that he was out of the taxi, he could hear faint strains of
ranchera
music drifting through the open, screenless windows from the darkened interior of the house. Haydon had the feeling that there wasn’t any girlfriend who worked at Le Blé, and if there was, this wasn’t her house.

But he didn’t have time to worry about it, A car honked twice outside in the street, and Haydon hurried to the gates, pulled one of them open enough to get outside. Dolfo was waving at Haydon from behind the wheel of a sun-bleached, red Japanese Starlet.

They headed toward town, through the tight streets of Zona 8, and then they hit the busy commercial thoroughfare of Avenida Bolivár where Dolfo drove only a few blocks before he exited north and got on 5a avenida, which ran straight to the cemetery and along its powder-blue façade. At 20 calle, which came up the hill from the city and ran straight into the cemetery’s Greek revival entrance, Haydon had the kid pull over to the curb. He paid him as he had promised amid Dolfo’s fervent insistence that he could be useful still further in many, many ways—the question of money never arising as he fired suggestions, examples of the kinds of services he could be relied upon to provide. Haydon said no, thank you very much, but finally had to accept the young man’s telephone number, which the youth pressed on him with an entrepreneurial urgency that Haydon was too embarrassed to decline.