Do They Know I'm Running? (20 page)

Roque got the knack of the Corolla easily, a little loose in the wheel, a leftward drift in the front end, soft brakes. They barreled down a two-lane road lined with fields of sun-browned
grass and scant trees. A man in an oxcart bearing plantains passed a small abandoned house bombed with gang graffiti. A woman with a bright red water jug atop her head led her daughter by the hand, the girl staring as the car sped past, the thing no less mysterious for being familiar.

As they drove, he listened to his uncle recount what Carmela and her friends had told him the past few nights. Street vendors were being driven underground, labeled terrorists for selling pirated CDs and DVDs—Hollywood was incredibly, strangely pissed about this, forcing the government to do something—plus the growing corruption in the national police, to where the FBI admitted they could find only twenty officers worthy of trust out of two thousand they’d polygraphed. Former guerrillas, desperate for jobs, now worked security for the very same men who, twenty years ago, wanted them dead. Whole farming communities had abandoned the land because they couldn’t compete with the low price of imported American corn. The spiraling cost of oil, swelling demand for meat and dairy in China and India, the use of cropland for biofuels, it was all driving up prices. Families couldn’t make ends meet. The number of people starving was larger than before the war.

—
I have this terrible sense of déjà vu
, Faustino admitted.—
I’m running away to save my boy. Except this time he’s saving me
.

It was after nightfall by the time they returned to the house in San Pedro Lempa. As they entered the courtyard, a figure they hadn’t spotted at first rose from one of the chairs, unrecognizable in the darkness. Roque felt his heart bound into his throat but the man approached with an air of deference, clutching a small cloth bag to his chest. In an accent Roque couldn’t quite place, the man said to Tío Faustino, “I believe you are Happy’s father. My greetings to you.” He placed a hand over his heart, bowing respectfully. “My name is Samir.”

THEY SAT AROUND THE WOOD-PLANK TABLE BENEATH THE MANGO
tree, the fragrance from Carmela’s exotic flowers mixing with the scent of candle wax.

“Let me tell you something, your son was a worker, very dedicated. But also very kind, very brave.” The Arab paused to take a sip
of shuco
, a hot corn sludge darkened with black-bean paste, thinned with scalding water and sweetened with raw sugar, something Carmela had worked up. “I owe him a great deal, your son. My being here tonight, not least of all.”

His face—long and vaguely hourglass shaped, indented at the temples—rippled with shadow in the guttering light, his features both delicate and stern, a beak of a nose but womanly lips, sunken eyes, closely shorn hair. His age was hard to pinpoint, late thirties, early fifties, anywhere between. Given the honey color of his skin and his textbook Spanish, he might just pass for a
guanaco
at the various checkpoints, Roque thought, if he says as little as possible. His accent seemed a bit starched, vaguely Castilian. As for his English, which he preferred to use with Tío Faustino and Roque for the sake of practice, it too was oddly accented, not just with the usual clipped Arab inflections but a kind of plodding cadence, as though he’d learned the language reciting clunky poems.

“I met Happy when the country was coming apart. The imams were in bed not just with the insurgency but with organized crime. Muqtada al Sadr and his thugs took over the hospitals. If a Sunni man came in with a gunshot wound, the Jaish al Mahdi would come, accuse him of being a terrorist, take him away. His body would get found a few days later, tossed in the street or a field somewhere.”

Tío Faustino hung on every word. Roque remained unconvinced. The man seemed too put together, like an actor still working into the skin of his role.

“The Shia hated the Palestinians worse than they hated the Sunnis. And I served in the war against Iran—very odd, a Palestinian
in the army, but that’s another story. The Persians are Shia too, so I was particularly loathsome to them. But the worst thing? What my own in-laws did to me.”

Tío Faustino looked puzzled. “How—”

“Two weeks after the election, my wife’s brothers came, took Fatima and our daughter away while I was at work. Admittedly, things were getting much worse. Our neighbor, he had two uncles kidnapped, a note demanding $100,000 ransom arrived. Impossible. They tried to negotiate. Next day, the two uncles show up at the morgue, drill holes everywhere. This is the Jaish al Mahdi, okay? I could tell you stories even more horrible than this, trust me.”

Tío Faustino gazed into the candlelight. “War is a kind of sickness. People go mad.”

“Two days later, Fatima’s brothers show up while I’m away. They left a letter behind, saying they couldn’t just stand by and watch their sister and niece get raped and murdered while I did nothing, as though I didn’t even want to protect them. Everything I did, every dollar I earned, was for them. But none of that mattered. They took Fatima and little Shatha and their own families and fled to Syria, but they couldn’t get in. They’re stuck.”

One of the candles burned out. Tío Faustino watched the thin curl of smoke rise. “I’m sure my son understood,” he said, “how hard it was for you, your family ripped apart like that, given what he himself has been through. Being deported, I mean.”

Roque wondered where Tío was going with this. It seemed a morbid kind of one-upmanship, a game of dueling miseries.

“A week later, the Jaish al Mahdi drove me out. Three of them showed up, dressed all in black, the oldest maybe twenty-one. They pounded on the door, spat at my feet when I opened it, then handed me a bullet soaked in blood, told me I had three hours to get out or die in the street. I left behind everything I owned but what I could jam into a suitcase. I began sleeping on
pallets of rice at the warehouse in Abu Ghraib, until they found a bed for me in the worker compound. That was when Happy and I got to know each other. I went to work for the Salvadorans because they were the only ones left. The Spaniards, the Hondurans, the Nicaraguans, all gone. Everybody was getting out if they could. The thing was a disaster. And everybody figured the Americans bungled their way in, let them bungle their way out.”

A stray dog poked its head through a hole in the hedge of
veranera
surrounding the garden, sniffing the air, eyes glimmering. Tío Faustino hissed, raised his hand in almost comic wrath. The dog shrank away. “Why didn’t you try working for the Americans?”

“Of course I tried, the Americans and British both. They would have nothing to do with me. I know Israel gets blamed for everything, not wrongly in my view, but I have to believe my being Palestinian was why I was shunned. The Salvadorans, praise God, took pity on me. They were in Najaf, rebuilding the airport, the hospitals, a few small refineries. None of the roads into Najaf were safe. Muqtada al Sadr and his thugs put up their own barricades. And if they weren’t shaking you down, the Badr Brigade was. I told you, your son was very brave. I grew to respect him very much. Entering the city took hours sometimes. Bribes just vanished, they did nothing, but without a bribe you sat there all night or got dragged away to a secret prison, ransomed off. Or got to star in one of those special videos, where your head disappears.”

A sudden stirring in the mango tree lifted everyone’s gaze. A
garrobo
scurried among the branches, scaly and brown, staring back at them with elfin dinosaur eyes.

“Not to sound morbid,” Samir continued. “I just want you to understand, your son—”

A car roared up the hill, crunching to a stop in the gravel beyond the hedge. Doors opened, slammed closed. The scuffling of feet, harsh voices.

Lonely appeared, clutching Lupe by the arm with one hand, the other grabbing her hair as he dragged her forward. She bucked against his grip. Sisco lingered behind, hands buried deep in his pockets.

On impulse Roque stood up, regretting the move instantly. Who did he expect to fight, who would it save? He could feel the adrenalin crackling in his blood. Tío Faustino just sat there slack-jawed. Samir stared blankly.

Lonely shoved Lupe forward and she stumbled, trying to keep her feet. Even in the candlelight, Roque could see the fresh damage, the glistening lip, the crimped eye. He envisioned killing the two
mareros
right there, bare hands if need be, knew as well it was his powerlessness triggering the fantasy, triggering all his fantasies.

Lupe dropped uneasily to one knee, her breath ragged. Eyes blazing, Lonely stepped forward, rocking his hip as though to kick her. She recoiled from him and he laughed, then looked up and met Roque’s stare.

“Like the way she looks,
jodido?
She’s yours. All the way to Agua Prieta. You deliver this
pinche putilla
to a dude called El Recio. He’s your man, you wanna cross over. She gets handed over to him or your uncle and Turco the motherfucker there don’t make it home, get it?”

Tío Faustino rose from his chair, came around to see if Lupe needed any help. Easing the girl to her feet, he took her chin in his hand, regarded her face. She seemed responsive to the kindness. Roque thought: Hand her over, and then? Meanwhile, Samir’s whole demeanor had changed. He seemed coiled, ready to lash out if need be and yet also indifferent. The look of an animal, Roque thought.

“Where are her things?” He felt the stupidity of the question instantly but couldn’t help himself from clarifying: “Her clothes, I mean. Her stuff.”

“Her
stuff?”
Lonely cackled like a magpie. “You wanna talk about her
stuff
?”

“You know what—”

“Pack up your own fucking
stuff
and drag your punk ass outta here,
mamón
. You gotta head for San Cristóbal. Guy you’re gonna meet there, his name is Rafa. He’ll be looking for your car. Pull up about half a mile shy of the border, his gas station’s there, blue lantern in the window. You see the bridge up ahead, you’ve gone too far, turn around and go back. And try not to be too fucking obvious about it.”

He took one last glance at Lupe, looking like he was gathering saliva so he could spit. Tío Faustino moved between them. Lonely grinned, turned on his heel and plodded back to the car.

Sisco lingered, hands still balled in his pockets. “You know the secret of getting past the checkpoints, right?” His eyes focused on some nebulous point outside the circle of candlelight, a grin on his lips, childish and taunting and strange. “No matter what they do, or how they ask, just keep smiling.”

THE COURTROOM DOOR WHISPERED OPEN, THUDDED CLOSED.
Turning to glance over his shoulder, Lattimore spotted the strange man enter timidly under the indifferent eye of the bailiff, who sat perched on a stool at the back, thumbing through last month’s
Ebony
.

The newcomer had a wonkish dishevelment, bristling salt-and-pepper hair, a close-cropped beard, gold-rimmed glasses that sat cockeyed on his face. His jacket, tie, shirt and slacks looked like they’d mugged him in the closet that morning. The man’s glance met Lattimore’s, followed by an unsettling smile. Lattimore turned back toward the proceedings.

“We’re not asking for any more than the court provided in
U.S. v. Fort
, Your Honor.” Pitcavage stood at the prosecutor’s table, hands clasped behind him, a skipper on deck. His trial team, a claque of mannequins with law degrees, sat to his right. “We have no obligation to provide police reports or 302s to the defense any earlier than the Friday before testimony.”

“We can’t prepare an adequate defense under those restrictions, Your Honor.” This came from Tony Torreta, lead defense counsel, representing Hugo “Little Brother” Rodriguez, the shot caller for the Fogtown Brujos, a Mara Salvatrucha
clica
that ran a car-theft ring and various shakedown rackets plus good old-fashioned dope in the Outer Mission and Visitacion Valley. He was on trial with two of his lieutenants for the murder of a witness in a federal racketeering trial last spring. “We get, what, two
days?” Torreta continued. “Two
weekend
days at that, to track down and interview more than one hundred witnesses. In an excess of caution, or bowing to the government’s paranoia, we’ve agreed not to share the witness names with our clients.”