The Convert's Song (13 page)

A wild woman,
he thought. They were still holding hands.

“You know, I noticed something,” he said softly. “These cabin doors don’t lock. It’s bad enough we don’t have guns. We don’t even have locks.”

“Alarming.” She made a solemn face. She was standing very close to him.

“Yeah. The thing to do is wedge a chair under the doorknob. Put keys on it, they fall and make noise if someone opens the door.”

“Good idea,” she whispered. Her free hand gripped his left triceps, fingers digging into the taut muscle. “Maybe you should show me.”

“Maybe I should.”

They went into her cabin. The door slammed. Their bodies slammed together in the dark. His head whirled. A bombardment of sensations: her mouth and skin tasting like Baileys and nicotine and rain, her breasts bursting free when he pulled apart the soaked shirt, her hair in his face when he turned her around. They peeled off each other’s clothes, water everywhere. They grappled and contorted and banged against the door and the wall.

She led him to the bed. They slowed down, enjoying each other, intoxicated by each other. At one point, he said he hoped she didn’t think he presumed he was entitled to anything because of the shooting incident in La Matanza. She assured him that she didn’t, then kissed the bruise on his chest and said she wanted to express her gratitude for La Matanza. Sometime later, she informed him that from now on, he would speak French in her bed. He responded, in French, that there were several terms he hoped to learn.

The rain fell. The narco-jungle growled and whispered and moaned.

A
mélie Hidalgo showed up at breakfast with a proposition.

The lawyer joined Pescatore and Fatima at the table where they had dined the night before. The soggy verdant landscape shimmered in the sun.

The hotel didn’t have espresso. Pescatore downed cups of foul coffee. He was gloriously tired. He had expected that he would feel guilty. He didn’t see a problem in joining forces with the French police after the FBI kicked him to the curb. But it was unprofessional and unwise to sleep with the lead investigator. Nonetheless, he couldn’t work up much regret about it. As far as he could tell, neither could Fatima. This morning, she had retreated into serene silence.

“He won’t see you and he won’t talk to you,” Amélie Hidalgo declared. “Not here, not in Cochabamba, not in Timbuktu.”

The lawyer sipped coffee and frowned. She wore a long white dress. Her fingers toyed with a necklace of red wayruro seeds. She clearly disliked playing the role of go-between. Pescatore was convinced that her secret source was a Bolivian police officer who had taken part in the shakedown of Raymond and his crony Ali Baba.

“He won’t communicate with you by phone or e-mail,” she continued. “He offers one thing. He has a photo for sale.”

“Of Ali Baba?” Pescatore asked.

“A photo that he knows you will find interesting.”

After conferring, Pescatore and Belhaj offered one thousand dollars for the photo. The lawyer sent a one-word text message. The response was a demand for five thousand dollars. They settled on three thousand. The French government was picking up the tab.

“Now listen,” Hidalgo said. “He gave me very specific instructions. I will explain. And then, at his insistence as well as mine, I withdraw from this sordid episode.”

The plan for the exchange was elaborate. The main virtue was that it gave Pescatore a chance to return to his preferred operational status: packing heat.

Ten hours later, as they sat in the Land Cruiser, the embassy security man handed Pescatore a SIG Sauer SP2022 nine-m
illimeter
semiautomatic. The pistol was in a shoulder holster. Pescatore strapped the holster over his black T-shirt and put on his black travel vest. He patted the gun.

“Much better,” he said.

Fatima winked at him. She and the security man, whose name was Wenceslao, had argued. Wenceslao had suggested demanding an alternative plan, delaying the rendezvous in order to request reinforcements, or returning immediately to the embassy in La Paz—his preference. He balked at providing Pescatore with the gun from a small arsenal in a locked case in the Land Cruiser. Fatima stood firm. The security man kept saying
“C’est pas bon.”
She finally cut him off with a phrase that sounded like French for “Shut the fuck up.”

The Land Cruiser was parked in the ramshackle business district of Villa Tunari, the biggest town in the Chapare. They were two blocks from the site designated for the meet. Pescatore and Belhaj went over instructions, code words and contingencies.

“Please be careful,” she said.

It was dusk. A breeze stirred stagnant heat. Pescatore walked along a row of brick and wood facades. Awnings and corrugated metal roofs overhung the sidewalk, dripping rainwater. The storefronts were pale green, bold blue, hot pink in the fading light. He passed a general store, an Internet café full of Scandinavian-looking backpackers, an outdoor bar where two Quechua men sat zombie-like in red plastic chairs, their table lined with beer bottles. Motor scooters whined by. A dog drank from a puddle. Pescatore made way for three women vendors hauling sacks, tent-shaped silhouettes topped by tall hats.

The Pensión Lola was on a dimly lit stretch where palm trees began to reclaim the street. Pescatore entered the small hotel, parting a curtain of beads beneath an ad for Cerveza Taquiña depicting Andean peaks. The clerk behind the caged front desk had a pulverized nose, lank gray hair, and an air of dazed hostility. Pescatore asked for room 205 and paid thirty-eight dollars.

The dim staircase led up into a pall of heat and smells: cigarettes, plumbing, incense, ammonia, and pervasive, ancestral mold. He heard a television, a raucous female laugh. He drew his gun, let himself into room 205, and checked the closet and the bathroom. He sat in a lumpy leather armchair. The flat-screen television was the only thing in the room that didn’t look older than him.

Night fell outside. Catching sight of himself in a wall mirror, he ran a hand through his curly hair. His reflection was dirty and distorted. He looked grim sitting in the gloom in the black outfit in the black chair. Like a specter.

The Pensión Lola was a flophouse that catered to prostitutes whose clients were denizens of the drug trade and grunts from military and police bases. Pescatore’s dislike for brothels went beyond an aversion to sleaze and disease. While in the Border Patrol, he had worked cases and heard stories involving migrant women and children forced into service as prostitutes on both sides of the border. Stories full of cruelty, perversion and despair. Stories that had burned foul images into his brain.

There was a knock on the door. The woman said her name was Yennifer. His gun low by his leg, he glanced down the narrow hall before stepping aside. She flounced past him in a tight green cotton minidress that ended at her upper thighs, outlining a diminutive, short-armed, cartoonishly abundant figure. Her perfume invaded the room, a chemical cloud that stung his throat.

“My friend sent me,” she said.

Yennifer looked about Pescatore’s age, though her round face showed wear. Her black hair was arranged with clips in the shapes of Mickey and Minnie Mouse. She plunked her purse onto the bed and propped a hand on a robust hip.

“So?” she asked.

Pescatore gave her the three thousand dollars. She counted it, then handed him a sealed envelope and announced that she was going to use the facilities. When the bathroom door closed, he opened the envelope.

The photo had apparently been taken with a cell phone. The quality was decent. It showed Raymond and another man sitting on a wooden bench. Neither was handcuffed, but it was not hard to see that they were prisoners. A uniformed arm and shoulder were visible on one side of the frame, and a row of walkie-talkies stood in a rack next to the bench.

Raymond looked as if he was working an audience, as usual. His legs were crossed, his right foot dangling in a hiking boot over his left knee. His arms were spread wide in an expansive gesture, as if he were telling an anecdote at a party. His eyes, however, were tense and watchful. He wore a Chicago Bulls sweatshirt.

Clenching his fist victoriously, Pescatore saw that the image of the man next to Raymond was clear and sharp. Ali Baba sat with folded arms, letting Raymond handle the public relations. He gazed at the camera. His stern face reminded Pescatore of an Arabic proverb that Facundo had told him: “Sit in your doorway and wait for the coffin of your enemy to go by.”

Pescatore put Ali Baba at over forty and in good shape. He had broad shoulders, his beard was trim and black, his head conical and balding. A white button-down shirt emerged from his V-neck sweater.

Whoever he is, he looks like serious business,
Pescatore thought.

He used his iPhone to snap a photo of the photo and e-mail it to Fatima. They had agreed he would do this for security and as a signal that he would be done shortly. Next, he sent the photo in a separate e-mail to Facundo with a message:
Can you ID? Will explain.

Pescatore put the photo in a vest pocket. Yennifer emerged from the bathroom. Her hair now tumbled to her shoulders. She placed the Mickey and Minnie Mouse clips on the nightstand. She was even shorter than before; she had removed her red platform shoes. He needed to make clear to her that the transaction was over.

“Well, señorita, everything seems fine,” he said quickly, rising. “Many thanks. I know you’ve already been compensated, but here’s a token of appreciation.”

He pressed the equivalent of twenty dollars into her hand. He wished her a good evening and started to usher her toward the door.

Yennifer’s eyebrows arched. Her heavily painted eyes had a liquid sheen, as if she had been drinking or doing drugs.

“What are you talking about?” she said.

“We’re done. I need to get going.”

“None of that, friend,” she declared. “I was told to spend an hour here. As part of the cover story. To make it realistic.”

He said that was unnecessary. She responded that she had been paid handsomely and given strict orders. She needed to obey in case anyone was watching. Whatever they did or didn’t do, she had to stay in the room with him.

“You sure?” he asked.

“I’m sure.”

He slumped into the armchair. He didn’t want to spend any more time in this dump. Fatima and the others were waiting down the street.

Yennifer cocked her head. “What’s your name?”

“Valentín.”

“You look like that singer.”

Startled, he asked, “What singer?”

“He’s an actor too.” Her smile was bleary. “A bad guy on a
telenovela
.”

She approached and stood over him.

“Listen, Valentín,” she said. “If you want, we could make it really realistic.”

Her body strained every fiber of the minidress. She lowered herself into his lap. The force of her perfume made him blink. Her arms encircled his neck. Her bosom filled his face.

His body, still charged up after the night with Fatima, responded. Here he was, a night later: another woman, another hotel room. The danger and raunchiness and craziness of it excited him.

His hand slid up the back of her meaty thigh to discover she was wearing nothing but the dress. She stuck her tongue in his ear. He cupped her haunches and pulled her against him.

This kind of shit doesn’t happen to me,
he thought.
This is a Raymond-type situation.

That stopped him cold. He gripped her fleshy shoulders. Gently, he pushed her back and away.

“Señorita.” His voice was hoarse. “Yennifer. Please. Not a good idea.”

“You sure?”

“I’m sure.”

He kept pushing. She slid off and straightened. Flushed and disheveled, she tucked herself back into the top of her dress. He exhaled, mortified by his descent to sleaze-dog level. He was covered in sweat.

“If you really don’t want to…” she said. Her tone said,
If you’re really that gay…

She demanded to know what they were going to do for an hour. He suggested turning on the television. She flopped onto the bed. He called Fatima and explained the situation tersely.

Fatima said they would adapt to the delay. In forty-five minutes, their vehicle would advance to a prearranged point with a view of the hotel.

“We will be in position,” Fatima said. Wenceslao’s voice was audible in the background, no doubt giving her grief.

Pescatore and Yennifer watched a music-video program. She cheered when they played one of her favorites, “El Baile del Sua-Sua,” by Kinito Méndez. She hopped off the bed and danced to the merengue along with the cheerful, sexy Dominicans undulating onscreen. Chanting the moves in unison with the singer, she demonstrated: Divide the body. From the waist up, do nothing. From the waist down, you go sua-sua-sua. Pescatore applauded, but declined her invitation to join in.

When the hour was up, she shook his hand. She said it had been an immense pleasure. He said the feeling was mutual. He closed the door behind her and called Fatima.

“Five minutes,” he said.

“Hurry up,” Fatima said.

Pescatore had intended to wait long enough for Yennifer to get clear of the hotel. But then he noticed that she had forgotten the Mickey and Minnie Mouse barrettes on the nightstand. He scooped them up and hurried downstairs to catch her. As he reached the lobby, he heard a screech of tires, a commotion, and a woman’s scream outside.

The battered desk clerk did not react; maybe he heard screams like that all the time. Pescatore drew his gun and peered out through the curtain of beads.

He saw the prostitute in the street struggling with two men near a GMC Yukon. The assailants were burly and military-looking. One man held Yennifer by the hair and pointed a pistol at her face, threatening to shoot her if she didn’t stop scratching. She cursed and twisted and slashed at him. The other man rummaged in her purse.

This was not a coincidental street robbery, Pescatore thought. The duo knew about the photo, or at least that Yennifer was involved in some kind of exchange. The struggle was taking place a few yards to the left of the hotel entrance. Pescatore’s getaway vehicle waited down the street to the right. If he slipped out while they were distracted with Yennifer, he had a good chance of escaping in the dark.

A slap knocked Yennifer down. She tried to crawl away in the mud. The gunman strode forward to kick her. As Pescatore watched the cowboy boot swing back, he chided himself for considering the escape option. He had a single, brutal alternative.

He stepped through the bead curtain and went into a combat stance. He shouted,
“Policía!”

But he wasn’t the police. Unless they surrendered on the spot, he didn’t plan to attempt some kind of citizen’s arrest of two armed, meat-eating, woman-kicking gangsters on their own turf. He had no badge, no jurisdiction, no reason to play fair.

The gunman wheeled. Pescatore fired three shots at him, aiming for the center of the body mass, and three at the sidekick. The gunman spun in a circle and dropped. The sidekick tottered toward the Yukon and sank to his knees. Yennifer screamed. Pescatore yelled at her to stay down.

A flash lit up the interior of the Yukon. Pescatore realized, painfully late, that there was a third man behind the wheel. The third man was firing at him through his own windshield. Pescatore fled, hearing slugs break glass. He twisted to shoot back wildly on the run, tripped, and fell hard. The impact knocked the breath out of him. He flopped onto his stomach, cringing as bullets whined overhead.

A vehicle roared up. Pescatore saw Wenceslao hanging out of the passenger window of the speeding Land Cruiser. The security man aimed the machine gun, steady as a surgeon. His volley chewed up the windshield of the Yukon. The gunman behind the wheel bounced around like a crash dummy and slumped out of view. The Land Cruiser swerved up onto the sidewalk, skidding to a halt next to Pescatore. Wenceslao sprayed an insurance volley at the two men lying in the gutter. Pescatore hauled himself into the backseat next to Fatima.